Diegesis
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Diegesis (/ˌdaɪəˈdʒiːsɪs/; from the Greek διήγησις from διηγεῖσθαι, "to narrate") is a style of fiction storytelling which presents an interior view of a world in which the narrator presents the actions (and sometimes thoughts) of the characters to the readers or audience.
Origin
Diegesis (Greek διήγησις "narration") and mimesis (Greek μίμησις "imitation") have been contrasted since Aristotle. For Aristotle, Mimesis shows rather than tells, by means of action that is enacted. Diegesis is the telling of a story by a narrator. The narrator may speak as a particular character, or may be the invisible narrator, or even the all-knowing narrator who speaks from "outside" in the form of commenting on the action or the characters.
In literature
For
- Details about the world itself and the experiences of its characters are revealed explicitly through narrative.
- The story is told or recounted, as opposed to shown or enacted.[2]
- There is a presumed detachment from the story of both the speaker and the audience.
Diegesis is multi-levelled in narrative fiction. Gérard Genette distinguishes between three "diegetic levels". The extradiegetic level (the level of the narrative's telling) is, according to Prince, "external to (not part of) any diegesis." One might think of this as what we commonly understand to be the narrator's level, the level at which exists a narrator who is not part of the story being told. The diegetic level or intradiegetic level is understood as the level of the characters, their thoughts and actions. The metadiegetic level or hypodiegetic level is that part of a diegesis that is embedded in another one and is often understood as a story within a story, as when diegetic narrators themselves tell a story.
In dramatic texts, the poet never speaks directly; in narrative texts, the poet speaks as himself.[3]
In film
In filmmaking the term is used to name the story depicted on screen, as opposed to the story in real time[clarification needed] that the screen narrative is about.[clarification needed] Diegesis may concern elements, such as characters, events, and things within the main or primary narrative. However, the author may include elements that are not intended for the primary narrative, such as stories within stories. Characters and events may be referred to elsewhere or in historical contexts and are therefore outside the main story; thus, they are presented in an extradiegetic situation.[citation needed][dubious ]
The classical distinction between the diegetic mode and the mimetic mode relates[clarification needed] to the difference between the epos (or epic poetry) and drama.[4] The "epos" relates stories by telling them through narration, while drama enacts stories through direct embodiment (showing). In terms of classical poetics, the cinema is an epic form[citation needed] that utilizes dramatic elements; this is determined by the technologies of the camera and editing. Even in a spatially and temporally continuous scene (mimicking the theatrical situation, as it were), the camera chooses for us where to look - and where not to look. In a similar way, editing causes us to jump from one place (and/or time) to another, whether it be elsewhere in the room, or across town. This jump is a form of narration; it is as if a narrator whispers to us: "meanwhile, on the other side of the forest". It is for this reason[dubious ] that the "story-world" in cinema is referred to as "diegetic"; elements that belong to the film's narrative world are diegetic elements. This is why, in the cinema, we may refer to the film's diegetic world.[citation needed]
"Diegetic", in the cinema, typically refers to the internal world created by the story that the characters themselves experience and encounter: the narrative "space" that includes all the parts of the story, both those that are and those that are not actually shown on the screen (such as events that have led up to the present action; people who are being talked about; or events that are presumed to have happened elsewhere or at a different time).[citation needed]
Thus, elements of a film can be "diegetic" or "non-diegetic". These terms are most commonly used in reference to sound in a film. Most soundtrack music in films is non-diegetic; heard by the audience, but not by the characters. Some films reverse this convention; for example,
In video games
In video games "diegesis" comprises the narrative game world, its characters, objects and actions which can be classified as "intra-diegetic", by both being part of the narration and not breaking the
See also
References
- Gerard Genette's Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (Cornell University Press, 1980); or (for a readable introduction) H. Porter Abbott's The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge University Press 2002).
- ISBN 0-8032-8776-3
- ^ See also Pfister (1977, 2–3) and Elam: "classical narrative is always oriented towards an explicit there and then, towards an imaginary "elsewhere" set in the past and which has to be evoked for the reader through predication and description. Dramatic worlds, on the other hand, are presented to the spectator as "hypothetically actual" constructs, since they are "seen" in progress "here and now" without narratorial mediation. [...] This is not merely a technical distinction but constitutes, rather, one of the cardinal principles of a poetics of the drama as opposed to one of narrative fiction. The distinction is, indeed, implicit in Aristotle's differentiation of representational modes, namely diegesis (narrative description) versus mimesis (direct imitation)" (1980, 110–111).
- ^ Elam (1980, 110–111).
- ^ Trenholm, Richard (2 March 2018). "Inside the Oscar-nominated sound that steers 'Baby Driver'". CNET. Retrieved 22 July 2021.
- ^ Russell, Dave (2 February 2011). "Video game user interface design: Diegesis theory". Dev.Mag. Retrieved 4 May 2017.
- ^ Tach, Dave (13 March 2013). "Deliberately diegetic: Dead Space's lead interface designer chronicles the UI's evolution at GDC". Polygon. Retrieved 15 April 2015.
Bibliography
- Aristotle. 1974. "Poetics". Trans. S.H. Butcher. In Dramatic Theory and Criticism: Greeks to Grotowski. Ed. Bernard F. Dukore. Florence, KY: Heinle & Heinle. ISBN 0-03-091152-4. p. 31–55.
- Bunia, Remigius. 2010. "Diegesis and Representation: Beyond the Fictional World, on the Margins of Story and Narrative," Poetics Today 31.4, 679–720. .
- Coyle, R. (2004). Pop goes the music track. Metro Magazine, 140, 94–95.
- Elam, Keir. 1980. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. New Accents Ser. London and New York: Methuen. ISBN 0-416-72060-9.
- Pfister, Manfred. 1977. The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Trans. John Halliday. European Studies in English Literature Ser. Cambridige: Cambridge University Press, 1988. ISBN 0-521-42383-X.
- Plato. c. 373 BC. Republic. Retrieved from Project Gutenberg on 2 September 2007.
- Michael Ryan, Melissa Lenos, An Introduction to Film Analysis: Technique and Meaning in Narrative Film, The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012. ISBN 9780826430021.
External links
- The dictionary definition of diegesis at Wiktionary