A discussion about telling and showing in narratology: problems and perspectives

The article is devoted to the history of theoretical categories of showing and telling that shaped the problem field of modern nar-ratology. As literal translations of the Greek words "mimesis" and "diegesis" in English, showing and telling turn up at the centre of discussions in literary studies after the works of H. James and P. Lubbok where showing had been made a prescription for novelists (H. James oriented himself to showing in his literary works). The prescription was that "direct", "impersonal" "dramatical" ways of narration are superior to those where the author allows himself to interfere with the action and evaluate what is going on, thus controlling the attention of the reader. W. Booth in his book The Rhetoric of Fiction defends the writers of the 18th-19th centuries and their predecessors who have different creative positions. Particularly Booth pointed to the examples of Boccaccio's stories, where telling and showing was interacting in a complex way. In his works Boundaries of Narrative and Narrative Discourse G. Genette insists that showing is always mediated and distanced through the language and, therefore, it is an illusion. Genette newly rethinks the ancient differentiation between mimesis and diegesis and claims that an epic literary work has only a narrative mode and, therefore, wholly belongs to the diegetic representation. Genette introduced the category of mode which allowed examining showing and telling in connection with a narrative distance. Genette wrote that when showing the thing comes to the fore, and when telling it is the fact of speaking itself. The paradox of Proust's novel is that every scene is highly mimetic i.e. saturated with details and slowed down but at the same time it involves an intense presence of the narrator. A modern review of different approaches to the telling and showing distinction is provided by T. Klauk and T. Koppe. Researchers call the presence or absence of the narrator as the decisive point in this differentiation. However, they can be distinguished by the criterion of distance between the narrator and narrated events, on the basis of presence or absence of dialogue, partiality or objectivity of the narration, narrative speed and other features. All of them are compiled in a table in the article. According to researchers, a common element for all the criteria might be the evidence of the reader who perceives the events either in the aspect of telling or somehow witnesses them. In the author's opinion in order to continue the research, it would be productive to fix the new differentiation between mimesis and diegesis. Genette polemically constricts the area of mimesis identifying an epic literary work with diegesis only. In the final part of the article, the author briefly examines the new conceptions of mimesis that indicate the incompleteness of the discussion about showing and telling. Supplementing the narratological discussion with the level of mimesis is shown on the basis of the works by S.N. Zenkin, M.B. Yampolsky, V.A. Podoroga which can be productive for a wide range of narratological research.

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