Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method

Rating:
Summary: Much theory, though not for the faint hearted
Review: Genette is one of the biggest-names in stylistic literary criticism around. One would imagine that this means his works are read far and wide, though this is not always the case.

Narrative Discourse samples essays from Figures III, Genette's most well read collection of essays. The theme of all of the essays is structure and presentation in the narrative, itself a topic which has only recieved a high place in the study of narrative in recent history. This collection gives the reader the basics of Genette's own view of narrative, but stands itself incomplete without criticism (which is presented and answered in Narrative Discourse Revisited).

Genette's ideas besides, this volume is difficult reading for the simple reason that information is not easily locatable and one is required to sift through the beach to find a sand dune: in other words, a person does ALL the work even if you want to double check the meaning of a single major term. This is another reason to get Narrative Discourse Revisited, where Genette actually explains in simple, straitforward terms his own ideas on narrative.

One unfortunate note on the translation is the original terms as they appeared in French are not included in the text. Instead, terms were applied which seem to add more confusion that clarity, such as the term recit in French being simply translated as narrative and histore translated as "story", neither of which are very accurate considering their respective english meaning.

In short, if you are going to buy this buy the other as well. It will save a lot of headaches in the end.

Rating:
Summary: Well, I tried
Review: I have only half finished this book and that is what kept my review from appearing a few days ago: Like an anal Proustian, I repented. However, upon looking through the antiquated, anachronistic, farcical profiles of Proust on the cover of his dated translations I was at the same time shopping for some audio tapes of him with the covers of the translations insinuating the eye of an omniprescent narrator. Given the fact that this book was -by no fault of the author(I mean here Genette) - profiled with that english visage I can't help but to say a few things; namely, that it is worth the headache: Anybody who has labored through to the point of "The Captive" deserves some expanded temporal explanation, and if it means using flashcards for the weird french words, so be it. Proust is not only a long read but a second and (let's face it) a third read.

Temporality, or simply time versus narrative, seems to me the main theme of Genette's great book and it is well worth reading. The only suggestions I would and really could be able to give is to someone who has chosen to read other forms of literature instead of this kind; and that he should make haste to read the Odyssey or its cliff notes and additionally a couple of Balzac novels before taking this particular book on. I have read some Balzac, and I feel remarkably safe in saying that LOST ILLUSIIONS would be enough if one doesn't want to bore oneself with things one doesn't like. I don't think it necessary to read through, for example, Cousin Betty or Old Goriot, both of which, in my view, fall very below any valid proustian juxtaposions and would almost be better consigned to the realm of Jane Austen in comparison to the modern novel. However, I haven't read Madame Bovary, which is apparently a turning point in literature along with Tolsoy and Maussapant(?) and I can sense this while reading this book; there is for me a palpable gap - a real sense of missing something.

Yet in the end one has to choose, and I guess in my case I ellec an apparently indispensable classic: IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME. Genette draws on many sources. (Yet he can choose whomsoever he wants. The endings of Lermantov's great "A Hero of our time" or Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground" could just as easily fit in for a missing scene in a James novel by perhaps replacing some mode of comparison. Why not, really, use that extremely weird scene in Juan Ruiz's "Book of Good Love, where the archpriest, for no "Elliptical" reason whatsoever, disappears into a "nothingness" as "idiosynchratic" (if "nothingness, so to speak, could become "Idiosynchratic") as any modern novel,(the narrator just disappears!) perhaps admittedly due to its "contrariwise" ordinariness or whatever.

The book may be burdensome, but so is a lot of Proust. I would say anyone would agree that many parts of "The Fugitive" and "The Captive" are pretty wearisome, and actually make a laugh feast of even the most abstruse Robbet-grillet novels.

This book presents a succinct "psychological anatomy" of proustian time, and that is obviously something very important in Proust, even though my professor stated that Proust is accessible. After reading this book, and considering the STAKES, what is truly accessible? One thing that is accessible is a cunning and clever writers' gift to impart his spadework and wisdow unto those who either don't have the time or - why not admit it? - temporal fortitude to survy every ravine Marcel Proust indeed seemed to plant.

And as far as content goes, for my money, Genette need not even address it - we have Proust for that. It is Proust's intentional or unintentional modes of recollection that may be,- as Genette suggests here,- as important as philosophy, fiction, reality, history, emotions, or what have you. I think this book is worth the headache for anyone who has read the first four books (up to The Captive) once because on the necessary secondary and againin perhaps third reading many very basic, important and proustian modes of thought are brought to light, sometimes glaringly so.

Rating:
Summary: The Seminal Work in Narrative Theory
Review: This book should be required reading for anyone who wants to look seriously at narrative theory. Genette's analysis of the construction of time in narrative discourse is the still the model for theorists writing since then. Such categories as order, frequency, and duration in the narrative presentation of story-time show how narrative decisions on the part of authors can have dramatically different rhetorical effects. Genette views these narrative strategies as a form of rhetorical figuration and gives them terms drawn from classical rhetoric (e.g., "prolepsis" for a flashing forward, "analepsis" for a flashback). Genette's work is one of the clearest of all the French theorists of the 1970s and 1980s who became popular among literary critics and theorists in the US. His work is easily the most empirical of his academic geration of French theorists and perhaps the most likely to be useful in generations to come.

Rating:
Summary: The Seminal Work in Narrative Theory
Review: This book should be required reading for anyone who wants to look seriously at narrative theory. Genette's analysis of the construction of time in narrative discourse is the still the model for theorists writing since then. Such categories as order, frequency, and duration in the narrative presentation of story-time show how narrative decisions on the part of authors can have dramatically different rhetorical effects. Genette views these narrative strategies as a form of rhetorical figuration and gives them terms drawn from classical rhetoric (e.g., "prolepsis" for a flashing forward, "analepsis" for a flashback). Genette's work is one of the clearest of all the French theorists of the 1970s and 1980s who became popular among literary critics and theorists in the US. His work is easily the most empirical of his academic geration of French theorists and perhaps the most likely to be useful in generations to come.