Glossary of narratology

This glossary of narratology is a list of explanations or translations of contemporary and historical concepts of narratology.

Glossary

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Anachrony are the temperal reordering of elements of the story and their eventual presentation. It is considered a serious discrepancy between how the story is ordered and how it is presented. It is defined by Ganette as a "temporal reordering of elements of the plot on the level in relation to their chronological order on the level". Anachronies can be based in the past e.g. , and or can be in the future e.g. , , . Examples of novels that use the technique include The Voice in Cocteau’s La Machine infernale. More extreme cases of this narration technique can be found in La vie imaginaire de l'éboueur Auguste G. by Armand Gatti.

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In essence a flashback in the narrative, i.e. the insertion of a previous scene into the current story. Defined by Gannet as an in the past that is told in the present, it is often used to introduce new characters or protagonists whose contextual existence must be told. Contemporary novels written in a modernist or a postmodernist style use this technique to reorder the chronological or teleological narrative structure. Examples of this technique include Emma in Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Flaubert lets the reader know that while Emma feels nostalgic about her farming life, it is revealed to the reader through flashback that she was an incompetent farmer and wished to escape her life through marriage.

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Diegesis is a style of fiction storytelling in which a participating narrator offers an on-site, often interior, view of the scene to the reader, viewer, or listener by subjectively describing the actions and, in some cases, thoughts, of one or more characters. Defined by Gannet as "Telling" as opposed to "Showing". Diegesis is firmly rooted in Genre studies and was defined by Plato and Aristotle.

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Focalisation is the perspective through which events in a narrative are perceived and presented to the reader. Genette used it to replace the vaguer notion of "point of view" by separating the question of who sees (the focaliser) from who speaks (the narrator). Genette distinguished three types: zero focalisation (an omniscient narrator whose knowledge exceeds that of any character), internal focalisation (the narrative is filtered through a character's consciousness), and external focalisation (the narrator reports only what is externally observable, knowing less than the characters). Examples of novels that use zero focalisation include Vanity Fair and Adam Bede. Examples of movels that use internal focalisation include The Ambassadors, The Age of Reason, The Ring and the Book and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Examples of external focalisation used in novels include The Killers.

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The narration is heterodiegetic if the narrator is not the protagonist and is outside the fictional universe. In the language of narratology, the narrator is not part of the . Typically, but not always associated with the third-person narration. It can be used with you, they and one narratives. Examples of novels that use these techniques include the Iliad and Eugénie Grandet, and Pride and Prejudice.

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The narration is homodiegetic if the narrator is character in the events or situations in the story. Defined by literary theorist Gérard Genette, the narrator is the same person in the . It is equivalent to First-person narration. If that person is the main protagonist, then Genette calls this . We narratives, where the story-teller is part of the group, but has their own narration are considered partially autodiegetic. This applies to couples narrating the story within the group. Examples of novels where the narrators are part of the story include Mr Lockwood in Wuthering Heights. Other examples include Gil Blas, All the King's Men and The Great Gatsby and Kiss Me, Deadly.

A hypodiegetic narrative is a narrative embedded in another narrative.

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