- 1 Originally published in Repères, 33, 2006, 37-60
1I will classically address the question of pupils’ writing and fiction building through the opposition between mimesis and diegesis revealed in The Republic by Plato and altered by Aristotle in Poetics.
2What place remains for pupils’ imaginative capacity in the era of fake games – video, TV, cinema games – when the boundaries between fiction and reality are increasingly blurred, crossed or even unperceived by the younger generations?
3And if this very capacity for imagination does consist in “imitating” reality according to the philosophical tradition, in what sense could we say that pupils learn or show us they can build fiction that imitates reality? Do they learn it through the very practice of fiction writing at school: what the school institution considers fictional is fictional? Or do they consciously or unconsciously resort to original fiction-building resources as a meeting with the language of the other?
- 2 How rough drafts were collected is presented further down the article. These texts are part of a co (...)
4In order to clarify these questions, I will first focus on imitation in discourse, mimesis par excellence in the eyes of Plato: when it is not the author who speaks frankly in his own name but the character who, through artifice, seems to speak. After outlining the limits of what I consider fiction, I will show that dialogue is the first material of fiction through examples based on the drafts of 11/12-year-old pupils. For that purpose, two sets of drafts collected in the same class will be examined2.
5Starting assumptions were as follows:
-
Drafts are particularly suitable material for the study of the processes at work in creation as the studies of genetic criticism in literature have fruitfully suggested. They contribute to identifying the enunciative forms selected by pupils to invent.
-
The forms under scrutiny are identified in two sets of drafts collected in the same class. These drafts are part of similar genres: “pure” fictional narrative on the one hand and description-narration on the other hand. In both cases, these are the enunciative forms of dialogue and reported speech that enable pupils to escape the solipsism of the “I”.
6Dialogue reveal how they are confronted with an alternative conscience: fiction may then be defined as the awareness of the other irrupting discourse.
- 3 Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Pourquoi la fiction ? Paris, Le Seuil, 1999. See the pages devoted to the ima (...)
- 4 Alain Reboul, Rhétorique et stylistique de la fiction, Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 2002.
7This title is aimed to delineate the subject of this paper for methodological purposes. Indeed, the a priori definition of an essence of fiction to evaluate pupils’ writing presupposes the existence of such a model. But we are aware of the aporia that results in oppositions between “fictional” and “factual” or “ordinary”: a seemingly fictional narrative3 proves factual under the effect of extralinguistic revelations and vice versa. A. Reboul4 showed the logical absurdity of arguing that a language proper to fiction exits: either fictional language is not the same as ordinary language and we do not see how we could understand it or language material changes meaning when it is used in fiction and if so, it is necessary to explain why morphology, syntax, and lexicon differ.
8A pragmatic position seems more reasonable: paratextual signs intended for readers announce the fictional discourse. The model of fictional reading is what is announced as such and thus genetically depends on what is read as fictional in a given time and era.
- 5 On the signs of fictionalisation, see Gilles Philippe, « Existe-t-il un appareil de la fiction ? », (...)
9I will not seek now to take sides between these two clear-cut positions. Middle solutions and acceptable objections were made5 to point to fiction as a process involving the development by the reader of this fictional reading. But the position presented in this article is that of the novice writer of fiction. Therefore, I will just retain the theoretical possibility to show that the young writer brings into play observable linguistic and language resources to develop fictional stories.
- 6 Gérard Genette, Fiction et diction, Paris, Le Seuil, 1972.
- 7 Aristote, La poétique, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2001.
- 8 Käte Hamburger, Logique des genres littéraires, Paris, Le Seuil, 1986, p. 25.
10In Fiction and Diction6, G. Genette made the distinction between two ways of understanding a literary object: the constitutive and the conditional approach. He combined them with two equally opposed criteria: the thematic (basically the topic of the text) and the rhematic (discourse exemplified by the text). The result of this combination forms literariness procedures. It is the Aristotelian definition7 according to which fiction inevitably results in a constitutive regime of literariness, which means that a fictional text, to use K. Hamburger’s reflection8, whether it is written by a great writer or by schoolchildren, is constitutively literature.
11The thematic criterion can undeniably make believe that a text is fictional (and “literary” in that restrictive sense): fiction can be more easily defined by its theme, ie the impossible or imaginary nature of the topics mentioned, than by its rheme, its “diction” (Genette), ie its form (see above). The examples below (parts 2 and 3) belong mostly to the regime of constitutive fictionality.
- 9 That is how Bernard Schneuwly names the cognitive representation of the system of communicational p (...)
- 10 According to Jean-Paul Bernié, “the fictionalisation of the context by pupils is not limited to a p (...)
- 11 See Martine Jey’s article in the present journal. She took a historical approach: « L’écriture de f (...)
12But there is another form of constitutive fiction proper to the school system. In the school institution, is fictional what is referred to as such, explicitly or not, in writing instructions as referred to by B. Schneuwly9. This definition was then taken over and theorised by J.-P. Bernié10. It is not in this sense that I use the term ‘fictional” when I speak of fictional narrative as “instituted” by the school system. I stick to the prescription of the school institution which labels what is fictional or not fictional generally through instructions. Admittedly, pupils often do something different from what is expected because they interpret instructions and have routines in terms of school genres. But for the school system,” fictional narrative” is still an expected genre both in terms of conventional length, topics and procedures (for example, a sequel to a fictional narrative)11.
13Let me come back to the main point behind this study: the idea that dialogue is a main arrangement of fictional creation. It is first important to remember the analysis made by Genette in Figures III.
14The direct dialogue scene during which Chryses, Agamemnon, Achilles and several other characters speak in turn became a narrative summarised by the narrator. Only narrative discourse, to use a term coined by Genette, rather than indirect discourse in the grammatical sense of the term is left of the characters’ lines.
- 12 This is G. Genette’s term.
15In book III of The Republic (392c-395), Plato opposed two narrative modes, depending on whether the poet “speaks in his name without seeking to make us believe that it is someone else who is speaking” (what he calls pure narrative12) or by contrast he “strives to give the illusion that he is not speaking but a particular character”, in the case of words uttered. This is what Plato called imitation or mimesis which he considers more misleading or pernicious than diegesis-bases narratives.
16Plato’s main argument consists in rewriting the beginning of Book I of the Iliad: Homer’s mimesis approach to the scene between Chryses and Achaeans was rewritten in diegesis by Plato. The direct dialogue scene during which Chryses, Agamemnon Achilles and various other characters spoke successively became a narrative summarised by the narrator in which what is left of characters’ cues is only narrativised discourse, to speak in Genette’s terms.
- 13 Laurence Rosier, Le discours rapporté, histoires, théories, pratiques, Bruxelles, Duculot, 1999.
- 14 According to L. Rosier, op. cit., “the history of direct speech (oratio recta) used to (re)produce (...)
17However, antiquity has largely described and practised dialogue as a narrative form. According to L. Rosier13, the ancients believed that indirect speech (oratio obliqua) was the speech of law and for that reason was supposed to tell the truth when used in a narrative whereas direct speech (oratio recta) was used for stylistic reasons14.
18Drawing on the famous extract from The Republic of Plato, L. Rosier noticed that Homer’s passage turned into oratio obliqua by Plato was originally a dialogue and not the quotation of a sentence or of a fragmented utterance to which direct speech is now usually reduced. In other words, we now equate direct speech with what was for long a specific resource of fiction writing, ie dialogue.
19When Plato accused oratio recta of lying, he did not blame the content of narrative discourse since he turned it into obliqua but the fact that dialogue “imitated” a character, feelings and in a word “created”, gave life to characters through speech.
20Therefore, whether the ancients blamed or praised dialogue, it was a material essential to inventio that applied to both fictional and non fictional topics.
21I will now outline what I found in dialogue in its broad sense contributed to fiction writing in pupils’ texts.
22All the following observations are based on the analysis of two corpuses collected in January 2004 in a class of 6e of Cormeilles-en-Parisis in the Paris suburbs. The pupils schooled in this recent residential suburb come from modest backgrounds with a few underprivileged children. There were repeaters and a few pupils with learning difficulties who had a poor command of writing but most pupils managed to write a text in line with expected criteria during the evaluations of 6e in September 2003.
23Two context points must be mentioned:
-
The experienced female teacher scrupulously applied the French national curriculum and especially the narrative and descriptive discourses;
-
She systematically reviewed pupils’ writing: production of a draft written version, oral interaction between pupils and the teacher towards guided rereading and rewriting.
24This is how the two corpuses under scrutiny were developed.
25The first corpus (the “Egypt” corpus thereafter) was handed in to me by the teacher with the relevant pieces of writing and above all pupils’ drafts and the teacher’s evaluation. This was narrative writing based on the following instruction:
“Tell the story of a day in the life of a young Egyptian in the time of the Pharaohs.
- 15 Especially Jacquie Valabregue, Le secret du scarabée d’Or, Toulouse, Milan Poche, 2000 and Bernard (...)
- 16 Scott Steedman, Égypte Ancienne, Paris, Gallimard Jeunesse, 2003.
Pupils worked for a long time in history on ancient Egypt. They read several novels whose action occurred during the Pharaohs15 and worked on a documentary text16.
- 17 Erik Orsenna, La grammaire est une chanson douce, Paris, Stock, 2001. The passage to be written by (...)
The second corpus (the “Orsenna” corpus thereafter) was based on two writing and rewriting lessons with oral interaction between the female teacher and her pupils. These lessons were filmed, recorded and fully transcribed. Typically, this was a sequel to a text taken from the novel for youths written by Erik Orsenna La grammaire est une chanson douce17. The instruction read as follows: “Tell what happened in the town hall as if you were the spectator-narrator of the scene.”
26The didactical interest of such a comparison between two fictional narratives lies in the fact that the former is supposed to compress historically true events in ancient Egypt but presented invented characters whereas the latter is a pure imagination narrative in the form of a fable meant to explain how grammar functions.
27These two types of narratives raised several questions:
-
Are the processes to write dialogue the same in both cases?
-
How can they be highlighted?
28I assume that dialogue is the main writing process in both corpuses irrespective of the strictly fictional material inherent in the topic suggested because pupils are allowed to compare several antagonistic or possible viewpoints from which meaning is derived.
29I have already answered the second question in introduction and mentioned the fact that the detailed analysis of drafts provided indisputable answers on the writing process.
- 18 I am grateful to Mme Bariatinski for welcoming me in her class. Her work and availability were inst (...)
30The following examples18 are taken from the “Orsenna” corpus:
31In the source text, an island on which words came to life is imagined. These words in human form live their grammatical lives – the topic of the book.
32The novelist imagined a town hall visited by the name (preceded by its determiner) and the adjective “to agree”. This meaningful syllepsis orients the understanding of the event. The challenge was also to use the word both as a character and as metalinguistic element (ex: the word “word” and the word “adjective”).
33The initial narrative material is doubly fictional for pupils:
34On the one hand, it is fictional in the most common sense of the term since the “characters” represented in these texts are not human beings but “words” that are brought to life like characters. While fiction consists in imitating, it might not be through copying exactly reality but rather through developing life-like elements as Aristotle underlined it.
35On the other hand, the objective was to invent a scene based on this material, which meant both selecting a mode of enunciation and putting it into words in the most “convincing” way according to Aristotle. In this case, the purpose was to conceal the grammatical sense of “to agree” and explain it.
36In this class of 6e, only 6 out of 25 pupils opted for “pure” narrative while the rest of the class chose dialogue.
37Text 1 features the stereotype of an official marriage ceremony through the exchange of consent between an “adjective” and a “name” who “agree”: words make them more humane as the house (the future “spouse”) hesitates to agree; in other words, it has feelings that it exteriorises in front of the mayor. What we visualise is no longer two abstractions but the smiling personification embodied in the dialogue.
38The scene ends in a particularly subtle way: the added “e” confirms the change in marital status of the two “agreed” people and thus becomes a sign of a sign.
- 19 The nouns in French are either of masculine or of feminine gender. The adjectives match in gender w (...)
39Text 119
Tout au fond se plaçait le nom masculin « maire » qui allait bientôt
accordés le nom « maison » et l’adjectif
« hanté ».
– Nous sommes ici pour accordés
ces 2 jeunes mariés, dit le « maire ».
Monsieur « hanté » continua « le maire »,
voulez-vous vous accorder avec
madame la « maison » ?
– Oui je le veux, répondit « hanté »
– « Madame la « maison » voulez-vous
que monsieur « hanté »s’accorde
avec vous ? demanda le « maire ».
– EUH… Je ne sais pas. Oui,
je le veux, répondit-elle hésitante.
– Longue vie à vous les accordés,
et à partir de maintenant « hanté »
prendra un « e » ce qui fera « la
maison hantée » expliqua le maire. La
scéance est levée. Madame, monsieur,
après vous
In the back was standing the masculine
- 20 Mayor in English (translator’s note)
noun “maire”20 that was soon to
marry the noun “maison” with the adjective
“hanté”
- We are here to marry
these two newlyweds, said the “maire”.
Mister “hanté” continued “the mayor”,
Will you agree with Mrs “maison”?
Yes I will, answered “hanté”
Mrs “maison”, do you accept
That Mr “hanté” agrees
with you? asked the “mayor”.
Erh…I don’t know. Yes, I do, she answered hesitatingly.
Long live the newly agreed,
And from now on “hanté”
will come with an “e”, which will give “the
maison hantée” explained the mayor. I
thank everybody for their attendance. Madam, Sir,
after you
40Text 2 is an example of the few pupils who opted for “pure” narrative. The narrator described facts and did not put the ritualised marriage scene into words. The “litteral sense” of grammatical agreement is preserved because the examination to know whether it is masculine or feminine is not personified, ie character-words do not speak despite their “human” behaviour. However, the narrator’s final words “les voilà accordés” brought the metaphor to life and rearranged the scene retrospectively – he described the “e” added to the adjective as an object that is “taken” and “given” or a sort of wedding ring that marks the agreement/consent of spouses. Unlike the previous text, the “e” letter illustrates a realistic conception of language as this sign is converted into an object.
41Text 2
Derriere la table se tenait le mot « maire »,
quand l’article entra on l’examina pour
prendre connaissance du masculin ou féminin du
nom. Puis quand l’adjectif « hanté » arriva, on le
plaça près de la table, et on attendit. Enfin le
nom « maison » arriva, on l’amena près de la
table, on l’examina, puis le mot maire prit
un « e » et le donna à « hanté », qui le mit
derrières son « é ». Les voilà accordés.
Behind the table was standing the word “maire”,
when the article entered, it was examined to
determine if the noun was in the feminine
or masculine. Then when the adjective “hanté” arrived, it
was placed near the table and we waited. The
noun “maison” finally arrived, it was brought near
the table, was examined, then the word maire took
an “e” and gave it to “hanté” which put it
behind its “é”. They are matched.
42Unlike what Plato defended, these two examples show that modes of enunciation are not interchangeable or adaptable. To speak in Aristotelian terms this time, the two “opposite” modes of imitation do not imitate the same thing: they modalise a universe in which signs function differently. That’s why the sense given to written fiction is different. It thus confirms that imitation does not lie in the imitated thing but in the sense given to it.
- 21 See Lev S. Vygotski, Pensée et langage, Paris, La Dispute, 1997 (especially chapter 2, p. 103-107).
43The analysis of drafts reveals the paths followed by writers to be inventive: what we observe is emerging thought that discovers alterity. Indeed, when pupils write “I”, it literally involves putting oneself in another’s place. That’s why the experience of writing dialogue is incredible in that the “You” of external dialogue, to use Vygotskyan terms, is internalised. What is true of writing and interior thinking for Vygotsky21 could materialise in fiction: assuming an “I” and a “You” that are both self and other.
44Young writers very often use dialogue in a form that does not correspond to represented discourse. In fact, their dialogues often work as substitutes for narration. Young writers do not seem to find other means to tell a story than to have characters speak. This written dialogue is fictional in the sense that it does not refer to actual events and above all that the signs used are the same as those in “I”-written discourses, which will prove tricky in the long run.
45Arguments are based on two examples taken from each sub corpus.
46Analysis first focuses on the two versions (draft and copied out versions) of the same text taken from the “Orsenna” corpus.
47The analysis of the pupil’s writing shows that the syllepsis, which structures fiction in the novel, is completely overshadowed by the marriage ceremony proper. The draft (left-hand side of the table) indicates how two groups of dialogue – that of “invited” words (l. 6-9 and 13-17) and that of the “priest” (l. 19-23) – were written. In these dialogues based on stereotypes borrowed from the ordinary civility of conversation, the pupil sought to explain each word pronounced to exemplify the topic of fiction. For example, the word “gaity” brought pleasure, the word “trip” left for Canada, etc. On the other hand, the words in the mouth of the “priest” are the sign of a cultural script familiar to the pupil, but once again these are the words of the character that give substance to fiction.
48Drawing on the teacher’s critical approach, pupils are required to rework their initial draft before copying it out. The teacher repeated that the “marriage” of words occurred in a town hall and accordingly it was a … mayor who married them. That’s why the writer could no longer rely on the priest’s speech. The pupil remarkably reorganised the narrative content of the text and extended dialogues between invited words (lines 7-12, 18-19, 23-31 in bold type in the right part of the table).
49It is significant to realise that the ceremony proper occupies only one sentence (32-33):
50Text 3
1. Dans la maison se trouvait beaucoup de
mots, qui
2. venaient assister au mariage. Les mots
féminin
3. s’étaient habillée de leurs plus beau
déguisements.
4. pour cette cérémonie. Le mot maison et
l’adjectif
5. hante saluaient leur invités.
6. – Merci beaucoup d’être venu ! leurs
disait le mot
7. maison au mot joie.
8. – Oui rajouta, l’adjectif hanté il est
important
9. que vous apportiez impeu de joie
pour cette célébration <gaité>
10. La mairie etait moderne, très approprié
pour
11. ce genre de cérémonie.
12. Le mot voyage était aussi present dans
la salle
13. – Vous me voyez très heureux de pré
votre présence
14 . disait le mot maison, et votre pro-
chaine destina
15. tion quand se ferat’elle ?
16. – Oh ma chère amie elle s’effectura
17. en mars, nous partons au canada.
18. Soudain le mot prêtre arriva.
19. - Mes enfants, nous sommes reuni
aujourd’hui
20. pour célébrer le mariage du mot
maison et de
21. l’adjectif hanté.
22. – Je vais donc vous demander de
vous lever et de les
23. applaudirent bien fort.
24. Un tonerre d’applaudissements fut
provoqués.
25.Quand il fut terminé le mot bavardage
continuait son
26. petit discours personnel.
27. Le prêtre continua la cérémonie tout en
regardant les
28. deux futurs mariés prêt à s’aimer pour
la vie
29. le mariage entre temp
30. Quand la cérémonie fut terminer les
invites rentrerent
31.. chez eux.
|
1. Dans la maison se trouvait beaucoup de
2. mots qui venaient assister au mariage.
Les mots
3. féminin s’étaient habillée de leurs plus
beau d
4. costumes
5. Pour cette cérémonie, le mot « maison » et l’adjectif
6. « hanté » saluaient leur invités.
7. – Merci beaucoup d’être venu ! dit le nom
8. maison au mot joie.
9. – « Oui » dit l’adjectif « hanté ».
10. Il ajouta même :
11. – C’est important que vous appor-
tiez un peu
12. de gaité pour cette cérémonie.
13. La mairie était moderne, très appropriée
14. pour ce genre de cérémonie.Il faut dire que les deux
15. mot n’avaient pas choisis cette mairie
pour rien.
16. Le nom voyage était aussi présent dans
17. la salle
18. – Vous me voyiez très heureux de votre
19. présence ici dit le mot maison au nom voyage.
20. Le nom voyage était une personne très
21. cultivé elle etait noir de pau car elle
venait d’un
22. pays lointain d’Afrique.
23. – Et votre prochaine destination
Quand
24. s’éfféctuerat’elle ? demanda maison
25. – Ma foi, elle s’effectuera en Mars,
je pars au
26. Canada avec le mot accompagna-
teur.
27. – Au Canada ?demanda Maison…
Vous
28. verrez le Canada est un pays magi-
que qui fourni
29. d’aventure et de romance. Vous
m’en direz des nouvelles.
30. – Bon allez, je vais me mettre en
place dit
31. maison
32. Soudain le maire arriva et célébra le maria
33. -ge
34. Quand la belle cérémonie fut terminée
Les
35. mariés remercirent leurs invités puis ils rentrerent
36. chez eux pret à s’aimer pour la vie.
|
|
|
1. In the house there were many
Words, which
2. came to attend the marriage. Feminine
words
3. were wearing their most beautiful fancy dresses.
4. for this ceremony. The word maison and
the adjective
5. hante welcomed their guests
6. Thank you very much for coming!
said the word
7. maison to the word joy.
8. – Yes added the adjective hanté it is
important
-
that you bring some joy for this celebration
-
The town hall was modern and very appropriate for
-
this kind of ceremony.
-
The word trip was also present in
the room
-
– I’m very happy about your presence
-
said the word house and when will
-
be your next trip?
-
– Oh my dear friend it will be
-
in march, we’re going to Canada.
-
The word priest suddenly arrived.
-
My children, we are here
today
20. to celebrate the marriage of the word
house with
21. the adjective haunted.
22. I’ll ask you to stand up and to
23. give them thunderous applause.
24. Thunderous applause was given.
25 When it was ended, the word chatter continued
26. its own little speech.
27. The priest continued the ceremony and looked at
28. the groom and the bride ready to love each other for life
29. the marriage in the meantime
30. when the ceremony was finished the guests returned
31…home
|
-
In the house there were many
-
words which came to attend the marriage.
The feminine
3. words were wearing their most
beautiful
4. dresses
5. For this ceremony, the word “maison”
and the adjective
6. “hanté” welcomed their guests.
7. – Thank you very much for coming! Said the noun
8. maison to the word joy.
9. – “Yes” said the adjective “hanté”.
10. It even added:
11. – It is important that you bring
some
12. gaiety for this ceremony.
13. The town hall was modern, very appropriate
14. for this kind of ceremony. Actually the two
15. words chose this town hall for a particular reason.
16. The noun trip was also present in
17. the room
18. – Your presence is a
19. delight said the word house to the noun trip.
20. The noun trip was a very learned
21. person she was black-skinned car she
came from
22. a distant country in Africa.
23. When
24. will be your next trip? Asked house
25. – It will be in March,
I go to
26. Canada with the word guide
27. – To Canada? Asked House…
you
28. will see Canada is a magic country ideal for
29. adventure and romance. I’m sure
you’ll like it.
30. OK It’s time for me to be in place said
31. house
32. The mayor suddenly arrived and celebrated the marria
33. ge
34. When the nice ceremony was finished
The
35 newlywed thanked their guests then went
36. home ready to love each other for life.
|
51The draft shows the dialogue-like dimension of narrative writing. Everything happened as if the writer needed to represent his characters while speaking for them to exist narratively. The narrative form is that of extended direct speech with little differentiation from dialogue.
- 22 The spelling and layout on the page are those of the pupil. They were not modified.
52The second example taken from the “Egypt” corpus brings a clear illustration. In text 422, pupils were assigned the task of representing a crocodile attacking young girls. In initial draft writings, the narrative presents characters that use direct speech to tell what they think. The example below suggests two stages (respectively stage 1 and stage 2) of draft work.
53The draft, which was extensively developed in stage 1, first presented the story of her own adventures told by the main character.
54Then this dialogue was crossed out (the writer wrote “too many dialogues” in the margin).
55Text 4
STAGE 1
20 (..) elle leurs expliqua ce qui lui était arriver :
21 « Les fi lles, il vient de m’arriver une chose épouvantable ! s’ex
22 -clama Tétikix Ankh
[It is followed by a crossed out dialogue]
23- Mais , voyons , quoi ? demanda, intriguée, Himis
24- J’ai été poursuivit par So…dit Tétikia
25- Par Somüs ? Waou ! s’exclama de joie Simös.
26-Mais non, ell∫e veut parler du soleil ! interrompit Himis
27-Pas du tout, les fi lles ! dit furieusement Tétiki
28- J’ai été poursuivit par le dieu crocodile Sobeck ! dit
29 Tetitrix elle.
30-Non ? ! dirent Himis et Simös
31- Oui, oui, les filles ! dit Tétiki
32-Quel horreur ! dirent Himis et Simös
33- Bon j’y vais ! s’exclama Tétikien saluant ces 2 amies.
34 - Fais bien attention à toi dit Himis
20 (..) she told them what had happened to her:
21 “girls, something awful has just happened to me Ankh
22 exclaimed
[ a deleted dialogue ensued]
23 -But what happened to you, asked a perplexed Himis
24 - I was pursued by So…said Tétikia
25 - By Somüs? Waou! Simös exclaimed with joy.
26 - But she means the sun! interrupted Himis
27 - Not at all, girls! Tétiki said furiously
28 - I was pursued by the god crocodile Sobek! said
29 Tetitrix.
30 - Really? said Himis and Simös
31 - Yes girls! Said Tétiki
32 - How awful! Said Himis and Simös
33 - Ok I’ll go! Exclaimed Tétikien as he bid goodbye to his two friends.
34 - Take care said Himis
|
56It was replaced by the paragraph below (stage 2) that substituted a fragment of narrativised discourse “Himis et Simös étaient vraiment horrifiées” (l. 37 of stage 2) for line 32 of the dialogue above “quelle horreur dirent Himis et Simös”.
57Significantly, the shift to indirect speech was the opportunity for reflexivity (“elles se posaient la question”).
STAGE 2
35 – Je viens de me faire poursuivre par le dieu
36 crocodile Sobeck ! » s’exclama Ankh
<Elles>
37 Himis et Simös était vraiment horrifiés ! Ils se
38 posaient la question « est-ce que cela va nous arriver
39 à nous », espérons que non ? ! »
35 - I’ve just been followed by the god
36 crocodile Sobeck! exclaimed Ankh
37 Himis and Simôs were really horrified! They
38 wondered “will it happen
39 to us”, we hope not?!”
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58These drafts raise a question that was outlined in the first part of the article: basically, cannot any “imitated” (ie “invented”, “created”) subject be reduced to language? Is any event just an event for language (opinions, interpretations, interior thoughts)? Does any event exist as such just when it is narrated? The event proper – the young girls escape the crocodile put to flight by a character – occupied only a few lines but the narrative (in the apparently vain and ephemeral dialogue form) originates in the consequences between and on the characters.
59The shift to the different levels of enunciation raises issues about the indirect representation of an “alternative” conscience in discourse.
60In my opinion, the journey deep into fiction happens through what I would call the irruption of the other.
61This phenomenon occurs when it is necessary to present the other in the 3rd person with his/her way of thinking, speaking and acting. One of the most fruitful games of fiction is indeed to imagine how the other thinks, speaks and feels. Various forms of narratives are then introduced. But this polyphony is often ill-ordered by young writers who are expected to combine two levels of enunciation. Indeed, young writers rely most of the time on dialogue in their narratives or use discursive communication in “I”/”You” and fail to reintroduce the character in the narrative. But fictional narratives imply this combination of “I”, “You” and “S/he” to immerse oneself in the conscience of the other.
62Dialogue is an extremely rich but dangerous tool, especially when the boundaries between discourse and narrative are increasingly blurred. The two levels of enunciation identified by Benveniste no longer structure the opposition between speaking, getting someone to speak and narrating. As a result, persons are confused and imitation becomes a trap into which the very writer falls because s/he no longer really knows who is “I” or “S/he”.
63An example from the “Egypt” corpus illustrates this point.
- 23 The table presents two stages of the copy: the draft on the left and the reproduction on the right.
64TEXT 523
16 La mère de To vu
17 son fils entourer de serpent elle appela
Möse qui enleva
< >
18 tout les serpends et les jeta dans le Nil.
Kafran et Ti rier
19 c’etait surment une de leur farce.
20 - Sa va ! dit Mose
21 - Oui sa va
22 - Oh j’ais eu une de ses peure dit Alita
23 Cette journée était bien mais fati-
guante j’ai bien meriter
24 de jouer au serpend[…]
16 To’s mother saw
17 her son with snakes wrapped around him she called Möse who removed
18 all the snakes and threw them at the Nile. Kafran and Tirier
19 it was probably one of their jokes.
20 Are you OK? Said Mose
21 Yes I’m OK
22 I was scared to death said Alita
23 this was a nice but tiring day I deserved
24 to play the snake[…]
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16 La mère de
17 To vu son fils entourer de serpent elle
appela
18 Môse qui enleva tout les serpends et les
Jeta
19 dans le Nil. Kafran et Ti riaient :
c’etait.
20 surment une de leur farce.
21 Cette journée était bien mais
22 fatigante j’ai bien mairiter de jouer
au serpend (…)
16 To’s
17 mother saw her son with snakes wrapped around him she called
18 Mose who removed all the snakes and threw them
19 at the Nile. Kafran and Ti were laughing:
It was
20 probably one of their jokes.
21 This was a nice but
22 tiring day I deserved to play the snake (..)
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65The problem of the writer clearly shows here: he would like to tell the story of a character named “To” and present his reflections. The comparison between the two versions shows the reasoning of the writer who initially wrote a dialogue between the characters ending on the sentence by the main character “This day was tiring, I derseved playing the snake.” then this dialogue is crossed out and deleted from the copied out version, except for the last sentence which as such is ill fitted here. How is it possible then to present the reflections of “To”, the main character” without resorting to dialogue? This is a tricky problem for the writer: how can he express an interior “I” that differs from him?
- 24 What Ann Banfield (1982) calls a “silent” structure.
66For that purpose, the writer needs an “interior” narrative structure: discourse of the narrator or free indirect speech24. These techniques are very often accommodated by writers because they discover the coexistence of consciences by chance and through rewriting.
67Here the solution found by the writer was to delete the dialogue but to keep the thought of the character as it was.
68An even more complex example is found in the “Orsenna” corpus.
69The pupil had to solve a challenging problem. In Erik Orsenna’s book La grammaire est une chanson douce, a girl tells her story and that of her brother in the 1st person in the land of words. The most frequent enunciative form is the morpheme “we”. But the female teacher (supra 2.1) required pupils/writers to act as a substitute for the fictional narrator (the girl and her brother) of the novel. Consequently, the narrator must withdraw from enunciation to become “historic” to use Benveniste’s term. Indeed, if the narrator used the 1st person, it could not refer to the children of the novel or the writer himself but to an “I” acting both as a character of the novel and the narrator.
70Below is the example of text 6 with its two stages. The problem was not completely solved in the copied out version (right-hand side).
71Text 6
- 25 These are the first names of the characters in the source novel.
STAGE 1
7….alors Jeanne et Thomas25
< jusqua>
8. restèrent debout suqua que les mots
9. s’accordèrent. « Soudain », on entendit
10. une musique mon frère et moi comprit
11. que le mariage aller s’accopler nous
12. restont jusquà la fin. Les mots nous
13. regarder très bizarrement ils nous ont
14. demander quesqu’on faisait là et nous
15. ont à repondut qu’on était pour la pour
17. la première fois et qu’on voulez rester
18. regarder la sérémonit. Et il nous ont dit
19. dacord à condition que vous ne faite
20. pas des bruit.La musique continuère et
<continuaire >
21. les mots continuère à assiter et ne s’ocoupait
<continuaire >
22. plus des deux enfants
Then Jeanne and Thomas kept standing until the words matched. “Suddenly”, a music was heard my brother and I understood that the marriage was going to match we stay until the end. The words looked at us very bizarrely they asked us what we were doing here and we answered that we were here for the first time and wanted to stay to attend the ceremony. They agreed provided we don’t make noise. The music went on and the words did not look after the two children
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STAGE 2
7….alors Jeanne et Thomas
< garçon et
< jusqua> méchant>
8. restèrent debout suqua que les mots
<assis comme
les hautres>
9. s’accordèrent. « Soudain », on entendit
<les deux qui étaient déjà
10. une musique mon frère et moi comprit
accordaient>
11. que le mariage aller s’accopler nous
<commencer>
12. restont jusquà la fi n. Les mots nous
13. regarder très bizarrement ils nous ont
<car il s’avaient
14. demander quesqu’on faisait là et nous
que nous on c’était déjà accoupler
15. ont à repondut qu’on était pour la pour
17. la première fois et qu’on voulez rester
18. regarder la sérémonit. Et il nous ont dit
19. dacord à condition que vous ne faite
20. pas des bruit.La musique continuère et
<continuaire >
21. <L>es mots continuère à assiter et ne
s’ocoupait
<continuaire > <sinteressai aus
mariage>
22. plus des deux enfants
<des mariés>
Then Jeanne and Thomas remained seated like the others until the words matched. “Suddenly”, we heard a music we understood that the marriage was going to start stayed until the end. The words looked at us very bizarrely because they knew we were already matched the words continued and were no longer interested in the marriage
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72Stage 1 starts and ends on the presentation of children as characters (l. 7 and 22) according to a historic mode of enunciation. But the remainder of the narrative introduces a “we” implying that the narrator is one of the two children like in the novel. It has to be noticed that it occurs when the writer must express the thought of the two children (l. 10 and sq.: mon frère et moi comprit que le mariage aller s’accopler nous restont jusquà la fin.), which is followed by a dialogue (l. 13 to 20) in hybrid indirect speech lines 18 to 20 (Et il nous ont dit dacord à condition que vous ne faite pas des bruit).
73How can be explained what is generally viewed as incoherence in pupils’ writing? The difficulty for pupils to interpret the instruction reveals a more general problem: how can be construed the fact that the narrator, who is supposed to see the scene he narrates, may not be part of enunciation? The pupil like in the first example had no alternative: she presented both solutions and thus preserved the opportunity to present herself as the narrator through the “I/we” (see l. 10) as requested in the instruction and introduced children in the 3rd person.
74The pupil did not manage to solve the problem of the instruction in which the narrator must be the writer herself and the “I” or “You” should not be confused with that of the characters or with that of the pupil. Therefore although the pupil was supposed to be the narrator in charge of enunciation, she could not realise that her enunciation should not come under the form of the deictic “I”.
75In stage 2, the pupil sought to take account of the criticisms made during the reflexive session but her rewriting made the problem worse. The excerpts in bold reproduce the alterations made by the pupil. The teacher blamed the pupil for using “we” because it referred to a narrator that could only logically be the two children but the latter were simultaneously referred to as “they”. In the second stage, the pupil substituted a third person (l. 9-10) for the wrong narrator “les deux qui étaient déjà accordaient”. But the “we” l.12 is still a trace of the first stage and refers to the two agreed words this time: once again, when she used a personal form, the pupil falsely believed she was in line with the instruction. For her, being the narrator probably implied using a deictic.
76And yet polyphony is probably discovered fortuitously through the assimilation of events by a conscience that gradually became “other”. Here is how the shift was made in the “Egypt” corpus.
77Text 6
Tout à coup une bille s’échappa et roula vers le Nil
Le plus grand essaya de la rattrapper, mais, il manqua
sont coup et poussa Ankh qui tomba
dans le Nil.
La jeune fi lle apeuré ce demanda quoi
faire elle nageait très mal et risquait de se
noyer. Le garçon qui avait poussé Ankh
avait disparu. Peut-être est-il allé chercher du
secours?
Suddenly a marble escaped and rolled to the river Nile
The tallest tried to catch it but he failed
And pushed Ankh who fell
Into the Nile
The young girl, feeling frightened, wondered what
She could do she swam very badly and might drown. The boy who pushed Ankh
Vanished. He may have called for assistance
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78The copy clearly separates the fall of the heroine from the following paragraph through a line feed, which apparently turns the part in bold type into an explicit representation of the interior thoughts of the character ([…] se demanda quoi faire elle nageait très mal et risquait de se noyer). Despite the following awkward wording (can the last three lines be attributed to the character?), the narrative might possibly relate the character’s thoughts provided it is told by the narrator. For that purpose, two changes would be necessary : “le garcon qui l’avait poussé avait disparu : peut-être était-il allé chercher du secours ?”
79There are cases of transposition of interior speech in the “Orsenna” corpus like in the example below:
80Text 7
Soudain le maire arrivit toujours bien
vêti avec
ses drôle d’écharbe tricolore.Les deux
am acor
dé se tenant par la main <brûlant
d’impacience.>
La maison portait une robe toute
blanche et ses
<elle>
sur ses cheveux rouge portait un
magnifi que chapeau.
Hanté n’avait b pas beaucoup chan-
geait, toujour au
ssi blanc il n’avait qu’un élégant nœud
papillion.
Suddenly the mayor arrived, well dressed as usual in a tricolour scarf. The two matched held hands and couldn’t wait.
The house had an all-white dress and wore a beautiful hat over its red hair. Hanté had not changed much, he was still as pale and only wore a bow tie
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Le mot maire arriva toujours bien vêti,,
les deux futures accordées se tenaient
côte à
côte.
Mais dans sa tête « maison » se
demanda
si c’était une bonne idée de s’accor-
dait avec 26. ce collant de « Hanté »,
tandis que « Hanté »
traipignait d’impatience à l’idée de s’
accordait avec « Maison ».
The word mayor arrived, well dressed as usual. The two soon-to-be-matched were standing side by side but in her head “maison” wondered if it was a good idea to match with this leech-like “Hanté” while “Hanté” coundn’t wait to match with “Maison”
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- 26 Whose text is as follows (op. cit., p. 83): « - À la mairie ! Tu ne veux pas te marier avec moi, qu (...)
81The use of dialogue does not mark here the starting point for narrative inventio. However, it must be pointed out that the content of the thoughts of the house is based on a part of the dialogue between the name “maison (house)” and the adjective “hanté (haunted)” that was present in the source novel26 and is here accommodated in the form of narrativised discourse.
82But what is the most striking in the shift from the draft to the copied out version is the substitution of the “interior” (her thoughts) for the “exterior “(the description of the red-haired house with a hat over representing the roof).
83The example below taken from the “Egypt” corpus is particular in the sense that there is no similar occurrence in free indirect speech in the “Orsenna” corpus as direct speech prevails over any other form of speech.
84Text 8
[…]Tétis prise de chagrin alla dans sa
chambre où là il lui vint une idée : el cette nuit
elle irait à la recherche de son frère. Pour cela il lui fallait des
provisions, des couvertures…Mais ! il y avait une réception
aujourd’hui et le château était surveillé.
[a grieving Tétis went to her
room where she had an idea: this night
she will look for her brother. But she needed food, blankets…But there was a reception
today and the castle was watched over.
- 27 K. Hamburger, op. cit.
85This example includes several features attributed by K. Hamburger27 to fictional narrative as signs of fictionality:
-
Interior thoughts of someone different from the narrator (interior monologue or free indirect speech);
-
Combination of temporal deictics with the preterite and the pluperfect. In ordinary discourse, they are used in relation to the present of the speaker while in fictional narrative they are often associated with the 3rd person;
-
Detemporalisation of the preterite, etc.
- 28 Delphine Denis and Anna Jaubert, « La fictionnalisation dans le langage », p. 1-5, in Denis & A. Ja (...)
86These attempts to “rationalise, objectivise” fiction as acting process are attractive and ancient. More recent initiatives28 seek to identify sets of more diffuse, system-like signs that form a “formal apparel of fiction” (Gilles Philippe).
87They all assume that if there are effects of fictional discourse, it means that there are procedures of fictionalisation in language.
88Nothing prevents these signs from coinciding with those that young writers discover when they write but the strong points of such texts is the delight felt by writers: it seems that the writers let themselves be lured by what does not “belong to them”, and paradoxically it is because they let what is foreign pervade them that fiction is introduced. The question of the linguistic resources to express this alterity is raised only afterwards; it is the reason why dialogue is the main tool for writing fiction.
89The emphasis on dialogue as a process crucial to writing fiction postulates that thematic content is just one component of fiction. In both the “Egypt” and the “Orsenna” corpuses, pupils imagine characters that speak and speak to each other. These external and internal dialogues are the expression of a cognitive necessity that was already supposed by Bakhtine and Vygotski: pupils gradually shift from a unireferential or omnireferential “I” to the controlled expression of the possible alterity of an “I” that is not “self”.
90Many other questions have been left unanswered: what about the plot, the events when episodes are created and of the work of pupils to make them convincing?
- 29 Catherine Lamothe-Boré, Choix énonciatifs dans la mise en mots de la fiction, le cas des brouillons (...)
91These questions are important. I addressed them29 in a far more pragmatic perspective.
92The focus on alterity and dialogue was meant to emphasise one particular aspect of alterity – the discovery of the other in oneself – a cognitive and linguistic discovery.
- 30 Francis Marcoin, À l’école de la littérature, Paris, Les Éditions Ouvrières, 1992.
93It is in this sense that I would refer to a “school of fiction”, to paraphrase a term coined by F. Marcoin30, as it is likely that learning to get someone to speak teaches something about oneself.