John Dryden on the central difference of painting and poetry:
"I must say this to the advantage of Painting, even above Tragedy, that what this last represents in the space of many hours, the former shows us in one moment."
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images.
Aristotle, 'On Interpretation'
Gotthold Eprahim Lessing
(22 January 1729 – 15 February 1781) was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature.
Lessing is important as a literary critic for his work "Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry". In this work, he argues against the tendency to take Horace's ut pictura poesis (as painting, so poetry) as prescriptive for literature. In other words, he objected to trying to write poetry using the same devices as one would in painting. Instead, poetry and painting each have its character (the former is extended in time; the latter is extended in space). This is related to Lessing's turn from French classicism to Aristotelian mimesis.
Lessing argued that although painting and poetry are similar in creating an illusion -"both are imitative arts" - painting uses completely different means or signs from poetry. This was a new view - in art theory they were considered sister arts.
Similarly to Lessing, I quote John Dewey ('Art As Experience'):
"For each art has its own medium and that medium is especially fitted for one kind of communication. Each medium says something that cannot be uttered as well or as completely in any other tongue."
In a way , I actually agree with this statement even though it almost goes against the ideas that I set out to explore in my work. Looking at mediums, there are certain limitations as to what you can do with them, but they've also got certain qualities that other mediums don't. Using those qualities of painting, I am going to try and create something that communicates (almost) like a narrative.
(22 January 1729 – 15 February 1781) was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature.
Lessing is important as a literary critic for his work "Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry". In this work, he argues against the tendency to take Horace's ut pictura poesis (as painting, so poetry) as prescriptive for literature. In other words, he objected to trying to write poetry using the same devices as one would in painting. Instead, poetry and painting each have its character (the former is extended in time; the latter is extended in space). This is related to Lessing's turn from French classicism to Aristotelian mimesis.
Lessing argued that although painting and poetry are similar in creating an illusion -"both are imitative arts" - painting uses completely different means or signs from poetry. This was a new view - in art theory they were considered sister arts.
Similarly to Lessing, I quote John Dewey ('Art As Experience'):
"For each art has its own medium and that medium is especially fitted for one kind of communication. Each medium says something that cannot be uttered as well or as completely in any other tongue."
In a way , I actually agree with this statement even though it almost goes against the ideas that I set out to explore in my work. Looking at mediums, there are certain limitations as to what you can do with them, but they've also got certain qualities that other mediums don't. Using those qualities of painting, I am going to try and create something that communicates (almost) like a narrative.
Percy Lubbock in 'The Craft of Fiction'
"As quickly as we read, it melts and shifts in the memory; even at the moment when the last page is turned, a great part of the book, its finer detail, is already vague and doubtful. A little later, after a few days or months, how much is really left of it? A cluster of impressions, some clear points emerging from a mist of uncertainty, this is all we can hope to possess, generally speaking, in the name of a book. The experience of reading it has left something behind and these relics we call by the book's name"
"As quickly as we read, it melts and shifts in the memory; even at the moment when the last page is turned, a great part of the book, its finer detail, is already vague and doubtful. A little later, after a few days or months, how much is really left of it? A cluster of impressions, some clear points emerging from a mist of uncertainty, this is all we can hope to possess, generally speaking, in the name of a book. The experience of reading it has left something behind and these relics we call by the book's name"
Timeline, plot, story and point of view
structuralists like Tzvetan Todorov and Roland Barthes have shown us ways of looking at how stories are constructed, especially across dimensions of time and narration.
In everyday life a speaker relates events according to chronology, but in complex works of fiction, there's a distinction between 'plot' and 'story'. The plot in effect reveals the story, but often rearranging the timeline of the events. This way the reader discoveres the original events that they need to know to understand the whole story during the narration.
Roland Barthes: "...the units of a squence, although forming a whole at the level of that very sequence, may be separated from one another by the insertion of units from other sequences..."
An oral tale usually consists of a speaker telling of past events either from a first person perspective (if the speaker was involved) or from a third person perspective (if the speaker was only an onlooker). Modern writing, however, is more complicated and uses devices such as narrator, voice and point of view in a more inventive manner to insert different facets of human psychology into their work.
Third person
The omniscient third-person narrator may choose to guide the reader's understanding of characters and the significance of their story. This type of narrator may be intrusive (commenting and evaluating, as in the novels of Austen, Dickens, and Tolstoy), or unintrusive (describing without much commentary, as in Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Hemingway's short stories). Another possibility is third-person limited (and with it, successive third person limited), probably the most frequently used point of view in contemporary fiction. Here the narrative voice limits itself to describing in the third-person only what is experienced by one character, or a series of characters in succession (stream-of-consciousness narration fits into this category).
The character who fills the role of filtering the events of the story to the reader is sometimes called a "focalizer"-he or she provides the focus for the story. This kind of narration is also referred to as selective omniscience and multiple selective omniscience - the story is told as if it is coming directly from the minds of the characters, but the narrative voice has access to some of those minds and is thus "selectively omniscient."
First person
The first-person narrator is generally a character within the story and therefore limited in understanding. He or she might be an observer who happens to see the events of the story or play a minor role in the action ("I" as witness as in Melville's Moby-Dick [1851]), or might be the main character ("I" as protagonist as in J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye [1951]).
This is the most common way of looking at point of view--but it isn't the only way. The narratologist Wayne C. Booth, for example, (The Rhetoric of Fiction [1961]) uses as his main distinction whether a narrator is dramatized or impersonal. According to this scheme, the intrusive, authorial narrator telling a story in the third person is in the same category as the first person narrator because both are dramatized. The emphasis here is on the way the narrator appears to the reader, the effect the narrative voice has on the reading experience.
You, "the author," and authorial voice
Your characters are not the only ones that end up having a voice in your fiction. Surveys of readers have shown that the impression they have of the "author," the teller of the tale, also influences their experience of the story. For this reason, a distinction is sometimes made also between the narrator, the author, and the implied author; the implied author is a presence inferred by the reader as the guiding personality behind the work, not necessarily synonymous with the actual author, who may have written other books with a different "voice," thus creating different implied authors.
Voice refers to the controlling presence or "authorial voice" behind the characters, narrators, and personae of literature. It is also described as the implied author. The particular qualities of the author's voice are manifested by her or his method of expression (an ironic narrator, a lyric persona), specific language, and so forth.
There are a few other interesting terms to know when considering the many possibilities of point of view beyond first person and third person limited:
Velasquez "Las Meninas"
the viewer being the person (The King and Queen [in the mirror on the back wall]) who is being painted whilst the overall painting looks like it's about the girls on the painting.
Mark Tansey "Forward retreat"
at first sight this painting looks upside down, but it is actually the reflection in the water. The reflection of the backwards horsemen as well as the items you can see sticking out of the surface of the water make me wonder about the events possibly taking place.
Norman Rockwell "Triple self-portrait"
this is another good example of play with point of view in a painting.
structuralists like Tzvetan Todorov and Roland Barthes have shown us ways of looking at how stories are constructed, especially across dimensions of time and narration.
In everyday life a speaker relates events according to chronology, but in complex works of fiction, there's a distinction between 'plot' and 'story'. The plot in effect reveals the story, but often rearranging the timeline of the events. This way the reader discoveres the original events that they need to know to understand the whole story during the narration.
Roland Barthes: "...the units of a squence, although forming a whole at the level of that very sequence, may be separated from one another by the insertion of units from other sequences..."
An oral tale usually consists of a speaker telling of past events either from a first person perspective (if the speaker was involved) or from a third person perspective (if the speaker was only an onlooker). Modern writing, however, is more complicated and uses devices such as narrator, voice and point of view in a more inventive manner to insert different facets of human psychology into their work.
Third person
The omniscient third-person narrator may choose to guide the reader's understanding of characters and the significance of their story. This type of narrator may be intrusive (commenting and evaluating, as in the novels of Austen, Dickens, and Tolstoy), or unintrusive (describing without much commentary, as in Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Hemingway's short stories). Another possibility is third-person limited (and with it, successive third person limited), probably the most frequently used point of view in contemporary fiction. Here the narrative voice limits itself to describing in the third-person only what is experienced by one character, or a series of characters in succession (stream-of-consciousness narration fits into this category).
The character who fills the role of filtering the events of the story to the reader is sometimes called a "focalizer"-he or she provides the focus for the story. This kind of narration is also referred to as selective omniscience and multiple selective omniscience - the story is told as if it is coming directly from the minds of the characters, but the narrative voice has access to some of those minds and is thus "selectively omniscient."
First person
The first-person narrator is generally a character within the story and therefore limited in understanding. He or she might be an observer who happens to see the events of the story or play a minor role in the action ("I" as witness as in Melville's Moby-Dick [1851]), or might be the main character ("I" as protagonist as in J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye [1951]).
This is the most common way of looking at point of view--but it isn't the only way. The narratologist Wayne C. Booth, for example, (The Rhetoric of Fiction [1961]) uses as his main distinction whether a narrator is dramatized or impersonal. According to this scheme, the intrusive, authorial narrator telling a story in the third person is in the same category as the first person narrator because both are dramatized. The emphasis here is on the way the narrator appears to the reader, the effect the narrative voice has on the reading experience.
You, "the author," and authorial voice
Your characters are not the only ones that end up having a voice in your fiction. Surveys of readers have shown that the impression they have of the "author," the teller of the tale, also influences their experience of the story. For this reason, a distinction is sometimes made also between the narrator, the author, and the implied author; the implied author is a presence inferred by the reader as the guiding personality behind the work, not necessarily synonymous with the actual author, who may have written other books with a different "voice," thus creating different implied authors.
Voice refers to the controlling presence or "authorial voice" behind the characters, narrators, and personae of literature. It is also described as the implied author. The particular qualities of the author's voice are manifested by her or his method of expression (an ironic narrator, a lyric persona), specific language, and so forth.
There are a few other interesting terms to know when considering the many possibilities of point of view beyond first person and third person limited:
- The self-conscious narrative, which draws attention to its own fictional nature
The self-reflexive narrative, which describes an act of fictional composition within its story (like a play-within-a-play) - The fallible or unreliable narrator, as in Henry James' The Turn of the Screw (1898)
- Editorial omniscience--Narrative dominated by authorial voice, speaking as "I" or "we"; the tendency is away from scene and towards summary narrative. (Henry Fielding's Tom Jones).
- Neutral omniscience--No direct comments by the author, but the scene is rendered as the author sees it and not as any individual character sees it.
http://www.ruthnestvold.com/narratology.htm
Reading and thinking about the point of view in literature makes me think about hte point of view in painting:
Velasquez "Las Meninas"
the viewer being the person (The King and Queen [in the mirror on the back wall]) who is being painted whilst the overall painting looks like it's about the girls on the painting.
Mark Tansey "Forward retreat"
at first sight this painting looks upside down, but it is actually the reflection in the water. The reflection of the backwards horsemen as well as the items you can see sticking out of the surface of the water make me wonder about the events possibly taking place.
Norman Rockwell "Triple self-portrait"
this is another good example of play with point of view in a painting.
Thursday, 18 February 2010
Narratology is both the theory and the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect our perception. Modern narratology is thought to have begun with Vladimir Propp and the Russian formalists.
Vladimir Propp, in his book Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928), analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folktales and identified the simplest irreducible narrative elements in them.
He identified a sequence of 31 functions and 7 broad character types which can be applied to all of the stories he analyzed. This kind of structural analysis has uncovered that these recurring narrative elements are based on the basic socio-psychological tasks that people confront during their lives, such as issues of dependence and independence, selfishness and sacrifice, birth and death.
Russian Formalism is distinctive for its emphasis on the functional role of literary devices and its original conception of literary history. Russian Formalism also has strong associations with the structuralist quest for a formal system of useful descriptions applicable to any narrative content. The structuralists seek to understand how recurrent elements, themes and patterns yield a set of universals that determine the make up of a story.
Vladimir Propp, in his book Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928), analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folktales and identified the simplest irreducible narrative elements in them.
He identified a sequence of 31 functions and 7 broad character types which can be applied to all of the stories he analyzed. This kind of structural analysis has uncovered that these recurring narrative elements are based on the basic socio-psychological tasks that people confront during their lives, such as issues of dependence and independence, selfishness and sacrifice, birth and death.
Russian Formalism is distinctive for its emphasis on the functional role of literary devices and its original conception of literary history. Russian Formalism also has strong associations with the structuralist quest for a formal system of useful descriptions applicable to any narrative content. The structuralists seek to understand how recurrent elements, themes and patterns yield a set of universals that determine the make up of a story.
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