This study analyses the famous novel The Notebook (Le Grand Cahier, 1986) by the Hungarian-Swiss Francophone novelist Ágota Kristóf (1935–2011) and its film adaptation The Notebook (A nagy füzet, 2013) directed by Hungarian film director János Szász, as the allegory of “Big History”, as the recording of human tragedy (or the tragedy of human destructiveness and lust for power) and also the tragedy of the individual. We also focus on special narrative techniques (1st person plural narrator, narrative voice as homo duplex), which are especially significant in relation to brutal scenes of violence, sexual deviations, moral violations, and its film transformation.
The article tackles the function of the narrator in contemporary fiction. After outlining the position of the narrator in classical and post-classical narratology, it analyses several innovative approaches to this category as found in contemporary Slovenian novel. The article outlines general determinants of the narrator and attempts at showing that the category is still viable and offers possibilities for systematising. It looks at the narrator in the context of narratology and provides a definition and typology of this category. Given the syncretic character of the category of narrator, the knowledge of its multiple types – not restricted to the ones outlined by structuralism narratology – proves to be fruitful. The wider current definition of the narrator is most concisely outlined in the standard model of communication and consists of such elements as the real author, implied author, narrator implied reader and real reader. The model, unlike older conceptualisations, is based on mediation and the activity of the narrator, not on the notion of the narrator as the speaker.
The study focuses on epistemological, theoretical-methodological, and ethical questions that touched on individual phases of the implementation of oral history, or biographical research, focused on the life histories of people who lived their adult life in the former Czechoslovakia. It pay attention to the specifics of the ethnological approach to the research of everyday life, the connection between the representation of the past in its current interpretations, and describes the possibilities and limits of the ethnological research of the past in the present. An essential factor in the interpretation and analysis of research data is the local context and the connection with a small industrial town that developed during the socialist era. The theoretical starting point of the research is the concept of memory, which is thematised from several points of view, while the moment of asymmetry between collective and individual memory is at the centre of analytical interest. The subject of the analysis are the so-called micro-stories that communicate the current view of an ordinary person on their daily life in the past, i.e. in socialism, which is viewed not only as a specific historical epoch, but also as a special type of culture. The chosen perspective is based on the thesis that the perception and experience of lived socialism at the local level can differ significantly from the official interpretation of historical events, while this narrative is recognized as dominant. The chosen ethnological perspective does not seek to reconstruct history; it also notes the role of emotions in the research process and opens up the possibilities of the social significance of biographical research in the present.
The aim of the contribution is to show that introductory and final formula considered as one of the most phenomenal features of a fairy tale are inwardly structured. These formula were analysed on the base of the ethnographic material (so called Wolman's catalogue of Slovak fairy tales). We analysed them regarding to their construction, way of development, stylisation, attitude of a narrator, measure of convention and a way of its contamination. We identified the several types of these skeleton forms: simple introductory and final formula characterised by a lower degree of stylization and development of conventionalised form and content; stylised introductory formula (magic), an explicitly characterised fictional world of fairy tales; stylised introductory formula (rhetoric) and final (formula with an involvement of a narrator into a plot) formula, expressing an attitude of a narrator to the told story. Further, we found that in the folk environment differently from the literary one, the occurrence of formula in the right sense of word is rarer. It is clear from the analysis that some of the types of formula determine generic characteristic of texts, in which they function like their skeleton; it is also clear how much they also depend on an interpret's narrative characteristics. In the end of the contribution we defined the functions of formula, which are revealed just on the background of typological modification of formula. The basic function of formula is to declare a fairy tale story as a fictional story - that is why we can consider formula as a type of metaleptic figures.
Although classical psychoanalysis and its off-shoots has not brought any “theory or narration” that would become part of literary narratology, it has postulated several basic elements of “general psychoanalytic narratology” as implicit psychoanalytic theory of narration (the therapeutic function of narration, dialogic part, in-depth interpretation, the thematization of interpersonal relationships). At the same time, the article analyses how the interpretation of the dynamic (narrative) aspect of literature has contributed to the creation of psychoanalytic theory itself and the role played by the reliability or unreliability of the narrator in it.
The paper is aimed at the category of unreliability of the narrative text. The author builds on narratological works which consider fictional and historical texts as different types of narratives. Essential difference can be identified in the sphere of reference of these texts and in both basic levels of common narratological model of analyses – in the level of discourse and story. The paper presents a set of mutually linked differences as a border between two different contexts of “unreliability”. Quotation marks express an opinion that narrator’s unreliability (theoretically elaborated in connection with fictional narrative) cannot be analogically applied in analyses of “unreliable narration” in historical text. After a brief summary of parallel aspects of narrativity, the author pays attention to giving reasons for two different regimes of “unreliability” as well as to selection of suitable terminology.
Sophie Calle's literary texts are very profoundly associated with 'intimate writing', and they are fruits of various strategies as well, such as mixture of the author and the narrator, or keeping the reader in a 'pendant' position. Somewhere in between autobiography and a longing for fiction there is a vast self-fabulation, thoroughly confirming the artist's position as a writer and her authorial qualities. Sophie Calle's life thus melts into her artistic work, the creation of autobiography being an actual working method for fulfilling the artist's objectives.
There are only several short stories in the work of Tajovsky with the themes of city life. In spite of the fact he knew city life very well; he seems more impressive in village themes. In his early prose 'Mládenci' (The Young Guys, 1902) about a stag café company and some banal themes he proved indirectly that writing is not a source of pleasure and fun for him but it is an analysis of important social content and also that his leaving the city themes was just an expression of his aesthetic preferences. The best known text 'Maco Mliec' (1903) is a short story, in which in the beginning of his carrier as a writer he demonstrates his philosophy - to present an ordinary life as an extraordinary, exceptional. Tajovsky builds the short story as a provocative alternative to 'paper' Vajansky like 'ideal' heroes, in which a main character is an ugly person, unacceptable and dishonoured by all people, a servant of the village. His name is Maco. The author predicts also all possible problems with acceptance of him and that is expressed by a narrator who represents 'public opinion'. He does not understand Maco's unwillingness to change his destiny. Contrary to the author himself he does not consider Maco to be a valuable and unique human being. 'Ironic gap', which comes from the contradiction between the opposite opinions of the author and narrator, is very clear in the crucial issue - who is guilty of Maco's destiny (a farmer or he himself). The question represents discrepancy between realistic - verifiable depiction of the world and alternative modern relativism. The short story 'Maco Mliec' is inwardly semantically 'balanced' in its expression. It reflects inner uncertainty of the subject of the author, which leads to making a multilevel structure of the text. Through an antinomy of loneliness of individuality within the collective and his inner distance from people of different value priorities the author anticipates a dominant theme of the lyrical prose and naturism.
The aim of the study is to show that it is possible to read the collection of the short stories by Dusan Dusek 'Milosrdný cas' (The Merciful Time) as a compact reminiscent story. This reader's approach is inspired especially by the types of a narrator in the stories, which signalised reminiscent strategy. At the interpretation we come out from the up to now having done readings of Dusek's proses (Krsáková, Zajac, Prusková), from the conception of a cultural memory by Jan Assman and also from theoretical works focused on the problem of authenticity in the literature (Mukarovský, Bachtin, Merhaut, P.de Man, Mikula, Zajac, etc.). Present interpretation showed that the world of Dusek's proses is a stylized version of everyday, profane world, which in the contact with getting involved; a very sensitive subject produces reminiscences of the past life in topical space. Dusek's world functions as a place of memory 'sui generis'. Anecdotes represent a peculiar unit in the book. It is possible to identify their phraseological character. Dusek's micro stories have a form of literal realisation of phraselogism, the author negates their metonymic /metaphoric base. We consider phraseologism as a cultural text with a denoting function and a qualifying intention, then the presented stories, as literally realised phraseologisms , are a cultural characteristic of the world of Dusek's proses and an organic part of the whole collection of the short stories.
The article is focused on interpretation of the most popular and known fiction by Slovak author Vincent Sikula. His novelette S Rozarkou (With Rozarka 1966) belongs to the early and the most productive period of his work (fictions from the 60-tieth) and represents one of two significant creative tendencies of the writer - he was focused more on the private problems, on a single relationship, destiny. Concurrently to that in a polyphonic narration with the book Nebyva na kazdom vrsku hostinec (There is not an Inn on Every Top Hill) he began to develop other socially - historical line, culminating in his collection of fictions Tazisko (The Locus). The study is an attempt to depict a narrative concept of the fiction, determining by two contra dictionary intentions. The narrator and the protagonist of the story took cares for an adult but mentally retarded sister Rozarka. Her condition cannot be (is not intentionally) determined. The empty space of silence is to be filled by something else not corresponding to the problem; almost half of the narration is filled with stories. Simple, private space, localized story of a brother and a sister´s sharing lives together became a source of themes which are foundational for the formatting principles of the narration; the fiction With Rozarka is in that way also a story about birth of a narrator who shares his experience coming from the difficult circumstances. Vincent Sikula developed in that novelette a unique variant of sentimentalism. His work is one of his creative climaxes and also it could be determined as regionally distinctive contribution to a Slovak version of 'sentimental maturing'. It is tendency putting together Sikula´s works with fictions of some of younger writers, e.g. Rudolf Sloboda, Pavol Vilikovsky, Dusan Kuzel, and Pavol Hruz.
The paper deals with the first of two collection of short stories written by Vincent Sikula 'Na koncertoch sa netlieska' (It Is Not To Clap During The Concert) and 'Mozno si postavim bungalow' (I May Build Up A Bungallow). Both of them were published in 1964. The analysis of the category of narrator is a core of the work. The narrator is a key element in Sikula's fiction. It is mainly about a position of the narrator in the narrative, about his attitude to the event he talks about. In the early period of Sikula's fiction we can determine both divergent and co-operative lines of narration. The first one is focused on depiction about itself, on expression, prosaic objectification of the inner condition ('Me expanding to the world': depiction of the world by the subject) for which the feeling of injustice is characteristic: subjective hypostasis in major way makes an influence in the plan of depiction of the outward setting as well as the plan of the plot. Similarly with that line Sikula develops also a contradictory approach, in which the narrator pays attention to the others, mainly to the people representing social majority ('humiliated and offended'): subject of the narrator - without being excluded - makes a space for others ('Me is opened to the world'). There are not only two contradictory concepts of narration, but also of the subject. The second one becomes similar to characteristics, which was in regard with subject said by a French philosopher Remi Brague: 'I am nothing, I am not more than that movement of disappearing, which makes a free space for integration of that what it is'.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.