The Morphing Metaphor and the Question of Narrative Voice
TL;DR: In this paper, a metaphor of "morphing" is proposed to describe the changing nature of a narrator's voice throughout a text, and the metaphor allows for "flexibility" within the discussion of the narrator's ontology.
Abstract: Over the last two decades, the advent of new narrative media has forced many in the field of narratology to grapple with the continuing questions and adjustments raised by such unconventional forms of story-telling. Among the leaders in this charge, Marie-Laure Ryan has worked to delineate the ramifications of new media, largely spawned from computer technology, on narrative theory.1 However, in her essay "Cyberage Narratology" which appears in David Herman's Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis, Ryan reverses this issue. Instead of asking how new technologies and narrative genres might necessitate "the broadening of the scope of narratology," here, Ryan seeks "to survey what computers can teach us about traditional forms of narrative" (115). Specifically, Ryan proposes applying four computer metaphors to narratological contexts. Among these four metaphors, Ryan suggests the metaphor of "morphing" may help define the changing nature of a narrator's voice throughout a text because the metaphor allows for "flexibility" within the discussion of the narrator's ontology (137). In this essay, I will further explore Ryan's morphing metaphor, specifically fo cusing on its usefulness as a method of discerning and describing the process of shifting textual voices within third-person narratives. I will examine this question from three perspectives. First, I propose that describing voice with a morphing metaphor has the potential to add specificity to ongoing discussions surrounding the nature of free indirect discourse because it introduces the possibility of identifying a transitional process of voice between narrator and character, while also illustrating, through visual terminology, the varying fluctuations between two speaking agents.
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Dissertation•
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06 Apr 2013
TL;DR: In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree, the degree was submitted in this paper, with a paper entitled "LEARNING Support, Guidance and COUNSELLING".
Abstract: Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree
PHILOSOPHIAE DOCTOR
(LEARNING SUPPORT, GUIDANCE AND COUNSELLING)
39 citations
Dissertation•
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01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: This paper explored the influence of digital tools on the composition of narrative and observed and analyzed the effects of this multimodal composition on the writer's creative practice, and on the resulting narratives.
Abstract: This practice-led research project explores the influence of digital tools on the composition of narrative. Its purpose was to create a fictional narrative in both analogue (print) and digital forms, observing and analysing the effects of this multimodal composition on the writer's creative practice, and on the resulting narratives. This project thus consists of both the creative artefacts and the critical exegesis that presents the analysis of the creative process and artefacts.
The creative artefacts encompass the analogue novella Faerwhile, included in this bound thesis as print novella, and its digital counterpart, included in the attached DVD as HTML digital fiction. The digital fiction actualises the narrative's fabula through a variety of narrative media, including Flash fiction, blog fiction, interactive fiction, and hyperfiction. These platforms were chosen in order to gain a broader understanding of the available media and their literary affordances; the selection of each was based primarily on its suitability for best crafting and communicating the characters, themes, and voice of each individual story or chapter.
The critical thesis examines how composing multimodal texts refocuses the writer's cognitive composition process on media-specific semiotic translations, and results in texts that depart from traditional narrative forms into anti-linear structures engaging in unnatural narration. The chapters included present my practice-led methodology; an examination of how the specific materiality of digital media affords multimodal layering of meaning; an analysis of the shift from mimetic first- and third-person narration in work preceding this research to unnatural narration and anti-linear structures in both the analogue and digital artefacts; a discussion of the implicit collaboration that arises from appropriating digital resources such as visuals, audio, and source code shared online under Creative Commons licensing; and an exploration of how knowledge and awareness of digital technologies and ergodic literature results in changes to the composition process, shifting it from a monomodal translation of imagined story to written text, to a multimodal practice engaged in multiple media even in planning stages.
11 citations
Book•
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on three novels that are central to the Modernist canon: Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow and James Joyce's Ulysses.
Abstract: Free Indirect Style (FIS) is a linguistic technique that defies the logic of human subjectivity by enabling readers to directly observe the subjective experiences of third-person characters. This book consolidates the existing literary-linguistic scholarship on FIS into a theory that is based around one of its most important effects: consciousness representation. Modernist narratives exhibit intensified formal experimentation and a heightened concern with characters’ conscious experience, and this provides an ideal context for exploring FIS and its implications for character consciousness. This book focuses on three novels that are central to the Modernist canon: Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse , D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow and James Joyce’s Ulysses . It applies the revised theory of FIS in close semantic analyses of the language in these narratives and combines stylistics with literary criticism, linking interpretations with linguistic features in distinct manifestations of the style.
9 citations
References
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TL;DR: Banfield as mentioned in this paper presents Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction, a collection of unspeakable sentences in the language of fiction, 1982.
Abstract: Critique de la theorie du recit chez Ann Banfield (Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction, 1982).
48 citations
"The Morphing Metaphor and the Quest..." refers background in this paper
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TL;DR: Gossip travels fast because in a sense it is always already known; it is not news at all but part of a social agenda already recognized by the community and already unconsciously internalized by what Austen-undercoring the theatricality of gossip-calls the "principals" of the marriage plot as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: It is as though this "large and populous village" (7) somehow had telephone connections; within hours, indeed by sunset, the news of the forthcoming marriage is on everybody's lips. But the ability of this gossip to travel at lightning speed is only partially Austen's comment upon the smallness of the community and the idleness of its members. It is also, and much more crucially, her articulation of the mechanisms by which gossip binds communities together under a mild system of surveillance and self-control. Gossip travels fast because in a sense it is always already known; it is not news at all but part of a social agenda already recognized by the community and already unconsciously internalized by what Austen-underscoring the theatricality of gossip-calls the "principals" of the marriage plot. For the engagement of Emma Woodhouse of Hartfield and George Knightley of Donwell Abbey is by no means a "wonder," as the lovers indulgently imagine, but the politically inevitable fulfillment of the most vigorously enforced social and novelistic expectations. It is, as Austen's exact diction underscores, neither an aberration nor a convenient device for closing an otherwise unmanageable plot but an instantly recognizable "sagacity," an aspect of universal wisdom. Indeed, it is so ideologically determined and coded-in-advance that an hour is all that is required for Mr. Weston to turn the "surprise" into a recognition of the deeply familiar:
37 citations
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TL;DR: The potential of fiction is the politics of language inscribing the nation, and post-colonisation theory as fiction is post-colonial theory as mentioned in this paper. But it is difficult to see how to apply it in practice.
Abstract: Part 1 Some contexts: "the potential of fiction" the politics of language inscribing the nation. Part 2 Aspects of style: speaking in tongues uses of person uses of tense voice, tone and mood. Part 3 Aspects of form: typology, symbol and myth time and duration parody as politics. Part 4 Post-colonial theory as fiction: the colonialism - persons, tenses and moods.
35 citations
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