“A writer’s technique is actually the means by which he discovers, objectifies, explores and evaluates his subject, and his technical dexterity determines his success”---Mark Schorer This chapter undertakes to make a detailed examination of all the narrative techniques present in the two novels, Wuthering Heights and The God of Small Things. The novel, as an established cultural institution has over the last two hundred years become the most significant and dominant form of literary writing with an unprecedented global acceptance, unimagined before in its much chequered history. An unknown mode of writing till recently, the novel with its polymorphic and incursive nature did not fit easily into any classical mode of writing. Robert Scholes
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The novel, according to M.H.Abrams, is an “extended narrative” (1993: 130).
Roland Barthes in the opening to his landmark essay on narrative (1966), speaks on the universality of narrative. Narrative, a semantic innovation (Ricoeur, lX), and a distinct human trait permeates our lives in various forms (Rimmon-Kennon 1). Hayden White in
The Content of Form points out that the word “narrative” goes back to the Sanskrit word
“gna”, which means “know”. But the term ‘narrative’ has its etymological base in the
Latin narrare, which is derived from Gnarus (“knowing”) and Narro (“telling”), which means 'to relate in order to know'. A narrative, thus, relates a sequence of events“and then” this happened (linearity) and “therefore” that happened (causality). Narrative or story telling involves events, and characters. It is employed by human beings to‘re-present' time, space and identity.
148
Narratives are distinguished by two characteristics: the presence of a story and
The novel, according to M.H.Abrams, is an “extended narrative” (1993: 130).
Roland Barthes in the opening to his landmark essay on narrative (1966), speaks on the universality of narrative. Narrative, a semantic innovation (Ricoeur, lX), and a distinct human trait permeates our lives in various forms (Rimmon-Kennon 1). Hayden White in
The Content of Form points out that the word “narrative” goes back to the Sanskrit word
“gna”, which means “know”. But the term ‘narrative’ has its etymological base in the
Latin narrare, which is derived from Gnarus (“knowing”) and Narro (“telling”), which means 'to relate in order to know'. A narrative, thus, relates a sequence of events“and then” this happened (linearity) and “therefore” that happened (causality). Narrative or story telling involves events, and characters. It is employed by human beings to‘re-present' time, space and identity.
148
Narratives are distinguished by two characteristics: the presence of a story and