Narratology Session 1 Overview

Narratology Session 1

• Narratology is a lecture course for the winter semester 2024-25, taught by Monika Fludernik.

What is Narrative?

• Various perspectives on narrative from different fields are considered:
  • Literary Studies (Epic, Lyric, Dramatic: narrative, poetry, drama)
  • Linguistics (argumentative texts, instructional texts, narrative texts, description, expository texts, explanatory texts, conversation)
  • Social Sciences (performance, face, purposes)
  • Cognitive Sciences (modes of explanation: narrative, metaphor)

Pros and Cons of the Literary Perspective

• Basic distinction is made between narrative (novel) and drama (mediacy of narrative vs. immediacy of drama in the narrator).
• Examples such as film, cartoon, ballet, and dramatic narrative are mentioned.

Pros and Cons of the Linguistic Perspective

• The list of text types is open, encompassing distinctions between global text types, genres, and subgenres, and discourse modes (e.g., narrative – novel, short story, film, Gothic novel, detective story, etc).
• Linguistic analysis often focuses on shorter texts like obituaries, recipes, or application letters.
• Principles like text grammars (focused on syntactic model, Chomsky) and pragmatics (looking at context and use) are highlighted.

Pros and Cons of the Social Science Perspective

• The central question focuses on why people tell stories.
• Analysis includes aspects like tellability and point- conversational analysis, entertainment/performance, self-presentation, current argument illustration, positioning (Michael Bamberg), and expression of ideas and emotions.

Pros and Cons of the Cognitive Perspective

• The central question focuses on the mental/cognitive purpose of storytelling.
• Explanatory value of narratives (cause and effect, temporality) is compared to other forms of explanation like metaphors or diagrams or visualisations.
• Experientiality (model Fludernik) is mentioned.

Moving Towards a Definition

• Various examples of narratives given and analysed.

Definitions (as per Gerald Prince's Dictionary of Narratology)

• Narrative is the recounting of one or more real or fictitious events communicated by one or more narrators to one or more narratees.
• Example texts (such as about electrons, people, or events) which do not have an event sequence are not narratives.
• A dramatic performance likewise is not a narrative, as the events occur directly in the performance.
• Even seemingly simple texts, such as "the man opened the door," or "the goldfish died," are considered narratives under this definition.

Additional Criteria for Narrative

• Narratives usually have a continuant subject and represent a whole.
• Narratives are ubiquitous, found in every society and used at an early age.
• The key element in a narrative is temporal sequence (causation).
• Narratives are not only products, but also processes, emphasising the element of communication.