Units of Literary Narratives; A Text Linguistic Model

This paper tries to provide a framework to analyse literary narratives in terms of form and functions of narrative units. It proposes a text linguistic model to describe narrative units in terms of forms and functions, and illustrates each of the categories it proposes with examples. It argues that different literary narratives may use these units in different ways, and that this provides a clue to the orientation of the text as a whole. For illustrations, passages from detective novels and thrillers are used.

The following framework is used to talk about the formal and functional units of literary narratives:

UnitsTitleSettingCharacterEvaluationEpisodes-

Functions abstract, display, structural, evaluative orientation, narration, display orientation, narration, display evaluation, narration. narration, orientation, characterisation.

Let us now look at some these units in detail in terms of form, content and function.

Title

Among the various units of the literary narrative, title is the one that is most easily recognizable. It has a fixed position at the beginning of the narrative. Generally, the title is less than a sentence: it is a word, a group of words or a phrase. Sometimes, the title can have a sub-title, as in Curtain: Poirots Last Case. Further, the novelist can give titles to the individual chapters in the novel. These chapter headings need not relate to the episodes of the novel. A single episode may be divided into two chapters and may have two headings or a heading can summarize more than one episode.
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A title can perform the function of an abstract

it can tell us precisely what the

story is about. For example, Untouchable, the title of the famous Mulk Raj Anand novel, is a very explicit abstract. The novel deals with the story of an untouchable, and retrospectively, the title seems appropriate. Similarly, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich gives us the events in a day in the life of Denisovich. We can give numerous examples of such explicit abstracts
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Death of Ivan Illychch, War and Peace, Pride

and Prejudice, etc. But it is necessary to point out that it is difficult to encapsulate in a title all the points that a narrative text is trying to make. For example, Anna Karenina is of course about a woman of that name, but it is also about many other individuals. In such cases, the writer has to choose from a host of possible points of the story.

Further, sometimes, the title can appear to be a pointer to what the story is about, but retrospectively, it may prove to be misleading. For example, there is a Kannada story titled Murder etc. in the East by Devanur Mahadeva. The story, however, does not contain any murders. The title in fact performs the role of an abstract in this story, but not

explicitly. It suggests that physical murders are not the only kind of murders, but this significance is revealed only after we read the story, and puzzled, ask ourselves
__

but

where is the murder? Thus, the title can perform the function of an abstract in literary narratives, but sometimes it can be an incomplete abstract or an implicit one.

A title may perform a display function also by drawing attention, not just to what it says, but also to its linguistic form, or to some strangeness in what it says. For example, look at the two titles Murder in Retrospect (Agatha Christie) and Remembrance of Murders Past (Noreen Wild). While the first one performs merely the function of the abstract, the second title draws attention to itself by slightly changing the famous phrase remembrance of things past. Similarly, a title like Welcome Death (Glyn Daniel) draws attention to itself by the unusual collocation.

Titles can also perform the function of indicating the unifying motive or idea of a novel. For example, we have many Agatha Christie novels, which have nursery rimes as titles. (And Then There were None, Pocketful of Rye, Hickory, Dickory, Dock, etc.). Her novel One, Two, Buckle my Shoe uses the ten lines of the rhyme as chapter headings as well. Here the nursery rime is used in the novel as a device which connects the different murders into some unifying theme. Such a title performs the structural function of adding to the connectivities among the different events within the novel. Similarly, a title like The Heart of Darkness has its echoes through out the novel where the heart of darkness forms a metaphoric tool of giving coherence to the novel. We will call such a function __ that adds to the structure of the narrative __ structural function.

Evaluation can also be a one of the functions that a title can perform. Titles like The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hide(Stevenson), The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Christie), etc., exhibit what can be termed as the story world evaluation. A title like How Much Land Does a Man Need (Tolstoy) or An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (Patricia Cornwell) exhibits a non-story world evaluation.

Setting.

We are using the term setting to refer to any description of place and object, using the term character to refer to participants. In terms of topic, we can divide setting elements in a narrative text into global and local setting elements. Global setting refers to the setting description of the global place of action refers to the subdivisions of this global setting
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a city, a village etc. Local setting

a room, the post office, the scene of

crime etc. Formally, setting units show the features of a descriptive text, dealing with objects and situations. They can also be in the form of instruction (If you take the highway, you will see a big building at the intersection: if you stop your car and look at the building, you will notice the beautiful garden etc: for a similar hypothetical text using instructional form for setting, see Nash, 1980: 14-15). Further, the setting elements can be either presented in an objective style or in a subjective style. When it is presented in an objective style, the focus is on the object being described. The following excerpt can be an example for the objective style:

The house was a long, low structure with artificially weathered thick shingles. [---] The driveway which approached the house was bisected by a five strand barbed wire fence, anchored to a concrete post in the middle

of the driveway. The living room was sumptuously furnished and lighted by concealed lights which gave the room an atmosphere of soft moonlight.

About one-third of the room was separated by the taught strands of the barbed wire fence, which ran in a mathematically straight line directly through the house and through the wall.

(The Case of the Fenced in woman, Erle Stanley Gardner, 16)

In this example, there are no abstract nouns and no verbs of perception. There are no psychological verbs and no non-factive verbs. For example, look at the sentence The living room was sumptuously furnished and lighted by concealed lights which gave the room an atmosphere of soft moonlight. If we use a non-factive psychological verb (There seemed to be an appearance of soft moonlight) the effect will be different. Here, the relationship between the object and the subject is not important. The setting would appear the same to any other subject. But look at the following example:

It was an imposing but unremarkable Georgian house with proportions which she knew rather than felt to be graceful, and it looked a little different from the many others she had seen in Londons squares and terraces. The front door was closed and she saw no sign of activity behind the four stories of eight-paned windows, the two lowest ones each with an elegant wrought iron balcony. On either side was a smaller, less ostentatious house, standing a little distanced and detached like a pair of deferential poor relations.

(Original Sin, P.D. James, 7.)

Though this passage is similar to the previous passage in that it tries to describe a scene accurately, there are some differences in the way in which the scene is seen. For example, we can try to replace [---] Georgian house with proportions which she knew rather than felt to be graceful with the Georgian house was graceful. The sentences are also not of x be y form. Replace, for example, It looked different with It was different. We can also see the use of metaphors that attribute human qualities to houses (like a pair of deferential poor relations). The objective world here is not presented in a neutral, objective way, but through the consciousness of an individual. This can be called the subjective way of presenting setting.

Setting can perform the function of orientation, display or narration. (See OToole, 1982, 187-192, for a more elaborate discussion on the functions of setting.) All stories should take place somewhere, and it is necessary for a narrator to point out where the story is taking place. In many oral narratives that Labov (1972) takes as example, we have such minimal setting units. Look at the following example
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Yeah, you know, I

was sittin on the corner an shit, smoking my cigarette, you know (Labov, 1972: 357). Here, the place indicator __ on the corner __ merely tells us where the event took place. It is of no interest in itself, nor is it very essential for the narrative for the event to take place in that particular corner. In literary narratives also there are many events which happen in a place that is not significant in itself, and the setting merely indicates where the action took place. For example, look at the following setting indicators-Mr. and Mrs. Charles Templeton stood just inside their drawing room door (Ngaio Marsh, False

Scent: 68): Judge Goodwin adjourned court shortly before four o clock and found Perry Mason waiting in the anteroom of his chambers (Gardner, Case of the Fenced in Woman: 9). Such orientational setting indicators are more likely to occur in case of minor setting.

But sometimes the setting is more integral to narrative. That is, in addition to indicating the place of action, the setting performs a narrative function as well. The example from Gardner given above is central to the narrative action. We constantly have to come back to this passage to make sense of the events in the story. In this case, the setting description is important because the place has certain significance for the events in the story: significance for the way in which the murder is committed and for the way in which the detective solves the crime. An extreme example of setting performing a narrative function is found in the Christie novel Taken at the Flood. The narrative is broken by a series of setting units, which talk about the smoke from a train appearing as a question mark to one of the characters. In the context of the novel, this setting unit is marked because there are no other descriptive setting units in the novel: no other setting units are of interest in themselves and nowhere else in the novel does Christie talk about the feelings evoked by the setting in a character. Here, she is doing it because the setting unit has a narrative function __ it clarifies the departure time of the train, thus breaking the alibi of one of the suspects __ but the writer wants to hide the narrative point for the time being by pretending that setting is of interest in itself.

But in many novels, the setting is of interest in itself

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not just as the place of

action or because it is important for the action. The historical novels can be an example for this. Look at the following extract from a historical detective fiction:

August came in, that summer of 1141, tawny as a lion and somnolent and purring as a hearthside cat. After the plenteous rains of the spring the weather had settled into angelic calm and sunlight for the feast of Saint Winifred, and preserved the same benign countenance throughout the corn harvest. Lammas came for once strict to its day, the wheat fields were already gleaned and white, ready for the flocks and herds that would be turned into them to make use of what aftermath the season brought.

(An Excellent Mystery, Ellis Peters, 1.)

Here, the setting is of interest in itself. It is not there to indicate the place of action, nor because it performs a narrative function. Let us look at the following example:

A traveller who visits Oxford today, and who walks northward from St. Giles, is struck immediately by the large, imposing houses, mostly dating from the latter half of the nineteenth century, that line of the Woodstock and the Banbury Roads and the streets that cross their ways between them. Apart from the blocks of weathered yellow stones round the whitepainted window- frames, these three storied houses are built of attractive red-dish brick, and are roofed with small rectangular tiles, more of an

arrange-red, which slope down from the clustered chimney stacks aslant the gabled windows.

(The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn, Colin Dexter: 19.)

In these cases, the setting is of interest in itself. It does not add to either the orientation or the narrative function of the narrative text, or when it does, the writer uses more setting clauses than is strictly necessary for the orientation or the narrative function. In such cases, we can say that the setting performs a display function.

Character.

Characters were a matter of great debate at the beginning of structuralism. On the one hand, we had structuralists arguing that characters have no existence beyond the roles that they perform in a novel and on the other hand, there were the psychological critics who argued that an interest in character is essential in a narrative (for a discussion of this, see Toolan, 1988: Rimmon-Kenan, 2002). Early structuralist attempts to deal with characterisation reduced characters to some roles that they perform in a story. Nevertheless, we are often drawn to the stories for the sake of the characters and sometimes the characters do gain an existence beyond the context of the narrative in which they occur
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there can be no better example for this than Sherlock Holmes. As

Chatman says, Too often do we recall fictional characters vividly, yet not a single word of the text in which they came alive (1978: 118). OToole also says that in some narratives, the character can be the raison d`tre and the other units can be [---] to some degree subservient to the revelation of character (1982: 143). Gargesh, 1990 points out

that there are narratives like Crime and Punishment where characters dominate the action (124). In this thesis, we recognize that characters can be limited to the roles that they perform in the narrative and we say that this relates to the narrative function of the character. But many characters may be of interest in themselves, and here we say that the unit character has a function other than that of narration or orientation. As Prakasam says, Some stories are event-oriented and some others are personality-oriented (1999: 66). We need a different analysis when we are talking about personality-oriented stories from the Griemas (1987: 106-121) kind of analysis that talk of characters as actants.

One way to analyse fictional characters is to look at the character traits as suggested by Chatman, 1978. Characters with more depth are likely to have more features than the characters with less depth. We can also look at the various strategies used by the writer to provide depth to his characters. Pearlman, 1994 discusses some of the ways in which depth can be provided to the characters. The writer may describe a character from more than one point of view; he may conflate or fuse different stock figures into one character; he may try to indicate a past life for the characters; and he may allow for the realistic, allegorical and supernatural elements within the same character. The effort the writer takes to provide depth to the character indicates whether the narrative is personality oriented or not.

The character traits of the character may be related to his personal, familial and social features:

Parameters for discussing characters

The following parameters are useful to discuss characters ---

i. Familial ii. Social iii. Personal The first parameter locates the character in a given family where he or she has certain paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations with other characters. The second parameter identifies a character as part of a social structure where he has certain obligations and privileges. The third parameter is engendered by the first two parameters. This parameter gives the character his or her unique status.

(Prakasam, 1999: 67.)

These parameters are useful in comparing different characters in a novel or with other novels. We may further divide these parameters into four components __ physical, behavioural, familial and social. When we look at the unit character in literary narratives, we can use these parameters to talk about the similarities and differences between the different novels.

There are many characters in any narrative text who are merely there to fill the place. These characters do not have any role in the narrative and they are merely participants. The narrator does not have to dwell on these characters for long. It is not necessary for him to give them depth, or to assign a role to them in the narrative.

Sometimes, he need not even give them names __ a flower girl, a waiter, a ticket collector, etc., can appear in a narrative just as a part of the setting. We will say that such characters perform an orientational function.

All characters perform this orientational function: but some characters are more integral to the narrative: they perform a role in the narrative
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to use Griemas

terminology, donor, receiver etc. A detective, for example has a particular role in the narrative, so has the victim. Such a character can be said to be performing narrative function. Even the minor characters can perform such narrative roles __ a ticket collector, who appears to be merely orientational, may prove important in a detective fiction from the point of view of establishing an alibi; the waiter can be important in clarifying who sat next to whom on the fatal day when the victim was poisoned, etc. Such characters perform a narrative function.

However, the writer may make the character interesting in himself or herself. He can decide to provide some depth to his character. There may be many qualities in a detective other than those strictly needed for the detection. In such cases, we say that the character is used to perform a display function.

Evaluation

According to Labov, evaluation is the most important part of a narrative. He says that evaluation is [---] the means used by the narrator to indicate the point of the narrative, its raison dtre (1972:366). According to him, it indicates the point of the story. Polanyi also says that evaluation is the most important aspect of a narrative and it

indicates the tellability aspect of the story (1989). Bamberg and Frey also emphasize the tellability aspect of the evaluation saying that evaluation gives meaning to the individual events and actions (1991: 670). But not all narratives may be oriented towards evaluation and in detective fiction, the tellability might be in the events rather than in the views of the narrator about the events. In this dissertation, we will use the term evaluation to refer to the comments __ either explicit or implicit __ made by the author. In some novels these comments may draw attention to themselves and thus indicate the point of the story, where as in some other novels, they may be secondary to the events.

Labov has elaborated on the types and devices of evaluation. Evaluation can be external (made directly by the narrator) or embedded. Embedded evaluation may take the shape of quoting oneself, quoting someone else, or of evaluative action. When talking about literary narratives we can talk about a cline of explicit/ implicit evaluation and say that direct comments are explicit whereas evaluation through events is implicit.
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Labov also talks about the different forms that a narrator can use to evaluate

intensifiers, comparators, correlatives and explicatives. It has been argued that in literary narratives, the use of the historical present tense indicates evaluation (see Fowler, 1981). But, as Polanyi, 1981 and Hunt and Vipond, 1986, point out, there need not be any absolute device for evaluation. It is possible to make a point without breaking the narrative by a careful arrangement of the events or episodes. We will see how the arrangements of sequences and episodes can be used to make an evaluatory comment when we deal with episodes.

In terms of content __ that is, what the evaluation is about __ we may talk about the story world and non-story world evaluation. Polanyi makes a similar categorization when she talks about contential and deictic evaluation (1981: 25). We use the term story world evaluation to refer to any evaluation of the content of the story and the non-story world evaluation to refer to any generalizations that apply beyond the story world also. But here again, we should note that it is often difficult to strictly separate the story world evaluation from the non-story world evaluation.

We will also have to distinguish between the passing evaluatory comments in a narrative that are significant at only that moment of the narrative and those evaluatory comments which connect with one another to indicate a particular moral or point of the story. For example, there may be many side comments in a detective novel about the role of women in the society, but these comments may not be given prominence. On the other hand, if we look at a novel like An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (James), the question of whether being a detective is suitable for a woman is repeatedly raised so that it becomes one of the focal points of the story along with the suspense related to the identity of the criminal. It is such structural evaluation (either story world or non-story world) that is important from the point of view of tellability aspect of the narrative.

Evaluation, besides being used to make a comment, can also be used perform a narrative function. In many cases, the evaluatory comment __ particularly the story world evaluation
__

may be a necessity in either adding to the narration or in explaining some

aspect of the narration that is not clear in the events themselves. Look at the following extract:

I was almost finished with the external examination, but what was left was the most invasive, for in any unnatural death, it was necessary to investigate a patients sexual practices. Rarely was I given a sign as obvious as a tattoo depicting one orientation or another, and as rule, no one the individual was intimate with was going to step forth to volunteer information, either. But it really would not have mattered what I was told or by whom. I would still check for evidence of sexual intercourse.

(Cause of Death, Patricia Cornwell: 36.)

Here, the evaluatory comment is used mainly to explain why the first person narrator has to check for signs of anal intercourse. The role of the evaluatory clauses here is not to express an opinion about either an event in the story or about the non-story world, but to explain an action of the protagonist. We will say that in such cases, evaluatory clauses are used to perform a narrative function.

Events, sequences and episodes.

Episodes can be said to be the microcosm of narrative texts because they contain all the units a narrative may contain. In the analysis of the longer narrative texts, episodes are also a practical necessity. We are using the unit of episode rather than the units of sequences and events mainly because it is convenient to analyse the longer narrative texts into episodes and because it is practically difficult to analyse a novel in terms of sequences and events. But at the same time it is necessary to remember that episodes are the building blocks of narrative and that even in oral narratives, the events are organized

in terms of episodes. That episodes reflect some reality about the cognitive process has been discussed by van Dijk and Kintsch, 1977 and Glen, 1978.

To begin with, it should be accepted that episodes are mainly pre-theoretical units and that certain amount of intuition is necessary to determine the boundaries of an episode. Van Dijk accepts the point that it is not possible to rigorously divide a narrative into episodes (1982). Nonetheless, it is possible to have certain guidelines to determine the episode boundaries.

Most of the definitions of episode talk about the topic on the one hand and the place, time and setting indicators on the other hand. For example, Brown and Yule say, The principles on which partitioning depends are related to change of setting (time or place) and theme (the person or thing talked about), in narrative discourse, at least (1983: 98). These two elements, setting and theme are mentioned by van Dijk also. Roughly speaking, paragraphs or episodes are characterized as coherent sequences of sentences of a discourse, linguistically marked for beginning and/or end, and further defined in terms of some kind of thematic unity [- - -] for instance, in terms of identical participants, time, location, global event or action(1982:177). Further, he says [- - -] an episode is first of all conceived of as a part of a whole, having a beginning and an end and hence defined in temporal terms. Next, both the part and the whole mostly involve sequences of events or actions. And finally, episode should somehow be unified and have some relative independence: we can identify it and distinguish it from other episodes (ibid: 180). In other words, though episode is a part of a larger unit, it can stand independently on its own. Any analysis of episode should be able to describe not only the

internal make up of an episode (what is a complete episode, what are the different units that an episode can contain, etc.), but also to describe how its separation from the other episodes can be recognized.

Change of time, place and participants can be a clue to recognize the separation of one episode from the previous episode. The following assumptions sound useful in determining episode boundaries. Provided that the time and place are constant, a change of participants is enough to mark the beginning of a new episode. Provided the place and participants are constant, a break in time is necessary to mark the beginning of a new episode. Provided the participants and time are constant, a noticeable and functionally important change in place is necessary to mark the beginning of a new episode. For example, two characters moving inside a house or travelling in a cab need not necessarily count as a functionally important change in place. Further, we assume that to count as an episode, a unit should be temporally significant with respect to other episodes and that it should contain events that are temporally significant.

In terms of the internal make up of an episode, we can talk about the way in which the different sequences within an episode are connected to the theme or the themes of the episode. Every episode should have a theme or themes that can properly and wholly apply to the events of the episode. Next, an episode may have an abstract that introduces the theme, though this is only an optional element. An episode should have at least one event, in the sense that an event signifies a change of state. When more than one event is present in an episode, we should be able to recognize a beginning and an end. The end or resolution should answer the question what next within the theme of the

episode. There will of course be comments on the events in the form of evaluation. Further, an episode should cohere with the main narrative both globally and locally. That is, the overall theme of the episode should connect with the global theme(s) of the main narrative. In addition, there should be linear links with the events preceding and succeeding it.

We can talk also about the connectivity between the events of an episode and between one episode and other episodes. It is possible to look at the interconnectedness between these various sequences of events as AND, THEN, and BECAUSE relations (see Stein and Glenn, 1979: 59-62). AND relation refers to events co-occurring in time or whose significance does not depend on the time element; THEN relation refers to events related by time, but not causally related (one event does not cause another event, though it precedes it); BECAUSE relation refers to the causal connection (one event causing another event). In causal relations, we can also differentiate between enablement and causal connection. Enablement is when one event leads to the other event, but does not cause it. That is, going in a cab may lead to reaching a place, but it does not cause it. These relationships can be applied between episodes as well as within episode and can be used to talk about the internal coherence of an episode and also about its connectivity with the other episodes. It is also possible to have further rhetorical units like problem, solution, claim, argument, list, etc. (Sanders and Noordman, 1992); event, internal response, reaction, goal, etc (Warren et al, 1989); or goal, attempt, outcome, etc. (Trabasso and Nickels, 1992).

A coherent episode is one, which has clear time, place, and participant indication and one in which the relation between the different events is clear. For example, we can have an episode in which we do not know the participants. In detective novels, the writer may deliberately withhold the information about one of the participants using a pronoun like he or she to refer to a character. Alternatively, the writer may not make clear the relationship between the events of the episode. We may not understand the significance of the actions of the detective or we may not understand how his action or speech is connected with what has preceded. In such cases, we have an episode that is incoherent __ at least for the time being. Here it is important to note that the lack of coherence may be intentional or accidental and that often addressees operate on the principle of the default assumption of coherence (see Wolfram Bublitz and Uta Lenk, 1984).

An episode can exhibit different kinds of coherence. We can have episodes in which we do not have to go either forward or backward in the narration to determine the time, place and participants and to determine the relationship between the events. Such episodes can be said to be textually coherent and we can say that it is the unmarked form of episodic coherence. Let us call this textual coherence. That is, when the setting indicators are clear and the event structure is complete in itself from the point of view of what began the episode, we can say that we have a case of textual coherence. But there can be cases where the coherence is deferred: that is the local absence of coherence is explained in some other episode that follows it. Let us call this deferred coherence. When the local absence of coherence can be resolved by recourse to what has preceded, we may say that the episode exhibits co-textual coherence. Some other episodes are locally coherent, but we come to know later on that we, as readers are mistaken about the

identity of one of the participants or about the relation between two events and we may have to change our ideas about one of the elements in the episode. Let us call this illusive coherence. An episode exhibits illusive coherence if it appears to be coherent locally, but later events prove this understanding to be mistaken. Illusive coherence and deferred coherence can be said to be the marked variants of episodic coherence and these are the ones that are significant from the point of view of suspense in detective fiction.

The significance of the use of such marked episodic coherence in detective fiction needs some elaboration. When talking about markedness, we should also look at the context in which an episode occurs. In a context full of one kind of coherence, a shift to another kind of coherence can be considered as marked. We can find an excellent example of markedness with respect to episodic coherence in the novel After the Funeral by Agatha Christie. The fifth section of chapter 3 of the novel begins with these words:

Meanwhile, in the buffet at Swindon, a lady in a wispy mourning and festoons of jet was eating bath buns and drinking tea and looking forward to the future. She had no premonitions of disaster. She was happy. (39)

Further on:
__ __

How smug the people were

and what hypocrites! All those faces

when she had said about murder! The way they had looked at her!

Well, it had been the right thing to say. She nodded her head in satisfied approval of herself. Yes, it had been the right thing to do. (Emphasis mine: 40)

The episode does not mention who this she is. But still the episode in the context of the novel makes perfect sense; because what has preceded this chapter has introduced a character who has said something about the murder, we assume that this she is the same person, and we can say that the episode exhibits co-textual coherence, which in itself is not marked. But if we look at some of the preceding episodes, we will clearly see that there is markedness about this episode. This episode is the part of a group of parallel episodes, all of which have the same event structure, where one or more participants are thinking about the same thing (about what happened at a funeral, which is what this she is also thinking about). But all these episodes have a clear textual coherence and in particular, they begin by making the setting element of the participant explicit. Look at the following opening lines from the other episodes of this group:

In a third class carriage, further along the train, Gregory Banks said to his wife----. (33)

Maude Abernethie, changing her dress for dinner [---]. (35)

Helen Abernethie sat by the fire in the green drawing room waiting for Maude [---]. (37) Appearing in this context of a group of parallel episodes which all exhibit textual coherence, the beginning of the fifth section of chapter five which uses co-textual

coherence and does not explicitly state the participant in the action, appears to be marked. As Prakasam says An unmarked expression is used normally unless there is a good reason not to do so (1982:12). There is an excellent reason why Agatha Christie does this. The coherence of this episode is illusive in the sense that the local interpretation of coherence will be proved wrong when the criminal is caught. This deceiving the reader is an integral part of the detective fiction, and here, the marked passage plays a role in that process.

Episodes again may have narrative, orientational or even evaluatory function. When episodes help to move a story forward, they are performing the function of the narration. But sometimes episodes may help to establish the where, when, who etc., of the novel. For example, the first few chapters of the Agatha Christie novel, A Murder is Announced, has a series of episodes where different families in a village are talking about an advertisement in a newspaper. These episodes manage to introduce us to the people involved in the action and the place of action
__

a village. The function of these

episodes is more orientational than narrative. Sometimes, the events themselves may indicate the evaluatory point of the story. When an aristocratic criminal is allowed to commit suicide and the detective promises not to reveal the truth to the police (Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie), the episodes dealing with these events are performing an evaluatory function as well. A better example for episodes being used to perform evaluatory function can be found in Mulk Raj Anands Untouchable. Twice in the novel, we have an episode dealing with the ill treatment of the protagonist by the caste Hindus immediately followed by an episode that shows a Muslim or a labour class Hindu treating him well. The function of these episodes in the novel is purely evaluatory.

Episodes are temporally and/or causally connected with the other units of the narrative and the events within an episode are also temporally or causally connected. But there can be events which do not form an episode. These events can be described as free events. Free events are temporally or causally connected with the other events in the novel, but among themselves, they may not have a significant temporal connection. For example, we may have a group of events which describe what some people were doing at nine o clock on a particular day. These events are temporally connected as a group with what has preceded and what follows them, but there may be no significant temporal connections among the various events that form this group. They are not orientational narrative clauses describing habitual actions because orientational narrative clauses have no temporal significance. Such events can often have the same theme
__

the actions of

some people at a particular time __ but they have different place and time indicators. It is necessary to distinguish such free events from the events that connect together to form an episode.

We should also note that in terms of external connectivity, we could have three types of relations between episodes
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contiguity, embedding and interlinking. Two episodes can

be considered as contiguous if they occur next to each other and the second episode begins after the resolution or coda of the first episode. This type of interconnectivity can be considered as unmarked as most of the episodes in a narrative text are contiguous. But some times, an episode can be inserted into another episode. Thus, an episode can be considered as embedded if it begins and ends completely within another episode. And the relationship between two episodes can be that of interlinking when two episodes share their resolution

Some other functions.

The above analysis is by no means exuastive. There are some other functions that can be relevant. Look at the following excerpt from the novel The Da Vinci Code:

The church of Saint-Sulpice, it is said, has the most eccentric history of any building in Paris. Built over the ruins of an ancient temple to the Egyptian goddess Isis, the church possesses an architectural footprint matching that of Notre Dame to within inches. The sanctuary has paid host to the baptisms of the Marquis de Sade and Boudelaire, as well as the marriage of victor Hugo. The attached seminary has a well-documented history of unorthodoxy and was often the clandestine meeting hall for the numerous secret societies. (125)

This is not setting, though the action does take place in the church described above. The passage does not describe the church: it gives information. In fact, the narrative text Da Vinci Code gives information through various forms. Later in the novel, the writer narrates a class that the hero took for prison inmates, where he discusses the history of the painting Mona Lisa. (166-168). Here, the narrative form is used for the purpose of giving information. The modern popular novel has this tendency to be information-oriented. Writers like Dan Brown, Thomas Harris and Arthur Hailey use many information-oriented passages in their novels. Such information appears in all narratives, but the relative importance given to it may be less. For example, look at the following excerpt from Poe:

The Corpse, being supposed at the bottom of the river, will there remain until, by some means, its specific gravity again becomes less than that of the bulk of the water which it displaces. This effect is brought about by the decomposition, or otherwise. The result of the decomposition is the generation of the gas, distending the cellular tissues [---]

(The Mystery of Marie Rogt, 374.)

The passage has all the features of the informative text type, but this information is used to make a narrative point, whereas in novels like the Da Vinci Code, the narrative is a pretext to give information.

A narrative text may also contain argumentative text type passages. Again, our example is from Poe. This is from the short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue. As it is a very long passage, we will give only some lines from the passage:

The Mental features discoursed as the analytical, are, in themselves little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. [---.] Yet, to calculate is not in itself to analyse. A chess player, for one, does the one without the other. [---.] The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity. [---.] It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic. (328-331)

Here, the effort is to prove something, and one has the doubt whether the narrative is just a device used to serve the argumentative function of the story. That is why Haycraft says It [The Murders in the Rue Morgue] might better be called an essay than a story(1984:16).

Look at another example from The DaVinci Code:

Nobody could deny the enormous good the modern Church did in todays troubled world, and yet the church had a deceitful and violent history. Their brutal crusade to reeducate the pagan and feminine-worshipping religions spanned three centuries, employing methods as inspired as they were horrific.

The Catholic Inquisition published the book that arguably could be called the most blood-soaked publication in human history. Malleus Maleficarum
__

or The Witches Hammer

__

indoctrinated the world to the dangers of

freethinking women and instructed the clergy to locate, torture and destroy them. Those deemed witches by the church included all female scholars, priestesses, gypsies, mystics, nature lovers, herb gatherers and any women suspiciously attuned to the natural world. Midwives also were killed for their heretical practice of using medical knowledge to ease the pain of childbirth
__

a suffering, the church claimed, was the Gods

rightful punishment for Eves partaking of the apple of knowledge, thus giving birth to the idea of the Original Sin. During three hundred years of

witch hunts, the Church burned at the stake an astounding five million women.

The propaganda and bloodshed had worked.

Todays world was the living proof. (173)

Here again, the whole passage tries to prove a point. This argumentative tone of the passage is not an isolated example: the novel has many such passages, which connect together to present a particular argument about the church.

Narrative text orientations.

Thus, the different formal units of a narrative may have different functions. It is important to point out here that normally every unit of a narrative performs more than one function and it is also not easy to draw a boundary line between the various functions. Thus, the division into different functions is always an approximation and when we say that a particular unit performs an orientational function, we do not mean that it does not perform any other function. We only mean that the orientational function of that unit is more prominent than the other functions.

As we have shown, literary narratives can have different passages with different orientations. In addition, a literary narrative may itself give more importance to some categories and some functions than others. Thus we can have evaluation-oriented narratives (where the evaluatory comments form the source of the tellability of the novel), thesis-oriented narratives (where the writer is trying to prove a preconceived

thesis), information-oriented narratives (where the narrative is used to impart interesting information), description-oriented narratives (where the setting is of greater importance __ Westerns, for example), character-oriented narratives (where the focus is on the character) and the event-oriented narratives (where the main interest is in what happens next). Narrative texts often may have more than one orientation, but rarely do we find narratives in which all the elements get equal importance. And we argue that the way in which a narrative arranges its different units indicates the orientation of the narrative text.

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---

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