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NOVELS AND SOCIAL CHANGE

On a very global level, there have been radical changes in social organization - economic, political and
cultural - over several centuries. These considerable transformations have altered the status and
perception of multiple elements in the real world and in novelistic forms.
Thus, the notion of the individual is gradually emerging. The person (and the character) is no longer
simply an emblem of his or her social caste (the knight, the peasant...) or a symbol of possible attitudes
in the world (the differences between the knights of the Round Table). As a result, heroes diversify and
no longer appear as exemplary representatives of their community. This mutation is seen as one of the
factors in the transition from epic to novel.

NOVEL AND CONFLICT :

On another level, conflict has undoubtedly had an influence on the novel. These
may have taken very different forms.
First and foremost, conflicts have increased the importance of the written word and of
the value of writers. In the 16th and 17th centuries, for example, religious
struggles and clashes between royalty and the great powers opened up a space for
writing in the form of direct polemics (pamphlets) or indirect polemics.

In the twentieth century, the question of commitment will be one of the most debated in
various ways. In the face of social, political and national conflicts,
can and should the novelist commit himself, asserting his power over society
but at the risk of submitting to external imperatives, or does it have to wage a
struggle within the artistic space, carrying out essentially formal revolutions?

NOVELS AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

The demographic, economic, social and technical transformations that

changes in the world and its existence have repercussions on the novel. Here are
just two of many examples.
The urbanization that accelerated in the 19th and 20th centuries imposed the
theme of the city. This theme plays out at different levels in the novel. In place of
traditional places (castles, courtyards, roads, etc.), it replaced a place that
concentrated spatial and social paths that had previously been fragmented (from
uptown to downtown), symbolizing social mobility and individual adventure. It
also unites actions that were once dispersed: encounters, dangers, safety...

Technical progress is gradually taking hold in the transport sector. In the

process, an entire vision of space and time was transformed. Visit
Shorter travel times mean shorter journeys (and some separations and escapes),
and more available and known space. What's worth telling changes.
NOVELS AND KNOWLEDGE:

Yet another dimension is likely to influence the development of the novel:

that of knowledge. The second half of the nineteenth century saw the affirmation of an option that was
that of competition and complementarity with the social sciences and journalism.
Turning outwards, towards the representation of the world, the novel exploits one
of its most classic and promising veins: it is based on knowledge and testimonies, it
works on realistic codes, the conditions of truth, and so on.

THE MAIN COMPONENTS OF THE STORY :

The character in a novel is a fictional, imaginary being. However, as with a person, we can identify his or
her identity, name, age, sex and social origin. Information is given in the form of portraits throughout
the story. The character is also a person put into action in a dramatic work, according to the legends
from which the theater originated. In this sense, he implies both men and women.

THE SPEECH:

William Henne defines discourse in relation to narrative. In his vision, "the

discourse, it's when the author, or the instance of enunciation (the narrator),
makes itself felt: when we perceive its intentions, its bias. Whenever the
narrative
proposes another meaning in addition to the narrative one, which is a matter of
discourse, e.g. a symbolic, aesthetic, poetic, parabolic, philosophical or moralist
meaning,
and so on. It's the narrator, while narrative is the told" (Henne, 2008). In his
view, narrative and discourse are generally inseparable.

Speech
Discourse is when the author, or the instance of enunciation (the
When we perceive a story's intentions and bias, we feel it. Whenever the story
proposes a meaning in addition to the narrative one, it's a matter of discourse: a
symbolic, aesthetic, poetic, parabolic, philosophical, moralist meaning, for
example. It's the narrator.

DIEGÈSE AND MIMESIES:

1.2 Diegesis and mimesis

Mimesis indicates that the narrative situation is a simulation, a feint.
Fiction or mimesis therefore consists of imitation and invention.

The diegesis refers to the universe in which the story takes place.

He. Story organization Il.1.

The plot
The story is organized around plot and action. The plot is the backbone of all
fiction. It consists of a sequence of episodes distinguished by sequences.
Il.2. Stocks
Actions are integral parts of the plot. They drive the plot.
-
functions

Every story is made up of a multitude of actions. From this observation,

Vladimir PROPP, in his book Morphologie du conte (Morphology of Storytelling),
hypothesized that, beyond their differences, actions can be reduced to a finite
set common to all stories.

Grema, for his part, reduces actions to 6 functions (sender, receiver, subject, object, opening adjuncts,
opponents).

According to them, every story is based on the following structure, known as the canonical scheme and
the quinary scheme.

STORY STRUCTURE :

There are two types of structure: external and internal.

Fig. 1. The external structure
It is composed of sequences or embedded stories

Fig. 1.1. The sequence

It is made up of the sequence of events, which can be identified by
a single theme. It has a beginning and an end, which appears as a transition to
another sequence. However, the sequence can be conceived according to different
models:

Some theorists believe that a sequence exists as soon as there is a unity of time,
place, characters or other actions.

others consider a sequence to exist as soon as a textual unit manifests the

quinary pattern in a minimal way.
-Others, such as Claude Bremond, formalize the dynamics of any
action-sequence as follows:
No matter what choice you make from the models on offer, it's always a good idea to take a closer look.
It's essential to remember that every story has, in general, a multitude of
actions.

II.1.2. THE EMBEDDED NARRATIVE

integration is done on your is that ue are encaseme the lenchainement.
The sequence is the set of stories in which each character or narrator speaks in
turn.
Entrenchment is the alternating telling of the two stories.
simultaneously, sometimes interrupting one, sometimes the other, and
resuming when the other is interrupted.

III.2. INTERNAL STRUCTURE

It refers to narrative layout. For a better approach to this part,
it's important to study the main concepts that make it up: mode, narration or voice, characters,
temporality and spatiality.

CHAPTER III: VOICE AND NARRATION

Her study is broadly concerned with enunciation in literature. It seeks to answer
the question: who is speaking in the text? What relationship does the speaker
How does it relate to the act of narrating and/or its statement? Where is the act of narrating located?
Both temporally and spatially?

THE NARRATOR

We can't talk about voice without distinguishing between notions such as

narrator and author, reader and narrator, fiction and referent.

Author: the person who exists or has existed in flesh and blood in the world.

-narrator: the person who seems to be telling the story inside the book, but exists
only in words in the text. In a way, he's an internal enunciator.

-Reader/narrator: real or potential readers are beings existing in our world. The
narrator is the person whom the narrator addresses explicitly or implicitly in the
world of the story.
-fiction/referent: narratological analysis distinguishes :
*
Fiction: the image of the world constructed and produced by the text. It does not
exist outside the text. It is therefore a specifically textual creation.

*The referent: this is the real world, the story that outside the text.

I.2. Narrator types and functions

Third-person narrative: the character in the story is different from the narrator.
In this type of narrative, the narrator tells a story to which he or she is the main
character.
doesn't belong. He's not a character in the story he's telling. In this case, the
narrator is heterodiegetic.
In this case, the story is told in the 3rd person.
(He(s)/she(s), the dominant past tense (alongside the imperfect and the plus-que-
perfect) is the past simple, and temporal markers such as: that day, the day
before, the day after, two days before, etc., are used.

First-person narrative: the character in the story is the same as the narrator. Here,
the narrator is a character in the story being told. In other words, he is both
narrator and actor. The narrator is homodiegetic. If the narrator is the main
character in the story, we speak of an autodiegetic narrator.
In this type of story, we're in a discourse. It is a discourse
with first and second person pronouns (I, you, we, you, our, your, me, you )

I.3.The functions of the narrator

The narrator's functions are multiple and non-exclusive. The following
functions can be distinguished:

-The communicative function :

It consists in addressing the narrator in order to act on him or to maintain
contact. It is very common in humorous novels.
Example:
"Before going any further, I want to destroy any doubt that may have crept
into the minds of my readers."

The metanarrative function :

It consists of commenting on the text and pointing out its internal
organization (it is an explicit governing function, which serves parodic
purposes.) Example:
This information was all that Monsieur Muret knew about Père Goriot's account, whose funds he had
bought. The suppositions Rastignac had heard the Duchesse de Langeais make were thus confirmed.
This concludes the exposition of this obscure but appalling Parisian tragedy.
The testimonial function :
Ele est center sur aposton le natur pint son frisode geil raco ou
shi dita ou sa naraid suiteire) en ur m encore ex rivaluai on lit pote a
judgment on actions and actors).
Examples:
This drama is neither fiction nor novel. All is true, it's so real that anyone
can recognize its elements in their own home, in their own heart perhaps
(Le Père Goriot, chap.1).
"They said a thousand things to each other so tender that it brings tears to
my eyes every time I think about it."

The explanatory function :

Its purpose is to give the narrator the elements needed to understand the story. It can be held by
footnotes.
Example:
As removed as it may be from the anecdotal account of this book, and because it
touches so directly on one or two very interesting peculiarities of sperm whale habits, this chapter, for a
start, is just as important as the most important of the others.

-The ideological function

It's set in general fragments about the world, society and people. It often
takes the form of maxims or morals, relatively autonomous, in the present
tense.
Example:
A man must study a woman well before letting her see his emotions and
thoughts as they happen. A mistress as tender as she is tall smiles at
childishness and understands it; but if she has any vanity, she will not
forgive her lover for being childish, vain or small.

Narration time
In relation to the diegesis, when does the narrated act take place? What is the
narrator's temporal position in relation to what he is narrating? Depending on the
act being narrated, there may be four (4) temporal positions.
IV.1. Anterior narration

Anterior narration: This is a rarer form of narration, and essentially concerns textual passages. Predictive in
nature, often in the form of dreams or prophecies, it anticipates what will happen next. The narrator tells
what is supposed to happen in the future of the story. The tense used is normally the future, but it often
takes the form of a vision expressed in the present tense.
For example, Revelation 4/ 1 and 2 The predictive narrative exists only as a fragment within a narrative.

Subsequent narration
This is the most frequent case in the creation of novels. It is
generally identified by the use of past tense in the narrative.
However, in some later narratives, the use of the
narrative present tense for stylistic effect. Its use gives the impression that
the event is reported as it happens. Example:
"When everything was sold, twelve francs and seventy-five centimes were left over.
were used to pay for Mlle Bovary's trip to visit her grandmother. The good
woman died that same year; Father Rouault being paralyzed, it was an aunt
who took charge." Flaubert, Madame Bovary, III, P.11

Subsequent narration
This is the most frequent case in the creation of novels. It is
generally identified by the use of past tense in the narrative.
However, in some later narratives, the use of the
narrative present tense for stylistic effect. Its use gives the impression that the event is being
recounted as it unfolds.
Example:
"When everything was sold, twelve francs and seventy-five centimes were left over.
were used to pay for Mlle Bovary's trip to visit her grandmother. The good
woman died that same year; Father Rouault being paralyzed, it was an aunt
who took charge." Flaubert, Madame Bovary, III, P.11

NARRATIVE MODE
To delimit the contours and domains of what he calls mode, Gérard GENETTE
starts from the definition given by the Dictionnaire Littré of this term as a verbal
category: "mode is the name given to the different forms of the verb used to
designate more or less the thing in question, and to express the different points of
view from which the existence or action is considered".
When applied to literature, mode can be considered as that which is
the regulation of narrative information. In fact, the narrative may provide the
reader with more or less detail, and in a more or less direct way, thus appearing to
stand at a greater or lesser distance from what it is telling. The study of mode is
divided into two parts: distance and focus.
IV.1 - DISTANCE
Under this term, GENETTE attempts, following Plato, to develop a theory of
the difference between mimesis and diegesis. Distance is, in fact, a
an old question addressed by Plato in the 4th century in Republic III. In his study
devoted solely to the telling of words, Plato distinguishes two ways of telling,
two narrative modes:

- diegesis", or pure narrative, in which the poet or author "speaks in his

own name, without trying to make it appear that someone else is
speaking", using indirect discourse. The distance is greater.

"mimesis" or imitation or dramatization, in which the poet or author

"strives to give the illusion that it is not he who is speaking", but a
character. Direct speech is used. Distance is almost non-existent.
GENETTE distinguishes between two types of narrative: the narrative
of events and the narrative of words.
The story of events
An event narrative is a story about what a character has done.
or what happened to it. This is the case of the novel, the short story, the myth,
the tale, etc.
This story never imitates. It can neither show nor imitate history. Indeed, the
narrative is made of words, and signs designate things, but do not imitate them.
There's a distance between words and things. Words serve as signs for things.
The narrative of events can only, at certain moments of its
to give the impression of showing, of imitating. It can give the illusion of mimesis,
as we say, by recounting in greater detail and more
lively.

The story of words

In this type of story, the narrated content consists of words. It can therefore be
presented immediately, without mediation. In other words, the words can be
reproduced literally as they were "really" spoken. In this case, the narrator steps
aside before the character. Mimesis is greater.
GENETTE distinguishes three degrees of mimesis, or three stages from
the narrator's discourse to that of the character:

-Narrative discourse
In this case of discourse, the words are integrated into the narrative and 19
at the same level as other events. Examples:
He chased him away
He confided in his friend that his mother had died.

- Transposed speech, indirect style/ free indirect style :

**indirect style :
The character's words or actions are reported here by the
narrator, who presents them according to his interpretation. According to
GENETTE, this form gives the reader no real guarantee of literal fidelity to the
words "really spoken".

Examples:
I don't think I should have gone.
He confided in his friend, telling him that his mother had died.

**free indirect style :

The narrator transposes the words or actions of the
character, but without the use of a subordinating conjunction. Examples:
-He was delighted: what a great idea I'd had!
- he ordered her to leave
- (he said) he should go away
-He confided in his friend: his mother had died.
FOCUS :

It crosses the different points of view expressed in a story.

The unfocused or zero-focus narrative, or God's point of view:

Narrator > character according to Todorov.
The narrator is everywhere and knows everything. He delivers information
than any of the characters in the story. There are no restrictions on how the
object is presented. This narrator is all
simply omniscient. Here, the use of the expression unfocused is justified by
Genette's own definition of the term focus. It is a
restriction of field, i.e. a selection o f narrative information compared to what traditionally was called
omniscience.
The unfocused narrative is characteristic of adventure novels and
realist novels à la Balzac.
Pouillon speaks of "vision from behind".

The internal-focus narrative or the singular gaze:

Narrator = character according to Todorov.
The narrator identifies with a character, putting himself or herself in the mind of a character.
character. In other words, the narrator delivers only the information in the
focal character's possession. There are two types of internal focus: fixed
internal focus, in which the narrator places himself in the
thoughts of a single character from the beginning to the
end of the novel. Pouillon speaks of "vision with

Example taken from La chartreuse de parme by Stendhal, III, 1840

"Suddenly, we were off at full gallop. A few moments later, Fabrice saw
[twenty paces ahead, ploughed land that was being stirred up in a peculiar
way. The bottom of the furrows was full of water, and the very damp earth,
which formed the crest of these furrows, was flying in small black fragments
thrown three or four feet high]. Fabrice noticed [this singular effect] in
passing, then his thoughts returned to the marshal's right. He heard [a
shriek near him]; it was two hussars who had been hit by cannonballs; and
when he looked at them, [they were already twenty paces from the escort.]
What seemed humble to him, [was a horse all bloody, struggling on the
ploughed earth, committing his feet to his own entrails; he wanted to follow the
others: blood flowed in the mud]."
The passages in square brackets are in internal focus: the object is then known
from Fabrice's point of view. Expressions in bold introduce this
focus with verbs of knowledge, the way a statement quotes indirect discourse
with verbs of thought or speech. The text refrains from presenting more than
Fabrice can know.
Fabrice's gaze is that of a naive person discovering a show for the first time.
first time. He first grasped appearances as they were; only then did he
understand them, and our hero realized that they were balls...
The external-focus narrative or the person gaze:
Narrator < character according to Todorov
The narrator chooses to tell only what he sees. He identifies himself with
an outside observer.
Pouillon refers to this as "vision from the outside".
Here, the hero acts in front of us, without our being privy to his thoughts
or feelings. This is the case of objective narrative.
Here's an example from Hemingway's Paradis perdu, Paris, Gallimard.
"On the other side of the Ebro valley, the white mountains
stretched to the horizon. On the other, south-facing slope, there wasn't a tree
to be seen, and the station stood in full sunlight between two railway tracks.
The narrow shadow of the building was cast against the station wall, and a
curtain of bamboo beads for flies hung in front of the door.
of the café. The American and the young woman were seated at a table outside
in the shade.
It was sweltering. The express from Barcelona would arrive in forty minutes. //
stopped for two minutes at this junction and continued towards Madrid.
-What could we drink?" asked the woman. She had taken off her hat and placed
it on the sand.

TEMPORALITY
Time is one of the so-called "fundamental categories" of the
novel text. Like space, it enables us to organize our perceptions into a
representation of the world. Just as we can't imagine a novel text without a
narrator, without spatial indications, etc., so we can't imagine a novel that escapes
all temporal order. In a novel, there's always a sequence of events from beginning
to end.

TIME TYPES
The creation of novels requires us to consider two types of time: external and
internal.

1 - External times
The time external to the work is the time of the novelist's life, on the one hand,
and that of the reader, on the other, as well as the "historical" period covered
by the novel.
artory of the novel, i.e. the period during which the action is supposed to have taken place.