Adoptionism

The narratology (science of the narration) is the discipline which studies the techniques and the narrative structures implemented in the literary texts.

History of the narratology

The first work in narratology of the modern literary studies comes from the Russian Formalisme and particularly from work of Victor Chklovski and Boris Eichenbaum.

In Germany the narratology developed under the impulse of Franz Karl Stanzel and Käte Hamburger.

Like the Semiology, the narratology developed in France at the end of the years 1960, thanks to the assets of the Structuralisme. In 1969, Tzvetan Todorov, forged the term in grammar of Décaméron , and in 1972, Gerard Genette defined some of its fundamental concepts in Figures III .

The character

An account is composed of several essential components, in particular a character , i.e. that which takes part in the history, the narrator , that which tells the history and, finally, a author, that which writes it. One thus should not confuse the narrator and the author, since the narrator is not, in fact, that a role played and invented by the author. Therefore, the narrator tells the history and the writer writes it.

In the same way, just like a work contains an implicit author, there exists also a reader and a built person for whom one intends the account, i.e. the recipient : “The text, object of communication, are not conceived without implicit recipient. ” (JOUVE, Vincent. the effect-character in the novel , coll “Writing”, Paris, PUF, 1992, p.18) the recipient is defined as the implicit reader to whom address the “effects of reading programmed by the text” (JOUVE, Vincent. the effect-character in the novel , coll “Writing”, Paris, PUF, 1992, p.21), is that to which addresses the narration. According to Vincent Jouve, following the analysis of the recipient one can theoretically put at the day the reactions of the “real reader”, i.e. the bio-psychological subject which holds the book between its hands, during his reading of the text.

In narratology, one appoints the sender “narrator”, by definition that which transmits the message, and the recipient “narrataire”, that to which addresses the stated speech. The narrataire does not have more one real existence that the narrator: they exist only in the textual form.

Various models of interpretation of works

The semiotic model

First of all, the Sémiotique is the science whose object is the whole of the processes of significance. Like the Sociology or the Psychology, semiotics does not have a clean object, but it constitutes a grid of analysis of the phenomena affecting living it and thus, it represents a place where can converge of many sciences like the Linguistique, the Anthropologie, the Sociologie, the Philosophie, the epistemology, etc Peu import its object of study, it approaches the various phenomena which constitute it while wondering which in is their SENS.

The semiotic narration , even semiotics greimassienne, is interested in the structures of the history which composes the account, that is to say with the " contenu". From this point of view, the history can be defined as a sequence of actions dealt with by actors . By definition, the actor is the authority charged to assume the actions which make function the account. Indeed, there cannot be account without actions.

With regard to the agents , one refers especially to the diagram actanciel such as establishes by A.J. Greimas. According to him, the actantiels roles (or agents) are six:

  • the subject

  • the object
  • the opponent
  • the additive
  • the sender
  • the recipient

Finally, the role set of themes appoints the actor who is carrying direction, in particular at the figurative level. It thus returns to categories (psychological, social) making it possible to identify the character on the plan of the contents. According to Vincent Jouve ( the poetic one of the account , ED. Armand Colin, 1997, p.53) " if the actantiel role ensures the operation of the account, the set of themes role enables him to convey direction and values. In fact, the significance of a text is due mainly to the combinations between actantiels roles and thématiques" roles;.

The semiological model

An approach is described as semiological when it chooses to study an aspect (for example the character) on the model of the sign Linguistique. Thus, the character becomes the " signe" account and lends itself to the same qualification as the signs of the language. So one can classify the characters of an account in three categories:

  • referential characters: they reflect reality (characters historical, mythological, standard characters);

  • the characters embrayeurs: they draw the place of the author or the reader in the fiction (narrator-witness, observer);
  • the characters anaphoras: they point out important data or prepare the continuation of the account (historian, investigator, biographer, soothsayer, prophet).

Philippe Hamon in his work For a semiological statute of the character (Threshold, coll Not, 1977), retains also three fields of analysis:

  • being (the name, the physical portrait, psychology, etc);
  • to do it (the sets of themes roles and the actantiels roles);
  • hierarchical importance (statute and value).

The sémio-pragmatic model

In the line of the work carried out by Umberto Eco in Lector in (1985) confabulated, a sémio-pragmatic approach studies the character like " effect of lecture". In other words, the narration (manner whose narrator carries out his presentation, its setting in scene) influence the image which retains the reader of a character and the feelings that it inspires to him.

According to Vincent Jouve in the effect-character in the novel (PUF, coll Writing, 1992), the characters can induce three types different of reading:

" A character can present himself as a textual instrument (with the service of the project that the author in a particular novel fixed itself), an illusion of anybody (causing, at the reader, of the emotional reactions), or a pretext with the appearance of such or such scene (which, requesting the unconscious one, authorizes an investment fantasmatic). These three readings respectively are named: effect-personnel, the effect-nobody and the effect-prétexte."

Actions

According to Paul Larivaille (" Morphological analysis of the récit" , in Poetic n°19, 1974), the intrigue (history) is summarized in any work according to a quinary diagram:

  1. Before - initial State - Balance

  2. Provocation - Detonator - Release
  3. Action
  4. Sanction - Consequence
  5. After - final State - Balance

In short, according to this diagram, the account is defined as the passage of a state in another by the transformation (stages 2,3 and 4):

" An ideal account starts with a stable situation that an unspecified force comes to disturb. It results a state from it from imbalance; by the action of a force directed in opposite direction, balance is restored; the second balance is quite similar to the first, but both are never identical. There are consequently two types of episode in an account; those which describe a state (of balance or imbalance) and those which describe the passage of one state to the autre." (Tzvetan Todorov, What structuralism? , volume 2, " Poétique" , Paris, ED. threshold, 1968, p.82)

Analysis of Genette

Narrative time

It is important to distinguish always well what concerns or not the narratology, i.e. here, the time of the universe represented and times of the speech.

The narratology can analyze the time of the account. There are several: the order, the duration, the frequency, etc the order of the account is the order of the facts. There can be retrospection or anticipation, the order can also be linear but also anachronistic. The duration as for it is time that lasts the facts, the rate/rhythm of the narration. As, the frequency is the number of times as an event occurred.

One can distinguish:

  1. the ellipse: Certain events in the narration overlooked and at this time one uses a temporal ellipse so that the reader can be located in the text. Example: “The D-day (temporal ellipse) arrived”. One can suppose that the previous days were not told.
  2. the synopsis: one summarizes in some lines of the events of long life, the account goes more quickly than the history.
  3. the scene: the time of narration is equal to the time of the account. One tells the events such as they did. Example: in a dialog.
  4. the pause: the account advances, but the history is suspended, one omits one period of the history. Example: during a description.

Moments of the narration

One distinguishes at least four different moments in the narration:

  1. later: one tells after what occurred front;
  2. former: one tells before what will occur;
  3. simultaneous: one tells directly what occurs;
  4. inserted: one mixes present and last.

Narrative modes and points of view

  • external Focusing
The history is told through the glance of a narrator external with the history which does not take part in it.

  • Focalization interns

The history is told through the glance of a character

  • Focusing zero (omniscient point of view)

The narrator knows all and knows some even more than the characters (especially in the novel, allows to give information in very few lines)

In the majority of the novels, the 3 points of view coexist in alternation and thus fit in variable focusing (zero): focusing moves of a character with another or is indéterminable.

When the narrator merges with one of the characters who tells lhistoire from his point of view, it is about a Récit to the first anybody. This technique is different from internal focusing. Indeed, the narrator can take a distance with the glance of the character while using internal focusing. He can for that use the Ironie, with the manner of Flaubert.

See too

Related articles

; Authors

external bonds

  • Site of the '' Cahiers of the narratology ''

  • Site of E. Simonnet, presenting the principal concepts narratologic

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