Bals

narratology and Calvinos Italian Folktales By Danilo Lopez How Mieke Bal was introduced into the world of literary criticism, structuralism, and

narratology is a story she tells in her website and also is related in the introduction to her book. Building upon Arisotle, Bakhtin, Propp, Derrida, Culler, and Genette, Bal proceeds to recoin new names for existing concepts and proposes, or elaborates on, new ones [focalization, types of description, levels of narration] to understand and advance the field of narratology. She no longer does narratology, she has moved on to other cultural studies, and it is said that her contributions to several dissimilar fields has been tremendous. In the age of postmodernism and the flourishing of multimedia objects [artists mix of sound, image, color, text] have provided new meanings to her concept of embedded texts and intertextuality [Bakhtin]. A good sample is analyzed in the book starting on page 66. The introduction is very detailed and provided a glimpse of what the book is about and the main concepts [a dictionary] of what she proposes in the rest of the book. Having the [online] full version of the book is essential to understand what is written on pages 42 and following, which are rather intricate and meticulous. All is narrative One concept that caught my attention is her definition of narratology as the theory of narratives that tell a story. It is broad and includes not just the written word, but also image, spectacle, events, etc. Film, painting, multimedia objects, architecture can and are included in her definition of narrative. I would venture to say that dance and all performing and visual arts could be included as cultural artifacts that tell a story. In another place I said that we can use embedded texts or subtexts as part of a narrative or as the main narrative to tell a story. Legal depositions are one example. Bal also mentions tourist guides in her definition. This postmodernist approach that everything goes, that truth is not absolute, that the individual reigns and all have equal stand on the flatland of relativism, has contributed to the fusion of horizons where all is art, all is valid [tudo vale]. Her view is that of particular segments of reality, there is no theory of everything only bits we can analyze and theorize about. The modern homo sapiens is incapable to grasp all of reality, there is no Renaissance man [or woman] that is versed in all fields, there is no reality per se only perceptions that vary from individual to individual in both, time and space.

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Defining her universe So Bal, consequent with modern scientific methods, proceeds to define the object of her study, the conventions that will be used, and the relationships of the parts of the system she is proposing. Her aim is to provide readers and critics with tools that will allow them to understand, to grasp the texts in front of them, to make sense of them and enjoy them better. She makes clear that she is not building a machine [like Bakhtin in his early approach] but merely providing intellectual tools [4]. Her book then proposes definitions and conventions to be used in the study of narrative or of the new field of narratology; how narratives are constructed; what are the components of a narrative system; how they interact among each other; and what variations these interactions assume. She leaves open the argument of what texts tell a story: are comic strips included? The way to resolve discrepancies and disagreements is by way of dialogue and argumentation. Rhetoric, conferences, essays, etc. are the medium for further analysis and development of the field. This is a typical structuralist position which originated in the Formalists view that the history of literature was/is in constant change with no eternal truth of single canon [what Jakobson called the dominant]. This process of reasoning [6] is what distinguishes the Romantic, pessimistic view of literature from the Modernist, reasonable view started by T.S. Eliot. Except that Eliot stopped at the canon. The Formalists and Structuralists did revile the canon and dived into the inner sanctum of language and literature. There was no canon of Western literature and culture, only constant change. Familiar and new concepts Bal affirms that concepts that are used too often [4] take a life of their own and lose significance for from one reader to the next they may have a different meaning. In the field of literature and text, she goes on, this is common. She does not propose the use of defamiliarization, a writers technique proposed by the early Formalist Shklovsky, but instead introduces the readers technique of focalization and the creation of dictionaries or conventions to level the field and analyze texts from and within a common agreed upon frame of reference. This is also a post modernist approach: all meaning is contextbound. After defining language text, theory, text, and narrative text [an agent tells a story], Bal proceeds to elaborate on her proposed tools. The main definitions here are: text [artifact, a finite

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structured whole composed of language signs], story [a fabula presented in a certain manner], and fabula [a series of logically and chronically related events caused or experienced by the actors]. Her definition of narrative text includes the word text in it. Ive learned that the defined object cannot be part of the definition, so to me it should be modified. Her definition of fabula is also flawed in the sense that the relation is neither always logical nor chronological; there are time shifts, there is fantasy where logic is not present. It should be clarified that the story and its world may have an internal logic, that time may be manipulated, and that the rules of logic can and are broken often even within the story, especially in folktales like the ones Calvino published, where characters are not fleshed out due to the short expanse of the text and the simplicity of the plot. Why didnt Silver Nose go back looking for Lucia? Illogical, unless we focus [focalization?] on the point of the story [fabula, moral?], which is that cleverness can fool even the devil if our intentions are good. The text is a series of words [symbols]. In Calvinos folktales his version is I am sure different to that of the originals, which were probably told orally using different words and languages? throughout the centuries. The fabula might be the same in general terms, the start, the middle and the end might have the same results. The way in which it is presented, though, might vary; it has to do with the sympathy a reader may or may not have for different characters. In the case of Silver Nose, hardly anyone would sympathize with the devil, unless one is a devil worshiper. Actors are just names or labels: the prince, the witch, the king, the dragon, the horse. Only when we see the actors in action, in timespace, and making decisions and choices, is that they become characters [Propps functions]. The good and the bad on the story, the right and the wrong, the sympathetic and the antipathetic come out then, and the actors become characters. They have a personality [Propps dramatis personae] and act according to [logically] that personality [Propps spheres of action]. The world of the story takes place in an abstract land [Bakhtin] or space which exists in a time that is susceptible of violation, like in the Dragon with Seven Heads, where the children grow up in a matter of paragraphs. Only information that is relevant to the story is presented. Time is. Years happen in seconds. We see fragments only, but these fragments [adventures in timespace or chronotope in Bakhtin] are relevant and make sense. The rest of the dark matter that fills the spacetime is not missed. We focus from event to event because only these change the previous status quo. Only the first ant the last event count: the princess was sent to the castle by her stepmother in The Canary Prince, the princess and the Prince got married. The materials of the fabula, events, actors, time, and location [Bal separates time from space]

is another concept offered in the book. Aristotle mentions these in his Poetics, except fibula, in his

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time the hero was always identified and the antihero as well, but the sympathy or preference for any of them was not relevant. All were actorscharacters behaving humanly or like demigods, filled with emotions, flaws, and qualities that were not good or bad per se. The center, the point of the story was to exalt the greatness of mankind [epic] along with its befall [tragedy]. Bal offers a tool that serves to identify the sympathy or absence thereof for a character beyond morals. She tells us that the writer can present the story in a manner that can manipulate and challenge our feelings and reasoning, our beliefs and ideology. When she resorts to a desired effect [7] she is saying that the author, the narrator, the writer [double voiced, single voiced, or polyphonic/heteroglossia] may indeed have an intention. This intention may be embedded in a subtext or imbued with a certain, aimed rhetoric. This is a departure [a contradiction?] from the classical structuralist view that the author is dead and the intention does not exist or matters. Desired effect also implies the need on the part of the author to communicate, to establish a link, to make her story interesting [James?]. So the author does matter after all; the message comes next. Bal also talks about time and its characteristics [8] making clarifications about chronology, expanse, character traits, locations and specific places, and choices made from POVs. The relation who perceiveswhat is perceived is the focalization that colors the story with subjectivity [8]. Propp is not interested with the message as for the mechanics of the folktale; he looks at conjunctive elements as technique of the trade [ex machine, announcement of misfortune, chance disclosure] as well as to attributive elements. The motivations he identifies do not go beyond the reasons and aims within the plot. The author is never addressed, probably because these were anonymous. Bals framework is aimed at all narrative texts, whether the author is known of not. But she does not include the author in her framework, unless as a part of the heteroglossia, like Bakhtin did. A partial comparison of Bals and Propps concepts in their study of narrative follows: Propp Bal Ismailian Merchant

Dramatis personae

actor

character

31 functions

fabula

Spheres of action

story

Conjunctive element

f. 0 Initial: Merchant, Giumento, > good man, humble, just, prophet f. 1: Absentation > the son goes away to learn the trade. Princess falls in love with Giumentos son f. 19: Resolution > after a series of exchanges, the son is revealed [recognition], then the Giumento is revealed as well [transfiguration]

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Bal considers the reader as the observer [as in quantum mechanics phenomena] and the text does not really takes up life until it is observed. The double voiceness of Bakhtin, Bal calls agent that relates [utters] the signs with the withdrawal of the author. Except that the narrator, in her exposition, changes: each character takes the function of narrator as s/he speaks [9]. All actors are narrators, I would add that the spaces, the time, the world of the story is also a type, participate as narrators. Some random observations Structuralists subdivide a problem so much, at the peril of compartmentalization that makes us lose sight of the big picture, the wider perspective. We get lost in the trees and dont perceive the forest. It is the fractured mirror of postmodernism. The fabula, seen as the result of interpretation by the reader, seems like a riddle the reader must guess. And any answer is valid. Possibility is the field of Bals theory [9]. As in any theory in formation, intuition plays a big role [10] in reading an artifact. Is this a break with the reign of Reason established by the Encyclopedists? Bal finds joy in the trip of the theory more than in the end, for the end is always in flux. Subjectivity becomes the basic tenet of her book, no universal propositions exist. The right question becomes: what does this text tell me today? Final thought Bal includes in her definition of narrative images and other cultural artifacts. The painting/text she analyzes on pages 6773 fits this definition. Whether it is looked from afar of at close range, the object tells something, in image and in written words. But even the written words [symbols] are mocked by the use of gibberish that resembles Hebrew characters. A story is told in a painting and in a poem. The single narrator is polyphonic as well. More than one language is used [bilinguism as artifact?], the levels multiply themselves at several realms: media, size, type of symbol, abstraction, concreteness. Bals book (1) provides me with plenty of ideas to interpret and more importantly to create texts that challenge different readers. Calvinos book (2) serves as excellent backdrop to test Bals theories. (1) Narratology: Introduction to the theory of Narrative, published December 31, 1997 | ISBN 10: 0802078060 | ISBN13: 9780802078063 | Edition: 2nd (2) Italian Folktales Italo Calvino, Harcourt, 1980

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