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hello and welcome to this introduction to narratology what is narratology narratology is the theory of narrative you can also call it the theory of storytelling the aim of this video is to present a pictorial guide mainly for beginners it is based on as many simple graphics and animations as I was able to access or create this is page 1 of 12.
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there are many types of stories and many types of narratologies and therefore we must be selective this overview is an attempt to combine mainly four approaches first there's classical narratology which is Gerard Genette's approach dating back to as early as 1972. then there is Natural Narratolgy a model that was introduced by Monika Fludernik in 1996. third we have focalization theory also known as point of view theory as developed by various
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authors including myself then there is transmedial narratology which is a recent approach focusing on storytelling in and across different media specifically including comics films computer games and so on you may want to check this video's description for the full script including references footnotes and additional suggestions page 2 elements of narrative texts this page starts off with a list of nine basic technical terms
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our first graphic is a speech bubble which depicts a narrative discourse a discourse is either spoken or a written text and the speaker or writer of it is a narrator when telling a story the narrator creates a story world which is populated by characters wait a minute is there a dog among the characters yes there is we actually accept all beings human or not as possible story characters
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each moment in the story's action takes place at a certain time and location the story Here and Now similarly each moment in the narrator's discourse is situated in place and time so this is the discourse here and now sometimes especially when dealing with narrative fiction we need to add the real life author as a separate agent mainly because authors of fiction often choose to invent narrators for instance an older author may invent a younger narrator
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or a male author may let the story be told by a female narrator as is suggested in the picture a narrative discourse is heard or read by an audience of one or more recipients please note that narrators and recipients are outside or external to the story world while characters are in or internal to the story world this is an important distinction
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finally efficient storytelling usually depends on a certain amount of cooperation between narrators and recipients narrators will consider what's new or familiar to their audience and adjust their discourse accordingly likewise recipients will try to be open-minded and constructive in their processing all the information provided and if assumptions and expectations are largely compatible on both sides we can speak of an implicit narrative contract between the two
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parties but as we all know contracts do get broken occasionally that's all there is on this page so far the definitions are all fairly obvious as thankfully most definitions in natural narratology are at least on the level of basics when we come to the final detail of all this things will become a bit more challenging page three homodiegetic and heterodiegetic texts there are many types of narratives but at this point let us focus on the two most important ones
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namely first-person or homodiegetic narratives and third-person or heterodiegetic narratives the Greek-based terms roughly translatable as same-narrative and other-narrative were coined by Genette and they have been adopted by practically all modern narratologists let's add a graphic depicting a narrator called A and two characters one of them called A prime and the other one called B Why A prime because we want to indicate that narrator A tells a story
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about himself often this is also called a memoir or an autobiographical narrative or a personal experience narrative abbreviated p-e-n or pen many narratologists identify the homodiegetic narrator as a narrating-I or narrating first person and A prime as an experiencing-I the two terms are listed here the second main type of narrative is the heterodiegetic narrative here the narrator tells a story about other people that is characters BCD etc what is important is that
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nowhere in a heterodiegetic story world is there an experiencing-I like the A prime that we have on the left in other words both types are based on a necessary condition a homodiegetic narrative must have an experiencing-I and a heterodetic narrative must not have an experiencing-I here is a box giving an example of how a homodiegetic narrator might begin his or her story let me tell you the story of how I almost got killed by my brother in contrast the
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heterodiegetic narrator might kick off by saying let me tell you a story in the hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit which of course is the famous beginning of the novel by JRR Tolkien let's clear the board and see how our model can be extended by adding aspects of perspective and point of view page 4 is on perception and perspective this wonderful cartoon was accessed from a Creative Commons source on the internet it is a static picture but it is also one that tells a little
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story two guys meet point at an object lying on the ground and apparently quarrel about what they see and who sees it correctly guy a claims that the object is a 6 guy B says it is a 9 we can immediately understand why this is so because we can easily adopt either A's or B's point of view and see the object just like they do even of the two interpretations are contradictory now I'd like to ask you this question does the picture offer any other perspectives the answer
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is yes because we as viewers and also the artist who created the picture see or saw the object in question from a different point of view and unlike characters A and B we would accept that the object could be either a six or a nine so the number of perspectives depicted in the cartoon is at least three let us use this Post-It note to introduce some more concepts characters shown in the act
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of perceiving the story world will be called reflectors this is a term invented by Henry James in 1909 A and B in the cartoon are reflectors reflectors are characters who are presented in such a way that we can access or adopt their point of view or as the German linguist Karl Buehler put it in 1934 transpose to their point of view which actually is what we just did
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let us also introduced Daniel Bickerton's distinction between online perception and offline perception online perception is what we perceive via our ordinary waking senses offline perception is what we see in our Mind's Eye such as memories dreams visions and other things purely imagined What our cartoon also shows is that a person's face bodily stance and behavior can be expressive of a mental state this is often referred to as attributing a Theory of
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Mind or guessing the operation of somebody else's mind for instance in the cartoon the facial expressions of the reflectors suggest that both of them are wholly convinced of the correctness of their interpretation neither of them seems to be willing to adopt the other's point of view even though they should be able to do that just like we did with the illustration in mind we see that perceptional perspective is not only determined by physical factors such as
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time and place but also by psychological factors such as interest knowledge beliefs and attitudes we will use the common term mindset to refer to mental makeups and dispositions of this kind
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now page 5 is on mindset mindset effects can be proverbial some people can't see the wood for the trees others can the optimist sees the glass as half full the pessimist sees it as half empty let's try another example a slightly trickier one again our two guys see an object I'm going to show you what they see it as in a minute before I do please make a mental note of what you are seeing that object now what is it in cognitive psychology the case is known as the rat-man experiment
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guy A sees a rat-like animal B sees an old man's head look at the unambiguous versions in the two thought bubbles to verify that both interpretations are indeed possible though perhaps not equally likely this raises three questions first what did you see a rat or the head of a man second why does one interpretation seem to inhibit the other and third why is it so difficult to see both interpretations at the same time the tricky point is that the decision for or against either
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interpretation seems to be made automatically it happens beyond conscious awareness personally I would be happy to extend the concept of mindset to include unconscious motives and preferences maybe for some reason A is more interested in rats and B is more interested in Old Men but who knows maybe a neuroscientist would be able to give us a less speculative answer
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page six focalization in texts in narratology the term focalization refers to the perspectivization of a story world as such it is directly related to perceivers, points of view and our ability to transpose to another person's point of view there is some controversy about the exact definition of focalization and also about its overall narratological importance my view as you can probably guess is that it is hugely important in fact I think everything else depends on it here is
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a simplified version of the standard storytelling scenario reduced to the figures of the narrator the recipients and just one character to this I now add this colored green bubble indicating the character's field of perception note the difference between the narrator's discourse bubble and the character's perception bubble please also call to mind that perception can be said to be colored by the perceivers mindset once the character is used as a reflector the narrative
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turns into a reflector-mode narrative that is a story told from the point of view of a reflector when a narrator opts for the reflector mode we are invited to transpose to the reflector's point of view moreover it is sensible to assume that in order to tell a reflector-mode story the narrator must also transpose to the reflector's point of view for this reason the graphic contains two transposition arrows all told them there are three kinds of point of view that must be
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considered when analyzing textual narratives the reflector's point of view the narrator's point of view and the recipients' points of view we will call these internal and external focalizations respectively why internal and external because as defined earlier reflectors are internal to the story world and narrators and recipients are external to the storyworld note that being external to the story world does not mean that narrators and recipients are necessarily neutral
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or objective their perceptions are subject to time place and mindset conditions too
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page seven the composition of film earlier we spent some time listing the elements of textual narratives now let's do the same thing for the components of film
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as we all know a film is projected onto a screen and it is watched by an audience of spectators or let's call them recipients as before we also know that a film is produced by a team of creators including a director a script writer actors composers cinematographers editors and so on the director obviously has a special status and some directors more so than others for example in this screenshot the whole film is credited to Alfred Hitchcock and here it is
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Stanley Kubrick who gets credited for no less than three creative roles from a narratological perspective film is a special type of narrative communication its substance is not a text or a discourse but a composition of audiovisual elements as suggested in this tree diagram which lists still and moving pictures as well as various types of sound and music let us call the focal point where all of this is orchestrated a composition device CD for short
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the CD is just a theoretical construct but it acts like a communicating instance without us having to associate it with any real-life people such as a director also because film is a form of meaningful communication the CD is likely to abide by the rules of a narrative contract
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film analysis usually begins by decomposing the film's various sources of information in order to assess their contribution to the composition as a whole often a central part of this exercise is to assess the relevance the function the effect and the reliability of the data a brief analysis of a film scene will be offered on page 12. and on page 8 we turn to focalization in film the natural question is whether it is anything like focalization in texts for instance is what
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was called a reflector mode possible in film and is it also possible for the recipients and the CD to transpose to reflector's point of view well we already assumed as much when discussing our original cartoon on page 4 and in film there is in fact a very remarkable special technique called the point-of-view shot that represents the reflector mode almost perfectly perhaps even better than is possible in texts of course as before the recipients have their own point of
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view and so does the CD in all then just like in textural narratives the basic configuration comprises one type of internal focalization and two types of external focalization additionally we must call to mind that the film can also make use of an on-screen or off-screen narrator in which case yet another external point of view needs to be added to the overall scenario
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Page 9 a master template of focalization focalization as you may have gathered is quite a complex field the term was coined by Genette and he used it to draw attention to an important distinction namely the distinction between who speaks and who sees the speaker of a narrative text according to the Genette is a narrator and the viewer in the text is a reflector
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reconsidering this 10 years later Genette rephrased the reflector question as who perceives a logical widening of the scope obviously but also one that lends itself to further modifications adding an object and an adverbial extension we can ask who perceives what how and from which point of view and we will use this version as our Master template and here's what it looks like with options added in the subject or who slots we can
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distinguish between external and internal subjects of perception and as noted external subjects are either creative subjects like the narrator the author and the composition device or recipients like readers hearers or viewers in the verb slot we place the online offline modes and in the point of view slot we register the time place and mindset conditions and most of the parameters listed are plain everyday concepts in sum then focalization refer to the ways and means
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of presenting narrated worlds from the points of view of perceiving subjects specifically in this definition presenting refers to any textual filmic or pictorial representation and a narrated world can be a fictional or a non-fictional story world page 10 is on externality and internality so far our focus was on subjects of perception and it was their status as external or internal perceivers that was criterial for determining types of focalization however
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degrees of externality and internality can also be found on the surface level of a presentation
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we'll show you five pictures and put letters R and O to mark reflectors and objects of perception as for picture 1 let's treat it as an establishing shot of a cityscape at the beginning of a film no character is visible and thus no reflector is present either let us label this as external zero the zero indicating that zero characters are present moving on to picture two we see an elderly lady sitting in a waiting room could this character be a reflector well it is a possibility
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but without any further information we really have no idea what the lady is seeing feeling or thinking I'll Place question marked R's and O's but generally accept that the presentation is basically external we can use the label external-1 to acknowledge the presence of a character if we know that the character is a reflector a label like external-R would seem appropriate and I have added it in brackets picture 3 shows us Hamlet in act 5 of Shakespeare's play and now
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we evidently have a reflector looking at the skull of Yorick the former court jester Hamlet reflects on the meaninglessness of life as viewers we see the object that he sees and knowing his state of mind we can co-experience what it is like to be in the desperate situation that he finds himself in in cinematography this type of shot is called a reverse point of view shot and this is also a convenient label for this type of surface focalization picture 4 is a famous painting
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by Caspar David Friedrich entitled Wanderer above the Sea of Fog if this were a scene in a film the character would be a reflector shown from behind the recipients see what the reflector sees from an almost identical point of view and naturally we are also aware of the reflector's romantic mindset let us call it a proximate point of view presentation it is a powerful type of internal focalization but we do notice that it denies us a view of the reflector's face
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finally item 5 is a still from an episode of the television series Mash aptly entitled point of view in this point of view shot the reflector is a wounded soldier who is visited by the camp Commander we do not see the reflector because the camera is virtually located inside his head but we know he is there and we see what he sees we will call this a direct point of view presentation and
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we note that neither the reflector's face no much of his body is visible when using this technique of course there are many intermediate and borderline cases that can be added to this particular selection nevertheless even given the examples at hand we can already observe a kind of scalar progression a steady increase in degrees of internality moving from left to right and a steady increase in externality moving from right to left page 11 a scene from Vertigo
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analyzing pictures in isolation is one thing but in film and comics contextual knowledge easily overrides local interpretation a good example is this one frame from the famous museum scene of Hitchcock's Vertigo we see the character of Madeleine played by Kim Novak from behind looking at a painting seen in isolation we would categorize it as a proximate focalization as used in the Casper David Friedrich painting on the previous page however when seen in
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the context of its actual filmic sequence it needs to be interpreted quite differently
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[Music]
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here on page 12 I have decomposed the clip into 10 frames showing each individual shot the proximate point of view shot presented on the previous page comes up as frame number six in the storyboard however now that we have seen it in context we know that the scene is oriented not on Madeleine but on a different reflector it is Scottie played by James Stewart the ex-detective whose job it is to secretly observe Madeleine supposedly the wife of a friend the sequence consists
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of alternating external views of Scottie and direct point of view shots of what he perceives we get several views of the reflector's face and body and they are either so-called gaze shots as in frames 1 and 7 or reaction shots as in frames 3 7 and 10 bracketed by the external shots are the direct point of view shots 2 6 8 and 9. I have again distributed letters R and O to mark reflector and object of attention the external shots are now labeled external-R recognizing them
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as parts of the scene's overall reflector mode but the decomposition also challenges our understanding of the reflector's mindset as the external views connect us to the direction of Scottie's sight the point of view shots let us see what he is interested in we know that Scottie has fallen in love with Madeleine and the persistent musical motif that accompanies the action accentuates his mood of fascination and wonderment
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foremost in his mind are the same questions that we are asking ourselves why is she behaving so oddly what is her interest in the painting and what's the relevance of that bouquet of flowers much later we learn that she is only playacting Madeleine isn't even her real name and it is a playacting that relies on the gut reaction of transposition to achieve its intended deception and the deception does its work both on the reflector and the recipients one of Hitchcock's
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often quoted comments is that he enjoyed playing his audience like a piano in this case we see that there are two players Madeleine who plays Scottie and the director who plays the recipients
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that's the end of the video and hopefully it has served its purpose as a brief introduction even if only by scratching the surface remember notes and references are accessible from the description if any of this has caught your interest here is a possible to-do list I'll say goodbye at this point thanks very much for your patience any comments good or bad are very welcome
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