Introduction to English Literary Studies (INTROLIT)
Narrative Theory 1:
Basics of the theory of Franz K. Stanzel
Constitutive elements of narrative situations
1. Constitutive elements
Mode
Mode (question: “Who is narrating?”) describes a narrator who can appear before the reader
as an independent person or is able to stand back from the narration in a way that enables
him/her to become “invisible” and therefore a reflector.
Person
Person (question: identity or non-identity of the realms of narrator and fictional characters?)
describes the relation or reciprocation between narrator and characters.
Perspective
Perspective (question: point of view from which the narrative is presented) describes the way
in which the reader perceives the depicted reality. Further question: Is the perspective in the
action or outside of it?
2. Continua
Continuum of form: mode
Marked by a binary opposition of narrator – reflector
Continuum of form: person
Marked by a binary opposition of identity – non-identity (the realms of narrator and fictional
characters)
Continuum of form: perspective
Marked by a binary opposition of Internal perspective – External perspective / Perspectivism
– Aperspectivism
3. Typical narrative situations
Authorial narrative situation
External perspective is dominant (Aperspectivism)
First-person narrative situation
Identity of the realms of narrator and fictional characters is dominant
Figural /Third-person narrative situation
Reflector mode is dominant
4. Oppositions
Opposition: Mode teller-character/reflector-character
In the following excerpt from James Joyce’s Ulysses the headmaster Mr Deasy gives the
teacher Stephen Dedalus a letter to a Dublin newspaper. Mr Deasy’s remarks are interrupted
by citations from the letter together with some comments by Stephen, who acts as a reflector:
I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It’s about the foot and mouth disease.
Just look through it. There can be no two opinions on the matter.
May I trespass on your valuable place. That doctrine of laissez faire which so often in our
history. Our old cattle trade. The way of all our old industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed
the Galway harbour scheme. European Conflagration. Grain supplies through the narrow
waters of the channel. The pluterperfect imperturbability of the department of agriculture.
Pardoned a classical allusion. Cassandra. By a woman who was no better than she should be.
To come to the point at issue.
I don’t mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Steven read on.
Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch’s preparation. Serum and virus. Percentage of
salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor’s horses at Mürzsteg, lower Austria. Veterinary surgeons.
Mr. Henry Blackwood Price. Courteous offer a fair trial. Dictates of common sense.
Allimportant question. In every sense of the word take the bull by the horns. Thanking you for
the hospitality of your columns.
I want that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said.
James Joyce,Ulysses
(Harmondsworth, 1969) 38 f.
If a narrator were to replace the reflector, the result would be a significant alteration of the
content and the form of the narrative.
Opposition: Person first-/third-person reference
In the following text the first-person narrator Holden Caulfield speaks to the reader as a part
of the depicted fictional world:
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was
born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents where occupied and all
before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going
into it. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have
about two haemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They’re quite
touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They’re nice and all--I’m not saying
that--but they’re also touchy as hell. Besides, I’m not going to tell you my whole goddam
autobiography or anything. I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me
around last Christmas before I got pretty run down and had to come out here and take it easy.
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
(Harmondsworth, 1958) 5
Should one try to transpose a first-person narration into a third-person narration, inserting a
narrator who is located outside the fictional world and therefore abandoning the identity of the
realms of narrator / depicted reality, the result would be a severe interference with the
narrative logic. Holden’s function would have to be split into a figure inside the action and a
narrator.
Opposition: Perspective internal/external
In Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus is waiting for a chance to
confess his transgressions:
The slide was shot to suddenly. The penitent came out. He was next. He stood up in terror and
walked blindly into the box. At last it had come. He knelt in the silent gloom and raised his
eyes to the white crucifix suspended above him. God could see that he was sorry. He would
tell all his sins. His confession would be long, long. Everybody in the chapel would know then
what a sinner he had been. Let them know. It was true. But God had promised to forgive him
if he was sorry. He was sorry. He clasped his hands and raised them to the white form,
praying with his darkened eyes, praying with all his trembling body, swaying his head to and
fro like a lost creature, praying with whimpering lips.
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(Harmondsworth, 1963) 143
As far as the sentence “He was sorry.“ Stephen functions as a reflector, since the reader
perceives the situation through his awareness (internal perspective). This part could be
transposed into a first-person narration. Thereafter, however, the external perspective is
dominant and such a change would no longer be possible.
In the oval flower-bed the snail, whose shell had been stained red, blue, and yellow for
the space of two minutes or so, now appeared to be moving very slightly in its shell, and
next began to labour over the crumbs of loose earth which broke away and rolled down
as it passed over them. It appeared to have a definite goal in front of it, differing in this
respect from the singular high stepping angular green insect who attempted to cross in
front of it, and waited for a second with its antennae trembling as if in deliberation, and
then stepped off as rapidly and strangely in the opposite direction. Brown cliffs with
deep green lakes in the hollows, flat, blade-like trees that waved from root to tip, round
boulders of grey stone, vast crumpled surfaces of a thin crackling texture--all these
objects lay across the snail's progress between one stalk and another to his goal. Before
he had decided whether to circumvent the arched tent of a dead leaf or to breast it, there
came past the bed the feet of other human beings. ... The snail had now considered every
possible method of reaching his goal without going round the dead leaf or climbing over
it. Let alone the effort needed for climbing a leaf, he was doubtful whether the thin
texture which vibrated with such an alarming crackle when touched even by the tip of
his horns would bear his weight; and this determined him finally to creep beneath it ...
Virginia Woolf, Kew Gardens (1919)
Translation: Cornelia Lippert