Stanzel & Genette – narrative situation and narrator
1. We hear every day of murders committed in the country. Brutal and treacherous murders; slow, protracted
agonies from poisons administered by some kindred hand; sudden and violent deaths by cruel blows, inflicted
with a stake cut from some spreading oak, whose every shadow promised — peace. [...] It was dusk when gigs
and chaises, dogcarts and clumsy farmers' phaetons, began to rattle through the village street, and under the
windows of the Sun Inn; deeper dusk still when an open carriage and four drew suddenly up beneath the rocking
sign-post.
It was Sir Michael Audley's barouche [=viersitzige Kutsche] which came to so sudden a stop before the little
inn. The harness of one of the leaders had become out of order, and the foremost postilion dismounted to set it
right.
"Why, it's my uncle," cried Robert Audley, as the carriage stopped. "I'll run down and speak to him."
(Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret)
arrative situation
extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator; zero focalization
I
2. We live in time - it holds us and molds us - but I never felt I understood it very well. And I'm not referring to
theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary,
everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything
more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's
malleability (...). I’m not very interested in my school days, and I don’t feel any nostalgia for them. But school is
where it all began, so I need you to return briefly to a few incidents (...). There were three of us (...) and we were
already beginning to imagine our escape from school into life. (...)
(Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending)
first person narrative situation
e
xtradiegetic-homodiegetic (autodiegetic) narrator; internal focalization
3. She woke early this morning. Not surprisingly, she’d been sleeping badly in recent weeks, and she lay now for
more than an hour thinking about her family. She liked to imagine them still asleep, each of the three women
lying in the warm darkness of her own room: Helen in her house in Belfast, Sally and her mother at home in the
country. Later, when Cate rose and moved about her flat making coffee and preparing her luggage for the
journey, she thought of her family waking. Helen would stretch out her hand and switch on the radio, would lie
there drowsing and listening to classical music. Sally would go downstairs, and, still in her dressing gown and
sleepy-eyed, would stare blankly at the cloudy sky while she waited for the kettle to boil. (...)
(Deirdre Madden, One by One in the Darkness)
Figural narrative situation
Ex
tradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator; internal focalization
4. I have told my reader, in the preceding chapter, that Mr Allworty inherited a large fortune, that he had a good
heart, and no family. Hence, doubtless, it will be concluded by many, that he lived like an honest man, owned no
one a shelling, took nothing what was his own, kept a good house, entertained his neighbours with a hearty
welcome at his table, and was charitable to the poor, i.e. to those who had rather beg than work, by giving them
the offals from it; that he dy'd immensely rich, and built a hospital.
And true it is, that he did many of these things, but had he done nothing more, I should have left him to have
recorded his own merit on some fair free-stone-over the door of that hospital. Matter of a much more
extraordinary kind are to be the subject of this history, or I should grossly misspend my time in writing so
voluminous a work; and you, my sagacious friend, might, with equal profit and pleasure, travel through some
pages, which certain droll authors have facetiously pleased to call The History of England.
(Henry Fielding, Tom Jones)
authorial narrative situation
extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator; zero focalization
~
1. We hear every day of murders committed in the country. Brutal and treacherous murders; slow, protracted
agonies from poisons administered by some kindred hand; sudden and violent deaths by cruel blows, inflicted
with a stake cut from some spreading oak, whose every shadow promised — peace. [...] It was dusk when gigs
and chaises, dogcarts and clumsy farmers' phaetons, began to rattle through the village street, and under the
windows of the Sun Inn; deeper dusk still when an open carriage and four drew suddenly up beneath the rocking
sign-post.
It was Sir Michael Audley's barouche [=viersitzige Kutsche] which came to so sudden a stop before the little
inn. The harness of one of the leaders had become out of order, and the foremost postilion dismounted to set it
right.
"Why, it's my uncle," cried Robert Audley, as the carriage stopped. "I'll run down and speak to him."
(Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret)
arrative situation
extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator; zero focalization
I
2. We live in time - it holds us and molds us - but I never felt I understood it very well. And I'm not referring to
theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary,
everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything
more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's
malleability (...). I’m not very interested in my school days, and I don’t feel any nostalgia for them. But school is
where it all began, so I need you to return briefly to a few incidents (...). There were three of us (...) and we were
already beginning to imagine our escape from school into life. (...)
(Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending)
first person narrative situation
e
xtradiegetic-homodiegetic (autodiegetic) narrator; internal focalization
3. She woke early this morning. Not surprisingly, she’d been sleeping badly in recent weeks, and she lay now for
more than an hour thinking about her family. She liked to imagine them still asleep, each of the three women
lying in the warm darkness of her own room: Helen in her house in Belfast, Sally and her mother at home in the
country. Later, when Cate rose and moved about her flat making coffee and preparing her luggage for the
journey, she thought of her family waking. Helen would stretch out her hand and switch on the radio, would lie
there drowsing and listening to classical music. Sally would go downstairs, and, still in her dressing gown and
sleepy-eyed, would stare blankly at the cloudy sky while she waited for the kettle to boil. (...)
(Deirdre Madden, One by One in the Darkness)
Figural narrative situation
Ex
tradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator; internal focalization
4. I have told my reader, in the preceding chapter, that Mr Allworty inherited a large fortune, that he had a good
heart, and no family. Hence, doubtless, it will be concluded by many, that he lived like an honest man, owned no
one a shelling, took nothing what was his own, kept a good house, entertained his neighbours with a hearty
welcome at his table, and was charitable to the poor, i.e. to those who had rather beg than work, by giving them
the offals from it; that he dy'd immensely rich, and built a hospital.
And true it is, that he did many of these things, but had he done nothing more, I should have left him to have
recorded his own merit on some fair free-stone-over the door of that hospital. Matter of a much more
extraordinary kind are to be the subject of this history, or I should grossly misspend my time in writing so
voluminous a work; and you, my sagacious friend, might, with equal profit and pleasure, travel through some
pages, which certain droll authors have facetiously pleased to call The History of England.
(Henry Fielding, Tom Jones)
authorial narrative situation
extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator; zero focalization
~
