Understanding Literary Genres: Lyric and Narrative Texts
Lyric Texts: Expression of Feelings
The lyric is appropriate for imitating moods and expressing feelings. Lyrical texts have the following characteristics:
- They provide a very subjective discourse, the product of internalization, where poetic emotion is prevalent.
- They do not develop a story; their content is an expression of feelings, emotions, and ideas.
- A poetic voice belongs to the fiction and is not to be identified with the author.
- They usually focus on one aspect and are generally short, which allows for the accumulation of expressive resources.
- They usually occur in verse, but lyrical prose works, also called poetic prose, exist.
- They do not exhaust the lines and try to give musicality.
Communicating in Lyrical Texts
The poetic voice-emitter can assume three positions:
- Apparent objectivity: Simply presents a fact seemingly disconnected from the outside and the self, using the 3rd person.
- Appeal: The lyric addressee (second person) acquires explicit presence, whereas the poetic self may appear or not.
- Pure expression: The poetic voice is expressed only through the poetic voice (first person). Other possibilities are splitting (a ‘you’ hides a self, the poetic voice speaking) or self-nomination (author of the text).
Narrative Texts: Storytelling
Narrative texts tell stories by a storyteller and correspond to the following features:
- They develop a story, i.e., a sequence of actions, so they dominate the referential function, besides the poetic.
- The story is told by a storyteller, who, like the facts stated, belongs to the world of fiction.
- The predominant mode of speech is prose, but verse has also been used to tell the story.
Narrative Subgenres
- Story: A short prose narrative that represents a situation of conflict and whose end can be open or closed. It often develops in a unique space and time. The stories can contain teaching by example.
- Novel: An extensive narration in prose that presents a problematic and diverse world. The story may vary in space and time. It differs from the epic due to the presence of a complex character rich in nuances.
Levels of Narrative Analysis
The story is what is said, and speech-like story involves a sequence of actions that follow a casual chronological order, made by characters in a given time and space. Discourse is the way the story is told and may not respect time in history.
Analysis of the Story
The analysis of the story includes the characterization of its four elements: the actions, characters, time, and space. According to their role in the story, characters can be protagonists or secondary. The main characters perform a series of actions to achieve certain objectives. In those actions, other characters are involved, who act as allies if they help, or as opponents if they hinder the attainment of their objectives. The space, unique or diverse, open or closed, rural or urban, realistic or fantastic, always determines the characters’ actions. Time can range from a few hours, even minutes, to many years.
Analysis of Discourse
Flashback, prolepsis, story time and discourse, scenes, breaks, narrators and perspective, narrator witness.