Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method

by Gérard Genette, Jane E. Lewin (Translator), Jonathan D. Culler (Foreword)

Narrative Discourse <> Paperback <> GerardGenette <> CornellUniversityPress

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Theory, Writing, Philosophy, Criticism, Literature

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Genette was largely responsible for the reintroduction of a rhetorical vocabulary into literary criticism, for example such terms as trope and metonymy. Additionally his work on narrative, best known in English through the selection Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, has been of importance.[2] His major work is the multi-part Figures series, of which Narrative Discourse is a section. His trilogy on textual transcendence, which has also been quite influential, is composed of Introduction à l'architexte (1979), Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (1982), and Paratexts. Thresholds of interpretation (1997).[3]
His international influence is not as great as that of some others identified with structuralism, such as Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss; his work is more often included in selections or discussed in secondary works than studied in its own right. Terms and techniques originating in his vocabulary and systems have, however, become widespread, such as the term paratext for prefaces, introductions, illustrations or other material accompanying the text, or hypotext for the sources of the text.

Reviews

[Alok Mishra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Genette is always a pleasure! In this book, he takes ahead his ideas and theories within the purview of structuralism. The focus on Narrative and discourse brings the readers of this book to various new dimensions of narratology. More enlightening and more descriptive - always helpful for those who want to widen their intellect in this particular direction.

[د.سيد (نصر برشومي) · Rating 4 out of 5]

خماسية جيرار جينيت لتحليل العمل القصصي
الترتيب
المدة
الترديد
الصيغة
الصوت
يمكن أن نحددها في ثلاثة عناصر محورية هي
القصة
الحكاية
السرد
يطبّق جينيت على البحث عن الزمن المفقود لبروست
منطلقا من الخاص إلى العام مع الوضع في الاعتبار خصوصية بروست من ناحية وقراءة روايته للاستراتيجيات السردية عبر التاريخ
من منظور يعي التطوّر الجمالي والاتصالي والمعرفي لحداثة القرن العشرين
القصة هي الحدث الذي قامت به ذات
والحكاية هي طريقة تقديم القصة
والسرد هو الخطاب الذي يجمع الحكايات الراوية للقصص
رابطا بينها، ومتحدثا عن أجوائها، عن طريق صوت له موقع، ومعرفة، ووظائف
يقدّم جينيت كثيرا من المفاهيم الدقيقة عن ترتيب القصة لأحداثها، ومدة الحدث في الحكاية وعلاقتها بزمنه الافتراضي خارج النص، والعرض، والمشهد، والمسافة بين الراوي والشخصيات، واستغراق الحدث المروي بالكثافة، أو امتداده بالاتساع، والاسترجاع، والاستباق، والوقفة، وأنواع الراوي الخارجي والداخلي، المحوري في الأفعال أو الثانوي المتابع، الذي يعرف أكثر، أو الذي يصاحب ما يحدث، أو الذي تخفي عنه الشخصيات ما تفعل أو يخفيها هو عن المروي له، وطريقة المؤلف الضمني في إدارة السرد
النسق اللساني هو محور النموذج
فعل القول وفاعله والموجّه إليه، والفعل الحدث وفاعله والموجه إليه، وتحكّم الزمن في الإخبار والسرد، زمن القصة، وزمن الحكاية، والتقديم والتأخير في الترتيب القصصي
ووظائف السارد مستوحاة من مخطط ياكبسون لوظائف اللغة وإن حددها جينيت في خمس وظائف هي الإخبار القصصي، وصياغة الحكاية، والتواصل مع المروي له الداخلي أو الخارجي، وتعبيره عن ذاته، وموقفه الأيديولوجي
هناك مرتكزات تصل السرد بالفنون الأخرى مثل الترديد والإيقاع في الشعر والموسيقى
والمشهد في السينما، والوقفة الوصفية في الفن التشكيلي
وهناك تقاطع مع الفلسفة، فطرائق السرد هي مواقف معرفية، منها ما يرى العالم واضحا نمطيا طبقيا يمكن تقديمه بالإحاطة التامة به
ومنها ما يرى العالم واقعا في منطقة جدلية بين المعرفة النظرية والتجربة العملية
ومنها ما يكتفي بصياغة ما يمكن معرفته بدرجات من اليقين والظن من منطلق يعي أننا لم نصل لمعرفة مطلقة بأنفسنا وعالمنا

[Petre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must-read book when studying narratology.

[Robyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't rated any theory as five stars in a while. Not since my initial infatuation with it. (Now we're like an old married couple.) Some of those stars there are for this being a book you need to know if you want to do narrative theory, and the rest of those stars are just because I love Genette's style, that is, his style both on the page and in his head.

Two main style things:

Turns of phrase -- he keeps it interesting and even informal in places. Funniest bit: "capital erotic habits." Capital! Just capital, I say! (I know this is a translation, but the thought is there even in the French.)


Evidence of painful, painstaking thinking -- Holy shit, footnotes! He ANGUISHES over choosing terms, for instance. To paraphrase: "Here's the etymologies on all these parts of the term, and here's why it doesn't quite work, and OH I regret that I even need to coin a term at all, but I do!"

I'd like to do this better justice, but the book is on my desk at the office, because it's in use for paper-writing.

A note: While Genette is the author of the most famous (in America) two books on narrative theory, that's hardly what he's interested in. He's done so much other work on everything but.

[Ярослава · Rating 5 out of 5]

Іще одна класика, яку знаєш через осмос, але не конче добираєшся прочитати.
Значна частина мови, якою ми говоримо про літературу (якщо симпатизуємо наратології) - це мова, яку винайшов Женетт. Звісно, в густині термінології є якийсь елемент сорому гуманітарних наук перед природничими (ми, мовляв, також маємо строгі визначення і строгий метод!) - але, on the plus side, hair-splitting терміни звертають увагу на текстові розрізнення/проблеми, які незле враховувати при аналізі, але дослідники, що не мають для цього окремих термінів, можуть і оминути увагою. (Ну, скажімо, може видатися недоцільним говорити про "інтрадієгетичного гетеродієгетичного оповідача", якщо можна сказати щось на кшталт "оповідь від першої особи, оповідач не є частиною сюжету" - але це звертає увагу читача на те, що оповідач у оповіді від першої особи, який участь у сюжеті бере й не бере - це різні текстові звірі й наративні стратегії.)

Крім того, "Наративний дискурс" - блискучий приклад того, як з прозою можна працювати не менш тонко, аніж з поезією (зазвичай прозу аналізують тематично, приділяючи тому, як вона зроблена, значно менше уваги, і я вічно шукаю зразків добрих аналізів прози - ну і от Женетт, безперечно, це пропонує).

[Kriangkrai Vathanalaoha · Rating 5 out of 5]

For people who loves to inspect any fictions' narrative structure, you may not miss this valuable volume. This book explores how we can understand narrators' attitude as well as their "focalization" by his methods. One of the most important biblical works for linguistic, stylistics, rhetoric students to place it on their shelves.

[Fahad Alhendal · Rating 5 out of 5]

من الكتب النقدية المهمة في النظرية السردية

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, again, four stars and "I Liked it!" seem like weird categories for academic texts, but.

This guy is brilliant.

Honestly, he coined most of the terms--ok, not MOST, but a whole bunch--associated with structuralist narratology and manages to explain them in a way that a peon like myself can understand. Ok, so this is translated from French, but still. He does use Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" as his case study text, so once he defines a term, he shows how it works mainly using that novel. I skimmed those sections since a) I have not read it, and b) I will never, ever teach it.

Again, a lot of the language I wish I had when I taught high school comes from this guy. Must be nice. When do I get to coin terms? :)

[Nikolay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cannot comment on the book's merit in the field of literary theory, although it seems considerable, to say the least.
But for the average reader it seems to me that it offers a range of valuable insights about subtle characteristics of the narrative that, if you pay proper attention to them, can certainly enrich the reading experience.
It could also undoubtedly be of great help to translators with the analytical tools it proposes.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edebi metinleri yapısal olarak değerlendirme açısından değerli bir çalışma; Proust üzerinden ve hatta Proust'un gelmiş geçmiş en zor metinlerinden biri olan Kayıp Zamanın İzinde üzerinde çalışması ve fikirlerini bu esere uygulaması açısından hakkı olan değeri görmesi gereken eser. Edebi eserlerin sadece tematik olarak değerlendirilmeyeceğine güzel bir kanıt.

Anlatı ve anlatının yapı taşları.

[samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cornell University Press, 1983).
• Foreword
o Basic concepts (pov, flashback, omniscient narrator, third person narrative) have been developed n an ad hoc, piecemeal fashion . Not been put together in systematic way
o Narrative Discourse fills the need for a systematic theory of narrative
o It is one of the central achievements of structuralism (Barthes, Todorov, Genette) sought not to interpret literature but to investigate its structures and devices.
 poetics stands to literature as linguistics stands to language
 emph. plot and effects and of structure
o The focus on this book is on Proust
o His major areas of interest
o POV
 many fail to distinguish mood and voice. The question is: who is the character whose pov orients the narrative perspective? this is not asking who the narrator is.
o Focalization
 a story is focalized through the character whose pov it is told
 Bal says he uses focalization to cover two cases which are so different that asto treat them as variants of the same phenomenon is to weaken his important new concept
• internal focalization: the narrative is focused through the consciousness
• external focalization: the narrative is focused on a character, not through him
o The Iterative
 Relationship between time of story/plot and time of narrative is classified in terms of
• order (events occur in one order but narrated in another),
• pace or duration (the narrative devotes considerable space to a momentary experience and then leaps over swiftly summarizes a number of years)
• and frequency (the narrative ma repeatedly recount an event that happened only once or may recount once what happens frequently
o This is rarely talked about but important! iterative!
o Norm and Anomaly
 Tense, voice, and mood
o Genette’s testimony to the power of the marginal, the supplementary, the exception.
• Preface
o Proustian yes but more than that, it’s a theory of narrative or narratology
• Introduction
o We currently use the word narrative without paying attention to, even at times without noticing, its ambigiuity
o Narrative defs
 The narrative statement
 Succession of events that are subject of the discourse, their relations of linking, opposition, reperition, etc.
 Narrative as event of recounting
o Analysis of narrative discourse will thus be for me, essentially, a study of the relationships between narrative and story, between narrative and narrating, and between story and narrating
o His three things are
 tense (in which the relationship between the time of the story and the time of the discourse is expressed)
 aspect (the way in which the story is perceived by the narrator)
 and mood (the type of discourse used by the narrator)
o The verbal form made “monstrous”, expansive.
• 1. Order
o connections between the temporal order of succession of events in the story and the pseudo-temporal order of their arrangement in the narrative
o • Anachrony: departures from chronological order.
o Analepsis (flashback): narrative moves back to earlier events.
o Prolepsis (flashforward): narrative jumps ahead to future events.
o • He studies how these shifts create effects like suspense, irony, or explanation
• 2. Duration
o connections between the variable duration of events or story sections nad the pseudo-duration (in fact, length of text) of their telling in the narrative
o Ellipsis: skipping over events. (“Three years passed…”)
o Summary: compressing long events into a few sentences.
o Scene: story time ≈ discourse time (often dialogue).
o Stretch: discourse longer than story (e.g., extended description of a brief moment).
o Pause: discourse halts story time (e.g., digressions, descriptive passages).
o This produces rhythm, pacing, and emphasis in the text.
o
• 3. Frequency
o connections of frequency, that is, relations between the repetitive capacities of the story and those of the narrative
o How many times events occur in the story vs. how many times they are narrated.
o Singulative: narrated once, happened once.
o Repetitive: narrated multiple times, happened once.
o Iterative: narrated once, happened multiple times (e.g., “Every day we went to the park”).
o This captures the difference between event frequency and narrative representation.
• 4. Mood
o Concerns the regulation of information and perspective.
o Distance: degree of mediation between story and narrative voice.
o Diegetic summary vs. direct speech.
o Focalization: “who sees?” (vs. “who speaks?”)
o Zero focalization: narrator knows more than characters (omniscient).
o Internal focalization: narrator knows only what a character knows.
o External focalization: narrator describes only external actions, not thoughts.
• 5. Voice
o 5. Voice (Narrating Instance)
o Who speaks, and from what position.
o Narrative level:
o Extradiegetic: narrator outside the story (classic omniscient).
o Intradiegetic: narrator inside the story.
o Metadiegetic: story within a story.
o Narrator types:
o Heterodiegetic: narrator not a character.
o Homodiegetic: narrator is a character in the story.
o Autodiegetic: narrator is the protagonist.
o Also distinguishes time of narration (subsequent, prior, simultaneous, interpolated).

[سيد السيد · Rating 4 out of 5]

معالجة السرد بمنهج علمي يحرر الدرس الأدبي من الإنشائية
ويستخلص قوانين صناعة وجهات النظر
من قلب المرويات
المؤسسة للحدث المتخيل
ثورة نقدية تكتشف هوية الصوت الناطق بالصياغة القصصية
وتحدد الرؤى المحركة لمقصدية الحكاية

[Aya Badr · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب تحليلي بحت عن فن وادوات الرواية، مهم جدا، ولكنه شديد التخصصية وطريقة العرض لم تكن سلسة على الاطلاق بالاضافة لكثرة الاستشهاد خاصة من ادباء معينين وجنسيات بعينها وبالتالي ان لم تكن تعرفهم فقدت بوصلتك، والهامش كبير جدا بالتبعية، فهو كتاب محتاج تخفيف وتدريس لانه صعب الاطلاع..

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strict structuralism and very dry. Not recommended for beginners.

[Jackie Reed · Rating 2 out of 5]

The methodology is useful, but the terminology made my brain feel like it'd been put through a blender and pureed.

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book sets out to expose the basic structures of narrative - the various possible usages of tenses and time, the role of the narrator and focalization - but really, as Genette suggests in the introduction, the book is half-way torn between this, and being a study of Proust, which is more or less what this book fundamentally is. In that regard, it seems to me adequate; his devotion to narratological concerns prevents him from going in depth, so much of this remains brief exegeses of Proust's games with narrative time and the narrator's eye. Meanwhile, Genette has a pretty good exposition of narratorial perspective, and his exposition of the function of time in the novel is well done, staying concrete and rigorous. While the book is sprinkled with continentalisms here&there, most of it remains pretty hard-nosed and avoids the indulgent existential philosophy that narratorial voice and the concept of time seem to invite, especially with Proust. This being his intent, it's fair to say he succeeded, although it's easy to find writers (mostly authors of novels; very typical that it took until 1980 for the academics to spell these basic terms out) decades earlier reflecting on time and perspective in greater depth & with more interesting and gratifying conclusions about their use - for example, Henry James' constant reference to the necessarily 'conscious' nature of narrators unites all these loose concepts together into a more compelling package, which may be arguably false and which yet was the explicit belief of many novelists that follow. I recommend this book any-how, since sensitivity to the basic elements of narration is extremely edifying for the reading of pretty much any novel.

[Karina Podraza · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ocena mysle ze taka a nie inna tez z tego prostego powodu zem jest prosty czlowiek, a tu nie dosc, ze koncepty miejscami trudne, to i angielski C2. Niektore przemyslenia byly ciekawe - jak te dotyczace trybu czy częstotliwości, ale ta ksiazka to skuteczna sieka dla głowy, zwlaszcza dla tych raczkujacych w temacie. Juz pomine fakt, ze ze strukturalizmem to sie chyba srednio lubimy. Koszmarek, ale jak sie obronie to nie zmienie na jedynke 😩

[Nour · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though it is one of my required reads at uni, surprisingly, I enjoyed it!
But I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more had I read Proust's In Search of Lost Time

Nevertheless, it offers the 'narratological' tools to better scrutinize the literary text! You would totally look at any text from a deep perspective after reading Narrative Discourse.

[Jeremiah Beaty · Rating 4 out of 5]

This text is a very great resource for the discussion of narrative theory. The author discusses several aspects of narrative, including such concepts as "mood" and "voice". It is a bit esoteric at times as befits an academic-focused work. The author specifically focuses on Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time and references several other French texts.

[Rhiannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

could do without the psuedo-mathematical formulations but that’s structuralism for you. still, genette has worthwhile insights on narrative temporality, voice, focalization, pov, etc. (even if his conceptual distinctions are overwrought), and his overall study will force you to complicate your understandings of narrativity. worth reading or even skimming through

[Diego Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excelente produção teórica e segue sendo incrivelmente na área da narratologia. Só não ganha 5 estrelas pois (é provável que seja problema relativo a edição que tive acesso) o texto era realmente cansativo devido ao nível de complexidade da terminologia.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating. What are the building blocks of narrative? How do we categorize narrators, time shifts, the differences between events and narration? If I'd read Proust it might make even more sense but it's a minor part of the book.

[John Fitzgerald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been looking forward to this book for a very long time. The theory presented is fascinating, but it does rely a ton on how it works in Proust's In Search of Lost Time - which is on the list for later this summer. Anyhoo, lots of fasinating things to think about.

[Jay Shelat · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for any scholar of literature or rhetoric.

[evil]

Tämän piti alun perin olla antoisa tenttikirja, mutta sitten tuli korona ja vesitti tämän kevään suunnitelmat. No, jäihän tästä jotain käteenkin. Nyt viimeistään kiinnostuin Proustista...

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5....I would have liked it more had I ever read Proust

[Chadwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly important. Perhaps not a great handbook for contemporary practice, but a wonderful example of what reading can be.

[Primo S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

definitely NOT recommended if you're not familiar with Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

[Ojaswi Sharma]

Enlightening, but I think reading a summarised account would have been a better use of my time.

[Joanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hyvä kurssikirja, jossa teoria on esitetty selkeästi. Ihan loputtomiin ei kerronnan teoria kiinnosta, mutta tulipahan luettua.