notes on narrative in a vidding context
laurashapiro asked: What's narrative? What follows are my tentative notes towards a possible answer (or several). Dialogue welcome.
In A Glossary of Literary Terms, M.H. Abrams defines narrative as "a story, whether told in prose or verse, involving events, characters, and what the characters say and do." This definition is accurate as far as it goes, but it' ( Read more... )
In A Glossary of Literary Terms, M.H. Abrams defines narrative as "a story, whether told in prose or verse, involving events, characters, and what the characters say and do." This definition is accurate as far as it goes, but it' ( Read more... )
From "What Can A Heroine Do? Or, Why Women Can't
Write" by Joanna Russ:
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If *the narrative mode* (what Aristotle calld "epic")
concerns itself with events connected by the
*chronological order* in which they occur, and *the
dramatic mode* with *voluntary human actions* which
are connected by both *chronology and causation*, then
the principle of construction I wish to call *lyric*
consists of *the organization of discrete elements*
(images, events, scenes, passages, words,
what-have-you) *aruund an unspoken thematic or
emotional structure*. The lyric mode exists without
chronology or causation; its principle of connection
is *associative*. Of course, no piece of writing can
exist purely in any one mode, but we can certainly
talk of the predominance of one element, perhaps two.
In this sense of "lyric", Virginia Woolf is a lyric
novelist-in fact she has been criticized in just those
tems, i.e., "nothing happens" in her books. A writer
who employs the lyric structure is setting various
images, events, scenes, or memories to circling around
an unspoken, invisible center. The invisible center
is what the novel or poem is about; it is also
unsayable in available dramatic or narrative terms.
That is, there is no action possible to the central
character and no series of events that will embody in
clear, unequivocal, immeditely graspable terms what
the artist means. Or perhaps there is no action or
series of events that will embody this "center" at
all. [...] Woolf uses a structure that is basically
non-narrative. Hence the lack of "plot," the
repetitiousness, the gathering-up of the novels into
moments of epiphany, the denseness of the writing, the
indirection.
--
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In the Russ quote, I have never quite gotten her distinction between narratives based on chronology vs. narratives based on chronology *and* causation, unless she's trying to make a distinction between 'cumulative' plotting (where one event causes another which causes complications which causes ... etc.) and picaresque, where the events are not particularly related. I don't find it a very useful distinction in any event, although I think there might be something promising there if it's looked at in conjunction with some of sockkpuppett's discussions on leading up to big comic or emotional moments by repetition and escalation.
After the bit I quoted, I seem to remember Russ making the point that most novels aren't purely narrative or purely lyric -- they feature elements or aspects of both modes, but one tends to predominate. I tend to think of metaphor and symbolism as lyrical elements: they accumulate meaning and force via placement in a narrative and careful repetition, but eventually the symbols *themselves* impart meaning to later events in the narrative, or influence the interpretation of those events.
I want to cite the way you intercut scenes in your earlier vids, which strike me as using lyricism in the service of narrative, with the more sophisticated intercutting you use later, which strikes me as shifting the vids more towards an overall lyrical structure, but I'm at work and don't have time for the viewing and re-viewing I'd need in order to support this claim.
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Yes -- this makes a lot of sense. I think I was more tentative in my argument about vids than I am in my arguments about vids; a good deal of my diss is premised on the notion that fictional texts are always arguments (which is why I'm using rhetorical rather than literary theory), much like what Laura and sisabet have said.
I have never quite gotten her distinction between narratives based on chronology vs. narratives based on chronology *and* causation...
I would need to read more of the context to be sure, I think, but it does sound like Forster's distinction between story ("and then... and then..") and plot ("because"). It also sounds like the difference between romances and novels; as one of my favorite professors put it, "Spenser is just one damn thing after another."
I tend to think of metaphor and symbolism as lyrical elements: they accumulate meaning and force via placement in a narrative and careful repetition...
Makes sense. They also help with the understanding (and making) of arguments, because they direct attention in particular ways. In novels, particularly, which are large enough that everything cannot be equally important, attention has to fix on *something*, find some pattern for meaning-making.
I want to cite the way you intercut scenes in your earlier vids...
Heh. I know too much about *why* I used intercutting in my early vids to be able to think clearly about how it affects the structure. I do think you're right that in general I've been moving away from narrative and towards lyrical structure.
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I think I burned out the braincell. Either that or you or renenet took it. ::eyes you suspiciously::
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