[lit-ideas] "What Is Narrated"

From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 10:44:49 EDT

 
 
Eric Yost writes
 
But  from the point of view of the production of a narrative, rather than 
from  
the vicarious analysis of literary products, form is the solution for  the 
problems of content. Form is the solution to the problem you set  yourself by 
the 
content you select.
We spend our lives learning  different narrative forms, forms that may have 
unconscious roots, that  we may sometimes intuit rather than analyze--and 
when we 
write, it is  this lifelong immersion in narrative form that we draw upon. 
It's like a  guitarist improvising on a chord progression. The progression 
lets you  know where you are going, except in writing improvised forms, you 
edit  
out the improvs that fail. The result is the unique and inseparable form  of 
the 
narrative. 


-----


Thanks for the comments on 'narration' and 'form' and 'content'. I wonder  if 
narration necessarily necessitates (as it were) some kind of content. It  
seems that it does, but maybe it does not. I mean, "He narrated that..." --  
seems like 'narrate' you have to narrate _something_ (more like 'prose' than  
'poetry'). But I believe Yost is using 'narrate' in a more general way to  
include 
poetry and, say, drama. I have not checked the etymology of 'narrate' --  not 
that it would matter much, but wonder if 'narrare' was essentially concerned  
with the _telling_ of a _tale_ -- as when we say, "not much of a  narration".
 
Cheers,
 
JL

 


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[lit-ideas] "What Is Narrated"

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