Overhearing Narrative
THE DYNAMICS OF NARRATIVE FORM: STUDIES IN ANGLO-AMERICAN NARRATOLOGY, pp.191-214, John Pier, ed., Walter de Gruyter, 2005
13 Pages Posted: 2 Jul 2011
Date Written: 2005
Abstract
Reading literary narratives involves interpreting and articulating a number of complex hierarchical structures of communicative address. Some of these interactive processes may be further examined on the basis of an analogy with oral or conversational narrative. The extension, coherence and referential autonomy of narratives favour the generation of elaborate textual images of senders and addressees. These textual subjects of written narratives are built on potentialities which a are already present in conversational narrative, whereas the specific constraints and possibilities of written language and of literary conventions make possible the development of more complex forms. A special sense of "overhearing" as applied to written narratives will have to be defined to account for some such complex effects. An analysis of such phenomena will require an approach through the pragmatic specificity of narrative fiction and of the modes of address involved in it.
Keywords: Literary Theory, Narratology, Narrative, Reading, Dialogism, Implied Reader, Conversational Narrative, Overhearing, Enunciation
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