The Role of Narratives in Literature Essay Sample

Language communicates power dynamics, sustains hierarchies while enforcing subjection, maintains cultural norms while establishing a dominant narrative, and therefore the rewriting present in counter-discourse still suffers from a clear power imbalance. Due to the functioning of truth as a narrative itself with a place of enunciation and resulting situated knowledge according to the perspective and circumstances as a reconstruction from the present, literature acts as a device of counter-memory or tool of rewriting in the presence of oppression for instance. Language is eminently social and historical, as a social function narratives and fiction attempt to claim a space of resistance beyond the impositions or limitations of language, and omission from historical discourse. Narratives provide a tool to apprehend the world order, lack thereof or to oppose it, be it through history as a dominant narrative or fiction as a counter-narrative and often a form of resistance. Roland Barthes describes narratives as numberless, composed of a diversity of genres and forms, universally present across all classes, geographic locales, and societal or cultural backgrounds- “as though any material were fit to receive man’s stories” . Narratives are inherent, international, transhistorical, and thus both consumed and produced by all, it acts as a form of translation regarding our experiences by using storytelling as a means to confer human understanding out of mere logical order or attribute meaning to senseless chaos when rationality no longer applies to.  

As for the nature of history and fiction as narratological constructions and their connection, “the writing of history has been intertwined with fiction”  since the use of poetry to depict a narrative of historical events such as Homer’s epics and the Greek’s belief in the Muses inspiration provided for the recording and preservation of those deeds reported. Aristotle’s literary criticism in Poetics considers that as all arts are a form of imitation (mimesis), this replication of something separate from itself loses its qualities in the process which constitutes a separation from the truth and its perfect form in the realm of the ideal. Literature is the art that uses language in its imitation and the importance of plot derives from the imitation of an action that is one and whole since the plot provides a sequence or order of events. The function of the poet isn’t the reconstruction of what happened but the report of what may happen, the possibilities within probability or necessity and thus this constitutes the difference between poets and historians moreover than the style of writing. Poetry expresses the universal and history the particular, universal correlates to the speech or action of a certain type of person on occasion. This aligns with perspectives such as Michel de Certeau who refers to fiction as “the repressed other of historical discourse”  which Hayden White justifies as the historical focus on the true and fictional interest in the real. Therefore such “repressed other (fiction) in history creates the simulacrum (the novel)” , by resisting disconfirmation prevails the attempt to preserve fictions and beliefs due to the desire for continuation or meaning not contained in the mere brute ‘truth’. As Orwell reflects upon the “four great motives for writing”  which he considers ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘political purpose’, and ‘historical impulse’ the latter he describes as a need or “desire to see things as they are”  by obtaining true facts and conserving them for the “use of posterity”  (placing the intellectual value upon the truth). Hayden points to the nature of literature “conceived as the artistic alternative to ordinary or everyday language”  as corresponding to “an invention of the nineteenth century”  and results in the desire to disengage historical account from “literariness”. Along with this longing for separation, literature itself searches for the approximation to the reality that transpires in literary evolution. It translates into the interest in the character’s resemblance with common readers, the portrayal of the mundane, and closeness in time or morals as opposed to the traditional heroes or mythical figures, with the narrative conveying such search for identification. As for the constitution of realistic literature since reality shifts constantly, it corresponds to fictional storytelling which doesn’t break the laws of probability thus operating on verisimilitude. It implies observation, application of logic, and arrival at knowledge (translation of and fascination with reality) and requires the gradual disappearing of the fantastic/supernatural into a more secular realm.

The role of narratives, fiction, and history is present in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey which explores authorship and readership, and how it defines each character and their interpretation of the world. As a parallel to novels’ critical reception, gothic novels are diminished below a gentleman’s reading material as a well-educated male due to the rationality/emotionality dichotomy and instruction/pleasure reading. This results in prejudice and misguided notions which attribute the readership of novels to women, a conception challenged by passages such as Henry Tilney’s admitted taste and enjoyment of novels and Eleanor Tilney’s interest in history. Such genre is considered by Catherine as the tale of great men with the exclusion of women, a denied existence in history as a reflection of societal order. The novel appeals to the intrinsic value of narrative regardless of the reader and as such, the genre shouldn’t be confined by gender. Upon the novel’s lack of social/intellectual respect or status as opposed to works of information with higher value, the author presents a passionate defense of the said genre as it is diminished by readership and writers alike. The novel is here considered superior to more considered works with the appeal to its serious nature, through their “knowledge of human nature”  depicted in the “best-chosen language” . As for the unreliable nature of sources that don’t fall under one’s own observation, history is characterized as filled with embellishments much as fiction, productions beyond genuine words, or simple transcriptions. The argument for the novel describes the simultaneous pleasure, enjoyment, and instruction, not truthful yet contains elements of truth within the fiction. As a form of “fictionalization of the past to think about the country's present and past”  ballads constitute a traditional literary form with a contemporary presence that reinforces tradition in a transgressive way. Ballads are examples of codified oral literature and its role in the conservation of knowledge (memorization and learning) with an effect on the order of the world and in close relationship with the community. Such folk songs possess authors and performers similar to their audience and descend from epics or tales of tribes (primarily anonymous, with oral transmission causing variation, distortion, or circumstantial changes). The Child Ballads for instance correspond to a collection gathered by Francis James Child with origins in the borders of Scotland and England as forms of narrative for those who lack it. Beyond the social or cultural entertainment in the absence of literary text, it presents an approximation to speech on an idiomatic/vernacular level. This collection constitutes histories of common folks transmitted through generations by songs that record the dialects, events, and lore of several periods/regions. Through the use of metaphors or other devices which denote skills often considered lacking in such forms, they explore painful experiences or taboo and gruesome topics with tales of loss and grief, hope and love, or revolt and oppression.