Narration: Difference between revisions

Thus, narration includes both ''who'' tells the story and ''how'' the story is told (for example, by using [[stream of consciousness (narrative mode)|stream of consciousness]] or [[unreliable narrator|unreliable narration]]). The narrator may be anonymous and unspecified, or a [[Character (arts)|character]] appearing and participating within their own story (whether fictitious or factual), or the author themself as a character. The narrator may merely relate the story to the audience without being involved in the plot and may have varied awareness of characters' thoughts and distant events. Some stories have [[multiperspectivity|multiple narrators]] to illustrate the storylines of various characters at various times, creating a story with a complex perspective.

 

An ongoing debate has persisted regarding the nature of narrative point of view. A variety of different theoretical approaches have sought to define point of view in terms of person, perspective, voice, consciousness, and focus.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Chamberlain |first1=Daniel Frank |title=Narrative Perspective in Fiction: A Phenomenological Meditation of Reader, Text, and World |year=1990 |publisher=ITHAKA |jstor=10.3138/j.ctt2ttgv0 |isbn=9780802058386 }}</ref> Narrative perspective is the position and character of the storyteller, in relation to the narrative itself.<ref>{{cite book|editor=James McCracken|title=The Oxford English Dictionary |url=http://www.oed.com/|access-date=16 October 2011|edition=Online|year=2011|publisher=Oxford University Press }}</ref> There is, for instance, a common distinction between first-person and third-person narrative, which [[Gérard Genette]] refers to as intradiegetic and extradiegetic narrative, respectively.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method |last=Genette |first=Gérard |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |year=1980 |isbn=0-8014-9259-9 |location=Ithaca |url=https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801410994/narrative-discourse/ |page=228 |others=Foreword by Jonathan Culler |lccn=79013499 |ol=8222857W |author-mask=0 |access-date=2023-10-04 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231004203129/https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801410994/narrative-discourse/ |archive-date=2023-10-04 |url-status=live |translator-last=Lewin |translator-first=Jane E.}}</ref> Intradiegetic narrators are of two types: a homodiegetic narrator participates as a character in the story. Such a narrator cannot know more about other characters than what their actions reveal. A heterodiegetic narrator, in contrast, describes the experiences of the characters that appear in the story in which he or she does not participate.