LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 17:8 August 2017
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
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         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Narrating the Narration:
Using Joyce’s Molly and Kafka’s Gregor to
Show the Nature of Narrative

Aiman Reyaz, M.A. English
Dr. Priyanka Tripathi, Ph.D. English


Abstract

Narrative refers to a story involving events and characters and the interaction between the two. Generally a narrator expounds the story in whichever way he/she chooses to do. Since the explication of a story is generally the work of a single subject, the narrator is looked at with a critical eye. This notion is backed up all the more because of the reason that the author, who may be dead long ago, represents a biased subjectivity. The purpose of this paper is to counter that notion because Narrative is a capricious form with greater reach than poetry and drama and the authors would take the case of Joyce’s Molly Bloom and Kafka’s Gregor Samsa to highlight the point. The paper will employ the two-pronged approach to enhance the importance of subjectivity in Narratives: Horizontal and Vertical. The former suggests that Narratives have an ecosystem-like structure. The latter suggests that Narratives show the human trajectory of life, even if that trajectory ends in death. The conclusion would highlight the future scope of the medium of Narration, when it is devoid of the human element.

Keywords: Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Narrative, Biased Subjectivity, Structures, Subjectivity, Text, Human Trajectory, Human Element

Introduction

Narrative, as defined by M.H. Abrams in its simplest form is “a story, whether told in prose or verse, involving events, characters, and what the characters say and do” (Abrams 173). Generally, used interchangeably with the form of story, narrative in its contemporary sense is technically different. Story refers to what is told and Narrative directs us to see how it is told. Novelists, right from their onset, have been greatly intrigued by the technical aspect of how they should compose their work. During the 18th century two main strands appeared on the literary scene, the first being the epistolary method of Richardson and second was the comic epic technique of Fielding (Sutherland 28). Dickens, in Bleak House¸ a century later compromised between an omniscient narrator and the first person limited narrator. However, it was only in the early 20th century, with the publication of Henry James’ Art of Fiction that the genre of novel became fully self-conscious of the Narrative aspect of writing- How became much more important than What. Many a time, people limit the scope of books and think of it as small propositions, that is, when one reads a book it represents a kind of alternative to experiencing life, a kind of reality out there creating a neat segregation between the so-called objective life of the world and the subjective life of the book. There is also a persuasive view that books are biased because they have the subjectivity of a particular writer who may be dead now for several centuries and that the dead writers and their works may have an inescapable limitation. The author is bound by the age and the surrounding and hence when the age and surrounding change, the subjectivity increases thereby causing an increase in alienation. Narrative thus becomes an extremely capricious form – a form that has greater reach than probably even poetry and drama.


This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.


Aiman Reyaz, M.A. English
Assistant Professor of English
Department of English
Jai Prakash University
Chapra 841301
Bihar
India
roxaiman@gmail.com

Dr. Priyanka Tripathi, Ph.D. English
Assistant Professor of English
Department of Humanities & Social Sciences IIT Patna
Patna 801103
Bihar
India
priyankatripathi@iitp.ac.in


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