4. Narration - telling a story

Veni, vidi, vici.

purpose - to relate events

- dynamic

• the unfolding of the plot is concentrated

THE FOX AND THE GRAPES (Aesop)

One hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. “Just the thing to quench my thirst,” said he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: “I am sure they are sour.”

It is easy to despise what you cannot get.

B. Character’s speech

1. Direct speech

2. Inner speech

1) Direct speech:

• uttered speech

- a quotation of the spoken utterance

-reflects natural communication

- a specific form of social contact

- forms: dialogue, monologue

S. Hill A Bit of Singing and Dancing

• An easy mistake, a perfectly understandable mistake. Mr. …

• Please do not feel at all …

• Curry. Amos Curry.

• … embarrassed.

-  I’m looking for a quiet room with breakfast. It seemed so hopeful. Park close. Such a comfortable address.

G. Greene The Comedians

“That’s. I didn’t. Nerves y’know. Highly strung. A sort of madness, it was. Can’t imagine now how I did it, ‘cos I’ve never been that sort of chap, though, mind you, I’ve always had temper if I got properly roused. Still, I don’t know how I came to do it, I don’t, really I don’t. Must have been properly mad at the time. Seems strange now, I can tell you, ‘cos don’t feel anything about it now, nothing at all.”

- the analogue of the oral type of speech

- reflects emotions by using:

• conversational words, slang, vulgarisms, exclamatory words

 laconic sentence structures

 repetitions, inversion, emphatic sentences

 phonographical devices (graphons)

• has a certain intonational structure

А. Белый. Петербург

И на бритом, багровом лице проиграло:

- «?»

- «!»

- «!?!»

Совершенно помешанный!

2) inner/interior speech of characters

- the personage’s narration of his/her own thoughts

-the author does not interfere

-the reader participates in the inner psychological life of the character

Types:

a. inner monologue

- a lengthy piece of the character’s meditations

- slows down the development of the plot

- 1^st person narration

- speech peculiarities of the character

He looked at his watch and thought, I wonder if Andres got through to Golz? If we are going to blow it I would like to breathe very slowly and slow up the time again and feel it. E. Hemingway

b. short insets of inner speech

- immediate mental and emotional reactions

- marked by dashes, brackets or dots

… the small straight nose and a cowlick in one eyebrow that sends a little fan of hairs the wrong way and seems to express a doubt. Amazing, genes. J. Updike

К.Паустовский Северная повесть

Он хотел услышать в комнатах женские шаги, но ничего не доносилось, кроме стука стенных часов и отдаленных гудков автомобилей. Где же она? Он хотел дождаться ее …