Narrative discourse : an essay in method
TL;DR: Cutler as mentioned in this paper presents a Translator's Preface Preface and Preface for English-to-Arabic Translating Translators (TSPT) with a preface by Jonathan Cutler.
Abstract: Foreword by Jonathan Cutler Translator's Preface PrefaceIntroduction 1. Order 2. Duration 3. Frequency 4. Mood 5. VoiceAfterword Bibliography Index
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: The authors discuss half a dozen kinds of framing; they attach some modes of criticism to them; and draw some examples from islands of the Southwest Indian Ocean (Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, Comoros, and Seychelles).
Abstract: "I'll tell you what I'll do," said the smith. "I'll fix your sword for you tomorrow, if you tell me a story while I'm doing it." The speaker was an Irish storyteller in 1935, framing one story in another (O'Sullivan 75, 264). The moment recalls the Thousand and One Nights, where the story of "The Envier and the Envied" is enclosed in the larger story told by the second Kalandar (Burton 1: 113-39), and many stories are enclosed in others. It was quite traditional for the Irish storyteller, historically disconnected from Arabian tradition, to use a frame-story. Folktale scholars label it "Story-teller Interrupted by Woman" and number it AT 1376A*. The Thousand and One Nights shows the literary imitation of that orally invented device; it standardizes the movement from one story into the next. So too "in the Sanskrit Five Books [the Panchatantra] the tales are neatly bound together by multiple use of framing" (Edmonson 143). Frame-stories in such collections are frequent enough for scholars to designate several as standing alone and establish a genre (Thompson, Folktale 415; Blackburn 496). All this is common knowledge to students of the Thousand and One Nights. I draw my examples from two stratified societies. Ancient Ireland surrounded its kings with a cattle-owning aristocracy whose dependants were firmly kept in lower social grades. Ancient India invented a system of caste too well known to need description (Dumont). Such societies foster the habit of subordinating one plot to another, creating that affinity that Theodor W Adorno perceived, "between the formal configuration of the artwork and the structure of the social system" (Hohendahl 172). Stratified societies favor frame-stories. In literary collections, and the criticism they have provoked, framing becomes either a genre or "a narrative mechanism for the linkage of possibly unrelated tales" (Belcher 1). In oral performance, framing is one device among many. What is the mechanism but a formal stylization of people's habit of interrupting their discourses, of going to another level? Framing is more than a mechanism; it is a human habit (Goffman) and a cultural universal. Therefore it sustains a variety of critical approaches. Modes of criticism, which intend to make sense of what is said, themselves function as interpretive frames (Bauman and Briggs 231). I discuss half a dozen kinds of framing; I attach some modes of criticism to them; I draw some examples from islands of the Southwest Indian Ocean (Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, Comoros, and Seychelles).' Frame-Story as a Genre If each tale, like the Irish one 1 began with, is a thing, an autonomous whole, then a genre becomes a thing as well, and the frame-story is a genre (though not only that). Still, because it requires other genres to live on, this one is parasitic. Perhaps it isn't an oral genre all over Africa (Belcher), but African performers do link (heir pieces. For instance, they often tell trickster tales in clusters or chains, so neatly that when collectors reproduce the cluster in the translations they publish, a reader can deduce principles of sequencing (Fontoynont and Raomandahy 83-86). One principle is to alternate trickster's success with his defeat and lead the audience toward a sense of cosmic order (Paulme, "Quelques procedes"). The audience's memory supplies another sort of frame: their familiarity with trickster's predictable behavior. Afghanistan and Ireland show plenty of examples of oral framing (Mills 123), the latter perhaps under literary influence (Belcher 16-18). But orality knows them too. In the story I began with, the smith requires Cuchulainn to tell him a story whilst mending his sword. When the smiths wife violates Cuchulainn's interdiction against eavesdropping, Cuchulainn breaks off the story of his adventure at its most suspenseful point, where he was in serious danger from a giant. The framed story is incomplete; the smith, his helper, and his wife are punished by the curtailment of Cuchulainn's performance. …
11 citations
TL;DR: The proposed goal-oriented approach emerges as a promising research line to help understanding, and hence better modelling and using, in their many dimensions, today's computer-based information systems.
Abstract: A temporal database environment, particularly if equipped with a log of the execution of predefined application-domain operations, can be regarded as a repository of narratives concerning the activities observed in the mini-world of interest. The analysis of these narratives leads to the construction of a library of typical plans, which can be used by Plan-recognition / Plan-generation algorithms to help prediction, decision-making and the adoption of corrective measures with respect to ongoing activities. The formulation of concepts and methods for identifying the typical plans, and, more generally, for discovering meaningful narrative patterns, should be based on Cognitive Science and, especially, on the various contributions of Literary Theories to the interpretation of narratives. The proposed goal-oriented approach emerges as a promising research line to help understanding, and hence better modelling and using, in their many dimensions, today's computer-based information systems.
11 citations
Cites methods from "Narrative discourse : an essay in m..."
...In our search for useful treatments of narratives, we found that Literary Theory (particularly the field of narratology [ Ge ]) should be covered as well....
[...]
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors have suggested that the way to understand such ill-framed writing is to determine how it got into such a confused state, pointing out to conflicting opinions and supposed redundancies within these chapters.
Abstract: displayed in introductions and textbooks as a show-case example of the value of historical-critical literary analysis for the improvement of our understanding of biblical literature. Pointing to conflicting opinions and supposed redundancies within these chapters, historical critics have suggested that the way to understand such ill-framed writing is to determine how it got into such a confused state. Encouraged by the established results of pentateuchal source analysis, scholars such as Otto Thenius (1842) and Karl Budde (1902) approached the literary complexities of 1 Samuel 8-12 with a predisposition to understand these literary phenomena as the traces of a long and varied process of composition. Artur Weiser’s remarks are characteristic: ’In view of the diversity of motives and points of view in the passages under discussion we must on the contrary take into account a many-stranded process of utilizing and shaping the traditions which developed over a long period and set at different
11 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jan 2013
11 citations
Cites methods from "Narrative discourse : an essay in m..."
...52 It is important to recall that on the level of individual narrative expression, one can still conduct an analysis via the structuralist methods of Genette and others. That is, for the Iliad as a single logical narrative sequence, we can still define the traditional fabula and note that these particular descriptive passages have no role in the sequence of major events. My focus here however is not on these traditional definitions, but rather those which highlight the aspects of choice and multi-linearity within this story system. 53 The function of the Meleager tale that Pheonix tells has been of great question to scholars over the years. See Willcock (1964) for a discussion of a story as a reworked exemplum, yet another example of multi-linear narrative and the choices available to narrative performers....
[...]
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: In this paper, Wu Song Fights the Tiger from the Ming novel Shuihu zhuan is analyzed with a view to its narrative form as exemplified in the novel, in oral performance by the famous Yangzhou storyteller Wang Shaotang (1889-1968) and his disciples, in a book edition of Wang's repertoire, and in some selected examples of other oral-related storytelling genres in written form, so-called tell-sing (shuochang) literature.
Abstract: The A. examines the concept of the storyteller's manner in the Chinese vernacular novel and short story from the perspective of contemporary and premodern storytelling in China. The episode of Wu Song Fights the Tiger from the Ming novel Shuihu zhuan is analysed with a view to its narrative form as exemplified in the novel, in oral performance by the famous Yangzhou storyteller Wang Shaotang (1889-1968) and his disciples, in a book edition of Wang Shaotang's repertoire, and in some selected examples of other oral-related storytelling genres in written form, so-called tell-sing (shuochang) literature. Against this background a set of narrative features is discussed, such as division into chapters, type of narrator, narrator's comment and simulated dialogue with the audience, alternation of prose and verse, and stock phrases of introduction, connection, and conclusion. The A. emphasizes the importance of studying the living oral traditions as performed orally in order to develop the understanding of the interplay of oral and literary elements in the existing oral traditions as well as in the vernacular literature from the medieval to the modern period.
11 citations
References
More filters
Book•
01 Jan 1954
TL;DR: Deuxieme tirage de cet essai critique de Georges Blin sur Stendhal, publie aux editions Jose Corti en 1954 as mentioned in this paper, et les images, une description a completer, une bibliotheque
Abstract: Deuxieme tirage de cet essai critique de Georges Blin sur Stendhal, publie aux editions Jose Corti en 1954.Deux images, une description a completer, une bibliotheque.
22 citations