Narrative Theory

Narrative theory — also called narratology — provides a vocabulary and a set of analytical tools for understanding how stories are told. For A-Level, narrative theory is invaluable because it gives you precise terminology for analysing the narrative techniques that every text employs. Instead of vaguely saying "the writer uses first person," you can analyse focalisation, temporal ordering, and narrative reliability with the precision that examiners reward.

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Gérard Genette: Narrative Discourse (1972)

Genette, a French literary theorist, developed the most influential vocabulary for analysing narrative structure. The three key areas are:

1. Time: Order, Duration, Frequency

Order: How Is the Story Arranged?

Term	Definition	Example
Analepsis (flashback)	The narrative moves backwards in time — narrating events that occurred before the current moment	Spies: old Stephen's memories of his 1943 childhood
Prolepsis (flash-forward)	The narrative moves forward in time — anticipating events that have not yet occurred	The Handmaid's Tale: the Historical Notes leap forward to 2195
In medias res	The narrative begins in the middle of the action	Othello: the play opens with Iago's conspiracy already in progress
Non-linear narration	The narrative does not follow chronological order	The God of Small Things: moves between 1969 and 1993 without following a linear path

Why It Matters: The order in which a story is told shapes our understanding of causation, suspense, and meaning. When Top Girls places its chronologically earliest scene at the end of the play, it forces the audience to reflect on causes rather than simply following consequences.

Duration: How Much Time Does the Narrative Spend on Events?

Term	Definition	Effect
Scene	Narrative time roughly equals story time (typically dialogue)	Creates immediacy; foregrounds character interaction
Summary	Narrative time is shorter than story time — events are compressed	Allows large spans of time to be covered efficiently
Pause	Story time stops while the narrator describes, reflects, or digresses	Creates emphasis; allows thematic reflection
Ellipsis	Events are skipped entirely — a gap in the narrative	What is NOT narrated can be as significant as what is

Application: In Waterland, Tom Crick's narrative is characterised by extraordinary pauses — long digressions about the history of the Fens, the life cycle of eels, the draining of the marshes. These pauses are not "interruptions" but are the substance of the novel's argument: that everything is connected, that the present cannot be understood without the past.

Frequency: How Often Are Events Narrated?

Term	Definition	Example
Singulative	An event that happened once is narrated once	Most conventional narration
Repetitive	An event that happened once is narrated multiple times	The God of Small Things: the central tragedy is approached repeatedly from different angles
Iterative	Events that happened many times are narrated once	"Every morning, she would..." — conveying routine, habit, repetition

Application: Roy's use of repetitive narration in The God of Small Things is one of the novel's most distinctive features. The central events — Sophie Mol's death, Velutha's beating — are narrated multiple times, each time revealing new details and perspectives. This repetition creates a sense of obsession, trauma, and the impossibility of fully understanding what happened.

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2. Focalisation: Who Sees?

Genette distinguished between who speaks (the narrator) and who sees (the focaliser). This distinction is crucial:

Type	Definition	Example
Zero focalisation	The narrator knows more than any character — omniscient narration	The narrator of Middlemarch sees into all characters' minds
Internal focalisation	The narrative is filtered through a character's consciousness — we see what they see, know what they know	Spies: focalised through young Stefan — we see the adult world through a child's confused perception
External focalisation	The narrator describes only what can be observed from outside — no access to characters' thoughts	Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" — the reader must infer the characters' feelings from dialogue and behaviour
Variable focalisation	The narrative shifts between different characters' perspectives	Revolutionary Road: alternates between Frank's and April's perspectives

Why It Matters: Focalisation determines what we know and how we feel about characters. When Spies is focalised through young Stefan, we experience the adult world as mysterious, exciting, and dangerous — but we also miss the realities that an adult focaliser would recognise (Keith's mother's affair, the identity of the man in the Barns).