Narrating Narrating: Twisting the Twice-Told Tale

Abstract

There is a structural/genetic continuity between everyday oral narrative and elaborate literary narratives, with listeners gradually becoming an audience. Literary stories which narrate some character's oral narrating keep us aware of this continuity, and build bridges between advanced literate and oral forms, reappropriating orality for literature, and constructing advanced interactional forms precisely through a return, with a difference, to the origins of narrative interaction. The paper examines some aspects of oral narration in written fiction, and suggests the general proposition that retelling is a crucial concept in narrative analysis, as narratives always retell earlier narratives.

Keywords: narratology, narrative theory, narrator, narrating, oral narrative, pragmatics, linguistic interaction, repetition, intertextuality