Writing Help 129 | - Freelance Writer
Apr 05, 2013 | #1
Terms You Need for Writing about the Novel
Although the ideas presented in the articles on point of view seem easy enough to grasp, there are many places where the generally solid conceptual scheme looks a little thin. For example, suppose I have a narrator who is not a key part of the story as it unfolds, and who did not witness the story, but who is reporting it to us from some point after it as a relative of one of the characters, and who perhaps even made an appearance in the story as a baby? Fiction being fiction, there is an enormous range of possibility, and distinguishing between different points of view can be difficult. In the case above, do we have a third-person narrator, since she is removed in time from the events, or is she a first-person narrator, since she refers to herself as I throughout the telling, and did technically take part in the tale? In such borderline cases, a more advanced terminology becomes useful, and it allows us to say that, in this case, we are certainly dealing with a homodiegetic narrator.
This might sound daunting, but the diegetic levels of narration, as introduced by Genette and adopted (as well as adapted) by many, serve as a finer tool for the dissection of narrative perspectives. The base term, diegesis, refers broadly to the world of the story, as well as the telling of events in that world (the narrative), and the characters that exist there. The protagonist is always part of the diegesis, for example, and the publisher of the novel is not.
Applying this to the level of narration, and using it to further define narrative point of view, we begin with the primary distinction between the entities of the story world and those which exist outside it. The former are referred to as homodiegetic, while the latter are heterodiegetic; the prefixes are excellent clues which will allow you to keep these straight in your mind, as homo suggests sameness, while hetero suggests difference. So, any narrator who is a part of the story world, whose existence fits into the world in which the story takes place, is known as a homodiegetic narrator; if the narrator could in some way interact with the characters and events he or she is describing, the narrator is homodiegetic. So, in the above example, since the narrator is telling the story from the perspective of an individual who lives in the world of the story, that narrator is properly termed homodiegetic. The vast majority of narrators who use I to describe themselves are homodiegetic, and this is a good (but not foolproof) test. I suppose you could have a narrator who uses I without being part of the story world, but this would be a rare and specialized case indeed, and would have to be presented in a manner similar to the following: "I am now going to tell you a story about an imaginary, far-away land, so prepare to be thrilled!" The rest of the story would unfold in the third-person, and the inclusion of sections where I is used would be considered instances of obtrusive narration. The narrator is, however, still clearly not part of the word described, and unless there is also a story going on around the narrator him or herself as well (which we will discuss later in this article), he or she is heterodiegetic.
As you might have guessed, a heterodiegetic narrator is one who is not a part of the story world. This covers most third-person narrators, and is most easily applicable to the authoritative, omniscient brand of this narration. When the narrator has no definable identity and does not include any references to self, that narrator is considered heterodiegetic. To test which of the two basic diegetic types a given narrator is, you merely have to ask yourself whether that agent could interact with the world of the story being described. If yes, you have homodiegetic; if no, heterodiegetic.
Within the category of homodiegetic narration are some important distinctions that further define the position of the narrator in relation to the world of which he or she is a part. One of the most useful of these terms is the autodiegetic narrator, which is one of the most common narrating types in literature. The autodiegetic narrator is not only a part of the story in which she resides, but is also the protagonist, the most important or the main character in the novel. This kind of narrator is always positioned in the first-person, and it is very difficult to imagine an autodiegetic narrator who employed the third-person, barring a strange science-fiction or fantasy scenario or an equally bizarre psychological disorder which causes the person to refer to themselves as he or she.
A further distinction in the agent of narration can be found in cases where a subsidiary story is being told within the main story. This is a fairly common device in literature of all types, and is especially common in the novel. Every story must have some teller (one of the basic tenets of narrative theory), and so the narrator of the story within the story is called the intradiegetic narrator. The prefix intra, meaning within, is an obvious indication of the term's meaning, and is an easy way to distinguish this from the other terms we have discussed so far. Intradiegetic narrators are almost always characters in the novels in which they appear, and their stories are usually bordered by quotation marks. It is possible, however, that the primary narrator, who also happened to be the protagonist, could decide to report a story she is telling within the main story; this would also likely be in quotation marks, and it would make the character a homodiegetic, autodiegetic, intradiegetic narrator all at the same time!
To clarify all of these terms, some concrete examples from actual and popular novels might be helpful. An obvious heterodiegetic narrator can be found in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, where the narrating voice is formal, descriptive, omniscient, and completely impersonal. We never get any indication that this narrator is a person at all, and we certainly don't get the impression that he is a part of the world he describes. Another fine example is the narrator of the Harry Potter series, who, although she often follows the perspective of Harry and his friends closely, is never identified with a member of the fictional world.
An example of a homodiegetic narrator would be Lockwood in Wuthering Heights, who, although he plays no major part in the events he relates, tells the tale of the doomed lovers he encounters, both as he has observed it and as it has been told to him through others closer to the action and the individuals involved. Autodiegetic narration can be seen in the famous (and infamous) novel Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. The main character, Holden, is a troubled youth who speaks to us directly in his own idiolect, using the same slang and patterns of thought that we might expect from any youth of his time period. He is the protagonist of his novel, and while he really isn't a hero, he is nonetheless the center of his own story.
Finally, we can see intradiegetic narration in Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness. The primary narrator, who is never named, is homodiegetic, and the world of his story is a ship on its way back to England. He talks to several people in a small group during this trip, and once a man named Marlow is allowed to tell a story, this continues for almost the entire novel, so that we often forget that the primary narrator is even there. Because he tells his story within the story of the primary narrator, Marlow's narration is intradiegetic, making him an (unorthodox) intradiegetic narrator.
Levels of Narration
Although the ideas presented in the articles on point of view seem easy enough to grasp, there are many places where the generally solid conceptual scheme looks a little thin. For example, suppose I have a narrator who is not a key part of the story as it unfolds, and who did not witness the story, but who is reporting it to us from some point after it as a relative of one of the characters, and who perhaps even made an appearance in the story as a baby? Fiction being fiction, there is an enormous range of possibility, and distinguishing between different points of view can be difficult. In the case above, do we have a third-person narrator, since she is removed in time from the events, or is she a first-person narrator, since she refers to herself as I throughout the telling, and did technically take part in the tale? In such borderline cases, a more advanced terminology becomes useful, and it allows us to say that, in this case, we are certainly dealing with a homodiegetic narrator.
This might sound daunting, but the diegetic levels of narration, as introduced by Genette and adopted (as well as adapted) by many, serve as a finer tool for the dissection of narrative perspectives. The base term, diegesis, refers broadly to the world of the story, as well as the telling of events in that world (the narrative), and the characters that exist there. The protagonist is always part of the diegesis, for example, and the publisher of the novel is not.Applying this to the level of narration, and using it to further define narrative point of view, we begin with the primary distinction between the entities of the story world and those which exist outside it. The former are referred to as homodiegetic, while the latter are heterodiegetic; the prefixes are excellent clues which will allow you to keep these straight in your mind, as homo suggests sameness, while hetero suggests difference. So, any narrator who is a part of the story world, whose existence fits into the world in which the story takes place, is known as a homodiegetic narrator; if the narrator could in some way interact with the characters and events he or she is describing, the narrator is homodiegetic. So, in the above example, since the narrator is telling the story from the perspective of an individual who lives in the world of the story, that narrator is properly termed homodiegetic. The vast majority of narrators who use I to describe themselves are homodiegetic, and this is a good (but not foolproof) test. I suppose you could have a narrator who uses I without being part of the story world, but this would be a rare and specialized case indeed, and would have to be presented in a manner similar to the following: "I am now going to tell you a story about an imaginary, far-away land, so prepare to be thrilled!" The rest of the story would unfold in the third-person, and the inclusion of sections where I is used would be considered instances of obtrusive narration. The narrator is, however, still clearly not part of the word described, and unless there is also a story going on around the narrator him or herself as well (which we will discuss later in this article), he or she is heterodiegetic.
As you might have guessed, a heterodiegetic narrator is one who is not a part of the story world. This covers most third-person narrators, and is most easily applicable to the authoritative, omniscient brand of this narration. When the narrator has no definable identity and does not include any references to self, that narrator is considered heterodiegetic. To test which of the two basic diegetic types a given narrator is, you merely have to ask yourself whether that agent could interact with the world of the story being described. If yes, you have homodiegetic; if no, heterodiegetic.
Within the category of homodiegetic narration are some important distinctions that further define the position of the narrator in relation to the world of which he or she is a part. One of the most useful of these terms is the autodiegetic narrator, which is one of the most common narrating types in literature. The autodiegetic narrator is not only a part of the story in which she resides, but is also the protagonist, the most important or the main character in the novel. This kind of narrator is always positioned in the first-person, and it is very difficult to imagine an autodiegetic narrator who employed the third-person, barring a strange science-fiction or fantasy scenario or an equally bizarre psychological disorder which causes the person to refer to themselves as he or she.
A further distinction in the agent of narration can be found in cases where a subsidiary story is being told within the main story. This is a fairly common device in literature of all types, and is especially common in the novel. Every story must have some teller (one of the basic tenets of narrative theory), and so the narrator of the story within the story is called the intradiegetic narrator. The prefix intra, meaning within, is an obvious indication of the term's meaning, and is an easy way to distinguish this from the other terms we have discussed so far. Intradiegetic narrators are almost always characters in the novels in which they appear, and their stories are usually bordered by quotation marks. It is possible, however, that the primary narrator, who also happened to be the protagonist, could decide to report a story she is telling within the main story; this would also likely be in quotation marks, and it would make the character a homodiegetic, autodiegetic, intradiegetic narrator all at the same time!
To clarify all of these terms, some concrete examples from actual and popular novels might be helpful. An obvious heterodiegetic narrator can be found in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, where the narrating voice is formal, descriptive, omniscient, and completely impersonal. We never get any indication that this narrator is a person at all, and we certainly don't get the impression that he is a part of the world he describes. Another fine example is the narrator of the Harry Potter series, who, although she often follows the perspective of Harry and his friends closely, is never identified with a member of the fictional world.
An example of a homodiegetic narrator would be Lockwood in Wuthering Heights, who, although he plays no major part in the events he relates, tells the tale of the doomed lovers he encounters, both as he has observed it and as it has been told to him through others closer to the action and the individuals involved. Autodiegetic narration can be seen in the famous (and infamous) novel Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. The main character, Holden, is a troubled youth who speaks to us directly in his own idiolect, using the same slang and patterns of thought that we might expect from any youth of his time period. He is the protagonist of his novel, and while he really isn't a hero, he is nonetheless the center of his own story.
Finally, we can see intradiegetic narration in Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness. The primary narrator, who is never named, is homodiegetic, and the world of his story is a ship on its way back to England. He talks to several people in a small group during this trip, and once a man named Marlow is allowed to tell a story, this continues for almost the entire novel, so that we often forget that the primary narrator is even there. Because he tells his story within the story of the primary narrator, Marlow's narration is intradiegetic, making him an (unorthodox) intradiegetic narrator.