Narratology words

Been reading for lit again.
Theory does like the twirly wording.

Started at the start, so I'm on the chapter about time, and how story time relates to narrative time. Story has to happen in linear time, narrative can go all over the place.
Analepsis is flashbacks and prolepsis is flashforwards. Teach said she wished there was an easy way to remember that. I find it sort of easy, but I don't know if pointing out the relation of 'anal' to 'back' is of the good in class.

There's also ellipsis, which is missing time out, and paralipsis, which is missing things out even if you're talking about that time. In the example for paralipsis it says like not mentioning your brother when mentioning your childhood. So maybe later you turn out to have to mention your brother after all, and then analepsis can fill in the existence of brother.

I was thinking that ellipsis and paralipsis is where fanfic lives, often. In the missing bits.

I was also thinking they're fiddly difficult to spell.

The book has a bit about that in a footnote:
"Here begin the problems (and disgraces) of terminology. Prolepsis and analepsis offer the advantage of being - through their roots - part of a grammatical-rhetorical family some of whose other members will serve us later; -lepse - which in Greek refers to the fact of taking, whence, in narrative, assuming responsibility for and taking on (prolepsis: to take on something in advance; analepsis: to take on something after the event) - and the root -lipse (as in ellipsis or paralipsis) which refers, on the contrary, to the fact of leaving out, passing by without any mention." [Genette, Narrative Discourse, ch1 note11 p40]

So, fiddly, but logical if you can but remember the parts.


There's more words, like about reach (how far back do you flash) and extent (how much time does it cover) and if the flashback is partial (stays in its own time) or complete (catches up with narrative time). I think. And mixed means it gets in to the time of story already told.

There's an awful lot of words in a row, but they do seem useful, if I get the hang of them.

I'm fairly sure this isn't interesting to very many of whoever reads my LJ, but I come on here and type stuff from memory to summarise what I've learned. Sometimes with errors, I'm sure, but it makes me put things in tidy tellings, which is handy.


When talking about prolepsis, flashforwards, there was talking about first kisses. Because if it is said to be the first of many, then that is prolepsis, because you know a thing that hasn't happened yet, that being the many.

Anyways, it mentioned:

"a sentiment of nostalgia for what Vladimir Jankelevitch once called the 'primultimateness' of the first time: that is, the fact that the first time, to the very extent to which one experiences its inaugural value intensely, is at the same time always (already) a last time - if only because it is forever the last to have been the first, and after it, inevitably, the sway of repetition and habit begins." [Genette, Narrative Discourse, p72]

Except, of course, in fanfic, we can write the first time over and over and over again, and always be different, and always be the first time. And that intensity mentioned there would be why some people want to.

I think.

There's an awful lot of words in this book. And its mostly about a book I haven't actually read, which never does help. But seeing as understanding half of it is still understanding more than I was before I read it I think its useful to read.

(no subject)

Have read 86/268 pages of Narrative Discourse.
Which gets me to the end of chapter 1.

This requires celebration chocolate.

Of course most of the earlier pages required thinking chocolate.
And some of them cheer me up chocolate.

There's been quite a lot of chocolate recently. I should probably stop for a while before it all turns into ouch.

The book is interesting, and full of words.

I still liked better reading Great Expectations.

(no subject)

Have been wandering around the 'friends' page for the RobinHoodBBC community.
It seems like I post a bit more than other people.
Say, six or seven times as much.

... sorry?

... unlikely to change. Have nobody to make words at who isn't on a computer.

Unanticipated futures

I'm reading a book copyright 1974-5, revised and expanded 1982.
Crystal Singer, by Anne McCaffrey.

I just found a bit that struck me as odd for a moment but took me a bit longer to figure out why:

All she ever wanted to know about black quartz communications, Killashandra thought as diagrams and computations rolled across the screens and pressed on to more interesting data. She slowed the display speed when she caught the caption 'Membership' and reversed to the start of the entry.

This is a short bit from the middle of a data dump.

But what struck me was how she is accessing the data. On a computer, yes, but after initially typing in the planet name, everything just scrolls past.

No Keyword search, at least not by typing, just by eye.
And no hyperlinks.

Just one big long page.

And, yes, this is a plausible way to access data when you don't really know what you're looking for. But it struck me that, to people used to reading books, keywords and hyperlinks aren't intuitively obvious ways that data will be stored in future. Pages in books don't have clicky links. The way we use this thing here we are reading right now wouldn't be obvious to someone reading twenty years ago. In fact some bits of it aren't obvious to people using it right now.

Fascinating.



Also, there's a bit where she finds a 'need to know' label on data, and can't get in because she can't think of a reason. Now it might be the character is just that law abiding, but methinks that if anyone knew, it would end up on future-wiki. I kind of don't believe in secrecy any more.

Also, she gets one and only one answer to her typed query. No google, just one authorised data source.

Weird, weird, weird, the minor differences.

Ghost Whisperer

Just watched a Ghost Whisperer where there was this murderer who got executed and then haunted his daughter and his art dealer. See the art dealer had one contract, giving him all the paintings to pay for the lawyer and stuff. The daughter had another, that gave the dealer only 15% of the paintings. The ghost jumped into the dealer and made him experience the execution over and over until he gave up and gave all the paintings to the daughter.

And the Ghost Whisperer lady was fine with this.

er, excuse me?

They didn't actually *prove* that the girl's contract had any legal force. They never ever proved that the art dealer was cheating. Only that the murderer - the self confessed really did do it the ghost said so murderer - really wanted to make him suffer until the daughter got rich. Surely the GW should have an opinion? Especially after the ghost did the same trick to her and scared hell out of her making her experience getting hanged? Maybe, just possibly, the dead guy was a *bad* guy?

Especially with the sub plot. That was about a woman pretending to be hurt by the paramedic husband so she could sue for a bunch of money. So she was faking so she could get what she was owed.

Seems like the story was saying maybe the ghost was too.
But the main character certainly didn't see it that way.


I don't quite know what to make of this show. It mostly seems really simple and weepy, but then there get to be other notes in there... If I was reading it like it was Buffy writing, I'd say she was heading for a fall, overconfidence and letting the ghosts walk over her and stuff. But it might not be layered like that. Can't quite figure if the plots are meant to reflect together that way.



In other news, I forgot to stop eating chocolate, so I feel oogy and have a headache. Is only my own fault. So I feel *dumb* and oogy.
And therefore annoyed.
:eyeroll:


I meant to have the mini chocolates so I could take a couple to school and avoid the 50p per bar college chocolate. Instead I seem to be munching them like every half hour. Very not good. I need some willpower.