Seminar 3 Worksheet

Obligatory tasks to be undertaken are in red

Narrative Theory

To be defined:
narrative
story
plot
overt narrator
covert narrator
tone
voice
external focalization
internal focalization

Hometask [to think over]:

“We are all born as storytellers. Our inner voice tells the first story we ever hear,” Kamand Kojouri

“Every story needs some sort of secret that impels it forward. Otherwise why would the reader
bother to keep on turning the pages?” Deb Loughead

“Stories matter,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Reading:
1. Edgar Allan Poe “The Tell-Tale Heart” (short story)
2. Jamaica Kincaid “Girl” (short story)
3. James Joyce “The Boarding House” (short story)

Task: Analyze these texts taking into account the info from the lecture and some of the typical
questions provided below. Support your answers with evidence from the text.

Typical questions:
What are the main ingredients of a narrative? What must a narrative have for it to count as
narrative?
How do omniscient, first-person, and third-person limited points of view differ and what impact do
they have on a reader's understanding of the text?
What is the narrator's relationship to their story? Is the narrator present or absent in it?
  Who does the author choose for a speaker? Does s/he have a name and/or a distinctive
voice? Is the narrator overt or covert or somewhere in between? Is the voice quality
different in specific location such as (chapter) beginnings and endings?
 Does the narrator make any assumptions about actual or potential addressees? Is there a
clear-cut narrator-audience contract? Is the extent of the narrator's (human) limitation or
omniscience ever discussed or problematized?
 Is the narrator largely reliable or does s/he deceive him- or herself or others? Does his or
her unreliability concern value judgments or facts?
How does a change in point of view affect our perception?
How do writers use different points of view to develop a text?
How can a certain point of view that a writer chooses influence a reader?
How can point of view change the theme of a story?