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5.1 Dolos and narrative theories: Greimas' veridictory square

In fictional communication some measure of deceit or at least ambiguity will always be present. Different theorists have different ways of expressing this idea; from a structuralist point of view there is an inherent trickiness in the narrative process itself: "the mainspring of the narrative activity is to be traced to that very confusion

between consecutiveness and consequence, what-comes-a/ifer being read in a narrative as vfhdX-'is-caused by. Narrative would then be a systematic application of

^Detienne and Vemant 43

^ibid. p. 2.

Hbid. p. 3

the logical fallacy denounced by scholasticism under the formula, post hoc ergo propter hoc."^

As regards the narrator-narratee axis, deceit must be present to maintain the

relationship between narrator and narratee throughout the course of the narrative. At any moment the narratee can put an end to the narrative transaction, withdrawing his attention out of sheer lack of interest or because he has prematurely gained all the information inherent in the communication. The flow of information must be manipulated continuously so as to maintain the audience's interest, directing them towards full recognition without including all the data to complete the process until the end, if at all. Enough information must be given to provoke speculation, but not too much. Withholding and hiding information, setting up false expectations, controlling the reader's response not only by the creation of frames but, more subtly, by leaving gaps, ambiguities or unresolved contradictions, is absolutely the way of all narratives.^

There are different models here. To Barthes, narratives are "legal tender, subject to contract, economic stakes, in short, merchandise... narrative is both product and production, merchandise and commerce, a stake and the bearer of that stake... This model finds some measure of immediate confirmation in ancient drama where the messenger might expect %dpig in return for his information:’* in Trach. and Phil. Sophocles draws attention to the messenger's information as a narrative transaction contained within a much larger piece of "trading" or "transaction" that is taking place.

Chambers' model is slightly different, emphasising a power structure: "To tell a story is to exercise power (it is even called the power of narration), and "authorship" is cognate with "authority." But the authority is not absolute but relational, the result of an act of authorisation on the part of those subject to the power, and hence something to be earned. ( m y italics)

Etymologically the narrator is the one who knows (Latin narrare, *gnarare, related to gnarus. knowing, skilled), and in Chambers' view, "where the narratee offers

*Cf. Barthes 1975,237, also Culler 1 9 7 5 ,183ff. on Nietzsche's mosquito bite and the problem o f causation. ’Cf. Perry, 1979.

'"Barthes 1974 89.

"cf. Trach. 190ff.; OT 1005ff.; El. 772; Phil. 5 5 Iff.. See also Longo, 1978,83ff. '^This is discussed below, p. 143 and 147ff..

attention in exchange for information, the narrator sacrifices the information for some form of attention."’"* From another point of view, narration can be viewed as a seductive act, a kind of strip-tease in which an unrestricted view is deliberately and tantalisingly denied.’^ All these different narrative models, which of course derive from the real world, perhaps unsurprisingly are often thematised within the narrative as well.

I find useful the model of narrative as a kind of game:’® fiction is essentially ludic, and works by continuous interplay of illusion, allusion, elusion, collusion, delusion, and so forth. Tragedies are of course also known as plays, and plays, with their concrete, three-dimensional falsehoods, disguise and dressing-up, most obviously and most profoundly exemplify the ludic. When this is thematised by plots involving overt deceit, a whole complex of effects can be created in which discrepant

awareness is always significant. Rich effects can be created, dependant on an

interplay of engrossment and detachment, and the play may draw attention to its own theatrical status, reminding us that it is second-by-second constructing a reality rather than constituting one. We are both drawn in and kept out; the design of the play is exposed and so is our response to it.

Greimas: the veridictory square

In Aristotelian plot terms, ludic elements of deceit, disguise and dissimulation are merely those preliminary conditions (hardly considered by Aristotle) which give way to reversals and recognition, elements which Aristotle considered to be "tragedy's greatest means of emotional power" (Halliwell's translation).’^ In the plots of both comedy and tragedy, we see a rich and continuous interplay between the need for knowledge, and doloi which frustrate the need. In this way, as I have noted already, plots often thematise the basic narrator - narratee situation by highlighting the struggle to get certain information and achieve an understanding of what is going on.

In their highly significant article, which in many ways develops Aristotle's views on plot, Greimas and Courtes locate four positions which between them cover the entire

'"Chambers, ibid.

'^cf. Barthes' S/Z (1974), essentially a meditation on the erotic functioning of narrative in Balzac's Sarrasine. “I am not in any way associating the notion o f game here with the "language games" of Wittgenstein. However, von Neumann's general theory of games would be applicable here, to the extent that it applies to the behaviour of two groups with conflicting interests in which the gain of one participant is at the loss o f the other. (See Fontana Dictionary of Modem Thought, edd. Bullock and Stallybrass, London 1977)

range of cognitive possibilities in narrative. These are interesting because they demonstrate how much more profoundly than in Aristotle's view the narrative process is steeped in deception. When deception stops, the narrative is over. The four basic positions are;

1. True (= being + appearing)

2. False (= not being + not appearing) 3. Secret (= being + not appearing) 4. Delusion/lie (= not being + appearing).

The relationship between these positions can be expressed diagrammatically in the figure known as the veridictory square,’* a schema which can be applied without modification to many complex recognition sequences, such as those in S.El. E. Hel.. IT. Ion: the desired husband/brother/son is first absent (position 3); then a report of some kind implies that he is not only absent but also dead (position 2); in fact the hero is alive and present, but disguised in some way (position 4); then full

recognition (often delayed by the success of the previous dissimulation) finally takes place (position 1).

The schema can also be used to describe the large movement from ignorance to knowledge, from deceit to anagnorisis, which provides the major outline of some tragedies. The movement from one position to the next around the veridictory square releases a transformative power,’^ which seems to be another way of saying "brings about a reversal and either a new phase of the story or closure."^®

'"Veridictory square (adapted from Greimas and Courtes 1989,571): |