Narrative

“ Therefore it will be more in accordance with my wishes if you come to the resolution to separate from the main body of your narrative, in which you embrace a continuous history of events, what I may call the drama of my actions and fortunes: for it includes varied acts, and shifting scenes both of policy and circumstance. Nor am I afraid of appearing to lay snares for your favour by flattering suggestions, when I declare that I desire to be complimented and mentioned with praise by you above all other writers. ”

“ To impress the mind by the narrative of heroic, or melt it by that of tragic events—to delineate the varieties of character, incident, and catastrophes—to unfold the secret springs which influence the most important changes, and often confound the wisest anticipations—to trace the chain of causes and effects in human transactions from their unobserved origin to their ultimate results, is equally the object of both arts. ”

“ Again, our narrative will be probable, if the things which are related are consistent with the character of the persons concerned, with the times and places mentioned,—if the cause of every fact and event is stated,—if they appear to be proved by witnesses,—if they are in accordance with the opinions and authority of men, with law, with custom, and with religion,—if the honesty of the narrator is established, his candour, his memory, the uniform truth of his conversation, and the integrity of his life. ”

“ The account of the event itself demands spirited narrative and description that portrays not only the scenes but the spirit of the occasion. The contrast between the emotions of the victors and those of the vanquished may be used to good advantage. ”

“ I have endeavoured to tell a simple story, believing that a narrative in which facts are chosen for their significance, and exhibited in their real connection, may be made to convey as true an impression as a fuller history in which the writer is not forced by the necessity of concentration to exercise the same rigour towards himself and his materials. ”

“ After the preface, long or short in proportion to the subject, should come an easy natural transition to the narrative; for the body of the history which remains is nothing from beginning to end but a long narrative; it must therefore be graced with the narrative virtues— smooth, level, and consistent progress, neither soaring nor crawling, and the charm of lucidity—which is attained, as I remarked above, partly by the diction, and partly by the treatment of connected events. ”

“ Illustrated.
"The narrative is pervaded by a fine poetical spirit that is alive to the subtle graces of character, as well as to the tender influences of natural scenes. . . . Its chief merits must be placed in its graphic and expressive portraitures of character, its tenderness and delicacy of sentiment, its touches of heartfelt pathos, and the admirable wisdom and soundness of its ethical suggestions."—N. Y. Tribune. ”

“ The gravest historians, as well as the lightest story tellers, frame their narrations for effect, and the tendency in all ages to shape and fashion the narrative with a view to the particular effect designed by the individual narrator to be produced has been found entirely irresistible. ”

“ You do not study a good story, or a haunting poem, or a battle song, or a love ballad, or any moving narrative, whether it be out of history or out of fiction—nor any argument, even, that moves vital in the field of action. ”

“ And it is of inestimable value to any people to obtain such a narrative, which shall comprehend all epochs, be true to fact and, while resting on thorough research, yet be attractive to the reader; for only by this aid can the nation attain to a perfect self-consciousness, and feeling the pulsation of its life throughout the story, become fully acquainted with its own origin and growth and character. ”

“ The narrative is one of intense interest from beginning to close, and the characters of the various personages with whom the hero of the story is associated, are drawn with perhaps more skill, and a deeper knowledge of human nature, than in most of the author’s previous novels. ”

“ At a later stage, varying with the standard of capacity of different classes, we find the temper of mind which asks continually, "Is that true?" To meet this demand, one draws on historical and scientific anecdote, and on reminiscence. But the demand is never so exclusive that fictitious narrative need be cast aside. All that is necessary is to state frankly that the story you are telling is "just a story," or—if it be the case—that it is "part true and part story." ”

“ Little details rise lightly and naturally to the surface of the narrative, not more noticeable at first than the most everyday occurrences, and a few pages farther on become of the greatest importance. ”

“ Make up your mind what was the truth of the matter, and then, out of the facts as you have disentangled them, construct a firmly touched narrative, and the thing you create is real, has the confidence and consistency of life. But mix the narrative with critical comment upon other writers and their variant versions of the tale, show by a nice elaboration of argument the whole conjectural basis of the story, set your reader the double task of doubting and accepting, rejecting and constructing, and at once you have touched the whole matter with unreality. ”

“ The narrative may take on a high degree of complexity, involving many well-differentiated characters and a well-developed art of conversation, and in some instances, especially in revenge, trickster, or recognition motives, approaching plot tales in our sense of the word. ”

“ We echo the universal opinion as to the skill with which a difficult work has been executed, and an absorbing interest given to the narrative Whatever can be derived from sequence of events, external description, and such indications of personal character as letters afford, is furnished in the fullest abundance. ”

“ The narrative, which is verified by the Psychical Research Society, places beyond doubt the existence of powers in certain individuals which open up an almost illimitable field of mystery and speculation. ”

“ Even such is the course of a narrative like that which you are perusing. The earlier events are studiously dwelt upon, that you, kind reader, may be introduced to the character rather by narrative than by the duller medium of direct description; but when the story draws near its close, we hurry over the circumstances, however important, which your imagination must have forestalled, and leave you to suppose those things which it would be abusing your patience to relate at length. ”

“ The combination of narrative themes is so frequent a phenomenon in folk and formal literature that one almost forgets to wonder at it. Yet in point of fact the reason for it and the means by which it is accomplished are mysteries past our present comprehension. If we could learn how and where popular tales unite, if we could formulate any general principle of union or severance, we should be well on the way to an understanding of the riddle which has hitherto baffled all students of narrative, namely, the diffusion of stories. We have theories enough ”

“ Viewed through this medium, our narrative—into which are woven some airy and unsubstantial threads, intermixed with others, twisted out of the commonest stuff of human existence—may seem not widely different from the texture of all our lives. ”

“ It is intended, therefore, to interrupt, from time to time, the main current of the narrative, for the purpose of viewing the people at borne, and of investigating, as far as the materials at command will permit, the condition of society, and the advance of civilisation. ”

“ This grouping of drama, action, and passion as the qualities of great poetry is significant. Bald narrative can never realize character or situation as can the dramatic form, either in narrative or for the stage, when the whole action takes place before the mind's eye instead of being told. ”

“ But in reading a narrative arrangement of life, we have a comfortable sense of order, which comes of our knowledge that the author knows beforehand whither the events are tending and can make us understand the sequence of causation through which they are moving to their ultimate result. ”

“ Finally, another way of simplifying truth is by narrative, of which the people are very fond. They cast every thing, even spiritual things, into tales, legends, and facts, which they take pleasure in learning to recite. ”

“ We notice, at any rate, that the diarist’s remarks need considerable re-arrangement to make them really narrative.
Life Is Chronological, Art Is Logical.––Yet it is just in this way that commonly event succeeds event in the daily life of every one. ”

“ In its general sense narrative history includes all true-story forms, even incidents and eye-witness accounts. But annals and chronicles may be grouped by themselves on the basis of the non-personal and scientific attitude of the writer and the fact that the story is usually of the doings of a set of people living as a unit. ”

“ Accurate biographies record narratives which no romancer's imagination could hope to rival. Researches, sufferings, labors, triumphs, agonies and disasters, the defeats of destiny, glory, which is the "sunlight of the dead," illuminating the past, whether fortunate or tragic,—such is what the lives of Great Men reveal to us, or, if the phrase be allowed, paint for us in a series of fascinating and dramatic pictures. ”

“ The material through which we are to exercise the imagination and develop imaginative vigor is the narrative form of discourse. Narration is successful when it records or has the effect of recording actual experience. ”

“ In a complex story with a series of incidents taking place simultaneously, different threads of narrative must be woven together skillfully to make it evident how the several incidents took place at the same time. ”

“ There is nothing like a true story, fully told, for illustrating truths of a moral or political class. We shall, therefore, relate a true story, making choice of our narrative for its fulness and clearness, and not through any partiality on other grounds. ”

“ Throughout the controlling thought has been to present only those selections which are of real value and of genuine interest—that is, those which subordinate the purely documentary and emphasize the strictly narrative, such as annals, chronicles, and biographies. ”

“ The form of the whole is in such examples narrative, inasmuch as it is the progressive advance of a situation or event, as among other instances, a particular direction in the fate of a nation, which is communicated. ”

“ But for us it will be appropriate to read such narratives as have been composed about deeds that have actually been done; but we must avoid all fictions in the form of narrative such as were circulated among men in the past, for instance tales whose theme is love, and generally speaking everything of that sort. ”

“ Further, as the lives of all men and women are more or less conditioned by their surroundings and circumstance, any story will require more or less description. Incidents are of but little moment, character showing may have but slight interest, description is purposeless, unless the happenings of the story develop in the characters feelings toward which we assume some attitude of sympathy or opposition. Including this fourth element of the story, we shall then have [2] incident, description, character, mood, as the first elements of the narrative form. ”

“ Sometimes the events come out in conversation or dialogue, the dramatic method, and the author appears but little. When he appears not at all we have true drama instead of narrative. The larger number of stories, doubtless, are a mixture of author and character talk. ”

“ Not a few pleasant anecdotes—mythical, ethical, social, and historical—as well as nearly all the minor affluents of the main stream of narrative, have been passed over or barely glanced at, for want of space. ”

“ and so little regard the Manners or Behaviour of their Heroes, that more Knowledge may be gained of a Man's real Character, by a short Conversation with one of his Servants, than from a formal and studied Narrative, begun with his Pedigree, and ended with his Funeral. ”

“ The main interest shifted from the state and the nation to the life and development of the individual.3 And with this interest arose in the literary sphere the dramatic narrative of human action—the Novella. ”

“ I felt the greatest eagerness to hear the promised narrative, partly from curiosity and partly from a strong desire to ameliorate his fate if it were in my power. I expressed these feelings in my answer. ”

“ Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. ”

“ The introduction of narratives, stirring incidents, and topics of human interest generally, is chiefly a mode of pleasurable recreation. If taken in any other view, it falls under some of the leading studies, and engages the memory, the judgment, or the constructive power, and must be estimated accordingly. ”

“ In the opposite scale there are other narratives, which, whilst rigorously true, move amongst characters and scenes so remote from our ordinary experience, and through, a state of society so favorable to an adventurous cast of incidents, that they would everywhere pass for romances, if severed from the documents which attest their fidelity to facts. ”

“ It is well that the human narratives should enlarge as [37] they do upon the outward features and circumstances of the journey, because they thus help us to realise the Acts as a veritable history that was lived and acted. ”

“ and, in contemplating the incidents in their lives or condition which tradition has handed down to us, we must rather consider the general bearing of the whole narrative, than the respective probability of its details. ”

“ The spirit intended, in all such narratives, on the one hand to reveal mysteries to the wise, on the other hand to conceal them from the multitude. The whole series of narratives is constructed with a purpose, and subordinated to the exposition of mysteries. Difficulties and impossibilities were introduced in order to prevent men from being drawn into adherence to the literal meaning. ”