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In [[literature]], a [[point of view (literature)|point of view]] is the related [[experience]] of the [[narrator]] - ''not'' that of the [[author]]. Authors expressly cannot, in [[fiction]], insert or inject their own voice, as this challenges the [[suspension of disbelief]]. Texts encourage the reader to identify with the narrator, not with the author. |
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{{short description|Written or spoken commentary}} |
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{{about|using a commentary to present a story|other strategies used to present stories|Narrative technique}} |
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{{redirect|Narrator}} |
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'''Narration''' is the use of a written or spoken commentary to [[storytelling|convey]] a [[narrative|story]] to an [[audience]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Narration in Poetry and Drama|author-last1=Hühn|author-first1=Peter|author-last2=Sommer|author-first2=Roy|work=The Living Handbook of Narratology|year=2012|publisher=Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology, University of Hamburg|url=https://www-archiv.fdm.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/article/narration-poetry-and-drama.html}}</ref> Narration is conveyed by a '''narrator''': a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the [[Plot (narrative)|plot]]: the series of events. Narration is a required element of all written stories ([[novel]]s, [[short story|short stories]], [[poems]], [[memoirs]], etc.), presenting the story in its entirety. It is optional in most other storytelling formats, such as films, plays, television shows and video games, in which the story can be conveyed through other means, like dialogue between characters or visual action. |
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The '''narrative mode''', which is sometimes also used as synonym for [[narrative technique]], encompasses the set of choices through which the creator of the story develops their narrator and narration: |
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Literary narration can occur from the [[First-person narrative|first-person]], [[Second-person narrative|second-person]] or [[Omniscient narrator|third-person]] point of view. In a novel, first-person commonly appears: ''I saw ... We did...''. In self-help or business writing, the second person (addressing "you") predominates: ''you must..., thou shalt...''. In an [[encyclopedia]] or [[textbook]] narrators often work in the third-person: ''that happened..., the king died...''. For additional vagueness, imprecision and detachment, some writers employ the [[passive voice]]: ''it is said that the president was compelled to be heard...''. |
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* ''Narrative point of view, perspective,'' or ''voice'': the choice of [[grammatical person]] used by the narrator to establish whether or not the narrator and the audience are participants in the story; also, this includes the scope of the information or knowledge that the narrator presents |
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* ''Narrative tense'': the choice of either the past or present [[grammatical tense]] to establish either the prior completion or current immediacy of the plot |
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* ''[[Narrative technique]]'': any of the various other methods chosen to help narrate a story, such as establishing the story's [[Setting (narrative)|setting]] (location in time and space), [[characterization|developing characters]], exploring [[Theme (narrative)|themes]] (main ideas or topics), [[Narrative structure|structuring the plot]], intentionally expressing certain details but not others, following or subverting [[Literary genre|genre]] norms, employing certain linguistic styles and using various other storytelling devices. |
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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. |
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The ability to use viewpoint effectively provides one measure of someone's writing ability. The writing [[markscheme]]s used for [[National Curriculum assessments]] in [[England]] reflect this: they encourage the awarding of marks for the use of viewpoint as part of a wider judgement regarding the [[composition]] and effect of the text. |
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==Point of |
== Point of view == |
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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> |
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Most novels are narrated either in the [[first-person narrative|first person]], in ''third person omniscient'', or in ''third person limited''. A third person omniscient narrator can shift focus from character to character with knowledge of everyone's thoughts and of events of which no single character would be aware. The ''third person limited'' [[point of view (literature)|point of view]] picks one character and follows him or her around for the duration of the book. The narrator may be more observant than the character, but is limited to what that one character could theoretically observe. In a minor variant on third person limited, narrator may "travel" with a single character, but the point-of-view conventions may be extended to allow the narrator access to other characters' thoughts and motivations. |
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===Literary theory=== |
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First person narration is used somewhat less frequently. The first-person point of view sacrifrices omniscience and omniprescence for a greater intimacy with one character. It allows the reader to see what the focus character is thinking; it also allows that character to be further developed through his or her own style in telling the story. |
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The Russian semiotician [[Boris Uspenskij]] identifies five planes on which point of view is expressed in a narrative: spatial, temporal, psychological, phraseological and ideological.<ref>[[Boris Uspensky]], ''A Poetics of Composition: The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of Compositional Form'', trans. Valentina Zavarin and Susan Wittig (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973).</ref> The American literary critic Susan Sniader Lanser also develops these categories.<ref>Susan Sniader Lanser, ''The Narrative Act: Point of View in Prose Fiction'' (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1981).</ref> |
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The psychological point of view focuses on the characters' behaviors. Lanser concludes that this is "an extremely complex aspect of point of view, for it encompasses the broad question of the narrator's distance or affinity to each character and event…represented in the text".<ref>Lanser, 201–02.</ref> |
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A small number of novels have been written in the second person, frequently paired with the present tense. A relatively prominent example is [[Jay McInerney]]'s ''[[Bright Lights Big City]]'', where the central character is clearly modeled on himself, and he seems to have decided that second-person point of view would create even more intimacy than first-person, creating the feeling that the reader is blind, in a sense, and the plot is leading him or her along. It is almost universally agreed that second-person narration is that hard to manage, especially in a serious work. Another example of second-person narrative is the ''[[Choose Your Own Adventure]]'' children's books, in which the reader actually makes decisions and jumps around the book accordingly. |
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The ideological point of view is not only "the most basic aspect of point of view" but also the "least accessible to formalization, for its analysis relies to a degree, on intuitive understanding".<ref>[[Boris Uspensky|Uspensky]], 8.</ref> This aspect of the point of view focuses on the norms, values, beliefs and Weltanschauung (worldview) of the narrator or a character. The ideological point of view may be stated outright—what Lanser calls "explicit ideology"—or it may be embedded at "deep-structural" levels of the text and not easily identified.<ref>Lanser, 216–17.</ref> |
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While the general rule is for novels to adopt a single approach to point of view throughout, there are exceptions. [[Epistolary novels]], very common in the early years of the novel, generally consist of a series of letters written by different characters (although they may all be letters from one character; a recent example is [[Helen Fielding]]'s ''[[Bridget Jones's Diary]]''). [[Robert Louis Stevenson]]'s ''[[Treasure Island]]'' switches between third and first person. Many of [[William Faulkner]]'s novels take a series of first-person points of view. |
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=== First-person === |
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Another issue related to point of view is whether the narrator is to be seen as reliable. Traditionally, the narration of a novel, especially a that of a third-person narrator, was to be taken at face value. Gradually, novels arose with less reliable narrators. For example, Huck in [[Mark Twain]]'s ''[[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'' does not outright lie to the reader, but he might admit something only sheepishly, or betray facts whose significance he clearly does not understand. An [[unreliable narrator]] is a (usually) first-person narrator, the credibility of whose point of view is seriously compromised, possibly by [[mental illness|psychological instability]] or powerful [[bias]], possibly merely through naïveté. |
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{{Main article|First-person narrative}} |
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A first-person point of view reveals the story through an openly self-referential and participating narrator. First person creates a close relationship between the narrator and reader, by referring to the viewpoint character with first person pronouns like ''I'' and ''me'' (as well as ''we'' and ''us'', whenever the narrator is part of a larger group).<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Wyile|first=Andrea Schwenke|date=1999|title=Expanding the View of First-Person Narration|journal=Children's Literature in Education|language=en|volume=30|issue=3|pages=185–202|doi=10.1023/a:1022433202145|s2cid=142607561|issn=0045-6713}}</ref> |
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=== Second-person === |
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[[Thomas Pynchon]]'s ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' remains in third-person throughout, but at various times, it is third-person limited inside the mind of a particular character, and not always a sane one. For example, in one chapter, we have an extremely unreliable third-person narrator describing an entire ship that is somehow the "toilet" of the German Navy; the effective point of view is that of minor character Horst Achtfaden, locked in the toilet of a ship and going crazy. |
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{{Category see also|Second-person narrative fiction}} |
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[[Mohsin Hamid]]'s ''[[The Reluctant Fundamentalist (novel)|The Reluctant Fundamentalist]]'' and [[Gamebook]]s, including the American ''[[Choose Your Own Adventure]]'' and British ''[[Fighting Fantasy]]'' series (the two largest examples of the genre), are not true second-person narratives, because there is an implicit narrator (in the case of the novel) or writer (in the case of the series) addressing an audience. This device of the addressed reader is a near-ubiquitous feature of the game-related medium, regardless of the wide differences in target reading ages and [[role-playing game]] system complexity. Similarly, text-based [[interactive fiction]], such as ''[[Colossal Cave Adventure]]'' and ''[[Zork]]'', conventionally has descriptions that address the user, telling the character what they are seeing and doing. This practice is also encountered occasionally in text-based segments of graphical games, such as those from [[Spiderweb Software]], which make ample use of pop-up text boxes with character and location descriptions. Most of [[Charles Stross]]'s novel ''[[Halting State]]'' is written in second person as an allusion to this style.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-441-01498-9|title=Halting State, Review|work=Publishers Weekly|date=1 October 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/05/and-another-thing.html|title=And another thing|author=Charles Stross}}</ref> |
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=== {{anchor|third}}Third-person<!-- Section linked from [[Horus Heresy (novels)]] --> === |
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[[Third person limited omniscient]] |
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{{redirect|Third-person perspective|the graphical perspective in video games|Third-person view}} |
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In the third-person narrative mode, the narration refers to all characters with [[Personal pronoun|third person pronouns]] like ''he'', ''she'', or ''they'', and never first- or second-person pronouns.<ref name="Ricoeur1990">{{cite book |author=Paul Ricoeur |title=Time and Narrative |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vjBw9NuSkuEC&pg=PA89 |date=15 September 1990 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-71334-2 |pages=89–}}</ref> |
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==== <span class="anchor" id="Third-person, omniscient"></span><span class="anchor" id="omni3"></span> Omniscient or limited<!-- Section linked from [[Horus Heresy (novels)]] --> ==== |
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''Omniscient'' point of view is presented by a narrator with an overarching perspective, seeing and knowing everything that happens within the world of the story, including what each of the characters is thinking and feeling. The inclusion of an omniscient narrator is typical in nineteenth-century fiction including works by [[Charles Dickens]], [[Leo Tolstoy]] and [[George Eliot]].<ref>{{citation |last1=Herman |first1=David |last2=Jahn |first2=Manfred |last3=Ryan |title=Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory |year=2005 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-0-415-28259-8 |page=442}}</ref> |
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Some works of fiction, especially novels, employ multiple points of view, with different points of view presented in discrete sections or chapters, including ''[[The English Patient]]'' by [[Michael Ondaatje]], ''[[The Emperor's Children]]'' by [[Claire Messud]] and the ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' series by [[George R. R. Martin]]. ''[[The Home and the World]]'', written in 1916 by [[Rabindranath Tagore]], is another example of a book with three different point-of-view characters. In ''[[The Heroes of Olympus]]'' series, written by [[Rick Riordan]], the point of view alternates between characters at intervals. The ''[[Harry Potter]]'' series focuses on the protagonist for much of the seven novels, but sometimes deviates to other characters, particularly in the opening chapters of later novels in the series, which switch from the view of the [[Eponym|eponymous]] Harry to other characters (for example, the Muggle Prime Minister in [[Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince|the Half-Blood Prince]]).<ref>{{Cite book|title=Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince|last=Rowling|first=J.K.|publisher=Bloomsbury|year=2005|isbn=978-0-7475-8108-6|location=London|pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_074758110x/page/6 6–18]|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_074758110x/page/6}}</ref>{{Primary source inline|date=July 2020}} |
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[[de:Erzählperspektive]] |
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Examples of ''Limited'' or close third-person point of view, confined to one character's perspective, include J.M. Coetzee's ''Disgrace''.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Mountford |first1=Peter |title=Third-Person Limited: Analyzing Fiction's Most Flexible Point of View |url=https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/why-third-person-limited-point-of-view |newspaper=Writer's Digest |access-date=28 July 2020}}</ref> |
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==== <span class="anchor" id="Third-person, subjective"></span> Subjective or objective ==== |
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''Subjective'' point of view is when the narrator conveys the thoughts, feelings and opinions of one or more characters.<ref name=Dynes>{{cite book |last1=Dynes |first1=Barbara |title=Masterclasses in Creative Writing |date=2014 |publisher=Constable & Robinson |location=United Kingdom |isbn=978-1-47211-003-9 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s0jBBAAAQBAJ&dq=third-person+subjective+objective&pg=PT37 |access-date=28 July 2020 |chapter=Using Third Person}}</ref> ''Objective'' point of view employs a narrator who tells a story without describing any character's thoughts, opinions, or feelings; instead, it gives an [[Objectivity (philosophy)|objective]], unbiased point of view.<ref name=Dynes/> |
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=== Alternating- or multiple-person === |
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{{Main|Multiperspectivity}} |
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While the tendency for novels (or other narrative works) is to adopt a single point of view throughout the entire novel, some authors have utilized other points of view that, for example, alternate between different first-person narrators or alternate between a first- and a third-person narrative mode. The ten books of the ''[[Pendragon: Journal of an Adventure through Time and Space|Pendragon]]'' adventure series, by [[D. J. MacHale]], switch back and forth between a first-person perspective (handwritten journal entries) of the main character along his journey as well as a disembodied third-person perspective focused on his friends back home.<ref name="White">{{Cite web |
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| last = White | first = Claire E. |
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| year = 2004 |
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|title=D.J. MacHale Interview|url=https://www.writerswrite.com/journal/dj-machale-10041|access-date=2023-01-25|publisher=Writers Write|work=The Internet Writing Journal}}</ref> |
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In Indigenous American communities, narratives and storytelling are often told by a number of elders in the community. In this way, the stories are never static because they are shaped by the relationship between narrator and audience. Thus, each individual story may have countless variations. Narrators often incorporate minor changes in the story in order to tailor the story to different audiences.<ref>Piquemal, 2003. From Native North American Oral Traditions to Western Literacy: Storytelling in Education.</ref> |
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The use of multiple narratives in a story is not simply a stylistic choice, but rather an interpretive one that offers insight into the development of a larger social identity and the impact that has on the overarching narrative, as explained by Lee Haring.<ref name=":0">{{cite journal |last=Haring |first=Lee |date=2004-08-27 |title=Framing in Oral Narrative |journal=Marvels & Tales |language=en |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=229–245 |doi=10.1353/mat.2004.0035 |s2cid=143097105 |issn=1536-1802}}</ref> |
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Haring provides an example from the Arabic folktales of ''[[One Thousand and One Nights]]'' to illustrate how framing was used to loosely connect each story to the next, where each story was enclosed within the larger narrative. Additionally, Haring draws comparisons between ''Thousand and One Nights'' and the oral storytelling observed in parts of rural [[Ireland]], islands of the Southwest Indian Ocean and African cultures such as [[Madagascar]].<blockquote>"I'll tell you what I'll do," said the smith. "I'll fix your sword for you tomorrow, if you tell me a story while I'm doing it." The speaker was an Irish storyteller in 1935, framing one story in another (O'Sullivan 75, 264). The moment recalls the Thousand and One Nights, where the story of "The Envier and the Envied" is enclosed in the larger story told by the Second Kalandar (Burton 1: 113-39), and many stories are enclosed in others."<ref name=":0"/></blockquote> |
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== Tense== |
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In narrative past tense, the events of the plot occur before the narrator's present.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Walter |first1=Liz |title=When no one was looking, she opened the door: Using narrative tenses |url=https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2017/07/26/when-no-one-was-looking-she-opened-the-door-using-narrative-tenses/ |website=cambridge.org |date=26 July 2017 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |access-date=28 July 2020}}</ref> This is by far the most common tense in which stories are expressed. This could be in the narrator's distant past or their immediate past, which for practical purposes is the same as their present. Past tense can be used regardless of whether the setting is in the reader's past, present, or future. |
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In narratives using present tense, the events of the plot are depicted as occurring in the narrator's current moment of time. A recent example of novels narrated in the present tense are those of the ''[[Hunger Games]]'' trilogy by [[Suzanne Collins]]. Present tense can also be used to narrate events in the reader's past. This is known as "[[historical present]]".<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Schiffrin|first1=Deborah|date=March 1981|title=Tense Variation in Narrative|journal=Language|volume=57|issue=1|pages=45–62|doi=10.2307/414286|issn=0097-8507|jstor=414286}}</ref> This tense is more common in spontaneous conversational narratives than in written literature, though it is sometimes used in literature to give a sense of immediacy of the actions. [[Screenplay]] action is also written in the present tense. |
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The future tense is the most rare, portraying the events of the plot as occurring some time after the narrator's present. Often, these upcoming events are described such that the narrator has foreknowledge (or supposed foreknowledge) of their future, so many future-tense stories have a [[prophecy|prophetic]] tone. |
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==Technique== |
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{{Main article|List of narrative techniques}} |
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=== Stream-of-consciousness === |
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{{Main article|Stream of consciousness (narrative mode)}} |
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Stream of consciousness gives the (typically first-person) narrator's perspective by attempting to replicate the thought processes—as opposed to simply the actions and spoken words—of the narrative character.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/133295/stream-of-consciousness|title=stream of consciousness – literature}}</ref> Often, interior monologues and inner desires or motivations, as well as pieces of incomplete thoughts, are expressed to the audience but not necessarily to other characters. Examples include the multiple narrators' feelings in William Faulkner's ''[[The Sound and the Fury]]'' and ''[[As I Lay Dying (novel)|As I Lay Dying]]'', and the character Offred's often fragmented thoughts in [[Margaret Atwood]]'s ''[[The Handmaid's Tale]]''. Irish writer [[James Joyce]] exemplifies this style in his novel ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]''. |
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=== Unreliable narrator === |
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{{Main article|Unreliable narrator}} |
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Unreliable narration involves the use of an untrustworthy narrator. This mode may be employed to give the audience a deliberate sense of disbelief in the story or a level of suspicion or mystery as to what information is meant to be true and what is meant to be false. Unreliable narrators are usually first-person narrators; a third-person narrator may also be unreliable.<ref>{{cite journal |first1=Terence Patrick |last1=Murphy |first2=Kelly S. |last2=Walsh |s2cid=171741675 |title=Unreliable Third Person Narration? The Case of Katherine Mansfield |journal=Journal of Literary Semantics |volume=46 |issue=1 |year=2017 |pages=67–85 |doi=10.1515/jls-2017-0005 }}</ref> An example is [[J. D. Salinger|J.D. Salinger]]'s ''[[The Catcher in the Rye]]'', in which the novel's narrator [[Holden Caulfield]] is biased, emotional and juvenile, divulging or withholding certain information deliberately and at times probably quite unreliable. |
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* [[Narrative structure]] |
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* [[Opening narration]] |
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* [[Pace (narrative)]] |
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* [[Voice-over]] |
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== Notes == |
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{{Reflist}} |
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== Further reading == |
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* {{cite book|last=Rasley|first=Alicia|title=The Power of Point of View: Make Your Story Come to Life|date=2008|publisher=Writer's Digest Books|location=Cincinnati, Ohio|isbn=978-1-59963-355-8|edition=1st}} |
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* {{cite book|last=Card|first=Orson Scott|title=Characters and Viewpoint|date=1988|publisher=Writer's Digest Books|location=Cincinnati, Ohio|isbn=978-0-89879-307-9|edition=1st|author-link=Orson Scott Card|url=https://archive.org/details/charactersviewpo00card}} |
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* {{cite book|last=Fludernik|first=Monika|title=Towards a "Natural" Narratology|date=1996|publisher=Routledge|location=London|author-link=Monika Fludernik}} |
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* Genette, Gérard. ''Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method''. Transl. by Jane Lewin. Oxford: Blackwell 1980 (Translation of ''Discours du récit''). |
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* Stanzel, Franz Karl. ''A theory of Narrative''. Transl. by Charlotte Goedsche. Cambridge: CUP 1984 (Transl. of ''Theorie des Erzählens''). |
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{{Narration|state=collapsed}} |
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[[Category:Fiction]] |
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[[Category:Style (fiction)]] |
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[[Category:Point of view]] |
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[[Category:Literary concepts]] |
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[[Category:Descriptive technique]] |
Revision as of 20:09, 21 May 2024
Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience.[1] Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the plot: the series of events. Narration is a required element of all written stories (novels, short stories, poems, memoirs, etc.), presenting the story in its entirety. It is optional in most other storytelling formats, such as films, plays, television shows and video games, in which the story can be conveyed through other means, like dialogue between characters or visual action.
The narrative mode, which is sometimes also used as synonym for narrative technique, encompasses the set of choices through which the creator of the story develops their narrator and narration:
- Narrative point of view, perspective, or voice: the choice of grammatical person used by the narrator to establish whether or not the narrator and the audience are participants in the story; also, this includes the scope of the information or knowledge that the narrator presents
- Narrative tense: the choice of either the past or present grammatical tense to establish either the prior completion or current immediacy of the plot
- Narrative technique: any of the various other methods chosen to help narrate a story, such as establishing the story's setting (location in time and space), developing characters, exploring themes (main ideas or topics), structuring the plot, intentionally expressing certain details but not others, following or subverting genre norms, employing certain linguistic styles and using various other storytelling devices.
Thus, narration includes both who tells the story and how the story is told (for example, by using stream of consciousness or unreliable narration). The narrator may be anonymous and unspecified, or a 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 multiple narrators to illustrate the storylines of various characters at various times, creating a story with a complex perspective.
Point of view
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.[2] Narrative perspective is the position and character of the storyteller, in relation to the narrative itself.[3] 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.[4]
Literary theory
The Russian semiotician Boris Uspenskij identifies five planes on which point of view is expressed in a narrative: spatial, temporal, psychological, phraseological and ideological.[5] The American literary critic Susan Sniader Lanser also develops these categories.[6]
The psychological point of view focuses on the characters' behaviors. Lanser concludes that this is "an extremely complex aspect of point of view, for it encompasses the broad question of the narrator's distance or affinity to each character and event…represented in the text".[7]
The ideological point of view is not only "the most basic aspect of point of view" but also the "least accessible to formalization, for its analysis relies to a degree, on intuitive understanding".[8] This aspect of the point of view focuses on the norms, values, beliefs and Weltanschauung (worldview) of the narrator or a character. The ideological point of view may be stated outright—what Lanser calls "explicit ideology"—or it may be embedded at "deep-structural" levels of the text and not easily identified.[9]
First-person
A first-person point of view reveals the story through an openly self-referential and participating narrator. First person creates a close relationship between the narrator and reader, by referring to the viewpoint character with first person pronouns like I and me (as well as we and us, whenever the narrator is part of a larger group).[10]
Second-person
Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Gamebooks, including the American Choose Your Own Adventure and British Fighting Fantasy series (the two largest examples of the genre), are not true second-person narratives, because there is an implicit narrator (in the case of the novel) or writer (in the case of the series) addressing an audience. This device of the addressed reader is a near-ubiquitous feature of the game-related medium, regardless of the wide differences in target reading ages and role-playing game system complexity. Similarly, text-based interactive fiction, such as Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork, conventionally has descriptions that address the user, telling the character what they are seeing and doing. This practice is also encountered occasionally in text-based segments of graphical games, such as those from Spiderweb Software, which make ample use of pop-up text boxes with character and location descriptions. Most of Charles Stross's novel Halting State is written in second person as an allusion to this style.[11][12]
Third-person
In the third-person narrative mode, the narration refers to all characters with third person pronouns like he, she, or they, and never first- or second-person pronouns.[13]
Omniscient or limited
Omniscient point of view is presented by a narrator with an overarching perspective, seeing and knowing everything that happens within the world of the story, including what each of the characters is thinking and feeling. The inclusion of an omniscient narrator is typical in nineteenth-century fiction including works by Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy and George Eliot.[14]
Some works of fiction, especially novels, employ multiple points of view, with different points of view presented in discrete sections or chapters, including The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud and the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin. The Home and the World, written in 1916 by Rabindranath Tagore, is another example of a book with three different point-of-view characters. In The Heroes of Olympus series, written by Rick Riordan, the point of view alternates between characters at intervals. The Harry Potter series focuses on the protagonist for much of the seven novels, but sometimes deviates to other characters, particularly in the opening chapters of later novels in the series, which switch from the view of the eponymous Harry to other characters (for example, the Muggle Prime Minister in the Half-Blood Prince).[15][non-primary source needed]
Examples of Limited or close third-person point of view, confined to one character's perspective, include J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace.[16]
Subjective or objective
Subjective point of view is when the narrator conveys the thoughts, feelings and opinions of one or more characters.[17] Objective point of view employs a narrator who tells a story without describing any character's thoughts, opinions, or feelings; instead, it gives an objective, unbiased point of view.[17]
Alternating- or multiple-person
While the tendency for novels (or other narrative works) is to adopt a single point of view throughout the entire novel, some authors have utilized other points of view that, for example, alternate between different first-person narrators or alternate between a first- and a third-person narrative mode. The ten books of the Pendragon adventure series, by D. J. MacHale, switch back and forth between a first-person perspective (handwritten journal entries) of the main character along his journey as well as a disembodied third-person perspective focused on his friends back home.[18]
In Indigenous American communities, narratives and storytelling are often told by a number of elders in the community. In this way, the stories are never static because they are shaped by the relationship between narrator and audience. Thus, each individual story may have countless variations. Narrators often incorporate minor changes in the story in order to tailor the story to different audiences.[19]
The use of multiple narratives in a story is not simply a stylistic choice, but rather an interpretive one that offers insight into the development of a larger social identity and the impact that has on the overarching narrative, as explained by Lee Haring.[20]
Haring provides an example from the Arabic folktales of One Thousand and One Nights to illustrate how framing was used to loosely connect each story to the next, where each story was enclosed within the larger narrative. Additionally, Haring draws comparisons between Thousand and One Nights and the oral storytelling observed in parts of rural Ireland, islands of the Southwest Indian Ocean and African cultures such as Madagascar.
"I'll tell you what I'll do," said the smith. "I'll fix your sword for you tomorrow, if you tell me a story while I'm doing it." The speaker was an Irish storyteller in 1935, framing one story in another (O'Sullivan 75, 264). The moment recalls the Thousand and One Nights, where the story of "The Envier and the Envied" is enclosed in the larger story told by the Second Kalandar (Burton 1: 113-39), and many stories are enclosed in others."[20]
Tense
In narrative past tense, the events of the plot occur before the narrator's present.[21] This is by far the most common tense in which stories are expressed. This could be in the narrator's distant past or their immediate past, which for practical purposes is the same as their present. Past tense can be used regardless of whether the setting is in the reader's past, present, or future.
In narratives using present tense, the events of the plot are depicted as occurring in the narrator's current moment of time. A recent example of novels narrated in the present tense are those of the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Present tense can also be used to narrate events in the reader's past. This is known as "historical present".[22] This tense is more common in spontaneous conversational narratives than in written literature, though it is sometimes used in literature to give a sense of immediacy of the actions. Screenplay action is also written in the present tense.
The future tense is the most rare, portraying the events of the plot as occurring some time after the narrator's present. Often, these upcoming events are described such that the narrator has foreknowledge (or supposed foreknowledge) of their future, so many future-tense stories have a prophetic tone.
Technique
Stream-of-consciousness
Stream of consciousness gives the (typically first-person) narrator's perspective by attempting to replicate the thought processes—as opposed to simply the actions and spoken words—of the narrative character.[23] Often, interior monologues and inner desires or motivations, as well as pieces of incomplete thoughts, are expressed to the audience but not necessarily to other characters. Examples include the multiple narrators' feelings in William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, and the character Offred's often fragmented thoughts in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Irish writer James Joyce exemplifies this style in his novel Ulysses.
Unreliable narrator
Unreliable narration involves the use of an untrustworthy narrator. This mode may be employed to give the audience a deliberate sense of disbelief in the story or a level of suspicion or mystery as to what information is meant to be true and what is meant to be false. Unreliable narrators are usually first-person narrators; a third-person narrator may also be unreliable.[24] An example is J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, in which the novel's narrator Holden Caulfield is biased, emotional and juvenile, divulging or withholding certain information deliberately and at times probably quite unreliable.
See also
Notes
- ^ Hühn, Peter; Sommer, Roy (2012). "Narration in Poetry and Drama". The Living Handbook of Narratology. Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology, University of Hamburg.
- ^ Chamberlain, Daniel Frank (1990). Narrative Perspective in Fiction: A Phenomenological Meditation of Reader, Text, and World. ITHAKA. ISBN 9780802058386. JSTOR 10.3138/j.ctt2ttgv0.
- ^ James McCracken, ed. (2011). The Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. Retrieved 16 October 2011.
- ^ Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Translated by Lewin, Jane E. Foreword by Jonathan Culler. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1980. p. 228. ISBN 0-8014-9259-9. LCCN 79013499. OL 8222857W. Archived from the original on 4 October 2023. Retrieved 4 October 2023.
- ^ Boris Uspensky, A Poetics of Composition: The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of Compositional Form, trans. Valentina Zavarin and Susan Wittig (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973).
- ^ Susan Sniader Lanser, The Narrative Act: Point of View in Prose Fiction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1981).
- ^ Lanser, 201–02.
- ^ Uspensky, 8.
- ^ Lanser, 216–17.
- ^ Wyile, Andrea Schwenke (1999). "Expanding the View of First-Person Narration". Children's Literature in Education. 30 (3): 185–202. doi:10.1023/a:1022433202145. ISSN 0045-6713. S2CID 142607561.
- ^ "Halting State, Review". Publishers Weekly. 1 October 2007.
- ^ Charles Stross. "And another thing".
- ^ Paul Ricoeur (15 September 1990). Time and Narrative. University of Chicago Press. pp. 89–. ISBN 978-0-226-71334-2.
- ^ Herman, David; Jahn, Manfred; Ryan (2005), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, Taylor & Francis, p. 442, ISBN 978-0-415-28259-8
- ^ Rowling, J.K. (2005). Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 6–18. ISBN 978-0-7475-8108-6.
- ^ Mountford, Peter. "Third-Person Limited: Analyzing Fiction's Most Flexible Point of View". Writer's Digest. Retrieved 28 July 2020.
- ^ a b Dynes, Barbara (2014). "Using Third Person". Masterclasses in Creative Writing. United Kingdom: Constable & Robinson. ISBN 978-1-47211-003-9. Retrieved 28 July 2020.
- ^ White, Claire E. (2004). "D.J. MacHale Interview". The Internet Writing Journal. Writers Write. Retrieved 25 January 2023.
- ^ Piquemal, 2003. From Native North American Oral Traditions to Western Literacy: Storytelling in Education.
- ^ a b Haring, Lee (27 August 2004). "Framing in Oral Narrative". Marvels & Tales. 18 (2): 229–245. doi:10.1353/mat.2004.0035. ISSN 1536-1802. S2CID 143097105.
- ^ Walter, Liz (26 July 2017). "When no one was looking, she opened the door: Using narrative tenses". cambridge.org. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 28 July 2020.
- ^ Schiffrin, Deborah (March 1981). "Tense Variation in Narrative". Language. 57 (1): 45–62. doi:10.2307/414286. ISSN 0097-8507. JSTOR 414286.
- ^ "stream of consciousness – literature".
- ^ Murphy, Terence Patrick; Walsh, Kelly S. (2017). "Unreliable Third Person Narration? The Case of Katherine Mansfield". Journal of Literary Semantics. 46 (1): 67–85. doi:10.1515/jls-2017-0005. S2CID 171741675.
Further reading
- Rasley, Alicia (2008). The Power of Point of View: Make Your Story Come to Life (1st ed.). Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books. ISBN 978-1-59963-355-8.
- Card, Orson Scott (1988). Characters and Viewpoint (1st ed.). Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books. ISBN 978-0-89879-307-9.
- Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a "Natural" Narratology. London: Routledge.
- Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Transl. by Jane Lewin. Oxford: Blackwell 1980 (Translation of Discours du récit).
- Stanzel, Franz Karl. A theory of Narrative. Transl. by Charlotte Goedsche. Cambridge: CUP 1984 (Transl. of Theorie des Erzählens).