Understanding Description and Narrative in Literature
The Description
A description is a detailed explanation of how certain people, places, or objects are ordered. There are two types of description: static (arranged in space) and dynamic (events that happen with regard to the facts).
Technical Description
A technical description involves:
- Observation: Considering everything that is going to be described and what elements make it up.
- Choice: Choosing only the most significant elements to describe.
- Structuring: Determining the order in which the elements will be described.
- Writing: Presenting the contents of the description.
Types of Description
Descriptions can be classified as:
- Technical or functional: These are objective, using referential or representative language, and are more practical.
- Literary: These need not be true and may or may not be objective or subjective. They predominantly use poetic function.
Types of Descriptions Based on Theme
- Description of concrete realities: The description of a person is very important. If it only describes physical aspects, it is called prosopography. If it refers to psychological traits, it is called ethopoeia. If it is humorous, it is called a caricature. If the author describes themselves, it is called a self-portrait.
- Description of abstract realities: These describe feelings, emotions not perceptible to the senses.
- Description of landscapes: This is called a topographic description.
- Description of an age or stage of history: This is called a chronographic description.
- Description of a process: This describes events without duration and presents a course of events without action.
Narrative
A narrative is a recounting of real or imagined events that happen to characters. It can be fabricated or real, but fabricated stories are considered literary (novels, short stories, epic poems, fables, etc.).
Elements of a Narrative
- Action: Constitutes the events that are happening and give rise to the story being told.
- Characters: Those who carry out the events that are narrated. They can be major if the narrative revolves around them or minor whose function is to complement the narrative.
- Time: External time is where the story is situated, and internal time is the time period covering the events of the story.
- Space: Where the characters develop actions.
Structure
- External: According to how the account is presented, it can be divided into paragraphs, chapters, head and body, acts, and scenes.
- Internal: This is how the content is organized. The approach presents the aspects where the facts develop. The knot is a conflict that transforms the situation and produces initial changes. The outcome is where conflicts are resolved.
Order of Events
- Linear: When the chronological order of events is followed.
- In Medias Res: When the story begins in the middle of the narrative, then returns to the past to reveal a history of events.
- In Extrema Res: When the narrator, from the present, goes to the past.
- Counterpoint: When different narrative sequences alternate.
The narrator is the person who tells the facts and should never be confused with the author.
Narrative Point of View
External
The story is narrated from outside (in the third person). There are different types:
- Omniscient narrator: Knows everything and can anticipate events.
- Outside observer: Only observes what they see and hear.
- Narrator as chronicler: Tells the story as they found it.
Internal
The facts are considered from within the story:
- Narrator as protagonist: The protagonist simultaneously tells the story.
- Narrator as secondary character: Considers the facts they have witnessed.
Nonfiction Narratives
- History books: Narrate events.
- Diary: A small, intimate story of one’s life.