Narrative Art in Poetry
CHAPTER ONE
THE POETIC ART OF NARRATION
1.1 A Historical Perspective Narrative, as a generally conceived term, is the type of literary composition which recounts a single event, a tale, or a story constituting a series of events usually told in chronological order. However, in some types of narrative works, the focus is on the nature of the plot itself regardless of the criterion of ordering the events according to a preconceived plan based on chronological structure (Abrams and Harpham 233). A narrative often involves actions, characters, and what the characters say and do. It is organized around issues such as events, time, focalization, narration, the text and its reading- apart from other structural concepts. On the other hand the term narration implies a communication process in which the narrative is transmitted as a message by a narrator- an addresser, to a narratee- an addressee (Kenan 1-2). In this respect Kenan refers to Genette's distinction between the basic aspects of narrative, the events (the story), their verbal representation (the text), and the act of telling or writing (Ibid 3). Since the text is a written or spoken representation, it implies someone who speaks, narrates or writes it. Narration can be taken as real or fictional. The author is often responsible
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for the production of the narrative in addition to its communication. The text is respectively the only narrative aspect the reader can directly get in touch with. It is the single source of knowledge of the story and of the narration available to the reader. An important idea in this respect is that if a text does not tell a story, it can never be a narrative, and without being narrated or written, it would not be a text. "Indeed, story and narration may be seen as two metonymies of the text, the first evoking it through its narrative content, the second through its production."(Ibid 4) It is not necessary that these happenings are told
THE POETIC ART OF NARRATION
1.1 A Historical Perspective Narrative, as a generally conceived term, is the type of literary composition which recounts a single event, a tale, or a story constituting a series of events usually told in chronological order. However, in some types of narrative works, the focus is on the nature of the plot itself regardless of the criterion of ordering the events according to a preconceived plan based on chronological structure (Abrams and Harpham 233). A narrative often involves actions, characters, and what the characters say and do. It is organized around issues such as events, time, focalization, narration, the text and its reading- apart from other structural concepts. On the other hand the term narration implies a communication process in which the narrative is transmitted as a message by a narrator- an addresser, to a narratee- an addressee (Kenan 1-2). In this respect Kenan refers to Genette's distinction between the basic aspects of narrative, the events (the story), their verbal representation (the text), and the act of telling or writing (Ibid 3). Since the text is a written or spoken representation, it implies someone who speaks, narrates or writes it. Narration can be taken as real or fictional. The author is often responsible
1
2
for the production of the narrative in addition to its communication. The text is respectively the only narrative aspect the reader can directly get in touch with. It is the single source of knowledge of the story and of the narration available to the reader. An important idea in this respect is that if a text does not tell a story, it can never be a narrative, and without being narrated or written, it would not be a text. "Indeed, story and narration may be seen as two metonymies of the text, the first evoking it through its narrative content, the second through its production."(Ibid 4) It is not necessary that these happenings are told