Table Of ContentFictions of Discourse
Reading Narrative Theory
The fundamental principle upon which contemporary narratology is
constructed is that narrative is an essentially divided endeavour, involv-
ing the story ('what really happened') and the discourse ('how what hap-
pened is presented'). For traditional criticism, the primary task of
narrative discourse is essentially to convey the story as transparently as
possible. Patrick O'Neill investigates the extent to which narrative dis-
course also contains the counter-tendency not to tell the story, indeed to
subvert the story it tells in foregrounding its own performance.
The systemic implications of this perspective for narrative and for
narrative theory are examined within the conceptual framework pro-
vided by classical French narratology. O'Neill ultimately attempts both
to expand and to problematize the structural model of narrative pro-
posed by this centrally important tradition of narrative theory.
O'Neill describes narrative as functioning in terms of four interacting
levels: story, narrative text, narration, and textuality. Using a range of
examples from Homer to modern European fiction, he discusses tradi-
tional narrative categories such as voice, focalization, character, and set-
ting, and reinscribes them within the contextual space of author and
reader to bring out narrative's potential for ambiguity and unreliability.
He also discusses the implications of translation for narrative theory.
PATRICK O'NEILL is a member of the Department of German and Associ-
ate Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Queen's University.
THEORY/CULTURE
Editors: Linda Hutcheon, Gary Leonard, Jill Matus, Janet Paterson,
and Paul Perron
PATRICK O'NEILL
Fictions of Discourse:
Reading Narrative Theory
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1994
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
Reprinted in paperback 1996
ISBN 0-8020-0468-7 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8020-7948-2 (paper)
Printed on acid-free paper
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
O'Neill, Patrick, 1945-
Fictions of discourse : reading narrative theory
(Theory / culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8020-0468-7 (bound) / ISBN 0-8020-7948-2 (pbk.)
1. Narration (Rhetoric). I. Title. II. Series.
PN212.0541994 808 C94-932010-2
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance
to its publishing program of the Canada Council and the Ontario
Arts Council.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the
Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
For Trudi,
who tells it like it is;
Conor, Owen, Brian, and Siobhan,
whose story continues;
and Zeno,
who told it like it wasn't.
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 3
1
Theory Games: Narratives and Narratologies 11
2
Narrative Facts and Other Fictions: Story and Discourse 33
3
Discourse Discoursed: The Ventriloquism Effect 58
4
Points of Origin: The Focalization Factor 83
5
Texts and Textuality: The Shapers and the Shaped 107
6
Games Texts Play: Reading between the Narratives 132
Conclusion 155
NOTES l6l
BIBLIOGRAPHY 169
INDEX l8l
Acknowledgments
Certain ideas first presented in my earlier book The Comedy of
Entropy: Humour, Narrative, Reading (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1990) concerning the ludic or gamelike qualities of
narrative as a semiotic system are here further developed, espe-
cially in chapters 1 and 5. Chapter 4, here slightly revised, first
appeared as ' Points of Origin: On Focalization in Narrative/ in
Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 19 (1992): 331-50. The
greater part of chapter 6 first appeared in print as 'Kafka across
the Intertexts: On Authority in Translation/ in Kafka pluriel:
Réécriture et tradition, ed. Monique Moser-Verrey, a special issue
of TTR - Traduction, Terminologie, Redaction: Etudes sur le texte et
ses transformations (Montreal) 5.2 (1992): 19-40. Earlier versions
of chapter 6 were delivered to audiences at McMàster University,
the University of Toronto, Queen's University, Laurentian Uni-
versity, the University of Victoria, the University of British Co-
lumbia, and the University of Manitoba. My thanks are due to
audiences at these universities for valuable feedback, as also to
the participants in a Comparative Literature seminar at the Uni-
versity of British Columbia, where this chapter had its origin; to
Barbara Sinnemann, whose MA thesis on English translations of
Das Urteil was written at Queen's University under my direction;
and to Roberta Ascarelli of the University of Toronto, who kindly
provided me with Italian translations of Das Urteil. Former stu-
dents at the University of British Columbia and Queen's Univer-
sity whose contributions over the years helped me eventually to
