Talk:Narration/Archive 1

Archive 1

Structure of the article

Although this article has lots more info (at first sight at least), I like the structure on nl:Vertelperspectief better. 23:46, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Second person

In comedy this is actually quite common. Dennis Leary springs to mind. Shinobu 23:46, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Notes

This is a terrible article. What about POV for formal writing? Sounds like a stuck-up "writer"-know-it-all wrote this -- it sounds very opinionated.

I seriously suggest we get some sources on this. Colonel Marksman 00:53, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Don't bitch about it, if you don't like it, fix it. Feel free to include sources if you have them. Something is better than nothing.Avt tor 21:06, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Hey, hey! I was fixing to apologize. No need to go about cursing. You destroy your outlook of professionalism that way. I didn't see the "(literature)". There is a separate article (grammatical person) which details what I was looking for.

As for simply ranting, I don't have any references immediately with me. In fact, don't have any clue about several articles I post suggestions about: they aren't thoughts about inserting information I have, but come from simply looking at the article. I don't have to be an expert at fashion to see that there are hundreds of fashion-related articles and suggest a Wikiproject be created. (It WAS a Musslim who created the Wikiproject: Christianity.) I'll come back to the article later today. If you promise to stop cursing me for being offended, I'll agree to work with you on helping fuck the article. This is one of the few things I have books, magazines, and experience with. Colonel Marksman 21:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Article title

I belive that this article is informative and concise, however, it has a major problem: what it refers to has nothing really to do with literary point of view in the theoretical sense!! The article describes 1., 2. and 3.-person narration, these are different "types of narration", not different "points of view"! It is true, of course, that 1., 2. and 3.-person narration are sometimes named "points of view" in inaccurate everyday use of the terms, however, an article on a literary concept should not reproduce common inacurracies. Prior to the 1960's/1970's, literary theory did not distinguish theoretically between types of narration POV, yet from Genette and onwards, these have commonly been regarded as two different concept. (The precise definitions of the concepts of narration and POVs have, of course, as any other theorecial concept been disputed, and if someone whould like to write a specialized article about the verious very technical narration/POV debates, it would, of course, be most appreciated, yet I do not see this as the most urgent task).

The general problem about not to distinguish between point of view and types of narration is that a text easily can be narrated by one person but seen from another person's point of view (e.g. narrated by a "third person narrator" but seen from a character's point of view or, for example, occiliatng between seen from different characters' points of view).

For references on this issue, see e.g. Katie Wales: "A Dictionary of Stylistics", Gerald Prince: "A Dictionary of Narratology.

In conclusion, the article is fine yet in my opinion it should be renamed "types of narration" (and ajusted accordingly) or, alternatively, it should simply be re-merged with the "narrator" article, and another article about "point of view, focalisation and perception in narratives" should be created. What do you people say?12:28, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

From my perspective, "Narrator" refers to the narrator as character or other aspects of narration. "Point of view" refers to one aspect of narration. The articles should not be merged.Avt tor 21:06, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

My earlier comment was about merging "Point of View" with "Narrator". "Point of view" is a well-understood concept used by writers. See Mastering Point of View by Sherri Szeman, Points of View by James Moffett and Kenneth R. McElheny; also extensively discussed in Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card. Point of view is an aspect of narration, but only one aspect, and deserves a separate article. This is a basic problem that many writers deal with.

And I don't consider "bitch" as a verb to be "cursing", it's simply a synonym for "complaining" with connotations.

Please note that I did not write most of the content of this article, I simply helped organize existing content that had been scattered randomly across the two earlier articles. I'm sure improvements would be welcome, so long as they are neutral, relevant, and conciseAvt tor 06:03, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Pynchon

I don't think "Gravity's Rainbow" was in third limited -- the narrator frequently went in and out of several different characters heads. However, I've only read the book once so far so I might just be confused.... Still, I thought it was third omniscent. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SeizureToday (talk • contribs) 00:49, 1 February 2007 (UTC).

Fourth Person

I made grammatical edits to the section, but it seems to me that so-called "fourth person" is a rhetorical technique more than it is a point of view. Anyone else care to weigh in? --TheEditrix2 00:08, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

heresy

"pov" has become internet slang (at least here) for "heresy". anyone else notice that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.247.235.10 (talk) 08:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Examples

This article needs brief examples of each, not just 2nd person. Example: 3rd person limited and 3rd person omniscient.Good examples of 3rd person omniscient are at: jonquil.livejournal.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.57.33.214 (talk) 16:56, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

First Person

The section on first person needs to be expanded - I don't have time now, but I be able to work on it later. Specifically I feel there should be seperate subsections for first person primary character and first person secondary character; there's a huge difference. Also, there should maybe be a seperate subsection for "Other types of first person," such as first plural narration (like in Virgin Suicides) Snowboardpunk 03:52, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, cool, go for it.Avt tor 15:31, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Is Anthem really in first person plural? It's written with the word "We" but it is very clearly written only to replace "I" as a political statement, rather than to establish an idea of communal action. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.79.201.202 (talk) 00:05, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Messups in paragraph after 2nd person point of view

In the paragraph after the point of views, at the very end there are some random letters and just an overall mess that someone has made. I dont know what to do to fix it and if someone else could re place what has been written there it would help alot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.196.131.47 (talk) 21:59, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

MAYOR FLAWS! EXAMPLE: Common uses of grammatical person

This article is terribly flawed and inconsistent. Please see the following example:

Common uses of grammatical person

	Past	Present	Future
First	autobiographies	wills	shopping lists
Second	letters	adventure books	ransom notes
Third	novels	plays	instructions

This text box is pure nonsense!! Wills could hardly be written consistently in the first-person present, they are rather primarily in the third-person future. e.g. "Peter shall have my estate, Mary my boat……"; shopping lists are normally not written in any person or tense (they are not narrative), e.g. "eggs, sugar, milk……" (one would rarely write “I need to buy 6 eggs, then I need to buy one kilo of sugar” etc. since it is quite obvious); letters are, I assume, equally often written in any of the three persons, eg. one could write one's own experiences (1.person) or one could write about a relative, for example, (i.e. in the 3. person) or one could write about one’s feelings towards the addressee (2. person); plays cannot really be said to be written in any person (they are not narrative in the strict sense of the term), they consists of dialogue (which could be in any person and any tense); instructions are hardly ever written in the third person but most often in the second person ("after you have finished part one, move on to part two ….."), or in the imperative mode (“finish part one and move on to part two………”)

Why does anyone write such rubbish which is so easy to prove false? If you come up with something, why not try to consider if it makes any sense before you post it!!???

The article is basically unfixable, it needs a complete revision!

Actually, as a narrative form, wills are written in first-person: "I declare", "I revoke", "I am married to", "I appoint", "I bequeath", and so on.

This article has come together from many different editors. It lacks consistency and surely has plenty of room for improvement. Feel free to improve it. In the process, please be careful not to lose any of the substance of the current content, unless you have better material on the same issues which is properly sourced. A major rewrite is a lot of effort, which is why nobody has done it yet. Avt tor 23:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Also: "that happened, the king died" (quotations actually in the quote)- shouldn't it be "that happened", "the king died"? 71.167.53.199 (talk) 15:59, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

notable?

It it notable enough that woot.com links to this article?Should that me mentioned in the talk page? Kushal^t 12:15, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Contradiction

• Paragraph 2: In a novel, the first person is commonly used...
• Paragraph 4: Most novels are narrated in "third person omniscient", or in "third person limited".

Is either used significantly more often than the other? What is truly the most frequent point of view employed? --UberScienceNerd _{Talk Contributions} 01:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Noticed this too, this needs to be fixed, but I have no clue which might be correct, though I'd tend towards 3rd person.--85.93.206.16 (talk) 14:22, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Um, WP:V? --Thinboy00's sockpuppet alternate account 06:02, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Merged content

I've just merged Third-person narrative back into this main article because, well, it actually contained less information than was here. Clearly this article is being improved more than its subarticles, so having a subarticle makes no real sense.

The only real differences in content (other than the apparently vandalised section on 3p subjective) were a set of examples and a few different points in the omniscient section. I've tried to work them into the text, but it may still be a bit clunky. JulesH (talk) 15:31, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Attempting to improve the article

OK. The article's a fair start, but as has been pointed out by a few commenters above it is fairly confused, and some of the terminology that it uses isn't quite correct. I've started trying to fix this; so far, I've had a go with the lead paragraphs. The first paragraph felt horribly stilted, so I've rephrased it quite substantially. I've also added a distinction between narrative point of view (i.e. who's telling the story) and narrative voice (i.e. the way they're telling it), which the original opening sentence basically treated as synonyms. If anyone objects to this distinction, please let me know.

The remaining stuff I've reordered so I feel it flows more logically. Specifically, it now deals with POV-related material first, and voice-related material second. This mirrors the rest of the article, which has POV-related material in sections 1, 2 and 3, and voice-related material in section 4.

I think the overall structure is basically sound, so I'm not going to start reorganising the whole article, at least not unless anyone else has some suggestions how to do so. There are a few minor points (e.g. that 'multiple-person narrative mode' and 'changing points of view within the story' basically cover the same ground), but I'll leave these for now.

There are a few places where the article isn't particularly clear, and unfortunately most of these are outside of my understanding of the subject. Specific things I'm struggling to grasp:

In movies and video games [... t]he second-person may also be used.

There's a nice, clear and concise explanation between those of what first and third person viewpoints are in this scenario. But I really have no idea what a second person viewpoint would look like. An example might be in order, but I have no idea where to start looking for one.

For example, in a horror film, the first-person perspective of an antagonist could become a second-person perspective on a potential victim's actions.

This is trying to be that example. But it isn't at all clear what it means. What I visualise when I read that sentence is what was described in the previous paragraph as first person.

[In t]ext-based interactive fiction [... t]here is also something called third person outside observer.

Great. What is it?

Any suggestions welcome. JulesH (talk) 17:18, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Not sure if this should be a new thread or not, but since we're on the topic of improving the article... I had a number of problems with the second-person narrative section, so I just went ahead and did a full rewrite. Essentially, I rewrote for style, grammer, and readability, but I also felt that the comments on McInerney read a little biased, so I tried to make it sound more objective (I'm happy to explain if anyone so desires). If anyone has any questions/problems, please let me know. Obviously it's not perfect, so if there are still readability or bias issues, let's fix them. And obviously as well, we still need citations - I didn't have time to add any, but will do my best to get to this (at least with the section I'm editing). Anyway, any suggestions welcome! Gennys (talk) 02:17, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

If you're still working on this section, I was intending at some point to add a reference to Charles Stross's novel Halting State which uses the second person as an intentional evocation of the style of text-based role playing games, which struck me as an interesting reason to use it. The closest thing I can find to a source for that being the reason for the use of the mode is this blog comment. I'll let you do whatever you think best with this info. :) JulesH (talk) 20:36, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect statement on authorial intrusion

The summary part of this article states Authors rarely, in fiction, insert or inject their own voice. This is just not true; it was a common thing to do in 19th century novels, including many of those now considered classics. It is much less common now, but the statement does not limit itself to current books. Eric-Albert 00:49, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

You're absolutely right. It's also very common in certain strains of modern, postmodern (e.g. Borges, Kundera) and early modern (Rabelais, Cervantes) works. Ditto Proust. The role of the author is one of the biggest question that sticks out in post-modern lit and I'd say authorial intrusion is the exception rather than the rule there. Good points about 19th century fiction as well.

However, outside "literary" fiction, it's not very common lately in your garden variety mass market paperbacks, so in terms of the kids using wikipedia to answer their English homework, it won't matter much if it's in there or not. They don't read these books in schools. Guinness4life (talk) 00:34, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

You are getting it all wrong

You are making a common mistake, mixing the concepts of "narrator" and "point of view". The narrator is the one "telling the story". But the same narrator could tell the story from several different points of view. "Pont of view" is who's seeing the story, or whose perspective (visual, phisicological, idiological, etc) is being adopted while telling the story. The same narrator can tell the same story from different points of view, and a single point of view can be adopted by various narrators.

An example: a grown man can narrate the story of his childhood from his grown up point of view, or from the way he saw things back then when he was a child, or a combination of both. In the two cases it's a narrator in first person, but still, two different points of views.

Same happens with the third person narrator. He can tell the story from a detached and neutral position, or he can take the side of one of the charachters. Same narrator, same gramatical category, different points of views.

First, second, third persons, are categories referring to the narrator, not to the point of view. Although they are related to the point of view, since gramatical different persons are sometimes used to denote different points of view, the point of view is by no means synonim to the "expirience of the narrator". It can be the expirience of the narrator, if the narrator chooses to, but it can also be the story as expirienced by one of the charachters, one of the charachters at certain location, time or age, or a any given combinations.

BTW, I'm basing myself on what I remember from my textbook to "Introduction to Narratology" class:

Narrative fiction : contemporary poetics / Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan. London ; New York : Routledge, 2002, c1983

--Rataube 15:25, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Another thing, the person who introduced this term and used it as I explain above was Gerard Genette.--Rataube 11:51, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Gerard Gennette didn't "invent" narratology or even the term narratology (though he is an extremely notable narratology scholar) nor is narratology the only subdiscipline concerned with narrative. Re: narratology - debatable whether it was the Russian Structuralists e.g. Propp or later structuralists like Levi-Strauss.

You're confusing the two things of POV and narrator, btw. The article is fine. POV is usually used in this fashion. The Narratologists use it as a term of art in a different manner than lit crit in general. Also, you completely misinterpreted Gennette. Gennette deals with narrative TIME as an aspect of narrative (essential to Proust, which has a complex narrative), something irrelevant to a basic encyclopedia article or the general needs of POV & narrator. Talking about Genette's concept of "narrative" is analogous to discussing Kant's concept of "categories" in a similarly general article. Nice effort, though. Guinness4life (talk) 00:46, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Useful source on video game narrative modes

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2009/20090504/newheiser-a.shtml

I may come back to this later, but if anybody else wants to go ahead and incorporate some stuff from this article, go ahead. JulesH (talk) 08:41, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd avoid this for three reasons - the first is that I think narrative in videogames should be addressed in itself because it's a separate medium (and because it confuses people who are looking at an encyclopedia article on books). The second is that videogames right now is a nascent field and in chaos. The ludology people, the hermeneutics people, and the narratology people are in open warafare. The industry is openly scoffing at all of them because except for some of the ludology and former industry people, no one knows anything about how games work. There's really no concensus on anything like this regarding perspective and in an article with a few narratology people, it will tend towards narratology, when that's not a representative view. Believe it or not, it's extremely controversial and will likely result in revert war. Three, this article isn't very good. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Guinness4life (talk • contribs) 00:57, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

remove/improve second-person example in introduction

[In fiction, authors often do not inject second-person: "that happened, the king died", etc.]

I don't find the example ["that happened, the king died"] to be a strong enough example of second person to be included in the sentence. This quote has nothing that makes it specific to second-person narration and could also apply to third or first person seeing as there is no use of the pronouns that define these views from one another. I suggest the quote be removed or updated.

Agreed and fixed. *check* I removed the line altogether rather than improved the example because the idea it conveyed is expressed in much more (and more accurate) detail in the second-person section of the article.

I also re-worded the rest of the introduction in general to enhance clarity and readability. Particularly, I edited the paragraph about "narrator" to make it clear that the narrator is not necessarily a character in the story. -Whesparrow (talk) 03:50, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Pronouns or POV

It's confusing to lable POV or perspective as first, second, or third person POV or narration. First, second, and third person refers to pronouns. First person we use I. Second person, you. Third person, he or she. POV refers to who is telling the story or from which character the perspective is taken from.

Personally, I prefer to use the terms of:

Nonparticipant:narrator is not a character in the story and uses either omniscient, neutral omniscient, or selective omniscient.

Participant.: The narrator is a character in the story and is either telling his own tale from his POV, or telling the story of another from his own POV.

--JennyAnne 02:19, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the terms! I included them in the introductory paragraph about "narrator". -Whesparrow (talk) 03:58, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

That makes sense, but i don't think we should change the whole article. Emily 20:41, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

The pronouns refer directly to how the story is told. Does the narration say "He", "I", or "you".Avt tor 05:46, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

More discussions

I brought some text which was misplaced at Grammatical person to this page. For a few more discussions that took place there, see the respective Talk Page. FilipeS 23:46, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Bold text Nadiya Brainbox Yasmine Wrote This November 2nd 2010 Tuesday 21:29 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.29.157.147 (talk) 21:29, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

An Inconsistent Hodgepodge

One of the problems with this article is the comparison of concepts of English Linguistics (the study of the English language) with concepts of dramatic storytelling. Point of view for drama was historically developed in Greek Theatre (in Greek Language of the time), so the concepts predated English. The article makes it seem like narrative modes came out of English whereas they may have actually influenced the development of the English Language.

Adding to confusion over point of view is colloquial usage of the term point of view and the fact that some of the ideas were later adapted into use with photography and film. The colloquial spoken term “point of view” (i.e., when a person says “My point of view on that is...”) would more accurately be stated using the term “perspective” (i.e., “My perspective on that is...”), but of course if you correct someone they will roll their eyes at you.

I was going to add some historical perspective and work on consistency of the ideas behind point of view, narrative techniques verses narrative voice, and other things from Humanities and Rhetoric curricula as understood at the university level from the 1980s and 1990s (the height of the education system in America) but apparently that is now considered outside of the standard understandings of the current education system in America (often taught by teachers with degrees in things other than writing).

This wiki article in its current state is confused and contradictory and may do more harm than good if you want to understand the totality of the study of Rhetoric and writing — how it all really fits together. It was suggested I start my own page on Wiki, and I appreciate that, but encyclopedia by consensus (and the dispute resolution process here) does not seem like fun.

Kennpreb (talk) 20:04, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Examples of future tense stories?

The section related to the future tense mentions that literature written in future tense in extremely rare. This means, however, that it's not unheard of. Are there any examples of such literature? - 89.70.239.244 (talk) 09:25, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved.' Number 57 12:51, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

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Narrative mode → Narration – "Narration" is obviously the more commonly recognizable name to encompass everything that "narrative mode" does on this article. Oxford Dictionaries online defines "narration" as "the action or process of narrating a story."[1] Narration works nicely to incorporate narrative point of view, narrative voice, and narrative time, all of which this article now covers. Thoughts? --Relisted. Dekimasuよ! 02:35, 27 October 2014 (UTC) Wolfdog (talk) 12:40, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

• Gregkaye ✍♪ 19:19, 12 October 2014 (UTC) gave Support to the request based on the sound reasoning of the nominator.
• Support. The nominator's argument makes sense. Egsan Bacon (talk) 13:41, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Oh dear - it's all so wrong

This is web 2.0 at its worst. Unfortunately, the very foundation of this article is completely at odds with the last 100 yrs. of narrative studies. Just take a look at the first line: "The narrative mode (also called narrative voice, narrative point of view, or mode of narration)" - I am sorry but you are getting the concepts all wrong. If you want to use concepts such as "mode", "voice" and "point of view", please be aware of their meanings. Narrative point of view is a category of narrative mode, whereas the narrator pertains to narrative voice.

See, for instance (just to mention a few classic books on this subject): Genette, Gérard. 1980 [1972]. Narrative Discourse. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Oxford: Blackwell; Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. 1983. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Methuen; Prince, Gerald. 1987. Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P.; Bal, Mieke. 1985 Narratology. Trans. Christine van Boheemen. Toronto: U of Toronto P.

This is just one example. In general, the article is one big confusion of tradionally well-defined concepts. The best thing to do might be to erease the whole article and and hope for someone with a little more experince in the field to build it up again. Good luck. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.196.35.225 (talk) 21:25, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I concur. I wanted to add a link to free indirect since that what I came here to find, but I realized I was just making more of a mess of it. for what its worth, here it is if anyone wants to make use of it:Third-person, indirect

The third person indirect style or free indirect style is a method of presenting a character's words partly mediated by the voice of the author, rather than as a direct quote. Using this voice often calls attention to irony or dramatizes a character's words. For example, Jane Austin uses this voice to highlight her title character's insincerity: “He was too good! – she could not endure the thought! – she would not give him such a troublesome office for the world". Puddytang (talk) 03:10, 2 April 2016 (UTC)