Pasakojimo pramanai

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Naratologija; Naratyvinis diskursas; Kinematografija; Struktūralizmas; Algirdas Julius Greimas; Pasakojimas; Laikas; Atmintis; Kinas; Retorika; Naratology; Narrative discourse; Cinematography; Structuralism; Algirdas Julius Greimas; The story; Time; Memory; Cinema; Rhetoric.

EN[...] This monography surveys contemporary theories of the narrative, compare the methodological tools they respectively offer, and evaluate their efficacy as regards the interpretation of narrative fiction in literature and cinema. It focuses on French structural tradition, which has exerted a great influence upon literaturology and art criticism both in Europe and America. More specifically, the works of two among the most relevant theoreticians in this domain are presented, analysed and confronted: A. J. Greimas’s theory of narrativity and G. Genette’s narratology. While the former analyses narratives as products of a general grammar of discourse (and of a action, as simulated in discourse), the latter describes the story telling itself, as a linguistic production, with its discursive and rhetorical structures. Analysing specific narratives, narrative semiotics does not consider them as products of a particular literary genre, but of narrativity as such – a concept which, indeed, encompasses all kinds of discourses in which a „transformation“ (leading from one state of affairs to another) is featured, by words, images or gesture. In other words, besides literary works, narrative structures may articulate just as well such meaningful objects as cinema, advertising, artistic compositions, or even cooking receits, etc. The object of semiotics consists, then, in making explicit the structuring principles upon which relies the meaning and the ideological value of such objects. On the contrary, Genette’s narratology deals, more traditionally, with narratives regarded as verbal texts. Rather than on their content, it focuses on their form and mode of uttering, on their specificities as discourses and especially their rhetorical construction.Greimas’s semiotics and Genette’s narratology propose two different ways of treating narratives, which do not exclude one another. Both approaches focus on narrative as a system of syntactic relations. A story is, indeed, composed of two syntaxes, one which is „narrative“, while the other is „discursive“. The narrative syntax articulates the actions and interactions. Greimas’s narrative grammar is the most coherent model to deal with this aspect. The discursive syntax is that of perception and communication. It is best developped by Genette’s narratology. Whereas the „discursive level“ is comparatively little analysed in Greimas’s theory, the corresponding „rhetorical“ dimension is at the core of Genette’s approach. It is also the main topic on which we concentrate in this book. Pointing out diverse „figures“ of the narrative, as described by Genette, we show that rhetorics on its own may produce meaning. Thereby, we add to narratology an important element which comes from semiotics: by associating to the figures of narrative a semantic correspondent, we introduce the question of their meaning, an aspect that Genette left aside. In the concrete analyses presented in this book, what was, according to Genette, an empty network of „form-figures“ becomes invested with a meaning. General theory and methodological tools are illustrated with numerous examples. Separately, entire chapters are devoted to the analysis of whole short narratives taken from both literature (Nabokov, Maupassant, Biliūnas, Savickis, Aputis) and cinema (Kubrick, Lyne, Kurosawa, Nolan).

• Filosofija / Philosophy
• Literatūrologija / Literary Studies