Narrative Sequence in Contemporary Narratology

230 Pages·2015·8.376 MB·English

by  Raphaël Baroni, Françoise Revaz (eds.)

THEORY AND INTERPRETATION OF NARRATIVE
James Phelan, Peter J. Rabinowitz, and Robyn Warhol, Series Editors
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Narrative Sequence
in Contemporary
Narratology
EDITED BY RAPHAËL BARONI and FRANÇOISE REVAZ
The Ohio State University Press ∙ Columbus
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Copyright © 2016 by The Ohio State University.
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data
TK
Cover design by TK
Text design by TK
Type set in Minion Pro TK
Printed by TK
Cover image: Broadway Boogie-W oogie was painted in 1942 by Piet Mondrian after he
reached New York to escape the war in Europe. The Dutch painter was impressed by the
movement of cars on the intersecting avenues of the city and the syncopated dynamism
of jazz music. In this work, he reinterprets his visual language, made of horizontal and
vertical lines and flat areas in primary colors, to increase the rhythm and movement of
the composition. Like contemporary narratology, this work reflects a quest for a more
dynamic form of expression.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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C O N T E N T S
List of Illustrations vii
Introduction: The Many Ways of Dealing with Sequence
in Contemporary Narratology 1
RAPHAËL BARONI
Part I Theorizing Sequence
1 On Narrative Sequence, Classical and Postclassical 11
GERALD PRINCE
2 The Configuration of Narrative Sequences 20
JOHN PIER
3 The Eventfulness of Non- Events 37
PETER HÜHN
Part II Rhetorical Perspectives on Narrative Progression
4 Privileged Authorial Disclosure about Events: Wolff’s
“Bullet in the Brain” and O’Hara’s “Appearances” 51
JAMES PHELAN
5 Ending Twice Over (Or More): Alternate Endings in Narrative 71
EYAL SEGAL
6 Virtualities of Plot and the Dynamics of Rereading 87
RAPHAËL BARONI
Part III Sequences in Nonliterary Narratives
7 Intrigue, Suspense, and Sequentiality in Comic Strips:
Reading Little Sammy Sneeze 107
ALAIN BOILLAT and FRANÇOISE REVAZ
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vi ∙ CONTENTS
8 Musical Narrativity 130
MICHAEL TOOLAN
9 Narrativizing the Matrix 151
EMMA KAFALENOS
Part IV Unnatural and Nonlinear Sequences
10 Unusual and Unnatural Narrative Sequences 163
BRIAN RICHARDSON
11 Sequence, Linearity, Spatiality, or: Why Be Afraid of Fixed
Narrative Order? 176
MARIE-L AURE RYAN
Conclusion: Epistemological Problems in Narrative Theory:
Objectivist vs. Constructivist Paradigm 195
FRANCO PASSALACQUA and FEDERICO PIANZOLA
Contributors 219
Index 223
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I L LU S T R AT I O N S
Figure 6.1 Dynamics of known and unknown plot 94
Figure 6.2 Virtualities of Peter’s Promise 99
Figure 6.3 Virtualities of Prayer at Gethsemane 100
Figure 7.1 Winsor McCay, Little Sammy Sneeze, September 25, 1904 108
Figure 7.2 Peter Newell, The Naps of Polly Sleepyhead, 1906 110
Figure 7.3 The Lumière brothers, L’Arroseur arrosé, 1895 113
Figure 7.4 Winsor McCay, Little Sammy Sneeze, April 2, 1905 114
Figure 7.5 Winsor McCay, Little Sammy Sneeze, 1904–6 115
Figure 7.6 Winsor McCay, Little Sammy Sneeze, 1904–6 117
Figure 7.7 Winsor McCay, Little Sammy Sneeze, March 12, 1905 118
Figure 7.8 Winsor McCay, Little Sammy Sneeze, January 29, 1905 119
Figure 7.9 Roba, Aventures de Boule et Bill, 1999 121
Figure 7.10 Winsor McCay, Little Sammy Sneeze, October 23, 1904 123
Figure 7.11 Winsor McCay, Little Sammy Sneeze, January 15, 1905 124
Figure 7.12 Winsor McCay, Little Sammy Sneeze, October 16, 1904 125
Figure 11.1 Types of networks: (a) distributed network, (b) tree,
(c) complete graph 179
Figure 11.2 Generative network for the sample stories 185
vii
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viii ∙ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 11.3 The linear discourse structure of Robert Coover’s
“The Babysitter” 188
Figure 11.4 What the reader’s mental map of “The Babysitter” could
look like 198
Figure 11.5 Structure of a typical computer game 192
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I N T R O D U C T I O N
The Many Ways of Dealing with Sequence
in Contemporary Narratology
RAPHAËL BARONI
SINCE ARISTOTLE, poeticians and, more recently, semioticians, linguists,
and narratologists have debated many basic features of narrative first identi-
fied in the Poetics. Among them, we find the common assumption that nar-
rative is an “imitation” or “representation” of actions (mimesis praxeos); that
this “representation” aims to elicit emotions, such as fear and hope; and that
“well- formed” stories are organized as a “whole” (holos), meaning that they
possess a beginning, a middle, and an end. These three aspects of narrative are
related to temporality, since actions told unfold in time, fear and hope orient
the attention of the audience toward an uncertain resolution, and the unity of
representation is assured by the cataphoric function of the beginning and the
anaphoric function of the ending.
Since then, however, there have been many ways to deal with the nature,
role, and relative importance of each of these components of narrative
sequences. Indeed, as stated by Hilary Dannenberg: “Many key definitions
of narrative hinge on the aspect of temporal sequentiality, and the repeated
attempts to redefine the parameters of plot reflect both the centrality and
the complexity of the temporal dimension of narrative” (“Plot” 435). Based
on the duality of fabula and sjuzhet emphasized by Boris Tomachevsky, con-
ceptualizations of narrative sequence can be linked either to the chronology
of the events, to its reorganization by the narrative representation, or to the
1
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2 ∙ INTRODUCTION: RAPHAËL BARONI
interplay between these two sequential dimensions.1 Derived from Aristotle’s
muthos, the concept of plot— not necessarily synonymous with sequence—
is even more polysemic, since it can be related to each of these aspects and can
also describe additional properties: for example, “plot” can be understood as
the causal relation between the events told (Forster) or as a rhetorical device
whose primary function is to arouse a “cognitive desire” for a possible end-
ing (Brooks 37; Dannenberg, Coincidence and Counterfactuality 6; Baroni 18),
while “emplotment” is sometimes viewed as a configuration conferring mean-
ing and unity on the endless and chaotic flow of time (Ricœur). This has led
H. Porter Abbott to state that plot “is an even slipperier term than narration,
both more polyvalent and more approximate in its meanings, indeed so ‘vague
in ordinary usage’ that narratologists often avoid it altogether” (43). Hence,
while it is necessary to distinguish between the slippery notion of plot and a
more precise conceptualization of narrative sequences— with a focus on fab-
ula and/or sjuzhet—, there is a need to clarify the relation between the two
concepts, because it is obvious that plot is connected in some ways with the
sequential nature of narratives. In a recent survey, Karin Kukkonen suggests
distinguishing between “three basic ways of conceptualizing plot”:
(1) Plot as a fixed, global structure. The configuration of the arrangement
of all story events, from beginning, middle to end, is considered.
(2a) Plot as progressive structuration. The connections between story
events, motivations, and consequences as readers perceive them are
considered.
(2b) Plot as part of the authorial design. The author’s way of structuring the
narrative to achieve particular effects is considered. (§2–§5)
In this volume, while some authors, like Prince or Hühn, focus more spe-
cifically on the configuration of the story events, others, like Eyal Segal or
James Phelan, are more focused on the progressive structuration of the story
by the reader and the authorial design of the narrative discourse. Indeed, the
history of narratology provides an interesting insight on how various episte-
mological frameworks influence the way “slippery” objects are seized. While
formalists and structuralists mainly focused their attention on the logical
organization of fully formed stories in order to describe their immanent (and
more or less invariant) sequential organization, more recent paradigms—
including reception theory (Eco), psychoanalysis (Brooks), rhetoric (Phelan,
Sternberg), and cognitive science (Herman, Ryan, Fludernik)—h ave privileged
1. On this specific aspect, see Sternberg, Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering.
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