Lecture 4. Plot. Types of Narration. Compositional speech forms.
4.1. Compositional-speech forms.
4.2. Plot.
4.2.1. The author’s narration.
4.2.2. The entrusted narration.
4.3. Narration of characters.
4.3.1. Dialogue.
4.3.2. Inner speech.
4.3.3 Represented speech.
4.1. Compositional-speech forms (term by prof. V.Vinogradov). The placement of concept signals in the work of fiction is very uneven. It strongly depends on the compositional speech forms as follows:
- Narrative proper (where the unfolding of the plot is concentrated);
- Description (supplies the details of the appearance of people and their things populating the book; also of location and time of action);
- Argumentation (offers causes and effects of the character’s behaviour, his or the author’s considerations about moral, ethical and other issues).
Narrative proper is dynamic; its object is to transmit to the reader an exact visual account of the represented events. Unlike narrative proper, two other compositional forms, description and argumentation are passive in nature and static.
The author expresses his/her position in a most explicit way in the argumentation form. As far as it is always a highly generalized presentation of the author’s position, argumentation is highly autonomous and can be attributed to several situations of similar kind. Therefore, cohesion needs to be strengthened in order to stick author’s words to the previous and succeeding contexts: "This story I am telling... These characters I create... This is a novel...".
As far as the argumentation can combine the facts from the described reality and the entire author’s previous experience, it always surpasses the scope of logical and causative relations, which is necessary to thinking over and elucidating the initial situation. The loss of contact with it is marked by the term standing for an extended argumentation: “digression”, or “lyrical digression”.
In XVIII century Laurence Sterne created his genius innovative novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent. (1759-67). Here among the other highly interesting narrative techniques, one can find the “Praise of Digressions”:
Digressions, incontestably, are the sun shine ; ---- they are the life, the soul of reading ; -- take them out of this book for instance, -- you might as well take the book along with them; -- one cold eternal winter would reign in every page of it ; restore them to the writer ; ---- he steps forth like a bridegroom, -- bids All hail ; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.
(http://www1.gifu-u.ac.jp/~masaru/TS/i.160-179.html#sunshine)
Thus, the argumentation in the work of fiction is the megaphone of author’s ideas, them not image-shaped, but outwardly expressing his concept. This is an explanatory form of author’s speech. It in it, the authors comes into the direct contact with the reader, addressing him входит в непосредственный контакт с читателем, обращаясь к нему "dear reader", "you", «любезный читатель», «ты» или объединяясь с ним в «мы», "we".
Description can be considered a temporally indexed invariable background, which actualizes factual information of static character. Three types of description can be distinguished:
(1) the description of location;
(2) the description of character(s), either in groups or individually;
(3) The description of temporal situations.
Traditional forms of description include as follows: a portrait and a landscape. Portrait is one of the major means of individualizing a character. Apart from outer physical characteristics, it can convey information about his/her haircut, cloths, manners, accessories, i.e. thing reflective of one’s taste, predilections, and habits. Unlike the landscape, he portrait both defines one’s social status and relates to the temporal continuum of text as far as the costume refers to the epoch, time of the year and time of the day.
E.g 1. An extended portrait in 20th c. modernist literature:
“Mr Duffy abhorred anything which betokened physical or mental disorder. A medieval doctor would have called him saturnine. His face, which carried the entire tale of his years, was of the brown tint of Dublin streets. On his long and rather large head grew dry black hair, and a tawny moustache did not quite cover an unamiable mouth. His cheekbones also gave his face a harsh character; but there was no harshness in the eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in others but often disappointed. He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense. He never gave aims to beggars, and walked firmly, carrying a stout hazel” (J. Joyce, “A Painful Case”).
E.g. 2. Portrait created by gradually accumulated traits:
"...а curly-headed rather sturdy girl with shining brown eyes halfway out of her head and a ruby-red dimpling smile lifted from a turn-of-the-century valentine" - "...the girl's eyes, keeping the merry red smile as if even these plain words are prelude to a joke" - "...her eyes shining steadily as lamps" (J. Updike “Rabbit Redux”).
Notes to be made about the portrait and its functions:
- A portrait can be a dynamic one, when it performs the function of actualizing the text’s coherence;
- Grammatically, a portrait basically contains nouns with adjective qualifiers;
- A portrait is nominative and always evaluative;
- Basic functions of portrait are as follows: individualizing, characteristic, actualizing the categories of coherence, modality and conceptuality.
- An additional function of a portrait is a semiotic one. It is developed in case of prevailing repetition of some bright detail: Sherlock Holmes’s pipe, Mr. Pickwick’s gaiters, Ostap Bender’s service cap, etc. Fiction illustrators play great role in developing the semiotic function of one’s portrait.
- Portraits of women are less represented in fiction than these of men.
Landscape is traditionally considered a static background of events. However, the image of nature, which the fictional landscape is, equally reflects dynamic natural processes: furies, earthquakes, typhoons, volcano eruptions, etc. In other words, in a landscape a peaceful “state of nature” can be opposed a violent “action of nature”.
The latter can be called a dynamic landscape. It signalizes the change of the plot, i.e. can be treated as an action switch. The rampage of nature, described in the dynamic landscape, inevitably precedes the substantial changes in the life of heroes. Thus, for instance, a thunderstorm precedes heroine’s drama in Charlotte Bronte’s “Jayne Eyre”.
A landscape has a semiotic function as well as the portrait. Unlike the analogical function of the portrait, which is developed as a sign of an extremely individualized object, the semiotic function of a landscape is based on the community of sensations different people experience when perceiving similar pictures of nature. In other words, there is a common core in our perception of natural objects. For instance, “rain”, “mist”, “blizzard” often become the announcers and symbols of troubles and unpleasant events, while “garden”, “grove” and “brook” purport positive associations.
One of the landscape’s major functions is the actualization of both temporal and spatial continuums of the book. The notion of spatial continuum is broader than this of the landscape. The surrounding space can be either open as during the landscape description, or closed as related to the interior. A definite type of landscape is an urban one.
Urban and natural landscapes are alienated from a person, devoid of his/her features and possess no characteristic functions. The interior on the contrary, is a highly notional form of description as far as the characters’ tastes, inclinations, worldview are concerned:
E.g. “The lofty walls of his uncarpeted room were free from pictures. He had himself bought every article of furniture in the room: a black iron bedstead, an iron wash-stand, four cane chairs, a clothes-rack, a coal-scuttle, a fender and irons, and a square table on which lay a double desk. A bookcase had been made in an alcove by means of shelves of white wood. The bed was clothed with white bedclothes and a black and scarlet rug covered the foot. A little hand- mirror hung above the wash-stand and during the day a white-shaded lamp stood as the sole ornament of the mantelpiece. The books on the white wooden shelves were arranged from below upwards according to bulk. A complete Wordsworth stood at one end of the lowest shelf and a copy of the Maynooth Catechism, sewn into the cloth cover of a notebook, stood at one end of the top shelf. Writing materials were always on the desk. In the desk lay a manuscript translation of Hauptmann's Michael Kramer, the stage directions of which were written in purple ink, and a little sheaf of papers held together by a brass pin. In these sheets a sentence was inscribed from time to time and, in an ironical moment, the headline of an advertisement for Bile Beans had been pasted on to the first sheet. On lifting the lid of the desk a faint fragrance escaped - the fragrance of new cedar-wood pencils or a bottle of gum or of an over-ripe apple which might have been left there and forgotten” (J. Joyce, “A Painful Case”).
Due to the category of anthropocentricity of work of fiction, landscapes carry definitely carry the features of their observers. By means of such phenomenon as authorization the description is being alienated from the author and attributed to the characters.
Grammatically and syntactically, authorisation is established with the help of modal adverbs such as "clearly", "of course", «безусловно», «наверно» and verbs of perception: notice, observe, seem, and see, etc.
As a rule, compositional forms intermingle even within the boundaries of a single paragraph. So we can speak of three kinds of informationally marked contexts:
a) Homogeneous (they only contain one type of information, and accordingly, one compositional form);
b) Relatively homogeneous (they are interspersed by signals of another, but not dominating kind of information);
c) Heterogeneous (they contain different kinds of information, as they are characterized by a high degree of authenticity of interspersed signals).
4.2. Plot. After we have got a general idea of the compositional speech forms in a work of fiction, we should deeper learn the peculiarities of narration. The narration takes the greatest part of author’s speech in any prosaic work of fiction. It is in the narration that the action side of the story is concentrated; here the main chains of its plot are spread.
Plot is the main story or scheme of a play, poem, short story, or novel. Any narrative is around interrelated incidents, or events that present and revolt around a conflict.
The plot unfolds according to a particular model, or plot structure. It consists of the following components:
- Exposition;
- Conflict;
- Complicating action;
- Climax;
- Falling action;
- Dénouement.
Traditional plot development can be traced graphically just the way it did G.Freitag, a German critic in 1863 (“Freitag’s triangle”).
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E.G. Longacre [1983: 21] views the plot as the notional structure of narrative discourse. He singles out seven notional features:
1) Exposition, or “lay it out” (time, place, local color, and participants);
2) Inciting moment, or “get something going” (the planned and predictable is broken up in some manner);
3) Developing conflict, or “keep the heat on” (the situation intensifies or deteriorates, depending on the one’s viewpoint);
4) Climax, or “knot it all up proper” (everything comes to a head);
5) Dénouement, or “loosen it” (a critical event happens which makes resolution possible);
6) Final Suspense, or “keep untangling” (works out details of the resolution);
7) Conclusion, or “wrap it up” (bring the story to an end).
The first part of a plot is the exposition. The task of the exposition is to establish the setting (time and location), introduce the main characters and the foil, give whatever background information the reader needs. Also, the exposition establishes the atmosphere and the tone of a work of fiction.
A set of related happenings, or sequence of events is caused by the conflict. There is no story without conflict. Conflict is the struggle between two opposite forces. There are two basic kinds of conflict: external and internal. An external struggle or external conflict involves a person against another person, a person against nature, a person against society. The nature of internal conflict is different: internal conflict is between two elements within a person that struggle for mastery. In general more than one kind of conflict is present in a fictional work.
The conflict builds to the climax. The latter is the decisive point in a story or play in which the problem must be resolved in one way or another.
Events that precede the climax and lead to it are called the complicating action. On the other hand, events that follow the climax and serve to resolve the conflict are called falling action. Together they built a set of related happenings that center on the conflict.
Longacre proposes to call the climax at the surface level as the Peak. The scholar points out those routine features of the event-line may be distorted or phased out at the Peak. He claims that the Peak has features peculiar to itself, otherwise a zone of turbulence would not be observed.
It is worth mentioning some markers of the surface peak:
a) Rhetorical underlining, which according to Longacre, is one of the “simplest and most universal devices for making the important point not only of a narration but of other sorts of discourse as well” [Longacre 1983: 27];
b) Concentration of participants (crowded stage);
c) Heightened vividness marked by a surface structure tense shift or by shift to a more specific person;
d) Change of pace (variation in the size of constructions and variation in the amount of connective material);
e) Change of vantage point and/or orientation (the phenomenon of role reversal).
f) Incidents of particles and onomatopoeia.
Denouement refers to the resolution of the plot. The conflict is worked out in the denouement.
In some stories the plot develops though flashbacks. A flashback technique is the interruption of the in the development of a story when the writer breaks chronological order and relates to something that happens before the story began. Foe example, in two famous stories by Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and the Short Happy life of Frances Macomber, insights into the main story are provided in flashbacks. In some stories climax may be less dramatic than the reader expects it to be. Likewise, especially in modern stories, the climax and the denouement may come very close together.
4.2.1 The author’s narration. It should be noted that the text’s elements systemic interaction is created and guided by the author. It is his/her position and view point defines and shapes everything in a work of fiction. However, the expression of the author’s position is spread over the text in an irregular and heterogeneous way. In a prosaic work, the author’s speech comes in turn with the characters’ speech. Although all of them are but an artist’s inventions, they express their own point of view in their reasoning. The plurality of viewpoints, represented in a single text makes it a multi-faced and polyphonic one.
A full set of character’s remarks initially dispersed over a text is called his/her speech part («речевая партия»). A speech part is reflective of a person’s outlook on life and world-view.
Speech parts are presented by different language material. The author’s speech can definitely be told from that of characters. Thus, two basic speech flows may be indentified in a work of fiction: (1) the author’s one; (2) the characters’ one. The latter is heterogeneous: a character speaks about something, thus expressing his ideas in an explicit way and thinks about something, without pronouncing his/her thoughts aloud. They are exposed in the text as one’s inner speech. And after all, there is a contaminated form of utterances in a work, a mixed exposition in which both the author and the character are available: a represented speech.
The author’s evaluation of objects, events phenomena, which make up his fictional reality, plays the leading role in forming the work’s concept. A work of fiction as a result of the author’s cognitive activity by all means bears the author’s concern, i.e. evaluation and modality. They are available in every text part, but it is in author’s proper speech that they represented in the most direct sincere form. Here, the author’s viewpoint comes to the surface in order to be explicitly expressed. Text categories actualization is as well the prerogative of the author’s speech. Therefore, while analyzing the work of fiction, we should very thoroughly treat the concept signals placed in the author’s speech – as they intermediately come from the author.
4.2.2. The entrusted narration. Since ancient times, a narrator had been introduced in the work of fiction to replace the author (although this narrative technique grew extremely popular in the second half of 19th century). The major function of the narrator is to create and keep up the authenticity of the story. In the modern English literature, an author may stick up to this type of narration in case when the problems he/she raises are not clearly formulated for him/her and he/she does not know how to settle the conflict. In such a situation, a narrator seems to suit better than a traditional “omnipotent, omniscient author”.
A narrator is naturally limited by the facilities of his personal contacts and his personal observations. As well as all the other witnesses of some conflicts, s/he only knows what s/he managed to see, or what s/he was told about (with some distortions of facts possible). Inner mechanisms of actions and motivations of the other characters are often inaccessible to him. In this way, the problem comes to be raised but not settled.
The narrator can carry up his functions either explicitly – narrate the story on his behalf and from the 1st person, or implicitly. In the latter case, we can identify the narrator’s voice by such traces as the specific language means organization and from the alternated point of view.
There is no distinct classification of the entrusted narrative types. In Russian science, they distinguish two major types of entrusted narration: 1st person narrative and the tale «сказ». The latter was introduced in 1920s and thoroughly described by V.Shklovsky on the basis of the Gogol’s “Shinel”. Since that the majority of scholars treat “tale” as a narrative which is at most close to the norms of oral colloquial speech, with a vast number of low register elements, with grammar, orthoepic, syntactic and literary norms violated.
There was a hypothesis made that the tale’s organizing principle is “the device of making things strange, the device of the impeded form”, i.e. deautomatization of narration. However, this idea did not prove to be exhaustive.
V.A.Kuharenko considers that all types of entrusted narration share such a common feature as the bringing in a stranger’s point of view, which organizes both the “world of denotates” and the compositional-linguistic substance of the book. The chief thing is entrusting of the narrative to a fictional person, the transfer of reflected reality perception and cognition facilities to a stranger’s consciousness, to a stranger’s system of rules and values in order to achieve maximum credibility of the story.
In this case a narrator joins in the fictional world of a book as its inseparable part, while an author always raises over his/her characters.
The author’s position can fully coincide with that of a narrator. This is a unidirectional entrusted narrative (F. Scott Fitzgerald “The Great Gatsby”, W.S. Maugham “The Moon and The Sixpence”). In case of a differently directed narrative, the author’s position does not coincide with this of a narrator.
The coincidence of the author’s point of view with this of a narrator can result in a false idea that their images are as well identical (myths about E. Hemingway, N. Mailer, etc.).
4.3. Narration of characters. The central element of a work’s denotate structure is a conflict, it being set by characters the author chose. Separate characters and personalities stand for the individual though which the general is grasped. They are the bearers of the author’s ideas or his opponents.
Whatever a character says in the book proves to be his self-description. Irrespective of his/her utterance’s content, it gives a multifaceted idea of the speaker: his educational level, general culture, social status, profession, etc. A full set of character’s remarks initially dispersed over a text is called his/her speech part («речевая партия»). A separate utterance is as rule a part of the dialogic unity: two or more remarks, closely welded by formal and content ties.
4.3.1. Dialogue. Dialogic part of a book, a “dialogue” can be unambiguously distinguished due to its punctuation and graphic structure. The main function of the dialogue is the presentation of a spontaneous communication of personages. Eventually, the dialogue in prose and drama is an analogue of the oral colloquial speech and submits to the rules of its development:
- Oral colloquial speech is characterized by an emotional coloring, which can be identified through both the choice of morphemes (e.g. affectionate diminutive suffixes), and of words, constructions, phrases, etc;
- Lexical structure of the dialogue is sate with units of informal stylistic layer, polysemic words. This allows using a relatively small set of vocabulary units to describe diverse situations: e.g. the verb “to pop” in the below mentioned dialogue "We hadn't anything fixed up. I just thought I'd pop round... Just pop your coat on... She's popped up the road to the shops... Would you like me to pop downstairs and make you a cup of cocoa?... His eyes stare as if they'll pop out of his head... Just pop into the scullery and get me something... There's a fish and chip shop up on the main road. I thought you might show your gratitude by popping up for some" “Ask Me Tomorrow” by S. Barstow.
- In order to preserve the credibility of oral speech in the work of fiction, its major characteristics are to be reproduced: emotionality, spontaneity, etc. Exclamatory words, interjections, vulgarisms, slang, repetitions are brought in. The sentence communicative type undergoes changes. Phrases get short, elliptical, interrogative and exclamatory constructions abound:
E.g. ""Our father is dead."
"I know. How long ago did he die?"
"'Bout a month."
"What of?"
"Pneumonia."
"Buried here?"
"No. In Washington." (J.Steinbeck)
- In a fictional dialogue, orthoepic and grammar forms are often violated:
E.g.: "I ain't so young as I used to was" (S. Maugham. Cakes and Ale), or "I ain't got no money. They has all the money" (E. Caldwell. Trouble in July).
Since the middle of 1920s in English-speaking prose, the volume of dialogues has been gradually increasing.
4.3.2. Inner speech. Inner speech, reflective of a character’s thinking is a part of a person’s speech set in a work of fiction (along with the dialogue). The latter (dialogue) plays great role in the plot development. The latter (inner speech) reveals motives of characters, elucidates causal relations in the book.
In reality, the inner speech is the derivative from the outer one. All the characteristics of inner speech spring from its chief specificity: the inner speech is not intended to take part in the communicative process; it is not directed to any addressee to convey him/her some message; it is thus self-directed. The sender and the addressee are a single person. Inner speech can be highly elliptical for any trace of idea can be easily decoded by a person him/herself. Another important feature is its high associativity.
The fictional analogue of the inner speech should be told from the real thinking process. The author’s task is to introduce one into a stranger’s inner world and make it comprehensible for the reader.
Types of inner thinking patterns in modern literature;