Unit -1(2) Most important for exam NARRATOLOGY: FORM AND FUNCTION OF NARRATIVE MOAST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS 2023

 Unit -1(2) Most important for exam NARRATOLOGY: FORM AND FUNCTION OF NARRATIVE (PGS.7-16, 103-105) Gerald Prince Kritika Sharma Gerald Prince (b. 1942) is an American academic and literary theorist. He is a leading contributor to the discipline of Narratology. Narratology is the study of narrative and the structures and techniques that make up narratives, and how they affect a reader’s perception. In his book Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative, written in 1982, and from which the prescribed sections are taken, Prince elaborates on a theory of literary narratives. In the first chapter called “Narrating”, he analyses the figure of the narrator in literature and various implicit and explicit ways in which the narrating voice functions in literary texts. In the fourth chapter, called “Reading Narrative”, he shifts his concern from the author to the reader and analyses how readers shape texts and give them meaning. The prescribed sections from Prince’s book form a useful introduction to literary studies by making the readers aware of all the processes at work when a text is read and interpreted by a reader. 1. How does Prince define narrative? 2. Does a narrator always have to be signified by the first person pronoun ‘I’? Give examples of sentences where ‘I’ is not used but the act of narrating is implied. 3. According to Gerald Prince, what are some of the ‘signs of the I’? 2. Section 1 - ‘Signs of the I’ Prince claims that often the first person voice of the narrator is presented indirectly. Sometimes, in a sentence where the second person pronoun ‘you’ is used but it does not refer to or is said by a character, it might imply the presence of a narrator. Prince calls this a “trace” of the narrator. In Prince’s example, the sentence “As you know, John went to France and then he went to Germany” has in it the trace of the presence of the narrator, as the ‘you’ is addressed to an implied reader. However, there are some signs of the ‘I’ pronoun that are much more direct, and represent not only the narrator but also tell us something about his “spatio-temporal situation.” First person pronouns ‘I’ or ‘We’ that do not refer to a character within the story might refer to the narrator. Similarly, contextual words like “now”, “here”, 3. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY 2. LEARNING OBJECTIVES 88 | P a g e © Department of Distance & Continuing Education, Campus of Open Learning, School of Open Learning, University of Delhi B.A. (Hons.) English/B.A. (Programme) “yesterday” etc., when not referring to a character, might be referring to the narrator. Sometimes, “modal words” (words that describe the manner in which an action takes effect), such as “perhaps”, “clearly”, or “unfortunately” etc. can signify a narrator’s stance on what is narrated. Other signs of the ‘I’ include any statement or words that give the reader any information about the narrator - his persona or attitude included. 3. Section 2. ‘Intrusiveness, Self-Consciousness, Reliability, Distance’ In this Section, Prince discusses four qualities of a narrator, the first of which is intrusiveness. He claims that a narrator can be more or less intrusive, regardless of whether he is represented by a direct ‘I’. A narrator’s intrusiveness is how overtly or not he is characterised as the narrator within a story. Prince points out that not all intrusions are equally obvious. In the novel Tom Jones, the narrator constantly warns the reader that the narrative is going to be very digressive. This is an example of very obvious intrusiveness. In a brief disclaimer, Prince claims that he is not convinced by a position that many narratologists take when they say that any even slightly evaluative word (a word that takes a position vis-a-vis an event or character in the story) is an example of intrusiveness. For Prince, not all evaluative words are markers of a narrator’s subjectivity. For example, in the sentence “John walked elegantly”, the comment on the elegance of John’s walk does not have to be the subjective opinion of the narrator, and could just be the objective truth within the story. Self-consciousness is another quality of a narrator. A narrator could be more or less self-conscious depending on how aware he is of his position of being the narrator. In a novel like L,Emploi du Temps, the narrator constantly comments on his writing of the story, thereby making him a self-conscious narrator. In Camus’s The Stranger on the other hand, the narrator gives no indication that he is telling his own story, thus not being a self-conscious narrator. Prince points out that “a self-conscious narrator is always intrusive, but the reverse is not true.” 4.1. Define intrusiveness, self-consciousness, reliability, and distance. How are these qualities reflected in a given text? 2. Give examples of unreliable narrators from any literary texts. What makes these narrators unreliable? 5. Section 3 - Narrator-Character A narrator may or may not be a character in the story he narrates. In a story told in the first person, one can distinguish between “the first person as narrator and the first person as character”. In Prince’s example, the ‘I’ in the sentence “I ate meat” refers to both the character as well as the narrator, since the ‘I’ recounts an action performed by himself. Prince goes on to state that “when the narrator is not a character, we usually speak of a third-person narrative, because the events narrated refer to third persons.” Moreover, sometimes a narrator who is also a character can still refer to himself in the third person. In Laurence Sterne’s novel Tristram Shandy, the narrator-character Tristram often does this. Similarly, a narratorcharacter could also refer to himself with the second person pronoun “you”. Moreover, narrators can have varying degrees of importance as characters in the stories they narrate - central, minor, or secondary, or anything in between. 6. Section 4: Multiple Narrators In any given narrative, “there may be an indefinite number of narrators”, Prince states. Among multiple narrators, an hierarchy can often be established. The primary narrator might introduce the secondary narrator, who in turn, might introduce a tertiary narrator, and so on. However, that is not a marker of who the most important narrator is. In a narrative, it is possible that the tertiary narrator is of the most and the primary narrator is of the least importance. Moreover, between the many narrators of a single narrative, there can be varying degrees of distance. 7.1. Give an example of a narrator who is an important character in the story he is telling, and of one who is no importance whatsoever to the events of the story. 2. Name a text that is told by multiple narrators. Who is the primary narrator in this text, and who is the most important narrator? 8.4. CHAPTER 4: READING NARRATIVE 9.1. How does Gerald Prince define the act of reading? 2. What is the importance of asking questions in the act of reading? What do you think Prince means by ‘relevant questions’? 3. What is the difference between reading a text and a reading of a text? 4. What is Narratology? Based on your reading of the prescribed sections from Gerald Prince’s book, what comprises the practice of Narratology? What aspects of a text is a narratologist interested in