COLI 289F SUNY Binghamton University Computer Games and Narrative Essay Respond to one of these prompts in about 400 words:1. Gerald Prince defines a narra

COLI 289F SUNY Binghamton University Computer Games and Narrative Essay Respond to one of these prompts in about 400 words:1. Gerald Prince defines a narrative as “the representation of at least two real or fictive events in a time sequence, neither of which presupposes or entails the other.” How does this definition capture the criteria of defining what narratology and narrative are, and mark the borders that separate narrative from non-narrative? 2. In light of the different definitions of “narrative” provided by Prince and others, how can computer games fit the definition and be regarded as narratives? What are the ways in which they could be studied and analyzed by narratologists? GERALD PRINCE
(Philadelphia)
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Surveying Narratology
When I accepted to participate in the “What is Narratology?” colloquium,
I decided to survey narratology: not merely because I had already reviewed, remodeled, and revisited it a number of times 1 ; and not only to
follow at least some of the lines drawn by the organizers 2 ; but mainly because surveying involves the examination of boundaries and because,
from the beginning, the question of boundaries has played a significant
role in narratology.
Since narratology is the science of narrative 3 (or a theory of narrative),
its very scope depends on the definition of the latter. It is, as a famous article by Gérard Genette indicates 4 , contingent upon the boundaries of narrative, upon distinctions between narrative and non-narrative, or between
both and antinarrative, or even between narrative as entity and narrative
as quality. As we know, nothing like a consensus has been reached on that
subject. Some theorists and researchers believe that everything is narrative; others maintain that everything can be; and still others contend that,
in a sense, nothing is (because narrativity is culture-dependent and context-bound). Some define narrative as a verbal recounting of one or more
events and others as any kind of event representation (including non1
4
See, e.g.. Prince (1992a), (1992b), (1999).
Among their initial queries: “what kind of theory should narratology be?” and “how
extensive is the field which narratology should cover?”
Tzvetan Todorov, who coined the term in Grammaire du Décaméron defined it as “la
science du récit” (Todorov 1969: 10).
Genette (1976).
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Gerald Prince
verbal ones). Some argue that it involves consecution, consequence, and
even closure, that it must be populated with anthropomorphic individuals,
that it must be anchored in everyday human experience; others do not
agree with all, many, or any of these specifications 5 . I myself have wavered but more on that later.
Even if a consensus were reached and everyone agreed on a definition
of narrative (for narratological purposes), another set of boundaries—the
boundaries of narratology, as a well-known piece by Michel MathieuColas once put it 6 —would have to be determined. The definition of the
discipline (or perhaps “undiscipline”) varies widely depending on
whether one believes in “getting it all in” or getting it all out, “only connecting” or always disconnecting, always historicizing or only abstracting, theory or science, expansiveness or restraint. There are formalist
considerations of narrative but also dialogical and phenomenological
ones; there are Aristotelian approaches to it as well as tropological or deconstructive ones; there are cognitivist and constructivist accounts of it,
historical, sociological, and anthropological views, feminist takes, queer
speculations, and political ones 7 . As suggested by the increasingly frequent recourse to hyphenated and modified expressions (structuralist narratology, postclassical narratology, socionarratology, psychonarratology)
or by the adoption of a plural (I am thinking of the title of Ansgar
Niinning’s paper and of that of the recent collection edited by David
Herman) 8 , it is not evident to everyone that the remarkable variety of discourses pertaining to narrative could or should be coherently subsumed
by narratology. In 1966, Roland Barthes would probably not have thought
so. The narrational level, he argued in one of the foundational texts of the
discipline, should be the last one to be addressed by the structural analysis
of narrative:
5
6
7
See, e.g., Adam (1984), (1985); Bal (1985); Bremond (1973); Coste (1989); Fludernik
(1996); Genette (1980), (1988); Greimas (1983), (1970); Herman (2002); Prince
(1987); Ricoeur (1984); Richardson (2000); Ryan (1992).
Mathieu-Colas (1986).
See, e.g., Herman (1997); Lanser (1992), (1986); O’Neill (1994); the three numbers of
Poetics Today revisiting narratology: 11.2 (1990), 11.4 (1990), and 12.3 (1991); the
recent special number of Style edited by Brian Richardson: 34.2 (2000); and the recent
special number oí Narrative edited by Emma Kafalenos: 9.2 (2001).
Nünning “Narratology or Narratologies?” (this volume); Herman, ed. (1999).
What Is Narratology? : Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory, edited by Tom Kindt, and Hans-Harald Müller,
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Surveying Narratology
3
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beyond the narrational level begins the external world, that is to say other systems (social, economic, ideological) which no longer include narratives only, but elements of
another substance (historical facts, determinations, behaviors, etc.) […] [F]rom that
point on, it is necessary to resort to another semiotics .
Tzvetan Todorov, when he emphasized that the object of the “science”
he named narratology “is constituted by actions such as a certain discourse, called narrative, organizes them,” and Nilli Diengott, who forcefully distinguished narratology as theoretical narrative poetics from “other
fields within the study of literature, such as interpretation, historical poetics, or criticism,” would also endorse a restrictive view of the field10. But
Didier Coste, Thomas Leitch, or Susan Lanser (who stated that narratology ought to “study narrative in relation to a referential context that is simultaneously linguistic, literary, historical, biographical, social, and
political”) would support an altogether different view11. As for me, I often
side with the former (restrictive) group, but more on that later.
Once again, even if a consensus were reached, still another set of
boundaries may have to be established. After all, whether it is expansive
or restrictive, narratology presumably studies what is relevant to narrative. Unless nothing in narrative texts and their contexts (from the motion
of electrons to that of the stars) is alien to them and if only for practical
reasons, narratology has to pose the question of narrative (and narratological!) relevance. Now, a number of criteria can be invoked regarding
the latter but none has proven unassailable. Perhaps, as I have already argued in a different context12, the most commonly sanctioned one is the
distinctiveness criterion. Narratology is concerned (significantly if not exclusively) with the differentia specifica of narrative, what in narrative is
distinctive of narrative. There is a lot more than narrative in narrative
(comic power, colorful images, psychological insight) and narratology
aspires (among other things) to account for narrative qua narrative (in its
narrativity): it attempts to characterize all and only possible narrative texts
to the extent that they are narrative (that they exhibit features specific to
narrative). Thus, if narrative is defined as the representation of events or
changes in states of affairs (and non-narrative is not), certain temporal relations, say, would be narrative-specific whereas comic power or psycho9
10
11
12
Barthes (1975: 264-65).
Todorov (1969: 10).
Coste (1989); Leitch (1986); Lanser (1986).
Prince (1995: 76-77).
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Gerald Prince
logical insight would not (given the definition and since there are many—
far too many!—narratives that exhibit neither and numerous nonnarratives that exhibit both). But if comic power or psychological insight
does not constitute a differentia specifica of narrative, the same can be
said of character (think of Theophrastus and La Bruyère), of description
(which occurs outside narrative), or even of point of view (since any entity or situation, in or out of narrative, can be considered in different manners, with different attitudes, from different positions). Yet these three
categories—especially the last one—have attracted a great deal of attention from narratologists (and often not in their specifically narrative functioning). In other words, the distinctiveness criterion is not determinative.
Nor is the integrality criterion. Narratologists pay much more attention
to a narrator’s diegetic situation or degree of covertness, for instance, than
to a narrator’s weight or age presumably because every narrator can be
described as extra- or intra-, homo- or heterodiegetic and every narrator
can be described as more or less overt or covert but not every narrator can
be characterized in terms of age or heaviness (what is the narrator’s
weight in “Hills Like White Elephants,” “Sally ate before she drank,” or
“Peter rode off into the sunset after mounting his horse”? More generally,
if narrative features and narratological accounts constitute and designate a
narrating entity, must that entity have a weight or age?). However, narratologists pay considerable attention to narrative space, say, though it is
quite possible to narrate without referring to the space of the story, the
space of the narrating instance, or the relations between them: consider
“Mary spoke to Irma before she spoke to Joan.”
Other criteria prove just as problematic. Simplicity, for example, is not
only a function of the measures selected (number of elements used in the
model proposed, number of rules for combining these elements, diversity
of the elements or the rules) but also a function of the results yielded
(what if they are inconclusive or (technically) uninteresting?); and elegance—another frequently invoked criterion—should be left to the designer.
In the end, maybe the most consistently applied and applicable criterion is that of productivity. The inclusion of a category like narrative
space in narratological models was at least partly motivated and vindicated by its traditional and continued importance in “adequate” accounts
of narrative possibilities as well as by its capacity to be linked with other
(traditionally) important categories in such accounts (narrative speed, for
example, or narrative frequency). Which leads me to say now (though I
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Surveying Narratology
5
will come back to it later) that, in principle, no textual (or contextual) feature of narrative should be considered narratologically irrelevant unless it
proves unproductive (or suffers from similarly afflictive conditions).
Of course, even when some kind of accord obtains about the set of features or categories that are narratologically relevant (or any proper subset
thereof), their boundaries are often controversial because their domains
are open to dispute. Arguments about point of view or focalization, for instance, have not disappeared; the (narratological) situation of a category
like ellipsis is certainly debatable (should it be classified under narrative
speed or narrative frequency?); and even as seemingly stable a figure as
the narrator is not immune from revisionism. After considering the functions implied by an act of narration, Marie-Laure Ryan recently concluded that narratorhood is a matter of degree. The narrator is not a
theoretical primitive. Its mode of existence depends on the number of narratorial functions it fulfills (and its theoretical correlate, the narratee, has a
correspondingly variable ontological status)13.
The frequent redrawing of some boundaries and the contesting of others, the redefinition of certain domains and the reclassification of certain
features as well as other kinds of controversy are clearly not specific to
narratology (or any particular branch of knowledge) though they may be
more commonly found in immature and underdeveloped fields. Nor are
they necessarily symptoms of trouble or disarray. They can even constitute signs of vitality, vigor, and the adventurousness that often leads to
discovery. But they can also bring about a dizzying proliferation of terminology (and dictionaries!); they can mean repeated starts from scratch and
concomitant wastes of effort; and—what’s probably even worse—they
can lead to adhocity and incoherence. In fact, the rigor of certain constraints, the precision of certain distinctions, the stability of certain
boundaries are no less crucial to the health and energy of a field and, in
what follows, I will, once again, make certain discriminations and propose certain definitions that I believe important to the development of
narratology.
First things first. Not everything is (a) narrative and not every representation is. For an entity to be a narrative, it must be analyzable as the
representation of one (or more than one non-randomly connected, nonsimultaneous, and non-contradictory) transformation of one (or more than
13
Ryan (2001). On point of view and focalization, see van Peer/Chatman (2001).
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Gerald Prince
one) state of affairs, one (or more than one) event which is not logically
presupposed by the transformed state and/or does not logically entail its
transform. However cumbersome, this definition, which is at once flexible
and limiting, has, I think, several virtues (beside agreeing or at least not
conflicting with commonly held views about the nature of narrative). For
example, it allows for a distinction between narrative and non-narrative (a
single linguistic sign, say, or the repetition of the same sign, a series of
nonsensical syllables, a purely phatic utterance, a simple existential statement, but also the mere description of an action like “John opened the
window” or “Mary closed the door,” a syllogism, an argument, and so on
and so forth). The definition also allows for distinguishing between
narrative and antinarrative (e.g. Robbe-Grillet’s La Jalousie) by assigning
cohesion, consistency, and even closure to narrative representations. Most
generally, perhaps, and to use Emile Benveniste’s terms, the definition
evokes the semantic rather than semiotic nature and mode of signification
of narrative entities: unlike a sign, a narrative is not recognized but understood (which, no doubt, helps to explain the differences of opinion regarding the narrative status of many entities)14.
If the definition points to a number of boundaries and makes a number
of conditions or restrictions explicit, it also makes room for a considerable
amount of diversity. For instance, it does not specify the medium of
narrative representations: oral, written, or sign language, still or moving
pictures, gestures, or a combination thereof. Nor does it specify their truth
or falsehood, their factuality or fictionality, their traditionalism or modernity, their ordinariness or literariness, their spontaneity or deliberateness.
Nor does it detail the nature of their content and its relation to anthropomorphic experience, the kind of topics addressed and themes developed,
the sort of situations and events represented or the nature of their many
possible links. Furthermore, it puts no limits on the potential magnitude of
narratives; it barely indicates the degree of cohesion or the kind of closure
they (ought to) possess; and it hardly constrains modes of narration (different ways of representing the same situations and events) or modes of
narrativity (what Marie-Laure Ryan describes as “the various textual realizations of plots, the various ways in which a text relies on a narrative
14
Benveniste (1974).
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Surveying Narratology
7
structure (or plot, or story) and suggests this structure as a model of coherence”15).
Narratology should make explicit those definitional boundaries of narrative and it should account for those narrative diversities. As a matter of
fact, it partly does. In the area of the narrating, for example, narratologists
have described the temporal orders that a narrative can follow, the
anachronies that it can exhibit, the achronic structures that it can accommodate. Moreover, they have characterized narrative speed and its canonical tempos. They have investigated narrative frequency, examined
narrative distance and narrative point of view, studied the types of discourse that a text can adopt to present the utterances and thoughts of characters, and analyzed the major kinds of narration (posterior, anterior,
simultaneous, intercalated) as well as their modes of combination. They
have also explored the distinctive features of first-, second-, and thirdperson narrative. Finally, they have specified (some of) the signs referring
to the narrator (who may be more or less overt, knowledgeable, reliable,
self-conscious, etc.) and to the narratee, and they have delineated (some
of) the respective functions of these two actants of communication, the
possible distances between them— temporal, linguistic, moral, intellectual, etc.—as well as the possible distances separating them from the
situations, events, and characters in the world represented.
The investigation of that world has likewise yielded notable results.
For instance, students of narrative have examined the minimal constituents of the narrated (existents and events, goal-directed actions and mere
happenings, states and processes) and they have distinguished those constituents essential to the causal and chronological coherence of the story
from those not essential to it. They have studied many of the possible relations (syntagmatic and paradigmatic, spatiotemporal, logical, functional,
transformational) between the minimal units and they have demonstrated
that narrative sequences consisting of a series of minimal constituents the
last one of which in time is a (partial) transformation of the first can be
combined into more complex sequences through such operations as conjunction, embedding, and alternation. Moreover, they have explored the
nature of the participants in the narrated situations and events as well as
the settings in which the latter take place. Characters, for example, can be
more or less textually prominent, dynamic or static, consistent or incon15
Ryan (1992: 369).
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