Literary Narrative Techniques and Styles: A Comprehensive Analysis
Literary Narrative Techniques and Styles
Historic or Heroic Narratives
Epic Poems:
- Characterized by impersonality and drama.
- Exists in its own world, lacking critical features.
- Narrated in the third person.
- Typically transmitted orally.
Epic Poem (Extensive):
- Describes actions worthy of remembrance by a community or humanity.
- Examples: The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, La Araucana.
Chansons de Geste:
- Accounts of heroic legends originating in the feudal world and the Crusades.
- Reflect the feudal link between lord and vassal.
- The Crusades are conceived as divinely inspired.
- Transmitted orally.
- Examples: Cid, Cantar de Roldán.
The Legend:
- Based on oral tradition, incorporating some historical facts.
The Romance:
- Epic-lyric-popular, of anonymous origin, derived from the chansons de geste.
Stories with a Didactic or Moral Function
The Fable:
- A short story, in prose or verse.
- Features animal characters representing virtues and vices.
- Includes a moral at the end.
The Parable:
- Intended to deliver a moral teaching, but does not involve animals.
Focalization
Zero Focalization:
- Omniscient narrator with a direct view of events.
- Knows everything about the characters.
- Objective viewpoint.
- Told in the third person.
Internal Focalization:
- Narrative recounted through a character, either protagonist or secondary witness.
- Subjective perspective, related to one person.
External Focalization:
- Narrator is located outside of the events and characters.
- Objective viewpoint.
- Told in the third person.
- Knowledge is relative.
Narrative Styles
Direct Style:
- Characters engage in dialogue.
- Quotation marks and hyphens distinguish this style.
Free Direct Style:
- Told in the first person.
- No explicit narrator, only the speaker.
Reported Speech:
- The narrator introduces the words of others.
Free Indirect Style:
- Employs an omniscient narrator.
- Narrates from the consciousness of the character.
Narrative Techniques
Mounting:
- In film, used for spatial and temporal movement.
- In narrative, achieved through multiple narrators and points of view.
Racconto:
- Extended reverse in time.
Flashback:
- Brief memory.
Premonition:
- Vision of the future.
Flash-Forward:
- Brief snapshot of the future.
Narrative Techniques Influenced by Psychology
Interior Monologue:
- Voice of the mental contents of the character.
Soliloquy:
- Dialogue with oneself, more logical and organized than a monologue.
Stream of Consciousness:
- Lacks logical structure, is chaotic.
- The character says whatever comes to mind at that moment.
Narrative Worlds
- Real: Can happen in reality.
- Mythical: Creation of the world and man; time of origins.
- Wonderful: Governed by its own laws (e.g., Fairy Tales and Legends).
- Fantastic: Starts in the real world, then experiences a break from reality.
- Utopia: An ideal world that cannot exist.
- Science Fiction: Set in the future, focuses on technology and science (also called not utopian).
- Dream: World ruled by the logic of dreams.
- Real-Wonderful World: Fantastic events are part of reality and cause no surprise.