Academic literature on the topic 'Intradiegetic narrator'

The purpose of this paper is to examine selected issues concerning the differences in the reception of specific narratorial features as regards the original literary text and its translation. The analysis focuses on a unique narrator created by Joseph Conrad – a story teller and yarn spinner Charles Marlow. Marlow as a first-person narrator, who recounts his experiences to his intradiegetic addressees, employs characteristic techniques to communicate with his listeners, to make them involved in his stories, and to re-live his experiences. If ignored or overlooked by a translator, narrative techniques and linguistic features typical of him disappear, thus changing the reception of him as a narrator. This shift in reception and the very image of Marlow is exemplified by ignoring such features as Marlow’s phatic communication with his intradiegetic addressees (the use of such expressions as “you see”, “you understand”), interpretive markers that indicate Marlow’s imperfect knowledge or hesitation (expressions such as “I think”, “I believe”), linguistic patterning (repetitions) and cases of delayed decoding.

Abstract The paper surveys two different functions that may be ascribed to unreliable narratives. Derived from the notion of technique (Russian »priëm«, German »Verfahren«), function is a key concept of literary theory, which relates textual properties to effects. One of the functions, in recent time related to unreliable narration, is deception. In order to appreciate the literary effect of deception, the reader must finally understand that s/he has been deceived for a certain time. In other words, in order to recognize that s/he has been deceived, the reader must find out what is the case in the narrated world, i. e. fiction, and distinguish it from what was told without being the case. Another effect will be introduced. It is related to narratives in which it is impossible to find out what is true in the fiction. In those cases, readers will be perplex or helpless. In the next step, these effects – that of deception and that of helplessness – being effects of reception shall be substituted by their hermeneutic counterparts. If one is deceived by an unreliable narration, one finally finds out what is the case in the fiction (with regard to the reason for the deception); if one is left helpless by an unreliable narration, one cannot find out what is the case in the fiction (with regard to the unexplained fact that is the reason for the helplessness). The first one of these hermeneutic counterparts of the reception functions will be called the closed function of unreliability, since a gap of explanation can be closed by an interpretation; the second one will be called the open function of unreliability, since a gap of explanation is left open and cannot be closed. The remaining parts of the paper deal with literary examples which show different cases fulfilling those functions. The first two examples are taken from stories by Stefan Zweig. In »The Fowler Snared« (»Sommernovellette«, 1911), the closed function is fulfilled because the trustworthy extradiegetic narrator finally corrects the unreliable intradiegetic narrator. The next example of Zweig, »The Woman and the Landscape« (»Die Frau und die Landschaft«, 1922), lacks an explicit correction, since the narrator deceives not only the reader but also himself. A thorough interpretation, however, shows that it is more plausible to assume that the narrator’s account referring to certain facts is not true than to assume that it is correct. In this case, the gap can be closed, too, although there are more assumptions required than in the first case as the second text gives no explicit trustworthy evidence. The evidence must be inferred by hermeneutic conclusions. In contrast to the closed function, the open function of unreliability is much more complicated to ascribe. The first case, the (very) short novel The Castle of the Brothers Zanowsky (Das Schloß der Brüder Zanowsky, 1933) by Paul Zech presents several contradicting versions of a fact of the fiction (narrated world). The narrator renders them without preferring one of them. He is even unable to account for, let alone to recognize the fact that these versions are contradicting each other. So, it seems impossible to determine which one of these versions is true in the fiction. The version the narrator believes to be true may be true or not. On the one hand, the narrator can be considered to be plainly unreliable; on the other hand, his unreliability is not the point of the story. It is its point that what the narrator tells us is inevitably vague; it is not its point that he lies or is not able to find out what is true in his world. – The last example stems from the novel The Poor Squanderer (Der arme Verschwender, 1936) by Ernst Weiß. In this case, the narrator’s discourse is full of single contradictions and omissions. Some of the gaps can be closed, some of them not. However, there is no explanation which accounts for the narrator’s misreporting and underreporting tout court. The overall setting of the narrator’s putative unreliability is left open due to the lack of self-awareness the narrator reveals in his discourse. – The paper closes with a short outlook on the literary/poetical difference between the closed and the open function of unreliable narration. Texts that close the gaps caused by the unreliability of their narrators display other literary properties than texts that leave the gaps, caused by the unreliability of their narrators, open. Additionally, the difference between texts whose open gaps are caused by unreliable narration and texts with similar gaps, which are not unreliably narrated, is hard to explain.

The story of Robinson Crusoe comes to us in the guise of a first-person narrative based in part on a diary. Successor texts have traditionally adopted the same narrative situation, exploiting it in order to foreground ideas of authorship, textual authority and linguistic dominance. This essay pays particularly close attention to those Robinsonades that have not followed this pattern and have instead opted to omit meta-narration and intradiegetic narrator figures. It considers to what ends this is done in three modern Robinsonades: William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954), J. G. Ballard’s Concrete Island (1974), and Michael Dudok de Wit’s animated film The Red Turtle (2016).

The Form of Text Communication in Eka Kurniawan’s Corat-coret di Toilet Short Story Collection. The purpose of this study is to find the method of text communication in the Corat-coret di Tolet short stories collection. The form of this study is a literary study with structural analysis methods as offered in the narrative theory of Gerard Gennette. The results of the study are the classification of the text communication method of short stories namely: zero and fixed internal focalization; subsequent and simultaneous narrating times; intradiegetic-heterodiegetic, extradiegetic-heterodiegetic, and intradiegetic-homodiegetic types of narrating level and person; the character and writer as a narrator. The findings of the classification of text communication methods indicate the existence of a gender bias that alienates women's position in the story.

This article focuses on stylistic choices in the novel Im atë donte Adolfin (My father loved Adolph) by the Albanian author in Kosovo Mehmet Kraja (2005) as a strategy to generate a post-communist perspective of interpreting history. By blending first-person narration as confidentiality and third-person narration as conventionality (Barthes, 1978), the possessive construction ‘my father’ in this literary text serves both as referential label and deictic, generating dual focalization (Phelan, 2005). The heterodiegetic narrator is positioned simultaneously as a neutral eye witnessing narrator and as a signal of subjectivity. Even in cases of intradiegetic role the narrator remains detached interweaving his voice with the voice of the character. The synchronized overt and distant narratorial stances in this novel correspond with the demonstration of historical discourse as both subjective and factual narration. The relationship between fiction and truth has been widely treated in the post-modern intellectual thought, and as Borg (2010) points out in his study on Beckett and Joyce, the radical narrative innovations are “examples of a peculiarly modernist engagement with the nature of factual and fictional truth” (p. 179), suggesting that in modern literary texts “every event exists factually and fictionally at the same time” (p. 187). As a resonance to Borg’s analysis of modernist literature, in Kraja’s novel the knowledge about history consists of both factual and imaginative elements, bringing “the moment of truth in all its potential” (p. 191).

Abstract This article takes Gamaliel’s speech in Acts 5:34-39 as a test case for Luke’s use of dramatic irony, which is defined as a difference in either knowledge or comprehension between an intradiegetic narrator and the extradiegetic recipients. It is argued that the author applies this narrative tool in a very complex way to elaborate his theology of providence: Even though Gamaliel proposes the distinction between divine and human plans and activities, he does not fully grasp the meaning of his words. This encourages the readers to evaluate Gamaliel’s statement on the basis of Luke’s narrative. Hence, they are able to conclude that from a divine point of view a human action opposing God’s plan cannot actually exist because God has already foreseen this action.

Sheri Holman’s neo-Victorian novel The Dress Lodger (1999 ) depicts the beginning of the 1831 cholera epidemic in Britain. The novel skilfully manipulates the conventions of nineteenth-century realism and neo-Victorian fiction to test the limits of readerly empathy and its foundations in the conception of the liberal subject as disembodied and disinterested. Although the novel seems ‘faux-Victorian’ and apparently encourages immersion in the story and identification with the central characters, metaphorical uses of language and shifting points of view disrupt such comfortable ways of reading, challenging the readers’ tendency to derive pleasure from representations of working-class suffering. Through complex characterisation of the protagonists, the factory and sex worker Gustine and the doctor Henry Chiver, the narrative exposes the violence of representation through parallels with medical discourse. This essay argues that Holman’s experimentation with narrative strategies ultimately suggests the need for a pandemic consciousness that transcends the clashing responses to the cholera epidemic and cultivates an awareness of global interdependence. The possibility of such pandemic consciousness is conveyed through ‘the Great Narration’ by the novel’s unconventional intradiegetic narrator, the working-class Dead, whose bodies were stolen by doctors for the purposes of dissection.

According to some grammarians the use of the historical present tense is a technique for enhancing the dramatic effect of a story by making addressees feel as if they were present at the time of the experience, witnessing events as they occurred. Others have suggested that the historical present represents events as if they were occurring before the speaker’s eyes. My own position on the matter, though, is that the necessity to postulate a “metaphorical shift”, an “as if”, is due to the interpretation of the basic meaning of the present as being contemporality with the speaker’s present and the identification of a speaker (narrator) with an “intradiegetic” participant in the story (character). In support of this position the paper argues that the temporal referential of the present tense is the speech referential, organised by and around the speaker/character. The speech process is an incomplete process with a validation interval closed to the left and open to the right. This property motivates use of the present as a gram-matical vehicle for re-presentation.

This article examines the apocalyptic in Gomorra ( Saviano, 2006 ). Wu Ming 1 (2008) declared Saviano’s novel to be part of a new body of literature called the “New Italian Epic” based upon the narrative’s seven characteristics. Alessandro Dal Lago (2010) , on the other hand, does not think that Saviano’s work represents a new genre. For him, Ming’s sixth characteristic, the unidentified narrative object, has been the narrative technique of various historical authors such as Giovanni Verga (1978) and almost any work by Jorge Borges, just to name two. This technique is that of a composite narrator, which employs mimesis in combination with a diegetic narrative that alternates between being intradiegetic and extradiegetic according to the author’s whim. In assessing Gomorra, Dal Lago argues that there has always been literature that appears to tell an objective truth but that, in fact, represents the author’s subjective portrayal. He calls this writing style the “heroic rhetoric.” Dal Lago is correct in assessing this rhetorical style, but does not fully explain Saviano’s popular success. This article will review the apocalyptic literature to show how it applies to the narrative of Saviano’s prophetic voice in an eschatological context.

Vytauto Martinkaus romane „Žemaičio garlėkys“ atskleistos pasakojimo ypatybes: naracijos laikas (trukmė, tvarka, dažnis), naratorių tipai (ekstradiegetinis, intradiegetinis) ir pasakojimo funkcijos (naratyvinė, valdymo, komunikacinė, liudijimo, ideologinė) naudojantis Gerard Genette naratologija.
The following characteristics of the narrative and the narrator are revealed in the novel „Žemaičio garlėkys“ through narratology: type of narrator (ekstradiegetic, intradiegetic), the time in the novel is classified by duration, frequency, and order; the functions in the narrative are as follows: narrative, operating, communicative, ideological functions and the function of witness.

Ce mémoire se compose d’une analyse narrative de deux nouvelles fantastiques par Guy de Maupassant : L’Auberge et la seconde version du Horla. La narration du premier de ces contes est extradiégétique, ce qui signifie que le narrateur se trouve en dehors de l’univers fictif. Le deuxième texte, en revanche, est un exemple d’une narration intradiégétique – le narrateur est donc un personnage du récit. Le but principal de l’étude est d’examiner comment le discours du narrateur, selon qu’il est extradiégétique ou intradiégétique, influence la perception des récits et des protagonistes. Pour atteindre cet objectif, nous identifions d’abord quelques stratégies narratives qui sont employées dans les nouvelles afin d’évoquer l’hésitation du lecteur et ainsi créer l’effet fantastique. Nous observons que, suivant le mode de la narration, extradiégétique ou intradiégétique, les stratégies narratives utilisées sont de différentes natures. Elles coopèrent toutefois pour créer un sentiment d’hésitation au lecteur et conduisent donc celui-ci à considérer l’existence du surnaturel dans le monde diégétique. Enfin, nous montrons de plus près comment le discours du narrateur influence la manière dont le lecteur considère le comportement des personnages principaux ainsi que leur santé mentale. Nous voyons que dans tous les deux textes, il n’y a aucun doute que le protagoniste devient finalement fou. Cependant, tandis que le savoir du narrateur omniscient aide enfin le lecteur à résoudre le mystère fantastique dans L’Auberge, le mystère n’est jamais résolu dans Le Horla. Cela semble être attribué à la perception et au savoir limité du narrateur intradiégétique.
This essay consists of a structural narrative analysis of two fantastic short stories by Guy de Maupassant: The Inn and the second version of The Horla. In the first of these stories the narration is extradiegetic, meaning that the narrator is positioned outside the fictional world. The second text, on the other hand, is an example of an intradiegetic narration – the narrator is thus a character in the story. The overall aim of the study is to investigate how the discourse of the narrator, whether he is extradiegetic or intradiegetic, influences the perception of the stories and the protagonists. In order to meet this aim, we start by identifying some narrative strategies which are applied in the stories in order to evoke the reader’s hesitation and, thereby, create the fantastic effect. Depending on whether the narration is extradiegetic or intradiegetic, it is observed that these strategies differ from each other. Nevertheless, they work together to awaken the reader’s hesitation, leading him thus to consider the existence of the supernatural in the diegetic world. Finally, it is revealed how the discourse of the narrator influences the way the reader perceives the behavior of the protagonists as well as their sanity. In both texts, there is no doubt that the protagonist eventually loses his mind. However, while the knowledge of the omniscient narrator finally helps the reader to solve the fantastic mystery in The Inn, the mystery is never resolved in The Horla. This seems to be a consequence of the limited perception and knowledge of the intradiegetic narrator.

AbstractThis article gives a comprehensive theoretical account of deception in multimodal film narrative in the light of the pragmatics of film discourse, the cognitive philosophy of film, multimodal analysis, studies of fictional narrative and – last but not least – the philosophy of lying and deception. Critically addressing the extant literature, a range or pertinent notions and issues are examined: multimodality, film narration and the status of the cinematic narrator, the pragmatics of film construction (notably, the characters’ communicative level and the one of the collective sender and the recipient), the fictional world and its truth, the recipient’s film engagement and make believing, as well as narrative unreliability. Previous accounts of deceptive films are revisited and three main types of film deception are proposed with regard to the two levels of communication on which it materialises, the characters’ level and the recipient’s level, as well as the intradiegetic and/or the extradiegetic narrator involved. This discussion is illustrated with multimodally transcribed examples of deception extracted from the American television seriesHouse.In the course of the analysis, attention is paid to how specific types of deception detailed in the philosophy of language (notably, lies, deceptive implicature, withholding information, covert ambiguity, and covert irrelevance) are deployed through multimodal means in the three types of film deception (extradiegetic deception, intradiegetic deception, and a combination of both when performed by both cinematic and intradiegetic narrators). Finally, inspired by the discussion of Hitchcock’s controversial lying flashback scene inStage Fright, as well as films relying on tacit intradiegetic, unreliable narrators (focalising characters) an attempt is made to answer the thorny question of when the extradiegetic (cinematic) narrator can perform lies (through mendacious multimodal assertions) addressed by the collective sender to the recipient, and not just only other forms of deception, as is commonly maintained.