Abstract
This article is based on the assumption that lyric poems generally share the fundamental constituents of story and discourse as well as the narrative act with narrative fiction in that they likewise feature a sequence of incidents (usually of a mental kind), mediate and shape it from a specific perspective and present it from a particular point of time vis-à-vis the sequence of incidents. A general outline of the narratological categories which may be applied to poetry analysis is given using William Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a cloud” as an illustrative example. The aim of the article is heuristic: the intention is not to blur the distinction between fiction and poetry and treat poems indiscriminately as narrative texts, but rather identify and highlight the specifically poetic forms and functions which instances of narrating adopt in poems. The main section of the article will then focus on the first of the three aspects mentioned, the modelling of poetic sequentiality, i.e. the specification of types of plot, plotting and presentation of plot in poetry and the analysis of their functions.
Highlights
Hierdie artikel is gebaseer op die aanname dat liriese gedigte en verhalende tekste die fundamentele samestellende elemente van storie en verhaal, asook die vertelhandeling in gemeen het
Hühn highlighting their distinctive features. As for poetry, such a transgeneric recourse to narratology is apt to demonstrate that narrative texts and lyric poems, in spite of their apparent differences in form, technique and function, share essential constituents and that narratological categories can, profitably be applied to poetry in the expectation that the more comprehensive scope and highly developed status of narratology as well as the discriminatory capacity of narratological terminology will both offer a fresh impetus to the theory of poetry and suggest new practical methods for the analysis of poems
The majority of narratological models explicitly or implicitly rest on the premise that narrativity is constituted by the combination and interaction of two different dimensions, of sequentiality and mediacy: a sequence of incidents evolving in time, on the one hand and, on the other, the structured representation and communication of such a sequence by a mediator in a semiotic medium and from a particular position (Genette’s “récit”, Chatman’s “discourse”)
Summary
The theoretical foundations of poetry criticism are increasingly being deplored as deficient. Tend to concentrate on only one of these two dimensions: Stanzel (1979), Genette (1980), Rimmon-Kenan (2002) mainly on the discourse level and the forms and modalities of mediacy (with the further differentiation, for instance, between voice and focalisation); Propp (1968), Bremond (1973), Frye (1957) on the story-dimension and the modalities of plot-development This premise has been categorically rejected by Fludernik (1996), who grounds her narratological concept prototypically in the everyday situation of oral storytelling and the conversational communication of personal real life experiences, equating narrativity with what she calls experientiality and consciousness. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed – and gazed – but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon the inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils
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