Charlotte Forster (4893416)

Question Three: Narrative

Narrative is a term that remains unsettled amongst literary theorists. This essay will explain one
definitional attempt of its aspects (as postulated by Seymour Chatman), utilising an extract of Ian
McEwans Atonement for illustrative force.
Narrative is the textual representation of a (series of) event(s), comprised of two key limbs. 1 The
first is story. This is the event(s) about which the narrative speaks in our extract, Briony Tallis
preparation of a play and her sharing of its draft with her mother.2 The second limb is discourse the
manner in which the story is represented in the text. 3 In our extract, this representation includes the
ordering of the storys events, and their narration by an absent entity (rather than, for instance,
Briony herself).
Story and discourse are both comprised of sub-aspects. Story includes existents (characters and
settings), events (actions by characters) and happenings (actions upon characters).4 All these
aspects are realised in our extract, to some extent. There are several characters identified Briony and
Emily Tallis, Brionys brother and her cousins (although the latter are only known peripherally).
Similarly, there is a setting a house belonging to the Tallis family (established by reference to her
[Emily Tallis] bedroom) of relative affluence (indicated by the houses decorative items, such as the
folding screen). However, this setting requires further development before it can be comprehensive
its geographical and temporal locations, for instance, are not clear. Finally, both events and

1 Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film
(USA: Cornell University Press, 1978), 10.
2 Note that while this essay speaks of Atonements events as separable from its
discourse, this distinction is technical only. Description of this story is a
discursive action thus, as described by this author, these events constitute a
new narrative.
3 Chatman, Story and Discourse, 24.
4 Ibid., 32.
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happenings occur in the extract. For instance, Emily Tallis reads Brionys play (an event) and Briony
is taken upon her mothers lap (a happening).
Discourse the second limb of narrative is comprised of the sub-aspects structure of narrative
transmission (structure) and manifestation. 5
Manifestation is the materialising medium through which a narrative is portrayed (for instance, in
a dramatic or verbal form). 6 Our extracts manifestation is obvious from its form it is a written text.
Structure describes the communicative relationships arising between a texts extra-textual figures
(Ian McEwan and a real-life reader) and various intra-textual figures (figures existing within a texts
fictive realm). The first of these relationships is between the implied author and ideal reader. The
former is an imagined view of a texts author inferred by the reader who is conceived of as
responsible for the texts design.7 In Atonement, this is Ian McEwan, writing Atonement with certain
objectives in mind perhaps, in our extract, to create a precocious character (Briony). The implied
authors counterpart is the ideal reader an imagined reader of the text that can and does
understand every aspect of its design.8 In our extract, this is the reader that, for example, is able to
recognise Brionys precociousness from the oddly mature moral of her play.
The narrator and narratee relationship is also part of this structure. The narrator is the entity
that, in the course of narrative, tells (someone) something that happened. 9 The narratee is the fictive
someone to whom the narrator speaks.10 Our extract sets up an anonymous narrator, who speaks in
the third person and possesses some knowledge of characters inner thoughts. The narratee, although
5 Ibid., 24.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., 149.
8 Ibid., 254.
9 Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1968), 228.
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covert, exists by virtue of the narrators communicative manner it is the someone to which such
ominous statements as Briony was hardly to know it then are addressed.
The final aspect of structure is focalisation, being the boundaries of perception through which the
narrative is told. In our extract, we are focalised to Briony and Emily Tallis being privy to some of
their internal thoughts and motivations but not to Brionys brother, for instance, whose perspective
remains unknown.
As such, upon Seymour Chatmans definition, the minimal requirements of narrative are set up in
Atonements opening passages.

10 Chatman, Story and Discourse, 173.

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Charlotte Forster (4893416)

Works Cited
Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. USA: Cornell
University Press, 1978.
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1968.