Contents

Introduction 3

Theoretical Aspects 5

Stages of Researching Discourse Analysis and Narrative: Short Overview 5

Narrative Structure 6

Narrators and Narrative Situation 8

First-Person Narrators: 13

Second-Person 15

Third-Person Narrators 16

The Voice of the Narrator in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit 18

The Narrative Situation in The Hobbit 18

Characterising the narrator in The Hobbit 19

An Intrusive commentator 19

An Outside Observer 24

The Self- Aware Narrator 26

Degree of Omniscience 28

Withholding Information 32

Changing the point of view 33

Changes in the narrative voice 34

Conclusion 37

References 39

Introduction

Narrative is a basic human activity. There are many different approaches to narrating. A narrator can remain mostly in the background and simply relate the story to his readers or listeners, without any commentary of other interruptions, or he can narrate the story through his or her own eyes, using the first person singular and thus creating an intensely personal atmosphere and letting the audience experience the adventures almost first-hand. However, sometimes the narrator can become actively involved into the tale, but without actually being a part of it. He adds his own thoughts and opinions to the story, he speaks to the readers himself and actively guides them through his story.

Narrative theory is currently enjoying a major burgeoning of interest throughout the world. More specifically, narrative theorists study what is distinctive about narrative (how it is different from other kinds of discourse, such as lyric poems, arguments, lists, descriptions, statistical analyses, and so on), and how accounts of what happened to particular people in particular circumstances with particular consequences can be at once so common and so powerful. And a key concern is whether narrative as a way of thinking about or explaining human experience contrasts with scientific modes of explanation that characterize phenomena as instances of general covering laws. Narrative theorists, in short, study how stories help people make sense of the world, while also studying how people make sense of stories.

Thus, it is not surprising that a great deal of scholarly investigation has focused on both the nature of stories and their central role in human affairs. Across many disciplines – including linguistics, literary criticism, anthropology, psychology, and sociology – researchers have begun to see how the analysis of story structure is fundamental to our understanding of individual intention and potential.

The present work focuses on types of narrators in literary texts. The choice of narratorial voice affects many subsequent decisions about the development of the story, and the choice of techniques. The ‘same’ story, told with different kinds of narrators, can have very different effects.

In order to examine the voice of the narrator in literary text and to determine its most characteristic features, it is necessary to first take a closer look at some theoretical aspects and the different approaches to analysing the narrator and the narrative situation of a novel. There are a number of different narrative theories available, and for this paper the classical introductions by Gerard Genette and Franz K. Stanzel are critical.

So, the subject of the present paper is narrative voices in the literary text. Peculiarities of narrator types are analyzed and considered as the object of the pro-ject. More particularly, the aim lies in investigating narrative characteristics in the novel of J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit. The descriptive analytical method of study is employed. This study is organized into four major sections including the introduc-tion and the conclusion. The theoretical part attempts to introduce and summarize remarkable researches of narrative and offers the basic terms needed for our further analysis. The practical part examines the characteristics of narrative voices in the well-known story for children The Hobbit by R.R. Tolkien.

Theoretical Aspects

Stages of Researching Discourse Analysis and Narrative:

Short Overview

The term narrative derives from the Latin verb narrare, which means “to recount” and is related to the adjective gnarus, meaning “knowing” or “skilled”(Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2007.) The word “story” may be used as a synonym of “narrative”, but can also be used to refer to the sequence of events described in a narrative.

Narratology examines the ways that narrative structures our perception of both cultural artifacts and the world around us. The study of narrative is particularly important, but a the same time complicated by the fact that different theorists have different terms for explaining the same phenomenon. Narrative theory starts from the assumption that narrative is a basic human strategy for coming to terms with funda

References

1. Lee, Charlotte and Timothy Gura, Oral Interpretation, 10th ed. Boston, Houghton-Mifflin, 2000.

2. Elizabeth Black, Pragmatic Stylistics Edinburgh Textbooks in Applied Linguistics Series Editors: Alan Davies and Keith Mitchell Edinburgh University Press, 2006

3. Norman Fairclough Analysing Discourse, Routledge, Taylor & Francis London and New York, 2003

4. Ismail S Talib, Narrative Theory, 2008 http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/ellibst/NarrativeTheory/

5. Scott Eric Kaufman, Narrative Handout, 2002 http://www.ags.uci.edu/~skaufman/teaching/teaching.html

6. Maureen A. Roe, English 102 Class Notes, 2001 http://www.sccollege.edu

7. Narrators and Narrative Situation / Basics of English Studies by Stefanie Lethbridge and Jarmila Mildorf, 2004 http://www.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/

8. Jan Blommaert, Discourse: A Critical Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 2005

9. Johnstone, B., Discourse Analysis and Narrative, in The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Schiffrin, Deborah, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton (eds). Blackwell Publishing, 2007

10. Jahn, Manfred. 2005. Narratology: A Guide to the Theory of Narrative. English Department, University of Cologne.

11. Genette, Gerard. 1980 [1972]. Narrative Discourse. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Oxford: Blackwell. 1988

12. Stanzel, Franz K. A Theory of Narrative. Cambridge et al. : Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986

13. Thomas, Paul E. “Some of Tolkien’s Narrators.” Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on the History of Middle-Earth. Ed. Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter. Westport, Conn. et al.: Greenwood Press, 2000. 161-181.

The source of examples:

1. Джон Рональд Руэл Толкиен (Tolkien, John R.R.) Хоббит или Туда и Обратно (The Hobbit or There and Back again). На англ. яз. – М.: Юпитер-Интер, 2003

Примечаний нет.