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Sternberg’s impersonal narrative voice relates to the concept that is usually referred to as a heterodiegetic extradiegetic narrator within literary theory. Gérard Genette coined the terms heterodiegetic and extradiegetic, identifying the extradiegetic narration as the first level of narration, the extradiegetic narrator to be the ‘fictive author’ of the story, and the

heterodiegetic narrator as a narrator that is ‘absent from the story’ it tells.10 Genette further

emphasises that the extradiegetic narrator, though situated outside of the story, is still inside the fictional world.

Narratologists who follow Genette’s distinction are, for example, Mieke Bal, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, and Seymour Chatman. Bal refers to the heterodiegetic extradiegetic narrator

as a non-character-bound external narrator, which is either perceptible or non-perceptible.11

Rimmon-Kenan, similarly to Bal, argues that the extradiegetic heterodiegetic narrator’s perceptibility varies, but she finds that it is rarely a case of being either perceptible or not but

that the degree of perceptibility ranges form covert to overt.12 Both the distinction between

non-characterbound and characterbound narrators, and perceptible and non-perceptible narrators is useful when identifying the fictional voices of screenplay texts.

Chatman identifies the narrator as the ‘discoursive agent charged with presenting the words, images, or other signs conveying’ the narrative, and he further finds that the narrator

can accomplish this either by ‘telling, showing, or some combination of the two’.13

Identifying the narrator as being able to both show and tell enables Chatman to conclude that a narrative (such as Hemingway’s The Killers) where the extradiegetic heterodiegetic narrator

is more covert involves a narrator that is mainly showing instead of telling.14 The use of the

10 _{Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited, trans. by Jane E. Lewin (Ithaca: Cornell University}

Press, 1988), pp. 228-29, 244.

11 _{Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 3rd edn (Toronto: University of}

Toronto Press, 2009 [1985]), pp. 17-21.

12 _{Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, 2}nd _{edn (NewYork;:}

Routledge, 2002 [1983], pp. 96-100.

13 _{Seymour Chatman, Coming to Terms: The Rhetorics of Narrative in Fiction and Film (New York:}

Cornell University Press, 1990), p. 119.

term ‘presenter’ also enables Chatman to transfer the narrator-concept to film narratives.15 Even though Chatman’s terms are suited to both films and novels, they will not be used in regards of the screenplay text. As Price states, the screenplay may come close to showing without telling but it cannot actually show the reader the story; it can only tell it.

4.3.1. Arguments against the external narrator

Within literary theory there are many theorists who argue against the existence of the extradiegetic heterodiegetic narrator, which was already seen in chapter 1 where Marianne Wolff Lundholt’s argument was mentioned. Wolff Lundholt’s main argument is that when a narrator is not textually retrievable it is absent. She explains further: ‘This means that when the covert heterodiegetic narrator expresses a certain ideology which cannot be traced to a character, the evaluations are ascribed to the “subjective worldview of the text” rather than a

narrator.’16 _{She emphasises that there ‘is no explicit subject to which we can ascribe these}

enunciations.’17 Wolff Lundholt further highlights Ann Banfield’s work, especially stressing

Banfield’s arguments against the narrator and regarding narratives as a communication. Banfield, quoted by Wolff Lundholt, finds that the text ‘must be held together by some other

hypothesis than that of the narrator’s voice’.18

Another argument against the fictional narrator is to ascribe the narration to the author. Both Richard Walsh and Dan Shen follow this argument and thus find that the extradiegetic heterodiegetic narrator does not exist: Walsh argues that when the narrator is not a character the narrator is the author, stating that ‘[e]xtradiegetic heterodiegetic narrators (that is, “impersonal” and “authorial” narrators), who cannot be represented without thereby being

rendered homodiegetic or intradiegetic, are in no way distinguishable from authors.’19 Shen

similarly argues:

If the extra-heterodiegetic narrator is free from personalizing, readers will only read the narrated words while feeling the presence of a “disembodied” voice. If readers try to

15 _{Chatman, Coming to Terms, p. 133.}

16 _{Marianne Wolff Lundholt, Telling Without Tellers: The Linguistic Manifestation of Literary}

Communication in Narrative Fiction (Copenhagen: Medusa, 2008), pp. 15-16.

17 _{Wolff Lundholt, p. 44.}

18 _{Banfield, as quoted in Wolff Lundholt, p. 46.}

look behind the words for the narrating process, they will only find the writer’s writing

hand, and the fact that the disembodied voice is merely a fictional illusion.20

Another theorist opposing the concept is Monika Fludernik, who, in line with Wolff Lundholt, finds that there, in some cases, is no textual evidence that somebody is telling the

story. Fludernik therefore refuses ‘to locate narrativity in the existence of a narrator.’21

Fludernik regards drama texts as being narrated without a narrating agent, but through

separating the definition of narrativity from a narrator she is able to include drama texts in her analyses. It is Fludernik’s discussion of drama text that is especially useful to text based screenplay research, since it focuses on how the narrations differ between the media.

Fludernik highlights that a drama text’s story is similar to those of films and fictions, but what separates the media is how the story is mediated on the discourse level. She therefore

identifies analyses that focus on the discourse level to be of greater importance than

examinations that focus on the story. Fludernik finds that the discourse level of a playscript can be defined by ‘distinguishing those elements that constitute what would traditionally be called “plot” and those elements of dramatic narration that belongs to the performance level

of staging.’22 _{She identifies features that indicate ‘visual and aural orchestration’ as elements}

that belong to the performance level.23 Fludernik’s separation between plot and the level of

staging is easily transferred to the screenplay text and the separation between extrafictional and fictional information: the separation of information concerned with the visualisation of the potential film and the information concerned with the fictional story world.

Fludernik concludes that in ‘reading a play, we imaginatively “stage” it in our minds’, and that the ‘reading process is different from that of reading fiction because - owing to the explicit staging information in the stage directions - it involves more visualisation than does

novel reading.’24 Fludernik further states that ‘stage directions are originally instructions for

the actors and director, but for the reader of playscripts, their function is an eminently

narrative one.’25 That the text is first and foremost a narrative text is equally important to keep

in mind when it comes to the screenplay text, and, as will be seen further on in the thesis,                                                                                                                

20 _{Dan Shen, ‘Narrative, Reality, and Narrator as Construct: Reflections on Genette’s ”Narrating”’,}

Narrative, 9.12 (2001), pp. 123-29 (p. 126).

21 _{Monika Fludernik, ‘Towards a ”Natural” Narratology’, Journal of Literary Semantics, 15.2 (1996),}

pp. 97-141 (p. 114).

22 _{Monika Fludernik, ‘Narrative and Drama’, in Theorizing Narrativity, ed. by John Pier and José}

Ángel Carcia Landa (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), pp. 355-83 (pp. 361-62).

23 _{Fludernik, ‘Narrative and Drama’, p. 362.} 24 _{Fludernik, ‘Narrative and Drama’, p. 363.} 25 _{Fludernik, ‘Narrative and Drama’, p. 375.}

directions to the production team also serve narrative ends that enable the readers to better imagine the potential film in his or her mind.

Manfred Jahn, in line with Monika Fludernik, examines drama texts and he finds that a reader’s ‘imaginative reading’ comes before a director’s or actor’s reading because the

imaginative reading is a ‘necessary precondition for understanding’ the text.26 Jahn also

emphasises that it is a drama text’s discourse level that is of greater interest since it is unclear whether or not a narrating voice exists in drama texts. Jahn concludes that in some playscripts a narrating voice can be found in the stage directions, which would have to be placed on a

higher level of narration than the character-narrator that speaks through dialogue.27 Jahn does

not, however, go into any detail about possible narrating voices in drama texts. Jahn’s

‘imaginative reading’ can be related to the reading that the property stage reader does, that is, the producer or investor, and Jahn’s director’s or actor’s reading can be related to the readings carried out by the blueprint stage readers (i.e. the director, photographer, actors, etc.).

Considering that it is the ‘imaginative reading’ carried out by the property stage reader that determines whether or not the screenplay will be put into production, Jahn’s argument that it is necessary for the text first to be understood through the ‘imaginative reading’ is also a valid argument for the screenplay text. If the property stage reader does not understand the

screenplay text, the screenplay will not be produced.

4.3.2. Concluding note

Even though some literary theorists oppose the narrator’s existence, most are in favour of the concept and use it to examine how the story is told and how the narration functions. What needs to be highlighted is that the debate has been taken up by narratologists of drama, and that they especially argue that it is the narration that is the most relevant to examine, since it functions differently in drama than in novels. By relating the narrator concept and narration to the screenplay one more step is being taken to expand the field of narrative research, and just as it is argued within drama, the screenplay as a text-type also distinguishes itself through its unique narration: the simultaneous narration of the story and how it should be visualised as a film. What is also clear after reviewing literary theories is that positing a narrating agent as existing in all screenplay texts needs to be carefully considered, and the reasons for arguing

26 _{Manfred Jahn, ‘Narrative Voice and Agency in Drama: Aspects of a Narratology of Drama’, New}

Literary History: Voice and Human Experience, 32.3 (2001), pp. 659-79 (p. 666).

for such an agent needs to be made clear considering that a narrator is not regarded as obligatory by drama text researchers or all literary researchers.