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SEMINAR 8. TYPES OF NARRATION

 

Section I

 

Points for discussion:

 

1. Types of the author’s narrative.

2. Dialogue.

3. Forms of interior speech presentation.

4. Represented (reported speech).

5. Narrative compositional forms: narrative proper, description, argumentation.

 

Recommended literature:

 

 

Section II

 

Assignments for self-control:

 

1. Name types of narration pertaining to prosaic texts.

2. Explain the difference between the author’s narrative proper and the entrusted narrative.

3. What forms of entrusted narrative do you know?

4. Comment on the main functions of the image of the author.

5. Dwell on interior speech and its forms.

6. What does stream of consciousness reflect?

7. What does represented (reported) speech serve to show?

8. Describe narrative compositional forms which are traditionally singled out.

 

Section III

 

Practical assignments:

 

Exercise 1. Find examples of various types of narration and narrative compositional forms. Pay attention to language means used in each one. State their functions. Discuss correlations existing between the type of narration, compositional form and the language of the discourse:

1. Novelists write for countless different reasons: for money, for fame, for reviewers, for parents, for friends, for loved ones; for vanity, for pride, for curiosity, for amusement; as skilled furniture-makers enjoy making furniture, as drunkards like drinking, as judges like judging, as Sicilians like emptying a shotgun into an enemy's back. I could fill a book with reasons, and they would all be true, though not true of all. Only one same reason is shared by all of us: we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is. Or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know a world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator: a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.

2. He refused a taxi. Exercise, he thought, and no drinking at least a month. That's what does it. The drinking. Beer, martinis, have another. And the way your head felt in the morning.

3. Now she come my room, he thought. "What you want?" he demanded.

"May I come in?"

"This house," he said slowly, "she yours."

"Tell me your name," she said. "You," he burst out. "This long time and no know my name – and no ask! What my name? Who me? You no care."

4. His mind gathered itself out of the wreckage of little things: out of all that the world had shown or taught him he could remember now only the great star above the town, and the light that had swung over the hill, and the fresh sod upon Ben's grave and the wind, and the far sounds and music, and Mrs. Pert.



Wind pressed the boughs, the withered leaves were shaking. A star was shaking. A light was waking. Wind was quaking. The star was far. The night, the light. The light was bright. A chant, a song, the slow dance of the little things within him. The star over the town, the light over the hill, the sod over Ben, night all over. His mind fumbled with little things. Over us all is some thing. Star night, earth, light... light... Ξ lost!... a stone... a leaf... a door... Ξ ghost!... a light... a song... a light... a light... a light awnings over the hill... over us all... a star shines over the town... over us all... alight.

We shall not come again. We never shall come back again. But over us all over us all... is – something.

A light swings over the hill. (We shall not come again.) And over the town a star. (Over us all, over us all that shall not come again.) And over the day the dark. But over the darkness – what?

We shall not come again. We never shall come back again.

Over the dawn a lark. (That shall not come again.) And wind and music far. Ξ lost! (It shall not come again.) And over your mouth the earth. Ξ ghost! But over the darkness – what?

5. "Honestly. I don't feel anything. Except ashamed."

"Please. Are you sure? Tell me the truth. You might have been killed."

"But I wasn't. And thank you. For saving my life. You're wonderful. Unique. I love you."

6. "What's your Christian name, Sir?" angrily inquired the little Judge.

"Nathaniel, Sir."

"Daniel – any other name?"

"Nathaniel, Sir – my Lord, I mean."

"Nathaniel Daniel or Daniel Nathaniel?"

"No, my Lord, only Nathaniel – not Daniel at all."

"What did you tell me it was Daniel for then, Sir?" inquired the Judge.

7. "Now I know you lying," Sam was emphatic.

"You lying as fast as a dog can trot," Fishbelly said. "You trying to pull wool over our eyes," Tony accused.

8. "She thought he could be persuaded to come home."

"You mean a dinge?"

"No, a Greek."

"Okey," Nulty said and spit into the wastebasket. "Okey. You met the big guy how? You seem to pick up awful easy."

"All right," I said. "Why argue? I've seen the guy and you haven't. In the morning I was a well man again."

9. "She's home. She's lying down."

"She all right?" "She's tired. She went to see Fonny."

"How's Fonny taking it?"

"Taking it."

"She see Mr. Hayword?"

"No. She's seeing him on Monday."

"You going with her?"

"I think I better."

10. "Ah, fine place," said the stranger, "glorious pile – frowning walls – tottering arches – dark nooks – crumbling staircases – old cathedral too – earthy smell – pilgrim's feet worn away the old steps – little Saxon doors – confessionals like money-taker's boxes at theatres – queer customers those monks – Popes and Lord Treasurers and all sort of old fellows, with great red faces, and broken noses turning up every day – buff jerkins too – match-locks – Sarcophagus – fine place – old legends too – strange stories: capital."

11. "She's a model at Bergdorf Goodman's."

"She French?"

"She's about as French as you are –"

"That's more French than you think."

12. ...and the wineshops open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about with his lamp and Ξ that awful deepdown torrent Ξ and the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a flower of the mountains yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me yes....

13. ...Thou lost one. Ail songs on that theme. Yet more Bloom stretched his string. Cruel it seems. Let people get fond of each other: lure them on. Then tear asunder. Death. Explos. Knock on head. Outohellout of that. Human life. Dignam. Ugh, that rat's tail wriggling! Five bob I gave. Corpus paradisum. Corncrake croaker: belly like a poisoned pup. Gone. Forgotten. I too. Arid one day she with. Leave her: get tired. Suffer then. Snivel. Big Spanishy eyes goggling at nothing. Her wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevy hair uncombe'd.

14. The young man's name was Eddy Little John, but over dinner he said, look here, would they call him Ginger: everyone else did. So they began to call him Ginger, and he said wouldn't it be a good idea if they had another bottle of fizz, and Nina and Adam said yes, it would, so they had a magnum and got very friendly.

15. Every morning she was up betimes to get the fire lit in her gentlemen's sitting room so that they needn't eat their breakfasts simply perishin' with the cold, my word it's bitter this morning.

16. The girl noted the change for what she deemed the better. He was so nice now, she thought, so white-skinned and clear-eyed and keen.

17. But in any case, in her loving she was also re-creating herself, and she had gone upstairs to be in the dark. While downstairs Adam and I sat in the swing on the gallery, not saying a word. That was the evening Adam got counted out for all the other evenings, and out you go, you dirty dishrag, you. (R.W.)

18. And then he laughed at himself. He was getting nervy and het up like everybody else in the house.

19. Sometimes he wondered if he'd ever really known his father. Then out of the past would come that picture of a lithe, active young feller who was always good for an argument, always ready to bring company home, especially the kind of company that gives food for thought in return for a cup of tea and something to go with it.

20. Well, I'll tell you. A man I know slightly, he was one of the smartest traders in Wall Street. You wouldn't know his name, because I don't think I ever had occasion to mention it except perhaps to your mother and it wouldn't have interested you. He was a real plunger, that fellow. The stories they told downtown about him, they were sensational. Well, as I say he's always been a pretty smart trader. They say he was the only one that called the turn in 1929. He got out of the market in August 1929, at the peak. Everybody told him, why, you're crazy, they said.' Passing up millions. Millions, they told him. Sure, he said. Well, I'm willing to pass them up and keep what I have, he told them, and of course they all laughed when he told them he was going to retire and sit back and watch the ticker from a cafe in Paris. Retire and only thirty-eight years of age? Huh. They never heard such talk, the wisenheimers downtown. Him retire? No, it was in his blood, they said. He'd be back. He'd go to France and make a little whoopee, but he'd be back and in the market just as deeply as ever. But he fooled them. He went to France all right, and I suppose he made whoopee because I happen to know he has quite a reputation that way. And they were right saying he'd be back, but not the way they thought. He came back first week in November, two years ago, right after the crash. Know what he did? He bought a Rolls-Royce Phantom that originally cost eighteen thousand dollars, he bought that for a thousand-dollar bill. He bought a big place out on Long Island. I don't know exactly what he paid for it, but one fellow told me he got it for not a cent more than the owner paid for one of those big indoor tennis courts they have out there. For that he got the whole estate, the land house proper, stables, garages, everything. Yacht landing. Oh, almost forget. A hundred and eighty foot yacht for eighteen thousand dollars. The figure I do know because I remember hearing a hundred dollars a foot was enough for any yacht. And mind you, the estate was with all the furniture. And because he got out in time and had the cash. Everything . he had was cash. Wouldn't lend a cent. Not one red cent for any kind of interest. Just wasn't interested, he said. Buy, yes. He bought cars, houses, big estates, paintings worth their weight in radium, practically, but lend money? No. He said it was his way of getting even with the wisenheimers that laughed at him the summer before when he said he was going to retire.

21. Holmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with He was quiet in his ways and his habits were regular. It was rare for him to be up after ten at night and he had invariably breakfasted and gone out before I rose in the morning. His very person and appearance were such as to strike the attention of the most casual observer. In height he was rather over six feet and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and his thin hawklike nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination.

 

Exercise 2. Make the stylistic analysis of the excerpts given below:

Item 1

He was disappointed with Rome. It was still beautiful indeed, but without his father to say 'Here Gibbon* must have heard the monks singing in the Ara Coeli*,' or 'Here's the rostrum – let's see how much we can remember of the Catiline oration*,' the ruins and the churches had somehow lost their charm. And the charm had gone too from Roman life. Cars hooted through the narrow streets, the old restaurants had vanished in a wholesale demolition, a pinchbeck Americanism had taken the place of the old lazy dignity. The beggars had gone, but so had the friendliness and simplicity. Under official encouragement the age-old society of Judas appeared to have taken on a new lease of life; the Eternal City swarmed with intellectual English, neo-Thomists* possessed of small Latin and less Greek, and with homosexual peers in violet cassocks. But worst of all, a strange feeling of moral oppressiveness hung over the town. It was unpleasant to feel that he was probably being watched, that an imprudent phrase might involve him in disagreeable results.

 

 

Item 2

To write of someone loved, of someone loving, above all of oneself being loved – how can these things be done with propriety? How can they be done at all? I have treated of love in my published work; I have used it – with avarice, envy, revenge – as one of the compelling motives of conduct. I have written it up as something prolonged and passionate and tragic; I have written it down as a modest but sufficient annuity with which to reward the just; have spoken of it continually as a game of profit and loss. How does any of this avail for the simple task of describing, so that others may see her, woman one loves? How can others see her except through one's own eyes and how, so seeing her, can they turn the pages and close the book and live on as they have lived before, without becoming themselves the author and themselves the lover? The catalogues of excellencies of the Renais poets, those competitive advertisements, each man outdoing the metaphor, that great blurt – like a publisher's list in the Sunday newspaper – the Song of Solomon, how do these accord with the voice of love – love that delights in weakness, seeks out and fills the empty places and completes itself in its work of completion; how can one transcribe those accents? Love, which has its own life, its hours of sleep and waking, its 1 and sickness, growth, death and immortality, its ignorance and knowledge, experiment and mastery – how can one relate this hooded stranger to the men and women with whom he keeps pace? It is a problem beyond the proper scope of letters.

From Evelyn Waugh's Work Suspended


Date: 2015-02-03; view: 2890


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SEMINAR 6. PHRASEOLOGICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC DEVICES | Shakespeare In The Bush Laura Bohannan
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