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On NarrativeStudiesand NarrativeGenres
Gerald Prince
Romance Languages, Pennsylvania
In the past two or three decades, students of narrative have very much
consolidated and developed our knowledge by isolating, (re)characterizing, and (re)classifying a large number of features distinctive of or
pertinent to (verbal) narrative (see Adam 1985; Genette 1980, 1988;
Mitchell 1981; Prince 1987; Scholes and Kellogg 1966). In the area
of narrative discourse (that of the narrating rather than the narrated,
the representing and not the represented), for instance, Genette and
others (e.g., Bal 1985; Chatman 1978; Rimmon-Kenan 1983; Todorov
1981) have described the temporal orders that a narrative text can
follow, the anachronies (flashbacks and flash-forwards) that it can exhibit, the achronic (undatable) structures that it can accommodate.
Furthermore, they have characterized narrative speed and its canonical tempos (ellipsis, summary, scene, stretch, and pause). They have
investigated narrative frequency (the relationship between the number
of times an event happens and the number of times it is recounted),
examined narrative distance (the extent of narratorial mediation) and
narrative point of view (the perceptual or conceptual position according to which the narrated events are depicted), studied the types of
discourse that a text can adopt to report the utterances and thoughts
of characters, and analyzed the major kinds of narration (posterior,
anterior, simultaneous, intercalated) as well as their modes of combination (two different acts of narration can be linked through a simple
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1989 Eaton Conference on
Science Fiction and Fantasy (University of California, Riverside).
Poetics Today 11:2 (Summer 1990). Copyright ? 1990 by The Porter Institute for
Poetics and Semiotics. ccc 0333-5372/90/$2.50.
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conjunction, the embedding of one into the other, or the alternation of elements from the first with elements from the second). They
have, moreover, explored the distinctive features of first-, second-,
and third-person narrative. Finally, they have specified (some of) the
signs referring to the narrator (who may be more or less overt, knowledgeable, reliable, self-conscious) and to the narratee, and they have
delineated the respective functions of these two "actants of communication," the possible distances between them-temporal, linguistic,
moral, intellectual, etc.-and the distances separating them from the
characters and events in the story.
The investigation of story-of that which is narrated-has also
yielded notable results. For example, students of narrative have examined the minimal constituents of the narrated (existents and events,
goal-directed actions and mere happenings, states and processes), and,
following the insight of Roland Barthes (and the Russian formalists),
they have distinguished those constituents essential to the causal and
chronological coherence of the story from those not essential to it.
They have studied the relations (syntagmatic and paradigmatic, spatiotemporal, logical, thematic, functional, transformational) between the
minimal units and drawn attention to the mechanisms underlying narrative surprise and suspense. They have also demonstrated that narrative sequences can be said to consist of a series of minimal constituents,
the last one of which in time is a (partial) repetition or transformation
of the first; and they have proved that complex sequences can be said
to result from the linking of simpler ones through such operations as
conjunction, embedding, and alternation.
Moreover, apart from showing that situations and events, states or
processes, actions or happenings can be grouped into basic (functional)
categories and that participants in them can be categorized according to (actantial and thematic) roles, they have explored the nature
of characters and settings as well as the various techniques through
which they are constituted and described. Characters, for instance,
can be more or less textually prominent, dynamic or static, consistent or inconsistent, simple, unidimensional, and highly predictable
or complex, multidimensional, and capable of surprising behavior;
they are classifiable not only in terms of their conformity to standard
types (the braggart, the cuckold, the wise fool, the femme fatale) or of
their corresponding to certain spheres of action but also in terms of
their superiority, equality, or inferiority (in kind or degree) to other
(human) beings and to "nature" or in terms of their acts, words, feelings, appearance, etc.; and their attributes can be explicitly and reliably stated (for example, in a set-piece presentation by the narrator)
or they can be inferred from their (mental, emotional, and physical)
behavior. As for settings, they too can be textually important or neg-
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erably exhibit simultaneous narration and the class of first-person narratives that preferably do not exhibit anterior narration; there is the
class of third-person narratives that must not adopt an omniscient
point of view; there is also the class of third-person narratives that
must not adopt an omniscient point of view, preferably exhibit posterior narration, and preferably do not exhibit beings with a salient
private ontology; and so forth. Let me add one further complication:
some features or feature specifications (involving, say, conjunctions or
disjunctions) are more formally complex than others. For instance,
there is not only the class of first-person narratives and that of secondperson narratives but also the class of first- and second-person narratives; and there is the class of narratives with posterior and anterior
narration, the class of narratives preferably exhibiting internal or external point of view, the class of narratives preferably not exhibiting
flat characters or characters superior in kind to nature, and the class of
narratives which must use either free direct or free indirect discourse.
Note that the number of features and, a fortiori, the number of
classes are indefinitely large. Note, too, that both the list of features
and the list of classes are open-ended. After all, it is quite possible that
certain features have been overlooked and will come to light through
further investigation. It is just as possible that certain other features
will be invented by certain future texts. In the case of motifs, for example, it is not only conceivable but practically certain that new ones
will appear in narratives as our world and our literature change. If the
list of features is thus (always) to be completed, it is also to be refined
(or reduced): some of the features may, for instance, prove to be redundant (say, if they are always uniquely implied by other features),
and some may require a more accurate and detailed characterization.
Many of those I have mentioned so far can be said to be "fuzzy"
or "relative" as opposed to "precise" or "absolute": compare, for example, "conforming to situations and events in our own 'real' world"
or "exhibiting many anachronies" with "adopting posterior narration"
or "using external point of view." In certain cases, the fuzziness (or
relativity) is easily disposed of: nothing prevents us, in principle, from
replacing a feature like "exhibiting many anachronies" with a set of
features like "exhibiting ninety, two hundred, or three hundred and
seventy anachronies." In other cases, however, the fuzziness or relativity constitutes a more integral aspect of the feature: "conforming to
situations and events in our own 'real' world," for example, depends
to a great extent on our conceptions and perceptions, and two different readers or the same reader at two different times may judge the
degree of conformity to the world of the same given work very differently. Likewise, at least some of the canonical tempos of narrative
speed are (often) a function of our own view of the world (as well as a
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Note that the set of theoretical genres subsumes the various categories-types, species, aesthetic forms and natural forms, fixed forms,
subtypes, or subgenres-that have been taken to mediate between
texts in particular and literature or discourse in general. Given its
makeup, the set could even accommodate a Croce-like view according
to which each text (also) constitutes its own genre: the set of theoretical
genres includes an indefinitely large number of genres with a (potential) membership of one. However, the view I have been outlining is
much closer in spirit to that of theorists like Todorov (1973) or Hernadi (1972), who have called for or attempted to develop deductive
rather than inductive generic models and descriptive rather than prescriptive ones. The set which I have isolated is clearly deductive: given
a list of features pertinent to narrative, a class of possible narratives
that specifies for its members a number of these features constitutes
a theoretical genre and there are as many genres as there are possible specifications. The set is also clearly not prescriptive: Thus, it
does not specify which features a given work must possess in order to
qualify for a certain label; in fact, it does not use any labels. Rather,
the set is descriptive of possibilities (it simply describes possible classes
which narratives-extant or not-can be said to constitute or belong
to). Of course, the set can function as a companion to or basis for both
prescriptive or descriptive historical approaches to genre (only those
works conforming to theoretical class A or B can be labeled X or Y;
all works labeled X or Y correspond to theoretical class A or B).
Note, moreover, that this set of theoretical genres tends to correspond to or confirm our intuitions about, knowledge of, or practices
in generic classification. It is, after all, constituted by classes whose
natures are very heterogeneous and whose characterizations vary considerably in precision and detail. Some classes specify three hundred
features and others specify only two; some specify features such as
conformity to our world, while others concentrate on such traits as
posterior narration, external point of view, or anachronic presentation
of events. Likewise, genres have historically been defined and distinguished on the basis of a motley, and more or less constraining, collection of features. Some generic distinctions or taxonomies are based
(at least in part) on what is represented (novel and romance), whereas
some are based on techniques of representation (diary novel and memoir novel); some stress mode (epic, lyric, dramatic) and some stress
length (novel, novella, short story); some focus on motivation (marvelous, fantastic, realistic) and others on motifs (fox stories, dog stories,
detective stories); still others privilege degree of legibility, effects on
the receiver, or relations between various worlds in the narrative universe; and, in many cases, competing and contradictory criteria are
invoked or devised to characterize certain categories of texts.
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The case of science fiction, for example, is telling. Partly because students of the genre often mix evaluative measures with non-evaluative
ones (and speak of "real" or "good science fiction" as opposed to
"science fiction, period"), partly because they favor rather different
definitional criteria (sociopolitical or ideological ones in Suvin [1979],
say, and the nature of event motivation in Todorov [1973]), partly because they sometimes compare and contrast the science fiction corpus
with corpora that do not necessarily constitute the most appropriate
points of reference (for example, the corpus of realistic fiction), and
partly because of the remarkable range, diversity, and richness of science fiction (or of what has, now and then, been assembled under that
rubric: sword and sorcery but also Borges, Calvino, Pynchon, Lessing,
and even Kafka or Cicero), these students have arrived at divergent
and even contrary characterizations of their object of study. Todorov
(1973), for instance, views science fiction as a particular subtype of
the marvelous; Brooke-Rose (1981) sees it as a mixture of romance
and realism, as in some way belonging both to the marvelous and the
realistic; as for Suvin (1979), though he considers estrangement or defamiliarization crucial to myth and the marvelous as well as to science
fiction, he ends up situating the latter (because of its cognitive and
pluritemporal nature) very far from the former.
It seems to me that the theoretical class whose requisites for membership all and only those texts designated science fiction fulfill is a
class which specifies no features pertaining to the narrating as opposed to the narrated. Science fiction narratives-like love stories,
detective stories, or spy novels-are defined by the elements making
up their story and not by those constituting their discourse (cf. Scholes
and Rabkin 1977: 170). Thus, there is (or could be) science fiction
in the first, second, or third person, with internal, external, or zero
focalization, posterior, anterior, simultaneous, or intercalated narration, omnipresent or inexistent commentary, and so on and so forth.
Indeed, much science fiction comes very close to realist or naturalist
fiction (Brooke-Rose [1981] shows, for instance, that the former can
feature thirteen of the fifteen basic traits that Hamon [1973] associates
with the latter); much comes very close to romance and to (other kinds
of) fantasy fiction (soap opera, sword and sorcery); and much could be
included in avant-garde or postmodernist fiction (Brian Aldiss's Barefoot in theHead, Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren, or James G. Ballard's The
AtrocityExhibition).
As for the story features that science fiction narratives must or
must not exhibit-they are few and far between. Indeed, in the final
analysis, perhaps no more than two clusters of features (two dominant
features along with their positive or negative specifications, presuppositions, and consequences) are necessary to characterize them. First, in
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of tellers. Granted, the set has relatively little to say about genre as
a function of certain effects (laughter, for instance, or pity and fear):
though it does not entirely neglect pragmatic factors (such as conformity to certain realities and conventions or degrees of legibility and
narrativity), the set differs from the many generic classifications which,
ever since Aristotle, have partially defined the generic nature of texts
in terms of the reactions they evoke in the receiver. Still, it could be
helpful in establishing possible explanations for these reactions by providing characterizations of those classes that tend to evoke them and,
in principle, could incorporate effects in its list of features.
Besides, the set of theoretical narrative classes constitutes a powerful instrument for the systematic study of historical genres. It not only
facilitates or allows for their possible characterization or a systematic
comparison between them, it also permits the exploration of certain
basic problems pertaining to them: Why is it, for example, that some
classes would be considered generic and others not (or why is it that
some would be viewed as more generic than others)? What, historically, is the generic importance of different features? What are some
of the possible bases of generic hierarchies? Why do some theoretical classes have actual equivalents at certain times and places while
others do not? and so on and so forth. In other words, the set of
theoretical narrative classes can help define the literary or discursive
consciousness of various social groups and, more generally, illuminate
the history and geography of literature and discourse.
Finally, and perhaps above all, this set manages to characterize the
nature and respect the uniqueness of particular texts (by specifying
an indefinitely large number of classes to which they would belong,
including the class of one that they would constitute) while clarifying
and underlining the nature of genre. The latter is a configuration or
entity mediating (at various levels of abstraction) between the (more)
general and the (more) particular, between code and message, langue
and parole, discourse and text. Indeed, genre is a configuration or
entity through which the text can signify either its appurtenance to
the general (to many levels of generality, to many families of texts)
or its concretization and constitution of a particular. In other words,
through genre, a text is and makes sense.
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Bremond, Claude
1985 "Concept et theme," Poetique 16: 415-23.
282
Brooke-Rose, Christine
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