NAMING IN NARRATIVE In narrative contexts, naming involves the use of singular terms, a class of designators or referring expressions functioning like individual constants in a proposition, to label an entity or set of entities in a 'storyworld or any of its subdomains. Naming practices arc meant to ensure the identification of the furniture of the story world and the continuity of *reference to a given entity throughout the •narration (see existent). The terms used for naming can be classified into proper names (or letters or numbers), pronouns and demonstratives, and definite descriptions (see description). While proper names are the major naming device in literature, they are not indispensable. A story with two or three 'characters can make do with pronouns, and 'novels have been written in which all characters are designated by definite descriptions. In autodiegetic narratives, such as Dostoevski's Notes from Underground, the narrator-characier"s name may never be men-Honed, or occur just once in a 'quotation from an address by another character (see narrator). Different 'authors show clear preference tor parti-c^r kinds of naming devices - for example. dcfiM« ^fenption in Zola and proper names in Flauber- contrastive use of names and definite descnp- changej chains creating discourse coherence and intd lbihty. This phenomenon has been studied m detail by Catherine Emmott (1997). who analyses chains such as a man-* the man-* John —he-the singer, etc. A semantic approach studies the role of names in establishing a storyworld's cast of characters and how they enable readers to answer questions such as: who is there, how many are there, who is who. who did or was such and such, and is it (still) the same individual? (JM 1MMAIIH semantics). Cognitively viewed, singular terms are names of mental files we keep on characters or an anchor for our construction of mental models of them (see cognitive narratology narrative comprehension: situation model*. In the course of the narrative text, relauons of preference, temporary or permanent, are estabhshed between different singular terms. Inside a storyworld. proper names ***** designators, picking £*- - -v.,uaSuve use ot names anu .....- . cnan*^ . to |aise -haractcr partition the personnel of a narrator^ and leading 1 ^ ^ d«Unct ^ k.»,. fncussinc and 'the- of a corre>r* n ^ name ol a * - in a narrame ma ■^J£BB»* individual ^^^SSSSSm or RhWRlTfc» Th. «orld> * --racier has personal relauons are reiu — ■ -Jg*. while officials are referred to by WP«*» ■gating their roles, such as 'the judge ler^ lexi-g^mmatical perspective on » --^ amines how they form extended anaphon bearers (-^^ NARRATEE raw*', H*** WWM O^'*'™""" «cSTe»P"< <'*»> L-OnomasliflUC SOS*'. Poi'tique. 54. 233-53. URI MARGOLIN JARRATEE Sarratee. a coinage of classical. *structuralist model of wwrntf * term sarratee. a coinage 01 classical, 'structuralist larratology. designates the addressee to whom a narrator tells his/her tale. The narratee. like his/ "X counterpart the narrator, is integral to a com-lunication model of narrative (see communica- 10n in narrative; function (jakobson); iARRATWE transmission). This model is based on a strict non-crossable ontological separation between the double, two-partner transaction: an •external" one between the 'real' *author and 'rear reader (e.g.. respectively, Austen and anyone reading her novels) (see Aud.ence); an 'internal' transaction between the narrator and the narratee who, are part of the 'fiction but not necessarily pari of the fictional world (where the 'characters are, emg one ,eve, above it OUnnnon-Ke^ 198 ! that narrators a„n narration entails mJSS faoccupy the » «^dded S^t%1h9^l1972]).Thus not only are w , SheUey s Frank™- narrator, his sister " n °'CS 'Wdhon, initially, as the" Viclor FranlnSs;arralee ln frame story "-ratee; then ,he mo™S, narralor' Walton his "^lee,, but at Si T^' Vicu>r *• -onster addr ^ Sj th° ,oles «re fixed Waho»' Victor", SSt«f ^na^ce, not 'rhetorieal S 1,1 r«'« , ^strandsof.™ , mons^). j°a** srsrs r"'ia-^ which altogether (Abbott 2002: 187-97) or may £>f comenient synonym for auditor, disregard,"^* strict ontological and hierarchical . the explained above ('insofar as a text is p^' % address a reader [or narratee]') (Fludernik19% V" Other postclassical strands focus not on ideal *r constructs, but on an empirical study 0f C0l^der nicalion and literary response (see recent*! theory). Such work examines the relation bctw^ narrators and real as opposed to ideal reader-(Bortolussi and Dixon 2003: 66-69); by implication it either understands the narratee as synonymous with a listener, or has no need for the concept at all. It also denies, in effect, the validity of the non crossable ontological boundaries of the communica tion model outlined in structuralist narratology. Narratees can be ranged along a scale of more or less detailed characterisation: from total absence (Maupassant. 'The Necklace"), through minimal characterisation (the out-of-town customer of Whitey in Lardner's 'Haircut'), to fuller characterisation (Victor as the monster's narratee). References and further reading Abbott, Porter H. (2002) 77i<' Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bortolussi. Mans.!, and Peter Dixon (2003) ' Psycho-"■irratology, Cambridge: Cambridge I m\ersit> Press. :rnik. Monika (1996) Towards \t 'Natural' Sam- nar Fludernik tology, London: Routledge. Genette, Gerard (1980 [1972]) Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. Jane E. Lew in. Oxford: Blackwell. Prince. Gerald (1973) 'Introduction a I'etude du narrataire'. Poetique, 14, 178-96. - - (1982) Narratologv: The Form and Functioning o) Narrative. Berlin: Mouton. Rimmon-Kenan. Shlomith (1981) Narrative Fiction Contemporary Poetics. London: Methuen. NILLI DIENGOTT NARRATING (GENETTE) fa Genette's terminology, the narrating refers to t» P» duung narrative action and. bv extension. lh« J . , lhe re''l or fictional situation in which £ .ct.on u.kes place K.eneUe |9«(l: 21) Yhc C) di. U''^"'cation of narrative: (1) Story. dl^urse, and (3) narratjng wjln wri„en ihe real process of narrating is I Ik n.ul-,,,u"'„„(, process, which lies beyond the '•ulll,°r" tnl, could fruitfully become a part of "!irl'a,,V'v,| study through combining intrinsic n;,rrat.m with extrinsic criticism tSl.cn 2001). In '"T'nirration. In contrast, the \iud.encc has ., iccess to the real narrating process of the ll'UX -Her The storyteller's tone. *gestures, facial ''^vssionsetc. interact with his/her words, serving TmiWum affective function. Whatever the '!lor\teller docs during the process of narrating nvn directly bear on the audience's response to the narrative. The proeess of fictitious narrating is not accessible to the reader unless reported either by the narrator himself or herself or by a higher-level narrator. These two cases are exemplified in Conrad's Heart of Darkness when, on the one hand. Marlow as embedded first-person narrator recounts his own narratorial activity as follows: ■When you have to attend to things of that sort... the reaiity, 1 tell you - fades.... "Try to be civil. Marlow", grow led a voice, and 1 knew there was at least one listener awake beside myself (49); and when, on the other hand, the frame narrator reports'. "[Marlow] was silent for a while— He paused again as if reflecting, then added..." (39). Not surprisingly, in narrative fiction, where only the verbal signs are accessible to the reader, the heme narrating has no other way to present itselt except through being reported. And when it becomes an object of narration, it either becomes part of the story (when narrated by a higher-level narrator) or part of the discourse (see story-DiscoL'RSEDtSTiNCTiON). Generally speaking, apart from the issue of temporal orientation (whether the narrating is retrospective, simultaneous, or prospective in relation to the narrated 'events; see riMt in narrative), there is no necessity for the narrating to be an explicit element of a narrative. When the fietive narrating is not mentioned as such 11 is usually 'considered to have no duration' IGeneite 1980: 222; see also Shen 2001). In the ease of extra-heterodiegetic narration, if the narrator is a depersonalised narrative instance, readers can 0nly get access to the words reported via a 'disembodied' voice. It readers try to look behind the *°rnce the real process of narrating lies beyond l"6 wrili«„ ________- j .1.. .o nrm'CSS IS have refrained lioiu making nanating a scp.naie category in their classification of the dimensions of wriilcn narrative. SI I \l SO: communication in natiame; iiati.iuvc transmission References and further reading Conrad, Joseph (1981 |1X')1>]) Heart oj Darkness, I larmondsworth: Penguin. Genetic. Gerard (l«ixt» Narrative Discount In Essa) in Method, nans. .1. [•. Lewin, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Shen. Dan (20(H) 'Narrative. Reality, and Narrator as Construct: Relleetions on Genetic's "Narrating"', Narrative, 9, 123 29. DAN SHEN iQli written narrative and the fictitious process is accessible unless narrated, many narcologists NARRATING-! The *narrator in a first-person narrative; specifically, in retrospective first-person 'narration, the older self who recounts the experiences undergone by the earlier 'experiencing-I'. Sec narrative situations (also person; time in narrative). NARRATION ■Narration' can be synonymous with •'narrative1 when referring to individual narrated texts, as foi example in the narration or narrative of a life (5« i ,| | STORY). But in most analytic discussion ol lvl,raiive narration is more closer) synonymous with ♦'narrating' or the production of narrative, and thus is subsumed within the larger categOT) ol narrative, Geneiie. for example, identifies nana lion as one ol'.lie three levels of narrative, alone wilh story (tor) and narrative discourse M ST„Rs DiscouRS. distinction). However. ,1U1I1S varj regarding the appueatton 0 fc« kll, ranging from a tight restneuon to unquoted verbal narration by a •narrate, to usage that..... broad as to encompass the entiret, ol nana- discourse. . ■ Even i„ its narrowest sense, narration ■ « tuples subject, containing within ll a erea, u be ol narcological concerns: .....lepsifc , ,s (,•> in which, in certain texts, narration can absorb a great deal of the reader's or 'audience's attention, often at the expense of the stor\ itself (.<«■«■ Ri n EXiviTY). Verbal narration, quotation, monologue, and interior monologue The term narration' has been traditionally restricted to the \erbal (oral or written) production of narrative by a 'narrator (Cohn; Genette: Prince). At times, the term has been further reduced fan a global to a local concept by distinguishing it from 'quotation or monologue, which are set off in some way by quotation marks and/or by phrases like he said' and she said" {see SKECM REPRESENTATION V, The argument for this position turns on the fact that quotation, insofar as it occurs within the story, is more mimetic than dtegette. in «hat it u wnwetrr present rather than represented through the narration {see l>W| vtvtfsrsk BaL m addition to snoring turrauoo's ditterence trom embeuoeu e_\ •> te.vt luraerous segments of almost any "narrative *• itmfr riwhrig 'desenpooo or narrative comment" that do not partidpMe Barraooo or" the story ftscusaoc oi■arratwni and qwoonoa has also impacted the common coorusoa cxrween laws s concert Of stream ot consoous-^ Edouard D**« •» i-m* more than language and therefore more than car, be directly represented in a monologue. Moreover as Cohn points out. the term "interior monologue' itself has been used to designate two very different things with two very different modes of narrative production, the one a technique of 'presenting a character's consciousness by direct quotation of his thoughts in a surrounding narrative context' and the other a narrative genre constituted in its entirety by the silent self-communion of a fictional mind' (15) (see genre theory in narrative studies). Thus Joyce deploys frequent passages of interior monologue in Ulysses, but with the exception of the Penelope' chapter these passages are contained within and mediated by narration in the third-person. Dujardin's Les lauriers son! coupes, by contrast, is interior monologue in its entirety and therefore essentially 'direct' first-person discourse. As Cohn points out. where the genre is a comparatively recent development, the technique is a natural outgrowth of a long tradition of representing consciousness by quotation within third-person narration. The validity, or at least usefulness, of the distinction between quotation and narration is complicated by the fact that narration can be an 1 frequendy is found embedded within monologu or quoted discourse, and much of this embedd narration" conveys events of the story withm whic the quotation occurs (see embedding framEI narratives) Correlativery. entire rated in the first-person are m essence long quotations. The tension involved in maintaining "* distinction between quotation and narration be seen in a narrative like Heart of Darkness m which, withm a few pages, the anonymous third-person narrator who begins the narration m effect hands over the dncoorse to a character, I" whose words, though techmcafly bring narrate the rest of the novel nidi few nnerrupuons The d»nbetween iMfiarion and qMWMW: Mde even more dwwcwh by the very no", ensue practice of free tmtmtxl winch a* Cohn observe* uuiipni '* isjrack oarrauon and quot*"' does lined-ncBon nanaw anowwhon, and nwnwnr of s •dmsum* niton i win iirrrrr" —«««nMmO«' m»m hex i cnwanwwk. Whether lor these reasons or other, n ® expand (ho framework for invest! s,rr)P'y production ol narrative, rccem Ml,d,,s oT'.v.'r? .'^ have broadened the focus of inquiry to 2 T" « here narration no longer strictly denotes narrative production by a narrator. ™" Classification by tense Narrative .s generally understood as presenting ♦events that have already happened by the *tinie of the narration (either actual, as in historical narra me. or invented, as in 'fiction) (see historio graph v). Narration, in other words, is understood to mediate a story, either true or fictional, that in some wav precedes the narrative. For this reason narration is rendered most commonly in the past tense (-Margaret picked up the scissors and ran at her accuser'). Not infrequently, however, novelists have deployed the present tense to narrate action in the past. Usually referred to as the 'historical present', this move is thought to heighten the immediacy and dramatic impact of the narration ('Margaret picks up the scissors and runs at her accuser"). Casparis argues that such narration diminishes reader-awareness of narration altogether, throwing the stress on perception. 'Plot, character development, logical causal framework are relinquished in favour of the act of perceiving' (74). The device is also common in narration that occurs naturally in the ordinary course of conversation ("So I'm heading for the train station when suddenly this thunderstorm comes out of nowhere"; see conversational storytelling: natural narratology). Narration in an actual, rather than a historical, present raises the issue of when what we read or witness is no longer narration but rather the unfolding of events as they happen. Cohn (1978) and Fludernik (1996) both note that one cannot at the same time live a story and narrate it. Whether one agrees with this or not. art forms like role-playing games, theatrical improv, or 'happenings would all appear to be as unmediated as life itself and therefore not examples of narration until rendered in retrospect (tee drama and narrative; narrative, games, and play). 'Current report' the present-tense reporting of events as they happen (sports, on-the-scene news: see sports broadcast) - even though a mediated presenta-would also appear to be so tied to the Idine of events as (arguably) not to qualify as NARRATION 341 a form of narration. Use of .hP Present tense or narra v, ^"historical Stanzel 1984, i^™™'?^* (Cohn 197* lion „ 1 i r " SUm' P^nt-tense narra- tes r"-^™'0-1 and can subst.tute Tor all lenses except the present perfect and the Future' (Fludernik 1996: 254). .™RTu"8 l° narrative tne°ry"s traditional bias toward the "past-factive-completive triplet' and the increasing proliferation or event-representational texts of other kinds, Margolin has used the tense-aspect-modality (TAM) approach to try to sharpen theoretical discriminations between kinds of narration on the basis of temporal features and 'reality status'. For Margolin, any adequate analysis of narration in one of the three commonly recognisable types - in his terms, retrospective narration (past), concurrent narration (present), and prospective narration (future) - requires further discrimination of a multitude of potential meaningful differences within these types depending on whether the action is completed or in progress and whether the world invoked is "actual, non-actual, hypothetical, indeterminate, counter-factual, wished for, ordered into being' (143; see modality). Naturally, the probabilities of one or the other of these modal variants depends to some degree on the temporal position of the event in relation to the narration (e.g.. the ratio of actual to non-actual modalities is usually higher in ret-ronarration than in concurrent or prospective narration). Classification by person; homodiegetic and heterodiegetic narration; reliability In addition to classification by tense, kinds of narration have traditionally been discriminated according to the grammatical person of the narrating voice. Far and away the commonest types are first- and third-person narration, with second-person narration forming a comparatively small, though growing body of texts. As the basis of a useful system of classification, grammatical person is fraught with difficulty, beginning with the fact that third-person narration is so frequently I 60s*» r a as "rst~ hies i» "h,Jl .r.« 10 himsell or w which f rth refers w tends to all the inadequacy of person- ,ha' * Son has been its de h. • the instance regardless of how classifications based sole complex SU,nZd 'T^ndsofnarrationaccordrngto parade * ^JJ^ (*® narrative s.tua- S major modes of narration: first-person nar-Srnal to the story), authona. narra ton cuernal » the story), and 'figuial' narration conveyed largely through the unspoken perceptions of a character operating as a 'reflector). Genette similarly promoted a distinction between homodiegetic and heterodiegetic narration, the one emanating from a character inside the diegesis, the other from a voice or character outside the diegesis. But Genette did not adopt the concept of an unspeaking narrator, developing instead the subsidiary concept of *focalization in place of Stanzel's reflector-mediated figural narration. Another notable reaction to the inadequacy of a system based on grammatical person is Booth's stress on the "reliability of the narrator. An author's strategic choices, for example, of 'dramatised' or 'undramatised' narrators, of 'observer narrators' or narrator agents', affect the narration's degree of emotional and perspectival distance from the action and hence the reliability of the views embedded in the narration (see emotion in narrative: perspective). Locating second-person narration in any com- l OH"5'" °f has also been problematic. Grammatical second-nersnn • ■mplicit concomnam of narration nT and instructional modes. yT^JZT*" ration is also arguably a s2 P S°n Dar' person narration thelrr^ ^ °( third" attennon toward what si". 5? ^ ilS (though some might argue Irl Vhe reader tee, or addressee, as both ■ *na"a-of the discourse, Z mIT™ ^ object , relationship implicit in the address to thc pCTT hrinBS with it the aura of a speak,nu r^der on b ^ ^ first.person behind the voice, subject: whereby second-person narra- F' extend the world of the narrative out into T^odd of the reader - i-e., incorporate the reader 'fth diegesis - makes it fundamentally asynv Metrical with first- and third-person narration. For "ore on the complexities of second-person narration see Fludernik (1994; cf. Mclnerney .984). Narration in non-verbal media For those who would limit the use of'narration' to the production of narrative by a narrator, stories presented in drama, *film, and other non-verbal *media are non-narrational. Though works in these media often contain narrators, either as characters who address the audience or in film through *voice-over technique, such verbal narration is rarely sustained, most of the represented action being freighted by performers and other visual and aural elements. Yet the term 'narration' has been widely applied to non-verbal media, even static pictorial media like paintings (see pictorial narrativity; visual narrativity). In the discourse on film especially, narration can be a very broad concept, referring at times to the combined effects of all the elements, verbal and non-verbal, that generate the narrative as it unfolds (see soundtrack). Bordwell, for example, includes within the concept of narration both *sjuzhet and style, a combination that is close to what in Anglo-American narratological thought is referred to as 'narrative discourse'. The issue of whether or not narration should be limited to narration by a narrator or, more broadly, to narration in verbal media relates intimately to the effort to distinguish telling from showing or presenting from representing («f showing vs. telling). These in turn are rooted in ambiguities in the classical distinction between diegesis and mimesis, first introduced bv Plato in '"' Rl'P»Mr as the difference between telling a sto.y (as ,„ *epic poetry) and performing u (as in drama; mode). Shortly thereafter. Aristotle in si mil " \SLlhsM Plato's distinction within a e a i", ] br°ader' Wn«Pt oi' mimesis that ^sxziir^ * *** *** r ^'metfc ,h ' ^-^Anstotle'sleadornot, narrat.on car t narrat,on have stressed that I 111 ,in l''"h '"Ul mlluc,uial troallse on fi|ll,n i(| (hc eamern lens is cssenliallv I he eye ol an ''"'■'i'i,. observer' who visuallv narrates ilie film. ■iti\i*11 idea of an invisible observei theorists like Branigan and BordweD turn "ln'r broadened and complicated ihe whole taussiOl) bj including within the concept of ''""uion. not only formal narralional eleiuents of "'"li-sis ami diegesis. hut also the \igenc\ of the .-later. While Branigan insists on the distinction hasten narrative discourse (the complete textual 'stem as object) and narration (the implied or explicit activity ol' a subject in grasping elements il' that system), he nonetheless greatly extends i he direction Stan/el look when he introduced ihe idea of unspoken narration. Branigan's complex understanding of narration allows lor multiple kinds of knowing, including the shifting under-suindings ol both characters and spectators. In Uoidwell's 'construclis tst' account, narration is the process of eliciting the spectator's construction of ihe film by a complex stream of cues designed to trigger schemata that pre-exist in the spectator's consciousness iv. scrums and ni hi \i \ 1 \). Incoin-passing and transcending not only voice-over but also the information produced by the camera eye. this is narration without a narrator. Indeed, on this view, a narrator is simply another among a multitude of schemata that may or may not be cued by the narration. Foregrounding narration In much twentieth-century fiction, narration itself has become a point of focus and in the process has tended to keep the reader from an *immersion in the story untroubled by questions regarding its transmission {set narrative transmission). though this development is one of the common ^natures of modernist and postmodernist fiction. 11 can be found in earlier narratives like Sterne's tyt and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759 1767) ■"•d Diderot's Jacques le fataliste ct son maitre w). The twentieth-century increase of novels '^"t-' veisiunxnl the narrative picsenl (Ihidcinik 251) would appear to be a pari of this switch '"cus, drawing attention, as Casparis argues, to ■On-going production of the narrative, rc-n shil1 Hl locus nas hccn ,rctiucnt|y SCl'n '" m a crisis o| opisk-utiilngs in which doubl is cast on the capacity ol narrative to represent a realit) outside the prison-house ol a narrator's subjectis Us and language A more radical version ol the crisis is the existentialist tenet that •.tone exist only in the mind and nowhere in external reality I he idea there are no 'line stories' existing outside our constructing imaginations was powerfully developed in Sartre's Nausea (1938). Narration's displacement of story as an object of readerly attention is also developed in Brooks's reading of Hear! of Darkness as a lexl in which the impossibility of original story, the need to retell, places emphasis of the tale on the plane of n.ni.i lion itself (2(0). Where Brooks locates this shift in a modernist exhaustion of narrative possibility. Hutcheon and McHale, following the lead of Barlhes, stress the way postmodern lexis extend an invitation to the reader to participate actively in the svorld-making process of narration (.veePOSStBLE-WOR! ds till ORY; RlMil R-RESPONSE THEOR1 slOR\ world). The optional and transposable lexia of some forms of hypertext fiction (set oii.uvi \ vrrrviivi ) can be seen as variants of this trend. The collaborative products of "interactive fiction would seem to carry this process even further, vet lhcs also raise again the question discussed above: whether or not "narration' is an appropriate term for projects (like role-playing games and theatrical improv) that invent themselves as they go along. Sll- AI SO: evolution of narrative forms; modernist narrative: novel, the: postmodern! narrative References and further reading Hal. Mieke (I'WS) Narratotogy: liltnxhtetion to the I lie-on ol Nanatoc. loionto: liniversits ol loionio Press. Ilanlicld, Ann (PW1.) I'nspeakubk Sentence! K85) Narration in ihe Fktta* Him. Madison, Wl: I'inversus ol" Wisconsin Press Branigan. Idvsaid (l')S4) Point of *'*•»• in the < memo A I'hcor i 11/ Narration ami Subjectivity in i 'An w.Film, New \ i-i k Mouloil Brooks, I'elei (P>Ss) Reading h» the Plot l\iign and Intention in \aiinioc. New \oik. \ inl.li;«.-CiNpaiis. ("Iiiislian Paul tl,,7S) I'ensi without I inic I he Present lease in Sanation. Seflvsei/oi \ih'Im lelic \i lu'iien, vol S-l. Hem I i.ineke Vcilaj! ,,hn. [Torní nwarent Mmb*r. alls a r„k... narrative i. . r.._7 ,ht (lc*npiivc »nn,„,.„u. psyi hologicai approa* his to narrative), expresses the idea that liv m,. ones |,k. .|lu| rdlm| upon it is like writing one's 'life story: a continuous act ol sell-creation that involves at every moment choices, responsibilities, rc-evaluations, and the addition of new chapters to the book-in-progress What is narrative theory to do about this metaphorical or metonymic assimilation of the concept of narrative with ideas which would have been labelled 'belief, interpretation', 'attitude', 'rationalisation', 'value'. *'ideology\ 'behaviour', 'plan", 'memory" or simply 'content' a generation ago (see metaphor: metonymy)? Should we design a definition thai acts like a semantic police, excluding all 'illegitimate' uses of the term 'narrative', but also endangering its theoretical vitality, or should we bow to current fashion, and work out a definition that accepts all current interpretations, at the price of losing some crucial distinction between narrative and other forms or products of mental activity? A compromise between these two possibilities is to regard narrative as a fuzzy set defined at the centre by a solid core of properties, but accepting various degrees of membership, depending on which properties a candidate displays (see mode). The fuzzy-set hypothesis will account for the fact that certain texts will be unanimously recognised as narratives, such as •fairy tales or 'conversational stories about personal experience, while others will encounter limited acceptance: 'postmodern novels, 'computer games, or historical studies of cultural issues, sucn as Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality- Describing versus defining narrative Inquiry into the nature of narrative can take two forms. The first, aiming at a descry ^ *hat does narrative do for human being.- 1VC ig * f'undamc;,:;CHtr,pl,vc "PPr'««h: *um«n experience aid 7* of ''"IV| 'NS.R,,M,nT :AWNARKAT'Vt'.A.S to come to termJ M°m hu™" J*' "istencc (Ricoeur K °f thinking, ihe mode ,Z , part,cular mode of p-ticuL as "ptsh; :c h?sn°the concrctc and (Brunei who dis2 V slract and «ene'ai r, who distinguishes 'narrative' and 'scien- " ur S narraliVe ™« ^ ^Zl beds h , '<,nS',and bU,lds the valu« and v cle i 6 CUltUra' *idCtUiliM; nar-tive is a vehicle of dominant ideologies and an instrument of power (roucault 1978; .see obcourse analysis (foucault): ideology AND NARRATIVE); narrative is an instrument of self-creation; narrative is a repository of practical knowledge, especially in *oral cultures (this view reminds us of the etymology of the word 'narrative', the Latin verb gnaw, "to know'); narrative is a mold in which we shape and preserve memories; narrative, in its fictional form, widens our mental universe beyond the actual and the familiar and provides a playfield for thought experiments (Schaeffer 1999); narrative is an inexhaustible and varied source of 'education and entertainment; narrative is a mirror in which we discover what it means to be human. While descriptive observations such as these can live in peace with each other, definitional approaches tend to provide conflicting views of the nature of narrative, since different scholars will single out different features as constitutive of 'narrativity. The following dilemmas illustrate some of the more contentious points. ,1) Does narrative vary according to cultureand storical pt narrativi toemergeasaineoicu" r [o cognition -'^/^ /a roach, but the speak in ^vour of a relativist. P, ^ q( culture-speclic *~^£S* .hat define the concept. K* the problem of jt The relativist! apPdical)y different comparabil.ty:.«nanajs the common forms in every culture. NARRATIVE .nominator that just.fi« the labelling of h-brms as narrative? If one opts for thecuta** universal approach, the obvious between the narratives of different periods ^nU •ultures are a matter of thematic filling in ana c /ariations on a common basic structure. Similarly. he 'epic plot and the dramatic 'plot can be seen in Western cultures as different realisations ol a mmon scheme. , (2) Does narrative presuppose a verbal act ot narration bv an anthropomorphic creature called . 'narrator, or can a story be toW without the mediation of a narraional consciousness? Gerald nee (2003: 58) defines narrative as the repre-ntation of real or fictive events by one or more urators to one or more 'narratees. The opposite >sition is represented by the film scholar David rdwell. who argues that film narration does not require a narraional figure (see no-narrator theory). Some scholars have attempted to onctle the narrator-based definition with the ssibility of non-verbal narration by analysing rama and movie as presupposing the utterance of narraional figure, even w hen the film or the play does not make use of *voice-over narration Tiaiman 1990). (3) Can the feature of narrativity be isolated as la_\er or dimension of meaning, or is it a global ect toward which every element of the text makes a contribution? The first position makes it itimate to divide the text into narrative parts lal move the plot forward and non-narrative iris where time stands still, such as digressions, hilosophical considerations, or the moral of a :able (see story-discourse distinction). But lis analysis runs into difficulties in the case of :scriptions: while extensive 'descriptions can be .ipped without causing the reader to lose track of le plot, 'characters, and settings could not be iemified without descriptive statements (seespace i narrative). If the purpose of narrative is to loke not just a sequence of events but the worlds i which these events take place (see story-world), then descriptions cannot be excluded from the narrative layer, and the distinction between narrative and non-narrative elements is blurred. Literary theorists, who generally adhere to the dogma of the inseparability of form and content, lend to fa \our the second possibility: narraas a global effect. Among them is the critic Sturgess, who writes: Narrativity is the bling force of narrative, a force that is present h.n-,rrative<29). The inevitable at evxry point •"^it.on is that narrativity consequence of thi P' from aesthetic tele-becomes .ndisting"^^, from the consistency Sgy.or.asS«ur^SP^ ^ (36, Since with which the .ex ui ^ ^ text so „ aesthetic f^*^ undefinable. narrativity. and u of forTn or a matter of «4, Is narrativity a ma narrativity as form content' The P"^" radicalise the ideas of (see realism, theor - sequence Hayden White. *h<^nted either as an of historical events can be rep unstructured list .'anna as g certain pnnciples ofunity" ^ ^ ^ ^ certain piinw-■ — -. hensive explanatory principle, or as a nc" v :„ >thirh events a which events are organised even s can be made into stories as well as into methmg else (for instance into diplomacy textbooks reiving on histoncal examples), doesn narrative require specific types of raw materials Einstein's famous equation, without adding anything to Can one turn e = MC:. into a story it? One way to resolve the dilemma of form vs. content is to invoke the linguist Louis Hjelmslev's distinction between form and substance, a distinction that applies to both the content plane and the expression plane of a text. i.e. to signifieds and signifiers. Narrativity in this perspective would reside on the content plane, not on the expression plane, but it would consist of both a certain form (expressed by concepts such as plot, 'story arc, or 'Freytag's triangle) and a certain substance (characters, settings, events, but not general laws or abstract concepts). (5) Should a definition of narrative give equal status to all works of literary fiction, or should it regard certain types of postmodern novels land films) as marginal? In other words does an ava„t-garde text that refers to characters settings, and events, but refuses to organise these contents into a determinate story expand the S? h^1^ makm8 11 "really vanable. or does it simplv demonstrate \Z separability of the concepts of literature -nar rative, and fiction'? ' ar" (6) Does narrative reauire hmh h:- story;. s,g„lfier and signed "or S ^ ^ floatmg representation, independent lv of tual realisation? Is the ohrZ . Wy tex' dear to tabloids, noxtori ^ ^ S0 ho.d a narrative ™ *« when we orisc the plot of a novel n j|haveagreatstoryto;e^u?wete,,OUr Story as cognitive construct thc mo« crucial t*e answer i,Mh,s|;M question to ,i definition of narrative, since ' made of he, ,n ,echn,cal distinctbn^* " 'narrative and Mo,,', even though eIST bOoar.es present these terms as sy^m'Sw^" .svvhy up to nou th,s entn has used .h?'S changeabK , Representing a' common narratologtsts, H. Porter Abbott reserve narrat.ve lor the combination of story and d course and defines its two components as follow Story is an even, or sequence of events (the action) and narrative discourse is those events as repre Bented (2002: 16). Narrative, in this view is the textual actualisation of story, while slorv is narrative in a virtual form. If we conceive representation as medium-free, this definition does not limit narrativity to verbal texts nor to narratorial ♦speech acts. But the two components of narrative play asymmetrical roles, since discourse is defined in terms of its ability to represent that which constitutes story. This means that only story can be defined in autonomous terms. Ever since the Russian formalists made a distinction between Tabula' and 'sjuzhet' (i.e. story and discourse), the standard narratological position has regarded stones as "sequences of events', but this characterisation ignores the fact that events are not in themselves stories but rather the raw material out of which stories are made. So what is story, if, as Hayden White has convincingly argued, it is not a type of thing found in the world (as *existents and events are) nor a textual representation of this type of thing (as discourse is)? ,„„resenta- Story, like narrative discourse, is a «P™«n Oon, but unlike discourse his not a =sentaUon encoded in material signs. Story is a ^ ^ of e be a its construct that concerns *rt^W (rf entities and relations between cognitive narratology). Narrative may combination of story and discou■ ^ djs(in_ ability to evoke stories in the i *teXt-types- guishes narrative discourse fro"1 c0a,:itive con-Here is tentative definition of tw struct that narratologists call s involves 1 The mental representation of a the construction ol tne NARRATIVE i^alS^^ individualed ^ of state tfer°l fU'lyPredlc,a"> ,hfb,tU«' Physical even 6 by non- < happening ordelibe e ^ accid™> gent agents. (Temp„aird^acll°ns by inteii, 3 In addition m k , d,rnension.) ^ Plans, 5? T« and causa causauty; schemata and causal structure ) This definition presents narrative as a type of ta able to evoke a certain type of image in the mind of the recipient. But, as mentioned above, it does not lake a text to inspire the construction of such an image: we may form stories in our mind as a response to life itself. For instance, if I observe a fight on the subway, I will construct in my mind the story of the fight, in order to tell it to my family when i get home. The narrative potential of life can be accounted for by making a distinction between 'being a narrative', and 'possessing narrativity'. The property of 'being' a narrative can be predicated of any semiotic object, whatever the medium, produced with the intent to create a response involving the construction of a story. More precisely, it is the receiver's recognition of this intent that leads to the judgment that a given semiotic object is a narrative pragmatics), even though (see intkntionality; we can never be sure if sender and receiver have the same story in mind. 'Possessing narrativity'. on the The PTll at'tthatspecfymin-mal nition are hard and (a r ^ however conditions. One ol he does a stor' have to involve Should this con SI enful-y routine action^ ^ ^ TJi ^conditions) is P** dilemma pom of mini difficult to ^7b'/ re,erence rule bctter described by ndi-This e ularly ability (an but if the NARRATIVE AS ARGUMENT border between narrativiry and ,met,mes fuzzv. there are nevertheless pnnciples M fall clearly on one side or the other. Bv loosening some of the conditions of he above definition, we can account for narrative jrms exhibiting less cohes.on than canonical lories, such as 'diaries, 'annals and 'chronicles, s well as for the extensions of the term •narrative ientioned at the beginning of this entry. The „outing of condition 3 explains for instance the narrative deficiency of some postmodern novels: hile they create a world, populate it with charters, and make something happen (though they ften take liberties with condition 2), these novels . not allow the reader to reconstruct the network jat motivates the actions of characters and binds le events into an intelligible and determinate quence (see indeterminacy). But they compen-ite for the subversion of story with an extra-rdinary inventiveness on the level of discourse. The lifting of condition 1 describes the 'Grand larratives' and their relatives. These constructs •e not about individuated beings but about col-ctive entities, and they display general laws rather in a concrete world to the imagination. But they tain a temporal dimension, and they provide global explanations of history. Condition 2 is the irdesl to ignore, but its lifting occurs when we ,ieak of "the narrative of while superiority', or of 'the narrative of the vitality of the Soviet system', /hat happens here is that the label narrative has ;cn 'mctonymically transferred from the stories ropagated by colonialist literature or party-mtrollcd media to the a-lemporal propositions lat form their ideological message. The label imains attached to the ideological statement even ftcr its emancipation from particular stories. II ALSO: ancient theories of narrative (non-Western); ancient theories of narrative (Western) references and further reading Mih.iii. II I'mu-i (.'on.') //»■ < umbrlag* Introduction lo Narrative, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Uurlhcs, Roland (1977 [I966|) 'Introduction to the Slruc-tural Analysis of Niirrniivcs', in limine Music Text, trunn. Stephen Healh, New York: Hill and Wang. ,,Miwi-ii Daviii r«>hiihic lion understood as the diM-,nsjVl. ' 11,1 P'"grL-s- MCtniK lo conclusion. A, ., ,,v , """'-""v I,..... """""v, v,lstems '"^ed in re«'°"^ and ,0 35t h be,WeCn th«« *a*s «* adopting 2* "J"1 » variou, ,|f tn contexts support or enhance intelligence can hushe situated within networks of beliefs, aesires, and intentions. Research by Danto (1985), Mink (I97S), and Bruncr (1991) bolsters the claim that narrative provides essential support for cognition. Focusing on 'narrative explanations of *actions and events, Danto suggests that narrative accounts of happenings are needed to bridge the gap between general world-knowledge (e.g., that water freezes at zero degrees centigrade) and knowledge of how something in particular unfolded as part of the history of (a fragment of) the world (e.g.. that a frozen patch of water caused me to slip and fall down yesterday) (1985: 238). Analogously. Mink distinguishes between the brute particularity of experience and the theoretical understanding of occurrences as instances or abstract schemata, positioning narrative between «<™™s 1978- 132: see scripts and schemata). For M.nk. rthermore. narrative alone can ident.fy aspects r h world in a way that makes constant and of the wo ricin > .n some pro. necessary rererence to Meanwhiie, Bruner cess of development 146 ^ characterises stones as ■ "JJJ^J^ j.e., the porting a pMt^^J procedures (versus Somain of socta.be ^^haviours of Ph—I domains associated wtn ^ than , objects, lor exampK es of narrative, Bruner s . suceests ways ol nuw- » ori!anised lccount sugg« uon enabled o one forms Ol cog" ^ disp]ay ner mapping those proper .nterpreteo whca til,urations in turn understand'^ AS COGNITIVE INSTRUMENT s making sense of individual events («r jermeneittcs). Analogously, humans construe particular behaviours of social actors by situating them in a wider context of assumptions about •identity, while also using the specific behaviours to monitor the validity of those same interpretive frames. Although its original formulation predates the body of research just mentioned, the 'activity theory' developed by the early twentieth century Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978; cf. Wertsch 1998) has come to have an especially vital influence on the many fields concerned with cognitive functions of narrative, from 'socio-linguistics. -discourse analysis, and 'ethnography to 'psychology, 'education, and media studies (see. e.g.. Lyle 2000; Rowe et al. 2002). For Vygotsky. intelligence needs to be re-described in terms of modes of activity within given environments; cognition itself is thus 'de-localised', i.e., spread across all the components of activities viewed as systems at once exhibiting and enabling intelligent behaviour. Such components can be non-human as well as human, material as well as mental (cf. Hutchins 1995); interactions among these elements make the system as a whole intelligent and, reciprocally, confer knowledge-generating properties on each component, including human ones. A key concern for cognitive narratologists is thus to specify how narratively organised systems of activity - systems that range from the practice of conversational storytelling to the performance of ceremonies such as eulogies - both embody and enable socially distributed cognition. Literary narratives also help constitute such intelligent systems. For example, 'framed narratives (e.g.. Wordsworth's The Ruined Cottage, Conrad's Heart of Darkness) at once stage and facilitate the process of shared thinking about past events. The framed events may be more or less remote from the here-and-now of a framing communicative event that is itself structured as an act of 'narration. In such contexts, narrative 'embedding contributes to the formation of intelligent systems which propagate experiential frames specifically, the experiences of character-narrators - across 'time and 'space (Herman 2003b; ,str iaim k11 mini in nakkaiok) The resulting system alTords opportunities for distributing intelligence not provided by other less richly differentiated narrative structures. In a story that does not make use of narrative embedding there will be no framing narratorial act, and no refer to situations and events making up the (ti ■enc arne narrative. In turn, the gestalt formed by the r Hons among these and other components (includ the tellers and interlocutors located at differ^ narrative levels, as well as the interpreters of tk framed narrative as a whole) will lose definition decreasing the system's ability to generate know" edge about multiple experiential frames. In 0ther words, there will be a net decrease in the capacit of the system to communicate representation originating from sources potentially quite widely separated in space and time. Narrative embedding thus increases the distributional reach of a framed tale, enhancing the overall power of the knowledge-generating system to which it contributes. References and further reading Bruner. Jerome (1991) "The Narrative Construction o Reality", Critical Inquiry, 18, 1 21 Danto. Arthur (1985) Narration and Knowledge, NY Columbia University Press. Herman, David (2003a) 'Stories as a Tool for Thinking", in David Herman (ed.) Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences, Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. -(2003b) 'Regrounding Narratology: The Study of Narratively Organized Systems for Thinking', in Jan Christoph Meister. Tom Kindt, and Hans-Harald Müller (eds) What is Narratology'' Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory, Berlin: de Gruyter. Hutchins. Edwin (1995) 'How a Cockpit Remembers Its Speeds'. Cognitive Science, 19, 265-88. Lyle, Sue (2000) 'Narrative Understanding: Developing Theoretical Context for Understanding How Children Make Meaning in a Classroom Setting". J"'1""* of Curriculum Studies, 32.1, 45-63 Mink, Louis O. (1978) 'Narrative Form as a Instrument', in Robert H. Canary and Henry (eds) 77)4- Writing of History: Literary CogmO« Km** Form tllfl of Historical Understanding, Madison: University Wisconsin Press. ..vf Ochs, Elinor, and Lisa Capps (2001) Living*<"™ Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling, Caw -Mass.: Harvard University Press. eW Rowe, Shawn, James Wertsch, and Tatyarwi jr. (2002) 'Linking Little Narratives to Big Vt^s', rative and Public Memory in History M Culture and Psychology, 8, 96-112. nttelt>P' Vygotsky. Lev S. "(1978) Mind in Society: The mxl merit of Higher Psychological Processes- |bnfr. eds.. Michael Cole, Vera John-Sterner. SylvM» LUl). Ellen Souberman, Cambridge. Mass.: Har versity Press. N tt. Verk Wertsch, James (1998) Mind as Action, ^ Oxford University Press. DAVID