Narrative

Paul Cobley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135049706
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria

Human beings have constantly told stories, presented events and placed the world into narrative form. This activity suggests a very basic way of looking at the world, yet, this book argues, even the most seemingly simple of stories is embedded in a complex network of relations. Paul Cobley traces these relations, considering the ways in which humans have employed narrative over the centuries to 're-present' time, space and identity.

This second, revised and fully updated edition of the successful guidebook to narrative covers a range of narrative forms and their historical development from early oral and literate forms through to contemporary digital media, encompassing Hellenic and Hebraic foundations, the rise of the novel, realist representations, narratives of imperialism, modernism, cinema, postmodernism and new technologies. A final chapter reviews the way that narrative theory in the last decade has re-orientated definitions of narrative.

Written in a clear, engaging style and featuring an extensive glossary of terms, this is the essential introduction to the history and theory of narrative.

1

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IN THE BEGINNING: THE END

In a short work called ‘Heredity’, the poet Tony Harrison answers a question about his vocation:

How you became a poet’s a mystery!

Wherever did you get your talent from?

I say: I had two uncles, Joe and Harry –

One was a stammerer, the other dumb.

(Harrison 2006: 111)

Slyly undermining expected formulations of heredity and evolution, Harrison nevertheless demonstrates how, as a result of factors preceding him, he has been compelled to pursue his craft. Something similar could be said about the human propensity to tell stories. Human forebears, flora and fauna, the other major life forms on this planet from which we have evolved, do not have the capacity to tell stories and it is difficult to ascertain whence this capacity came. Yet, as will be seen in this book, and as the latest research demonstrates, humans have a compulsion to narrate.

Especially after the development of the verbal faculty, human beings have constantly told stories, presented events and squeezed aspects of the world into narrative form.

Wherever there are humans there appear to be narratives. It is true that people tell stories about life history (Gee 1991) and about their psyches (Schafer 1983; Spence 1987); people read stories when they consume various media, including the daily press (Kunelius 1994); different media, such as musical notation, might embody stories (McClary 1998); and, even when thinking about the world in an ‘objective’ fashion, scientifically or ethically, the tendency to ‘storify’ remains (Harré 1990; Levine 1997). Yet, as soon as we start to look more closely at this phenomenon, it is evident that the apparently natural impulse of storytelling and storylistening (or reading) is far from simple. Pronouncing that certain events in the world of human experience ‘make a good story’ invariably carries with it the contention that those events can be reduced to a few crude principles, that stories are very ‘basic’ ways of thinking about the world.

This book is dedicated to the opposite premise: that even the most ‘simple’ of stories is embedded in a network of relations that is sometimes astounding in its complexity. This is not to say that those relations are beyond the ken of all but the most technically orientated academic minds. The opposite, once more, is the case. The most familiar, most primitive, most ancient and seemingly most straightforward of stories reveal depths that we might hitherto have failed to anticipate. That we do not anticipate them is usually because we do not attend to the network of relations in which a story resides; but this is definitely not to say that we do not partake of these depths and the potential pleasure they yield.

So far we have referred to stories, but, strictly speaking, the chief object of our focus in this network is ‘narrative’, a communicative relation which is often conflated with straightforward understandings of what a story is. We will see that narrative is a particular form of representation implementing signs; and in the rest of this chapter we will consider how it is necessarily bound up with sequence, space and time. Chapter 2 reflects on early narratives and confronts some of the thorny issues involved in the search to discover them, while Chapters 3 and 4 focus on arguably the most pre-eminent narrative form, the novel. Chapter 5 continues to focus on print fiction but discusses different forms of consciousness arising from inter-cultural exchanges, technology and the advent of ‘modernism’. Then, in Chapter 6, another embodiment of narrative, the cinema, is discussed in relation to ‘modernism’. Chapter 7 considers the phenomenon called ‘postmodernism’ and how it has impinged on the manifestations of narrative. Chapter 8 surveys recent developments in narrative technologies, considers ‘openness’ and ‘closure’ and suggests one direction for the future study of the narrative sign. Finally, Chapter 9 suggests that a new awareness of narrative in the last couple of decades has contributed to re-thinking the question ‘What is narrative?’

Throughout, we will be interested in narrative as part of the general process of representation which takes place in human discourse. Hall (1997) suggests that there are three general approaches to the question of the work done by representation. The ‘reflective’ approach sees meaning as residing in the person or thing in the real world; a representation such as narrative ‘reflects’ that meaning. The ‘intentional’ approach sees meaning in the control exercised by the producer of a representational form such as narrative; s/he uses representation to make the world ‘mean’. The ‘constructionist’ approach sees meaning neither in the control of the producer nor the thing being represented; instead, it identifies the thoroughly social nature of the construction of meaning, the fact that representational systems, rather than their users and objects, allow meaning to occur. The following chapters will be mostly concerned with the ‘constructionist’ perspective on narrative as representation but will also consider some arguments regarding ‘reflection’ and ‘intention’. They will also, more specifically, discuss some of the possible reasons for changes in the components of narrative representation; among these is a concept so frequently synonymous with narrative that it must be defined now: ‘story’.

STORY, PLOT AND NARRATIVE

To be sure, story and narrative are closely related; but even the most preliminary of investigations reveals that there are three fundamental items which, while they sometimes blend in a most pleasing way, are really separate. These are ‘story’, ‘plot’ and ‘narrative’. Rather than relying on technical descriptions of each, let us turn to a reasonably familiar kind of contemporary illustration. In 1999, a four-part series, Oliver Twist, was broadcast on the commercial television channel now known as ITV1 in Britain. As is well known in the literate world, The Adventures of Oliver Twist is an early novel of Charles Dickens, originally published in 1838. The stoory concerns a young orphan boy, Oliver, brought up in a workhouse, thrust out into the evil world and then preyed upon by Fagin, a small-time racketeer whose principal source of income is garnered from the petty criminal activities of a group of street urchins over whom he presides. The story of the character Oliver Twist, his adventures, what happens to him and the events connected with these, is therefore central to the novel.

The plot of Oliver Twist, the circumstances which involve Oliver in a specific series of events, is not quite the same as the story. The reason that Oliver is victimized by Fagin and his associates has to do with Oliver’s parenthood. He is the illegitimate product of a union between Edwin Leeford and Agnes Fleming, both of whom are dead as Oliver takes his first breath in the world. Leeford, incarcerated in an unhappy marriage when he met Agnes, already had a son, Edward, by his wife. This shadowy young man, under the alias of ‘Monks’, later haunts Oliver and, in turn, is haunted by the orphan’s very existence, a fact which could prevent him getting his hands on the considerable Leeford inheritance. ‘Monks’ is determined to gain what he considers to be his birthright. He is, therefore, the main catalyst of the plot and, concomitantly, the events of the story.

In Dickens’ novel, the full account of the events which bring Oliver Twist into the world and the web of circumstances in which he is enmeshed is not actually given until near the end. Although the events precipitating Oliver’s genesis will, ineluc-tably, precede in a temporal sequence the events of his life, the narrative chooses not to disclose them. In short, the narrative of Oliver’s story and the plot which drives it only reveal the relevant wider circumstances surrounding them in Chapter XLIX, ‘Monks and Mr. Brownlow at last meet. Their conversation and the intelligence that interrupts it’ and in Chapter LI, ‘Affording an explanation of more mysteries than one, and comprehending a proposal of marriage with no word of settlement or pin-money’. Even with such an account, it can be seen that the narrative separates the revelations of these chapters with a chapter devoted to the narration of Sikes’ demise.

The 1999 television version, dramatized by Alan Bleasdale, has a different narrative. The first episode of the four-part series consists of a detailed narration of the love affair between Oliver’s parents, Edwin and Agnes. This narrative not only moves the facts of their story to the beginning, unlike Dickens’ novel which leaves them at the end, but it also depicts the affair ‘first-hand’, with the characters speaking their own dialogue and acting out the events, rather than having them retold by ‘Monks’ and Lee-ford’s friend, Brownlow. The narrative of the TV version also has additions: the murder of Leeford and the continued existence through subsequent episodes of Leeford’s wife.

We glean from this example a sense of how narrative is different from ‘story’ and ‘plot’. Put very simply, ‘story’ consists of all the events which are to be depicted. ‘Plot’ is the chain of causation which dictates that these events are somehow linked and that they are therefore to be depicted in relation to each other. ‘Narrative’ is the showing or the telling of these events and the mode selected for that to take place. As we saw above, the Dickens novel about Oliver has a narrative with certain key events narrated towards the end; the TV version has a narrative with those events appearing at the beginning. The novel’s narrative tends to ‘tell’ what those events were through a scene involving the verbal testimonies of Monks, Brownlow and others. One could argue, though, that this is a ‘showing’ because the narrative selects for depiction this particular scene with these particular characters. The TV version ‘shows’ what happened between Oliver’s father and mother; it presents them in a depiction at ‘first hand’. At the same time, though, one could argue that this is a ‘telling’ because only certain scenes in the love affair and the genesis of Oliver are offered; the narrative ‘chooses’ to present some events and not others.

This example demonstrates how narrative maintains the fragile distinction between ‘showing’ and ‘telling’, an issue to which we will return on more than one occasion in what follows. Yet we must also note that the act of selecting what is depicted here is also crucial in the process of narrative and provides a demonstration of a general fact about representation: that representation allows some things to be depicted and not others. In order to prefigure some of the arguments about this, consider the following example. The film Pleasantville (1998) features the story of a contemporary American brother and sister in their teens. Near the beginning of the movie they find themselves inserted into the world of a late-1950s television sitcom, a world that is self-contained, black and white, squeaky-clean and ideologically unquestioning. Having reconciled themselves to their fate, they play the roles of son and daughter to their fictional parents, and the roles of friends to their fellow pupils at school. But this is not without its problems: in one humorous moment, early in the film, the sister decides to go to the Ladies’ Room while she is in a diner, only to find, once she is beyond the door, that there are no facilities there for answering the call of nature. The incident wryly tells us what we all know: that, on television, people never (or very rarely) empty their bowels. More accurately, in the terms of the present discussion, we could say that narrative selects some events and omits others.

These comments should offer a few preliminary insights about narrative as it might be distinguished from the terms with which it is often juxtaposed and often confused: ‘story’ and ‘plot’. Yet it remains to ask what is fundamental to narrative and what some of its chief components might be. In light of the above comments about selection and the (re)arrangement of events, it should be clear that the concept of sequence is crucial.

SEQUENCE

At the lowest level of simplification, narrative is a sequence that is narrated. As an example, we might consider any documentary series on television. Since the success of Life on Earth in 1980, BBC 1 in Britain has made sure that the autumn schedules will be graced with a major ‘life’ documentary such as The Living Planet (1984), The Life of Birds (1998) or Life in Cold Blood (2008). Customarily we will assume that these consist of a series of pictures which we watch on the screen and which are narrated by a voice-over commentator. Quite often, in wildlife documentaries, the latter is a popularly recognized authority such as Sir David Attenborough. Thus, the narrative seems to come from the authoritative voice-over. But one might ask whether the actual pictures on screen and the way that they are organized into a sequence also constitute a narrative. This nonverbal ‘showing’, in addition to the voice-over ‘telling’, might equally possess a narrative orientation.

By asking this question it is not necessarily implied that verbal and visual narratives are the same. The Russian semiotician, Jurij Lotman (1977), usefully illustrates that the verbal arts such as literature are characterized by sequences whose individual elements are themselves discrete units of meaning (words or phrases). The iconic or pictorial arts, on the other hand, realize their meaning through their existence as an isolated whole, while music does it not through individual elements or through isolation but through its very sequence; film, television and video, in yet another way, combine these characteristics. So, with the simplest of definitions which aims to cover all media, serious questions begin to arise.

It is probably the fact that we rarely acknowledge such questions that makes us take narrative for granted; or even believe that it is natural and just happens for our instant gratification. Organized stories, once more, seem to be intrinsic to the fabric of everyday existence (cf. Forster 1962). On the other hand, as soon as we begin to think a little bit more deeply about the issue, we might easily reach the conclusion that the whole storytelling impulse is illusory: catching the bus, going out with friends, performing mundane tasks at work, watching football – none of these come to fruition as stories unless we ‘choose’ to impose some kind of narrative form on them.

The contradictory coupling of these insights leads to the most fundamental observation that can be made of narrative: that it consists of signs. A sequence of any kind might exist in the world, but if that sequence is to consist of meaningful relations it requires human input; it needs to be understood as being made up of signs. A cat, for example, may jump onto a wall and, in so doing, nudge a terracotta pot which falls onto the concrete on the other side, spilling its load of compost and shattering into the bargain. This sequence of actions exists, but until I become aware of the breakage by being told or by actually witnessing the desolate fragments of the pot, I am unable to interpret it as a sign of the cat’s clumsy wall-scaling activities.

What is apparent, then, is that as soon as we advance on the task of seeing relations between things, we are operating in the domain of signs. Moreover, these are thoroughly human signs. Undoubtedly, signs between and within animals, and signs between plants make up the bulk of communication on this planet; but while it is possible that a second cat might pass by the broken vessel and catch the sign of another cat’s scent, we have no way of knowing whether it could make the interpretation that we do on the basis of the breakage alone. Human signs, or what humans interpret as signs, therefore stand in for something else in the world. Put another way, they re-present it (Hall 1997).

This dynamic, which is so obvious that we tend to forget it, has been depicted most economically by the literary theorist Wolfgang Iser. Referring to the way in which representation works, he has stated succinctly, “no rendering can be that which it renders” (Iser 1989: 251). Put another way, as it is here by the philosopher David Carr, “real events do not have the character of those we find in stories, and if we treat them as if they did have such a character, we are not being true to them” (1991: 160). In the second quote we can see that there is much at stake in recognizing the transformations which take place in re-presentation. Yet, not only is the ‘real’ world different from the world as it is represented, as even ‘reflective’ and ‘intentional’ approaches would acknowledge, but representational systems such as narrative work to facilitate the recognition of such phenomena as sequence and causality. They facilitate the meaningful relations which will transpire with human input.

The general work of representation as we have described it can also be carried out by putative non-narrative forms such as statuary, still photography and even music. Therefore we are compelled to ask what is specific to narrative representation. At their simplest, all narratives are the movement from a beginning point to a finishing point. Narrative is just a sequence which starts and moves inexorably to its end. To understand this is to understand the most important principle behind narrative. Of course, any straightforward movement from start to finish runs the risk of being tedious; yet, as most of us are aware right from our first experiences of fairy tales as infants, narrative has the potential to be thoroughly captivating. Furthermore, even tedious narratives cannot c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• The New Critical Idiom
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Series Editor's Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 In the beginning: the end
• 2 Early narrative
• 3 The rise and rise of the novel
• 4 Realist representation
• 5 Beyond realism
• 6 Modernism and the cinema
• 7 Postmodernism
• 8 In the end: the beginning
• 9 What is narrative?
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index