Is There a Narrator in This Narrative?
Keywords:
Narrative, NarratorAbstract
Some narratologists insist on the fact that a narrative cannot do without a narrator that has to be distinguished from the real author. Indeed, the narrator is considered as that mediating agency whose task is to prepare the reader’s entrance to the diegetic world by organizing all the necessary elements which may facilitate this entrance. This is what has been labelled the pan-narrator theory.
Others, on the other hand, advocate the idea that not all fictional narratives contain a fictional narrator (Köppe/Stühring 2011). Hence, they adopt something called the no-narrator theory.
These positions lead us to raise such questions as: do all narratives contain a narrator? And if not, does the death of the narrator engender the death of the narrative?
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References
- On the author/narrator/ implied author distinction see, Booth (1961) ; Toolan (1988) ; Bal (1997) ; Rimmon-Kenan (2002) ; Prince (2003) Bortolussi and Dixon (2003) ; Herman and Vervaeck (2005) Jahn (2005); Fludernik (2009).
- For more critical studies on the concept of “author” see, W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley’s essays ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ and ‘The Affective Fallacy’ ; Roland Barthes’s ‘The Death of the Author’(1977[1967]); Michel FOUCAULT’s ‘What is an Author?’ (1979).
- Here again another complexity is introduced, that of the identity and nature of the narratee. On the question see, G. Genette (1980); G. Prince (1973); S. Chatman (1978); Sh. Rimmon-Kenan (2002); M. Fludernik (2005, 2009); D. Herman (2007); Herman et al (2008).
- Some narratologists including G. Genette argued that “narrative is a mode of verbal representation which involves the linguistic recounting or telling of events, rather than their performance or enactment on stage.”
- Seymour Chatman defines the existents as “the objects contained in story-space […] namely character and setting (107). For G. Prince, “existents and events are the two fundamental constituents of the story, states and events” (qtd in Herman et al 388).
- Emile Benveniste, M.J. Toolan, Sh. Rimmon-Kenan, Ann Banfield, M. Fludernik,
- The heterodiegetic narrator belongs to the fictional world but does not participate in the events of the story. i.e., the narration is done by a third-person narrator, as opposed to the homodiegetic narration in which the narrator is also a character.
- As opposed to the overt narrator which is “one that can be clearly seen to be telling the story – though not necessarily a first-person narrator – and to be articulating her/his own views and making her/his presence felt stylistically as well as on the metanarrative level.” (Fludernik 22)
- For more details consult Stanzel’s A Theory of Narrative (1984 [1979]).
- Such as: Kate Hamburger (1973 [1957]); Emile Benveniste (1966); Ann Banfield (1982).
- The majority of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories consist of a great number of quotations and dialogues such as: The Killers, Hills Like White Elephants, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Cat in the Rain to name only a few.
- As, again, opposed to the overt narrator which is referred to by the first-person pronoun and whose physical appearance, gender, life, thoughts, desires, dreams and ideological affiliations are clearly and fully portrayed.
- This list comprises: the description of setting, identification of characters, temporal summary, definition of character, reports of what characters did not think or say, commentary and the use of footnotes. For a more detailed account see Rimmon-Kenan (2002) pp. 100-2.
- S. Chatman’s term in Story and Discourse (1978).
Works Cited
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- ____________________________________. ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ (1954), in D. Lodge, ed., 20th Century Literary Criticism: A Reader. London: Longman, 1972, pp. 334-344. Print.
