This glossary of narratology is a list of explanations or translations of contemporary and historical concepts of narratology. It defines all the concepts and definitions used in Narration.
Glossary
A
Anachrony is the temporal reordering of elements of the story and their eventual presentation. It is considered a serious discrepancy between how the story is ordered and how it is presented. It is defined by Genette as a "temporal reordering of elements of the plot on the level in relation to their chronological order on the level". Anachronies can be based in the past e.g. , and or can be in the future e.g. , , . Examples of novels that use the technique include The Voice in Cocteau's La Machine infernale. More extreme cases of this narration technique can be found in La vie imaginaire de l'éboueur Auguste G. by Armand Gatti.
Defined by Prince as a , a , an going forward into the future of the narrative with respect to the present. The chronological narrative flow of events is interrupted to make space for the anticipation. In Madame Bovary prolepsis is used between chapters to elicitate anticipation.
In essence a flashback in the narrative, i.e. the insertion of a previous scene into the current story. Defined by Genette as an in the past that is told in the present, it is often used to introduce new characters or protagonists whose contextual existence must be told. Contemporary novels written in a modernist or a postmodernist style use this technique to reorder the chronological or teleological narrative structure. Examples of this technique include Emma in Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Flaubert lets the reader know that while Emma feels nostalgic about her farming life, it is revealed to the reader through flashback that she was an incompetent farmer and wished to escape her life through marriage.
The class of or narratives characterised by . Defines one of Lintvelt's 3 narrative types along with and . Books that use this technique included Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Bella, Tom Jones by Henry Fielding.
See
A first-person narrative, where the narrator is the protagonist or the hero. Defined by Genette in 1980, is a form of where the protagonist or hero tells their own story. An example of a novel that uses this technique is Jane's narration in Jane Eyre. Other novels that use this technique include Great Expectations, Kiss Me, Deadly by Mickey Spillane and The Stranger by Albert Camus.
C
D
Diegesis, the opposite of , is a style of fiction storytelling in which a narrator offers an on-site, often interior, view of the scene to the reader, viewer, or listener by subjectively describing the actions and, in some cases, thoughts, of one or more characters. Defined by Genette as "Telling" (diegesis) as opposed to "Showing" (mimesis). Diegesis is firmly rooted in genre studies and was defined by Plato and Aristotle. In narratology, Plato defined two poetic modes. In the Republic Book III, he describes the narrator of the verses of Homer as speaking with his own voice (diegesis) while the characters speak (mimesis). Mimesis in Ancient Greek meaning imitation describes the poet delivering a speech as though he was some other character. Aristotle in his Poetics defines all literature as mimesis.
See
Deixis is the use of words or phrases to refer to a particular time (e.g. then), place (e.g. here), or person (e.g. you) relative to the context of the utterance. There are many others for example "Now","This","That", "Up" and "There". Deixis exists in all known natural languages and is closely related to anaphora in linguistics, with a sometimes unclear distinction between the two. According to Bühler 1934, Deixis defines a centre of reference know as an Origo that identifies the speakers location and point in time and the Origo may shift from speaker to the character.
E
One of eight that is defined by Friedman 1955b. He defines it as intrusive narrator, external to the story, i.e. heterodiegetic. Novels that use this technique include "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" and War and Peace.
F
Fabula is the set of events and situations within their chronological sequence in a narrative i.e. it refers to the chronological sequence of events within the world of a narrative. The term was originated by the Russian formalists, the folklorist Vladimir Propp and literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky as part of the Russian Formalism movement of the 1920's and 1930's. Combined with the complementary term: also defined by the Russian formalists, meaning "the way a story is organised", the two terms define a distinction between the "what" and the "how", or more accurately "what is being told" versus the "manner in which it is told".
Focalisation is the perspective through which events in a narrative are perceived and presented to the reader. Genette used it to replace the vaguer notion of "point of view" by separating the question of who sees (the focaliser) from who speaks (the narrator). Genette distinguished three types: zero focalisation (an omniscient narrator whose knowledge exceeds that of any character), internal focalisation (the narrative is filtered through a character's consciousness), and external focalisation (the narrator reports only what is externally observable, knowing less than the characters). Examples of novels that use zero focalisation include Vanity Fair and Adam Bede by George Eliot. Examples of novels that use internal focalisation include The Ambassadors by Henry James, The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, The Ring and the Book by Robert Browning and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Examples of external focalisation used in novels include The Killers by Ernest Hemingway.
A frame is an abstract term borrowed from the domain of cognitive science to represent a type of scenario. It defines the mental data that represents various aspects of reality that is needed to enable human perception of those aspects. Narratology can be considered a frame that enables the understanding of reality. For example, imagining a house (the frame). Further elements within this frame can include the door or the windows.
A frame narrative (also known as a "frame story", "frame tale", "framing device'","sandwich narrative", or "intercalation") is a literary technique that serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, where an introductory or main narrative sets the stage either for a more emphasised second narrative or for a set of shorter stories. The frame story leads readers from a first story into one or more other stories within it. The frame story may also be used to inform readers about aspects of the secondary narrative(s) that may otherwise be hard to understand. This should not be confused with narrative structure. Novels that use this technique included 1001 Nights and The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio.
A technique in narratology where the characters spoken words or thoughts are delivered as they appear without any narratorial mediation, e.g. quotes, attribution or first-person framing. For example "It was unbearably hot, and she just stood there. I can't stand any of these people! She decided to leave". "I can't stand any of these people!" is an example of free direct discourse. It is almost akin to .
Free indirect discourse is the literary technique of writing a character's utterances in the voice of the third-person narrator. It is a style using aspects of conjoined with the essence of first-person direct speech. A type of narrative that is defined by the free form of its syntax along with the presence of deictics, expressive terms, styles and emotional colouring specific to the original speaker. Free indirect discourse is "free" as it doesn't have a i.e. a verb to speak or perceive. For example "He said that" or "She wondered why". Instead with the tag missing, for example: "Had she observed him at all" or "Tomorrow was Christmas". This type of narratology also incorporates politeness markers e.g. "Sir", deictic markers, e.g. "now" as well as expressions that are not usually found in but often found in . Free indirect discourse is heavily dependent on context such that it generally appears close to verbs of speech or next to direct or indirect discourse. Although it is particularly associated with third-person, it can be used in first and second-person narrative, e.g. "My dream was out", "My wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality". Although it is particularly associated with past tense, it can be used with other tenses, e.g. "She shrugs her shoulders and goes out. She is not going to fall for this two-bit punk". Although it exists alongside , it isn't present in every sentence associated with the characters perspective, e.g. "He saw John leaning against the wall" or "She thought about her past and felt deeply moved". Lastly, it also occurs in spoken language as well as written languages. The technique is also referred to as free indirect speech, free indirect style, or, in French, discours indirect libre. Well known novels that use free indirect discourse include Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and for example, in the modern novel The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.
H
The narration is heterodiegetic if the narrator is not the protagonist and is outside the fictional universe. In the language of narratology, the narrator is not part of the . Typically, but not always associated with the third-person narration. It can be used with you, they and one narratives. Examples of novels that use these techniques include the Iliad and Eugénie Grandet, and Pride and Prejudice.
The narration is homodiegetic if the narrator is a character in the events or situations in the story. Defined by literary theorist Gérard Genette, the narrator is the same person in the . It is equivalent to First-person narration. If that person is the main protagonist, then Genette calls this . We narratives, where the story-teller is part of the group, but has their own narration are considered partially autodiegetic. This applies to couples narrating the story within the group. Examples of novels where the narrators are part of the story include Mr Lockwood in Wuthering Heights. Other examples include Gil Blas, All the King's Men and The Great Gatsby and Kiss Me, Deadly.
A "hypodiegetic narrative" is a narrative embedded in another narrative. Examples of novels that use the hypodiegetic narrative technique include Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien.
I
A form of where the narrative is filtered through the characters own or , in essence through their own consciousness. Example novels that use this technique with a single point of view include The Ambassadors and What Maisie Knew by Henry James. When different points of view are presented: The Age of Reason, The Golden Bowl by Henry James. When the same situation is presented from multiple points of view: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins or the The Ring and the Book by Robert Browning.
See
Part of and within the . Essentially a character within the story who narrates a story within a story, that is a This is the intradiegetic level. Examples of novels that use this technique include Père Goriot by Balzac, Manon Lescaut by Antoine François Prévost and Heart of Darkness by Conrad. See for an ontological description of different levels of narration.
Isochrony assumes that any narrative utterances are divisible into equal rhythmic portions of some kind. Defined by Genette as the of the narrative. An isochronic narrative is one where the speed is constant. See .
M