Conlangs are classified into types and subtypes based mainly on why they are created. The three basic types are engelangs (engineered languages), auxlangs (auxiliary languages), and artlangs (artistic languages).
Whatever your reason for making a language, it's good to keep always in mind why you started it in the first place.
- 1 Engineered languages
- 2 Auxiliary languages
- 3 Artistic languages
- 4 Other ways of classifying conlangs
Engelangs, sometimes called englangs, are conlangs designed to meet objective criteria, rather than subjective goals like "elegance" or "ease of use". For example, one might design an engelang so that the arrangement of sounds in a word classifies its meaning; or so that its grammatical structure imitates formal logic; or so that its expressions conform to a certain ideology or point of view (say, Taoism, or feminism). Subjective goals are always around — motivating the choice of objective criteria, and filling in gaps in the language design that the objective criteria don't address. As long as the technical criteria take precedence when deciding features of the language design, it's an engelang.
Be aware (and beware) that the names for this type of conlang and its subtypes vary a bit across the conlanging community. What we're calling engelangs here, some conlangers call loglangs (a term we're using just for the ones that implement formal logic); and some other conlangers call them philosophical languages (a term we're using for a subtype of engelangs distinct from loglangs).
Loglangs are conlangs built around the structure of formal logic. They are usually designed to investigate how the human mind would work when using a language with that structure. Logical languages tend to have few or no irregularities and be similar in style to computer programming or markup languages. They advocate a logical and consistent architectural structure of utterances. Lojban, a language created to test the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis (the idea that language shapes the operation of the mind), is considered archetypal of the genre. Others are like Ithkuil, a language created by John Quijada: Ithkuil exists as an exercise in how human languages could function. These often overlap with philosophical languages.
Some examples of loglangs:
- — developed in the mid-twentieth century, originally as a tool with which to test the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis.
- — a community-driven offshoot of Loglan. Its development is ongoing.
- Ceqli — originally inspired by Loglan, then took a turn toward the naturalistic.
- — a knowledge representation language, for an attempt to create artificial intelligence through vast accumulation of knowledge.
- — intended to express thoughts precisely and densely.
Philosophical languages are conlangs constructed to meet some philosophical goal. This goal can be to explore how the mind works by altering the fundamental structure of the language (which is the aim of some loglangs, such as Ithkuil), or it can be to see if language is even possible when certain elements are changed. In general, philosophical languages are experimental.
In some of them, for example, all the words for manmade objects (artifacts) will typically begin with the same letter, t for instance, all the words for pieces of furniture will begin with to-, the word for "chair" will be tod, words for different types of chairs will begin with tod-, organisms will begin with v, plant species will begin with ve- while animals begin with vu-, all vertebrates will begin with vuz-, mammals with vuzu- and rodents with vuzum-.
A common criticism of languages that use such a word categorization system is that the words that are most similar in meaning and topic, and will therefore most need to be distinguished from each other, will sound too alike, and become too confusable to learn, even though the goal of these languages is usually to make memorization easier. In a few of these languages a single phoneme or very short (two-letter) syllable will indicate an element of meaning, such as "light/vision", "female", or "many".
Some examples of philosophical languages:
- Wilkins' philosophical language — seventeenth century classification language. It has been described as paving the way for Roget's Thesaurus.
- aUI — 1960s. Each sound has a meaning, and the meanings of words are built up from the meanings of the sounds.
- Ro — early twentieth century classification language. One of its supporters was Melvil Dewey, creator of the Dewey Decimal System.
- Ygyde — twenty-first century. Two-letter morphemes carry meaning, and longer words are built up as compounds.
- Toki Pona — twenty-first century. Designed to facilitate Taoist thinking. Very few words with no inflections and uncomplicated meanings, and very simple grammar.
Auxlangs are designed to help ease communication between two or more linguistically diverse communities. They use simple phonology and grammar to try to make them easy to learn. Their grammars are made in such a way as to express the widest range of meanings possible. There are many Auxlangs, and some of them were among the first constructed languages ever made.
Some examples of auxlangs:
- Esperanto — probably the most widely known auxlang. It includes words from languages of several Indo-European branches and has a highly developed system of word derivation.
- Volapük — the most successful auxlang prior to Esperanto. Its vocabulary is derived from Germanic roots.
- Ido — derived from Esperanto, separating in an event called the schism (or even the Great Schism) from which resentments have not entirely faded more than a century later. Ido uses a Romance-derived vocabulary.
- Latino sine flexione — based on Latin without inflections.
- Novial — based on modern West European languages.
- Solresol — based on the musical scale. It can be sung and played.
Many auxlangs borrow their vocabulary entirely from the Indo-European languages — often from a mix of Romance and Germanic languages, but most often entirely from Romance languages. As a result, the vocabulary and general method of reaching the goal of universality sound a lot alike from auxlang to auxlang. These auxlangs are often called "Euroclones". More recent auxlangs that take their vocabulary from more diverse sources and use non-Indo-European grammar include Vorlin, Ceqli, Ilomi, and SASXSEK.
Artlangs are created for a wide range of reasons: fleshing out works of fiction, fun, experimentation, or even historical study (colloquially called "if-langs"). Most people who create artlangs do so simply because they enjoy it. The artlangs best known today are probably Klingon, created for the Star Trek franchise by professional linguist Marc Okrand, and the many Elvish languages, most notably Quenya and Sindarin, in Tolkien's Middle-earth.
The most familiar and general subset of artlangs are fictional languages. These are spoken by the inhabitants of the fictional worlds of a book, movie, television show, video game, comic, or toy, such as Middle-earth, the Star Trek universe, or the game Myst. These worlds in which they are spoken are called conworlds, inhabited by fictional concultures. The conworld influences what words the language will have for flora and fauna, articles of clothing, foods, objects of technology (such as bricks, cannons, or telephones), sports, music genres, ethnic groups, religious concepts, and place names.
The culture will also have an influence on some things like verb tenses (how your people view the future and the past, or whether time should even be grammatically indicated at all any more than place should), pronouns (whether the speakers need fine enough shades of "we" to distinguish the concept of "you and I" from "he and I", or whether they have different levels of formality for "you"), and how kinship terms are split up (some languages have different words for older and younger brothers, others do not distinguish "brother" from "sister", and some have different words for the sister of a sister and the sister of a brother). Tolkien started out inventing languages for his amusement and then retroengineered a fictional universe to have a world in which these languages would be spoken.
Since the Internet became popular, many people have now become able to put up information on their conlangs and associated conworlds on their sites, and these have become famous. Verdurian, the language of Mark Rosenfelder's Verduria on the planet of Almea, is often invoked as a symbolic representative of these Net-based fictional languages.
Some examples of fictional languages:
- Klingon — created for the Star Trek franchise by linguist Marc Okrand; meant to have a harsh sound, but be pronounceable by actors, and to reflect a suitably bellicose worldview.
- Na'vi language — created for the movie Avatar by professor Paul Frommer; meant to fit the film concept, and be pronounceable by actors, but not sound like any particular human language.
- — described in George Orwell's novel 1984; supposed to prevent dissident thoughts by not allowing them to be expressed.
- Quenya and Sindarin — the most prominent of J.R.R. Tolkien's Elvish languages; designed to Tolkien's personal taste. He created Middle-earth as background for the languages.
- Verdurian — created by Mark Rosenfelder for a Dungeons & Dragons world; borrows from various European languages, but doesn't closely resemble any of them.
Altlangs are also known as What if? languages or if-langs. They speculate on an alternate history and try to reconstruct how a family of natural languages would have evolved if things had been different. What if King Harold had won the Battle of Hastings? What if the Polynesians had settled in Central America during the time of Meso-American Empires? What if Alexander the Great had not been able to conquer Egypt? What if Greek civilization went on to thrive without a Roman Empire, leaving Greek and not Latin to develop several modern descendants? The language that would have evolved is then traced step by step in its evolution, to reach its final form.
The revered grandfather of this genre is Andrew Smith's Brithenig, which attempts to determine what Romance languages would have evolved into had the Romans displaced the Celtic people in Great Britain. The vocabulary of Latin is altered through the same evolution that befell Welsh from the evolution of the Celtic languages through the present day. An altlang will typically base itself on the core vocabulary of one language and the phonology of another. An altlang will ideally have meticulous understanding and admirable imagination as to world history, sturdy knowledge of linguistics, and ingenious improvising when it becomes necessary to "toss it up".
Some examples of altlangs:
- — might have evolved if Latin had displaced the native Celtic language in Great Britain.
- — might have evolved if the Romans had conquered Poland.
Personal languages are languages that are created by and belong just to the inventor, for just the inventor to see, or perhaps to show off. A personal language is created for the ultimate purpose of creating a language. There is no conworld it is associated with, no people whom the creator actually expects to speak it, no product that will be manufactured in its language. A personal language is considered by many to be artlanging in its purest form, although a personal language may well have no artistic intention behind it. A personal language may be invented to create a beautiful language or for self-expression. It may be invented to give out a tribute to a language or language family the creator really likes, attempting to capture the flavor of the original as much as possible, or it may be created just for the fun that there is in creating a language.
Personal languages are often created as practices in linguistics; a conlanger learning about ergativity might write out the grammar of an ergative conlang in order to understand how ergative languages work. Some exist to test outlandish phonologies or orthographic systems, or have hundreds of noun cases or tens of millions of possible verb forms. Many are invented simply because people love constructing languages! The creators of personal languages often share their languages and update their progress over the Internet, and many habitually scrap an old conlang project that hasn't gotten beyond a lexicon of 50 words and start a new one. These personal languages tend to have short lifespans, but others are developed for years on end as their creators try to become truly fluent in them, perhaps using them for diaries and other writings.
Some artlangs are micronational languages — like fictional languages, but their creators make them real. They declare territory, issue official flags and currency, and recruit citizens, then have the citizens learn the language. These are the languages of micronations, sometimes created for entertainment, but often breakaway nations that are created for political purposes, declaring themselves to exist alongside UN-recognized nations (such as Sealand, the Conch Republic, or Atlantium). The members of these micronations meet up and speak the language they have learned when they are participating in these meets. The language and its creation belong to all the citizens of these micronations. They determine the direction of its evolution, invent new grammatical constructions when they discover it is necessary, and coin new words as they speak.
Some examples of micronational languages:
Other ways of classifying conlangs
The three broad kinds of goals we've described — technical features, cross-cultural communication, and art — aren't mutually exclusive. What if your goal is to see whether a certain technical goal can be successfully combined with your personal aesthetics? Is that an engelang or an artlang? Liva is a conlang with just that sort of goals, and its author has suggested that conlangs should be placed on the interior of a triangle, with the three pure types of conlangs at its corners (see here).
Even if a conlang has a single, pure primary goal, there are enough details in any conlang that the primary goal probably doesn't cover all of them. Auxlangs have some artistry in their making — it's been argued that artistic merit is part of why Esperanto has succeeded so much better than its competitors. Engelangs may have some artistry in them, too; and artlangs often have some technical aspirations lurking under the surface.
A particular class of mixed-goal conlangs with its own name is the fauxlangs, short for fictional auxlangs. These are supposed auxlangs created by characters in a fictional setting, often in an alternative history. Examples include
- Rex May's Texperanto — created by L.L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, in an alternative history where he emigrated to the Republic of Texas.
- At one time, Ray Brown's το άνευ κλίσι Ελληνικό ("Greek without inflections") was a fauxlang — the analog, in an alternative history where Alexander the Great conquered Rome, of Giuseppe Peano's 1903 auxlang Latino sine Flexione. It was revised a few years ago, though, to be more of an englang because the fictional setting was found too limiting.
A relex is a conlang generated from a pre-existing language by replacing the forms of the words, while leaving most of the rest of the original language unchanged — especially,
- the exact meanings of the words from the original language, and/or
- the grammar of the original language.
With both of these unchanged, the conlang is a sort of word-replacement code for the original language. By extension, relex is sometimes used as a broad criticism of any conlang seen as too closely copying another language.
The largest class of relexes are (by reputation, at least) artlangs whose authors failed to notice that they were copying most of the look and feel of their native language. Not all relexes are artlangs, though, and not all are unintentional. Auxlangs Speedwords and Glosa have both been criticized as relexes of English. The loglang started as a deliberate relex of , since which their grammars and vocabularies have gradually diverged as both languages underwent further development (see here).
Some relexes may be used for specific purposes, for example, the Israeli miltary uses a relex of Hebrew called "NADBAR".
The conlanging term relex is a shortening of the term relexification, borrowed and adapted from linguistics proper. The linguistic term has a narrower meaning: in linguistic, a pre-existing language keeps its grammar but replaces its vocabulary from another pre-existing language. The language from which the vocabulary is taken is called the lexifier.
A priori and a posteriori
Particular features of a conlang can be a posteriori — meaning borrowed from natural languages, rather than invented — or a priori, meaning invented rather than borrowed from natural languages. These terms are most often used to describe the forms of words, as with thewords toki, from the English word talk, and pona, from Latin bona (good). An entire conlang may also be described as a priori/posteriori if most of its grammar and vocabulary are of that type. A conlang described as a posteriori usually borrows from several, or even many, different natlangs; relexes are not normally called a posteriori.
Classification-based vocabulary is an a priori strategy that has been used in a number of engelangs (e.g.,) and some auxlangs (e.g., ). Most auxlangs make extensive use of a posteriori vocabulary.
A diachronic conlang is equipped with an internal, i.e., fictional, linguistic history. Since the internal history is fictional, all diachronic conlangs are artlangs; but most subtypes of artlangs include both diachronic and non-diachronic (synchronic) languages.
Tolkien's Elvish languages are the most famous example of diachronic conlanging, with an entire family of languages descended from a common ancestor,. Many artlangs, though by no means all, have at least some suggestions of internal history about them, even if no parent language has been fully worked out.
Altlangs are diachronic, by definition.
Kitchen sink languages
A kitchen sink conlang is one that has way too many exotic features, all at once for no apparent reason — "everything including the kitchen sink" in an uncoordinated mishmash. Unlike relex, kitchen sink has no neutral technical sense; it's always a strong term of opprobrium.
Kitchen sink languages are at the opposite end of a spectrum from relexes: where too little tinkering can produce a relex (that lacks interest), too much tinkering can produce a kitchen sink language (that lacks plausibility). It has been suggested that a conlanger's second conlang — after they've made a relex for their first — is often a kitchen sink language; but even experienced conlangers, tempted by the lure of exotic features, can sometimes fall into the trap of kitchen-sink-ism.
Caution should also be exercised, though, in applying the term kitchen sink to a conlang — not only because it's such a strong term, but because just having many unusual features doesn't necessarily make it a kitchen sink language (which is why the term is so strong). For proper use of the term, the many unusual features should be unjustified; in principle, at least, it's possible for many unusual features to occur in a smoothly coherent design, so that they all feel quite natural in context. The catch is that — as David Peterson remarked when awarding the 2007 Smiley Award to , a highly respected conlang with several unusual features — there is a double standard at work between natlangs and conlangs: any bizarre features of a natlang are natural by definition, but the same features in a conlang would have to persuade on their own merits. His case in point is , a natlang with no way of expressing time; no way of counting; a culture with no storytelling, oral history, or art; it can be spoken, whistled, hummed, or drummed; and it has different phonologies for men and women. If it were a conlang instead of a natlang, its creator would have a hard time passing it off as naturalistic.


African American literature
2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Literature types
African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. The genre traces its origins to the works of such late 18th century writers as Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano, reaching early high points with slave narratives and the Harlem Renaissance, and continuing today with authors such as Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Walter Mosley being ranked among the top writers in the United States. Among the themes and issues explored in African American literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, African-American culture, racism, slavery, and equality. African American writing has also tended to incorporate within itself oral forms such as spirituals, sermons, gospel music, blues and rap.
As African Americans' place in American society has changed over the centuries, so, too, have the foci of African American literature. Before the American Civil War, African American literature primarily focused on the issue of slavery, as indicated by the subgenre of slave narratives. At the turn of the 20th century, books by authors such as W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington debated whether to confront or appease racist attitudes in the United States. During the American Civil Rights movement, authors such as Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about issues of racial segregation and black nationalism. Today, African American literature has become accepted as an integral part of American literature, with books such as Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley, The Colour Purple by Alice Walker, and Beloved by Toni Morrison achieving both best-selling and award-winning status.
Characteristics and themes
In broad terms, African American literature can be defined as writings by people of African descent living in the United States of America. However, just as African American history and life is extremely varied, so too is African American literature. That said, African American literature has generally focused on themes of particular interest to Black people in the United States, such as the role of African Americans within the larger American society and what it means to be an American. As Princeton University professor Albert J. Raboteau has said, all African-American studies, including African American literature, "speaks to the deeper meaning of the African-American presence in this nation. This presence has always been a test case of the nation's claims to freedom, democracy, equality, the inclusiveness of all." As such, it can be said that African American Literature explores the very issues of freedom and equality which were long denied to Black people in the United States, along with further themes such as African American culture, racism, religion, slavery, a sense of home. and more.
African American literature constitutes a vital branch of the literature of the African diaspora, with African American literature both being influenced by the great African diasporic heritage and in turn influencing African diasporic writings in many countries. In addition, African American literature exists within the larger realm of post-colonial literature, even though scholars draw a distinctive line between the two by stating that "African American literature differs from most post-colonial literature in that it is written by members of a minority community who reside within a nation of vast wealth and economic power."
African American oral culture is rich in poetry, including spirituals, African American gospel music, blues and rap. This oral poetry also appears in the African American tradition of Christian sermons, which make use of deliberate repetition, cadence and alliteration. African American literature—especially written poetry, but also prose—has a strong tradition of incorporating all of these forms of oral poetry.
However, while these characteristics and themes exist on many levels of African American literature, they are not the exclusive definition of the genre and don't exist within all works within the genre. In addition, there is resistance to using Western literary theory to analyze African American literature. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of the most important African American literary scholars, once said, "My desire has been to allow the black tradition to speak for itself about its nature and various functions, rather than to read it, or analyze it, in terms of literary theories borrowed whole from other traditions, appropriated from without."
Early African American literature
Just as African American history predates the emergence of the United States as an independent country, so too does African American literature have similarly deep roots.
Lucy Terry is the author of the oldest piece of African American literature known which was "Bars Fight", 1746. This poem was not published until 1855 in Josiah Holland's "History of Western Massachusetts". Also, Briton Hammon's "The Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprising Deliverence of Briton Hammon, A Negro Man", 1760. Poet Phillis Wheatley (1753–84), who published her book Poems on Various Subjects in 1773, three years before American independence. Born in Senegal, Africa, Wheatley was captured and sold into slavery at the age of seven. Brought to America, she was owned by a Boston merchant. Even though she initially spoke no English, by the time she was sixteen she had mastered the language. Her poetry was praised by many of the leading figures of the American Revolution, including George Washington, who personally thanked her for a poem she wrote in his honour. Despite this, many white people found it hard to believe that a Black woman could be so intelligent as to write poetry. As a result, Wheatley had to defend herself in court by proving she actually wrote her own poetry. Some critics cite Wheatley's successful defense as the first recognition of African American literature.
Another early African American author was Jupiter Hammon (1711–1806?). Hammon, considered the first published Black writer in America, published his poem "An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries" as a broadside in early 1761. In 1778 he wrote an ode to Phillis Wheatley, in which he discussed their shared humanity and common bonds. In 1786, Hammon gave his well-known Address to the Negroes of the State of New York. Hammon wrote the speech at age seventy-six after a lifetime of slavery and it contains his famous quote, "If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being black, or for being slaves." Hammon's speech also promoted the idea of a gradual emancipation as a way of ending slavery. It is thought that Hammon stated this plan because he knew that slavery was so entrenched in American society that an immediate emancipation of all slaves would be difficult to achieve. Hammon apparently remained a slave until his death. His speech was later reprinted by several groups opposed to slavery.
William Wells Brown (1814–84) and Victor Séjour (1817–74) produced the earliest works of fiction by African American writers. Séjour was born free in New Orleans and moved to France at the age of 19. There he published his short story " Le Mulâtre" ("The Mulatto") in 1837; the story represents the first known fiction by an African American, but written in French and published in a French journal, it had apparently no influence on later American literature. Séjour never returned to African American themes in his subsequent works. Brown, on the other hand, was a prominent abolitionist, lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery in the Southern United States, Brown escaped to the North, where he worked for abolitionist causes and was a prolific writer. Brown wrote what is considered to be the first novel by an African American, Clotel; or, The President's Daughter (1853). The novel is based on what was at that time considered to be a rumor about Thomas Jefferson fathering a daughter with his slave, Sally Hemings.
However, because the novel was published in England, the book is not considered the first African American novel published in the United States. This honour instead goes to Harriet Wilson, whose novel Our Nig (1859) details the difficult lives of Northern free Blacks.
A subgenre of African American literature which began in the middle of the 19th century is the slave narrative. At the time, the controversy over slavery led to impassioned literature on both sides of the issue, with books like Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) representing the abolitionist view of the evils of slavery, while the so-called Anti-Tom literature by white, southern writers like William Gilmore Simms represented the pro-slavery viewpoint.
To present the true reality of slavery, a number of former slaves such as Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass wrote slave narratives, which soon became a mainstay of African American literature. Some six thousand former slaves from North America and the Caribbean wrote accounts of their lives, with about 150 of these published as separate books or pamphlets.
Slave narratives can be broadly categorized into three distinct forms: tales of religious redemption, tales to inspire the abolitionist struggle, and tales of progress. The tales written to inspire the abolitionist struggle are the most famous because they tend to have a strong autobiographical motif. Many of them are now recognized as the most literary of all 19th-century writings by African Americans, with two of the best-known being Frederick Douglass's autobiography and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (1861).
While Frederick Douglass (c. 1818–95) first came to public attention as an orator and as the author of his autobiographical slave narrative, he eventually became the most prominent African American of his time and one of the most influential lecturers and authors in American history.
Born into slavery in Maryland, Douglass eventually escaped and worked for numerous abolitionist causes. He also edited a number of newspapers. Douglass' best-known work is his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which was published in 1845. At the time some critics attacked the book, not believing that a black man could have written such an eloquent work. Despite this, the book was an immediate bestseller.
Douglas later revised and expanded his autobiography, which was republished as My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). In addition to serving in a number of political posts during his life, he also wrote numerous influential articles and essays.
After the end of slavery and the American Civil War, a number of African American authors continued to write nonfiction works about the condition of African Americans in the country.
Among the most prominent of these writers is W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963), one of the original founders of the NAACP. At the turn of the century, Du Bois published a highly influential collection of essays titled The Souls of Black Folk. The book's essays on race were groundbreaking and drew from DuBois's personal experiences to describe how African Americans lived in American society. The book contains Du Bois's famous quote: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour-line." Du Bois believed that African Americans should, because of their common interests, work together to battle prejudice and inequity.
Another prominent author of this time period is Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), who in many ways represented opposite views from Du Bois. Washington was an educator and the founder of the Tuskegee Institute, a Black college in Alabama. Among his published works are Up From Slavery (1901), The Future of the American Negro (1899), Tuskegee and Its People (1905), and My Larger Education (1911). In contrast to Du Bois, who adopted a more confrontational attitude toward ending racial strife in America, Washington believed that Blacks should first lift themselves up and prove themselves the equal of whites before asking for an end to racism. While this viewpoint was popular among some Blacks (and many whites) at the time, Washington's political views would later fall out of fashion.
A third writer who gained attention during this period in the US, though not a US citizen, was the Jamaican Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), a newspaper publisher, journalist, and crusader for Pan Africanism through his organization the UNIA. He encouraged people of African ancestry to look favorably upon their ancestral homeland. He wrote a number of essays published as editorials in the UNIA house organ the Negro World newspaper. Some of his lecture material and other writings were compiled and published as nonfiction books by his second wife Amy Jacques Garvey as the Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey Or, Africa for the Africans (1924) and More Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (1977).
Paul Lawrence Dunbar, who often wrote in the rural, black dialect of the day, was the first African American poet to gain national prominence. His first book of poetry, Oak and Ivy, was published in 1893. Much of Dunbar's work, such as When Malindy Sings (1906), which includes photographs taken by the Hampton Institute Camera Club, and Joggin' Erlong (1906) provide revealing glimpses into the lives of rural African-Americans of the day. Though Dunbar died young, he was a prolific poet, essayist, novelist (among them The Uncalled, 1898 and The Fanatics, 1901) and short story writer.
Even though Du Bois, Washington, and Garvey were the leading African American intellectuals and authors of their time, other African American writers also rose to prominence. Among these is Charles W. Chesnutt, a well-known essayist.
The Harlem Renaissance from 1920 to 1940 brought new attention to African American literature. While the Harlem Renaissance, based in the African American community in Harlem in New York City, existed as a larger flowering of social thought and culture—with numerous Black artists, musicians, and others producing classic works in fields from jazz to theatre—the renaissance is perhaps best known for the literature that came out of it.
Among the most famous writers of the renaissance is poet Langston Hughes. Hughes first received attention in the 1922 poetry collection, The Book of American Negro Poetry. This book, edited by James Weldon Johnson, featured the work of the period's most talented poets (including, among others, Claude McKay, who also published three novels, Home to Harlem, Banjo and Banana Bottom and a collection of short stories). In 1926, Hughes published a collection of poetry, The Weary Blues, and in 1930 a novel, Not Without Laughter. Perhaps, Hughes' most famous poem is "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," which he wrote as a young teen. His single, most recognized character is Jesse B. Simple, a plainspoken, pragmatic Harlemite whose comedic observations appeared in Hughes's columns for the Chicago Defender and the New York Post. Simple Speaks His Mind (1950) is, perhaps, the best-known collection of Simple stories published in book form. Until his death in 1967, Hughes published nine volumes of poetry, eight books of short stories, two novels, and a number of plays, children's books, and translations.
Another famous writer of the renaissance is novelist Zora Neale Hurston, author of the classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). Altogether, Hurston wrote 14 books which ranged from anthropology to short stories to novel-length fiction. Because of Hurston's gender and the fact that her work was not seen as socially or politically relevant, her writings fell into obscurity for decades. Hurston's work was rediscovered in the 1970s in a famous essay by Alice Walker, who found in Hurston a role model for all female African American writers.
While Hurston and Hughes are the two most influential writers to come out of the Harlem Renaissance, a number of other writers also became well known during this period. They include Jean Toomer, who wrote Cane, a famous collection of stories, poems, and sketches about rural and urban Black life, and Dorothy West, author of the novel The Living is Easy, which examined the life of an upper-class Black family. Another popular renaissance writer is Countee Cullen, who described everyday black life in his poems (such as a trip he made to Baltimore, which was ruined by a racial insult). Cullen's books include the poetry collections Colour (1925), Copper Sun (1927), and The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927). Frank Marshall Davis's poetry collections Black Man's Verse (1935) and I am the American Negro (1937), published by Black Cat Press, earned him critical acclaim. Author Wallace Thurman also made an impact with his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life (1929), which focused on intraracial prejudice between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned African Americans.
The Harlem Renaissance marked a turning point for African American literature. Prior to this time, books by African Americans were primarily read by other Black people. With the renaissance, though, African American literature—as well as black fine art and performance art—began to be absorbed into mainstream American culture.
Civil Rights Movement era
A large migration of African Americans began during World War I, hitting its high point during World War II. During this Great Migration, Black people left the racism and lack of opportunities in the American South and settled in northern cities like Chicago, where they found work in factories and other sectors of the economy.
This migration produced a new sense of independence in the Black community and contributed to the vibrant Black urban culture seen during the Harlem Renaissance. The migration also empowered the growing American Civil Rights movement, which made a powerful impression on Black writers during the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Just as Black activists were pushing to end segregation and racism and create a new sense of Black nationalism, so too were Black authors attempting to address these issues with their writings.
One of the first writers to do so was James Baldwin, whose work addressed issues of race and sexuality. Baldwin, who is best known for his novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, wrote deeply personal stories and essays while examining what it was like to be both Black and homosexual at a time when neither of these identities was accepted by American culture. In all, Baldwin wrote nearly 20 books, including such classics as Another Country and The Fire Next Time.
Baldwin's idol and friend was author Richard Wright, whom Baldwin called "the greatest Black writer in the world for me". Wright is best known for his novel Native Son (1940), which tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a Black man struggling for acceptance in Chicago. Baldwin was so impressed by the novel that he titled a collection of his own essays Notes of a Native Son, in reference to Wright's novel. However, their friendship fell apart due to one of the book's essays, "Everybody's Protest Novel," which criticized Native Son for lacking credible characters and psychological complexity. Among Wright's other books are the autobiographical novel Black Boy (1945), The Outsider (1953), and White Man, Listen! (1957).
The other great novelist of this period is Ralph Ellison, best known for his novel Invisible Man (1952), which won the National Book Award in 1953. Even though Ellison did not complete another novel during his lifetime, Invisible Man was so influential that it secured his place in literary history. After Ellison's death in 1994, a second novel, Juneteenth (1999), was pieced together from the 2,000-plus pages he had written over 40 years. A fuller version of the manuscript will be published as Three Days Before the Shooting (2008). Jones, Edward " The Known World", 2003 Carter Stephen, "New England White" 2007 Wright W.D. "Crisis of the Black Intellectual",2007
The Civil Rights time period also saw the rise of female Black poets, most notably Gwendolyn Brooks, who became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize when it was awarded for her 1949 book of poetry, Annie Allen. Along with Brooks, other female poets who became well known during the 1950s and '60s are Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez.
During this time, a number of playwrights also came to national attention, notably Lorraine Hansberry, whose play A Raisin in the Sun focuses on a poor Black family living in Chicago. The play won the 1959 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. Another playwright who gained attention was Amiri Baraka, who wrote controversial off-Broadway plays. In more recent years, Baraka has become known for his poetry and music criticism.
It is also worth noting that a number of important essays and books about human rights were written by the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. One of the leading examples of these is Martin Luther King, Jr's " Letter from Birmingham Jail".
Beginning in the 1970s, African American literature reached the mainstream as books by Black writers continually achieved best-selling and award-winning status. This was also the time when the work of African American writers began to be accepted by academia as a legitimate genre of American literature.
As part of the larger Black Arts Movement, which was inspired by the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, African American literature began to be defined and analyzed. A number of scholars and writers are generally credited with helping to promote and define African American literature as a genre during this time period, including fiction writers Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and poet James Emanuel.
James Emanuel took a major step toward defining African American literature when he edited (with Theodore Gross) Dark Symphony: Negro Literature in America, the first collection of black writings released by a major publisher. This anthology, and Emanuel's work as an educator at the City College of New York (where he is credited with introducing the study of African-American poetry), heavily influenced the birth of the genre. Other influential African American anthologies of this time included Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing, edited by LeRoi Jones (now known as Amiri Baraka) and Larry Neal in 1968 and The Negro Caravan, co-edited by Sterling Brown, Arthur P. Davis and Ulysses Lee in 1969.
Toni Morrison, meanwhile, helped promote Black literature and authors when she worked as an editor for Random House in the 1960s and '70s, where she edited books by such authors as Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones. Morrison herself would later emerge as one of the most important African American writers of the 20th century. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. Among her most famous novels is Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. This story describes a slave who found freedom but killed her infant daughter to save her from a life of slavery. Another important novel is Song of Solomon, a tale about materialism and brotherhood. Morrison is the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In the 1970s novelist and poet Alice Walker wrote a famous essay that brought Zora Neale Hurston and her classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God back to the attention of the literary world. In 1982, Walker won both the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her novel The Colour Purple. An epistolary novel (a book written in the form of letters), The Colour Purple tells the story of Celie, a young woman who is sexually abused by her stepfather and then is forced to marry a man who physically abuses her. The novel was later made into a film by Steven Spielberg.
The 1970s also saw African American books topping the bestseller lists. Among the first books to do so was Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley. The book, a fictionalized account of Haley's family history—beginning with the kidnapping of Haley's ancestor Kunta Kinte in Gambia through his life as a slave in the United States—won the Pulitzer Prize and became a popular television miniseries. Haley also wrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X in 1965.
Other important writers in recent years include literary fiction writers Gayl Jones, Rasheed Clark, Ishmael Reed, Jamaica Kincaid, Randall Kenan, and John Edgar Wideman. African American poets have also garnered attention. Maya Angelou read a poem at Bill Clinton's inauguration, Rita Dove won a Pulitzer Prize and served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995, and Cyrus Cassells's Soul Make a Path through Shouting was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1994. Cassells is a recipient of the William Carlos Williams Award. Lesser-known poets like Thylias Moss, and Natasha Trethewey also have been praised for their innovative work. Notable black playwrights include Ntozake Shange, who wrote For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf; Ed Bullins; Suzan-Lori Parks; and the prolific August Wilson, who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his plays. Most recently, Edward P. Jones won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Known World, his novel about a black slaveholder in the antebellum South.
Young African American novelists include Edwidge Danticat, David Anthony Durham, Tayari Jones, Mat Johnson, ZZ Packer and Colson Whitehead, just to name a few. African American literature has also crossed over to genre fiction. A pioneer in this area is Chester Himes, who in the 1950s and '60s wrote a series of pulp fiction detective novels featuring "Coffin" Ed Johnson and "Gravedigger" Jones, two New York City police detectives. Himes paved the way for the later crime novels of Walter Mosley and Hugh Holton. African Americans are also represented in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror, with Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler, Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due, Robert Fleming, Brandon Massey, Charles R. Saunders, John Ridley, John M. Faucette, Sheree Thomas and Nalo Hopkinson being just a few of the well-known authors.
Finally, African American literature has gained added attention through the work of talk show host Oprah Winfrey, who repeatedly has leveraged her fame to promote literature through the medium of her Oprah's Book Club. At times, she has brought African American writers a far broader audience than they otherwise might have received.
While African American literature is well accepted in the United States, there are numerous views on its significance, traditions, and theories. To the genre's supporters, African American literature arose out of the experience of Blacks in the United States, especially with regards to historic racism and discrimination, and is an attempt to refute the dominant culture's literature and power. In addition, supporters see the literature existing both within and outside American literature and as helping to revitalize the country's writing. To critics, African American literature is part of a Balkanization of American literature. In addition, there are some within the African American community who do not like how their own literature sometimes showcases Black people.
Refuting the dominant literary culture
Throughout American history, African Americans have been discriminated against and subject to racist attitudes. This experience inspired some Black writers, at least during the early years of African American literature, to prove they were the equals of European American authors. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr, has said, "it is fair to describe the subtext of the history of black letters as this urge to refute the claim that because blacks had no written traditions they were bearers of an inferior culture."
However, by refuting the claims of the dominant culture, African American writers weren't simply "proving their worth"—they were also attempting to subvert the literary and power traditions of the United States. Scholars expressing this view assert that writing has traditionally been seen as "something defined by the dominant culture as a white male activity." This means that, in American society, literary acceptance has traditionally been intimately tied in with the very power dynamics which perpetrated such evils as racial discrimination. By borrowing from and incorporating the non-written oral traditions and folk life of the African diaspora, African American literature thereby broke "the mystique of connection between literary authority and patriarchal power." This view of African American literature as a tool in the struggle for Black political and cultural liberation has been stated for decades, perhaps most famously by W.E.B DuBois.
Existing both inside and outside American literature
According to James Madison University English professor Joanne Gabbin, African American literature exists both inside and outside American literature. "Somehow African American literature has been relegated to a different level, outside American literature, yet it is an integral part," she says.
This view of African American literature is grounded in the experience of Black people in the United States. Even though African Americans have long claimed an American identity, during most of United States history they were not accepted as full citizens and were actively discriminated against. As a result, they were part of America while also outside it.
The same can be said for African American literature. While it exists fully within the framework of a larger American literature, it also exists as its own entity. As a result, new styles of storytelling and unique voices are created in isolation. The benefit of this is that these new styles and voices can leave their isolation and help revitalize the larger literary world (McKay, 2004). This artistic pattern has held true with many aspects of African American culture over the last century, with jazz and hip hop being just two artistic examples that developed in isolation within the Black community before reaching a larger audience and eventually revitalizing American culture.
Whether African American literature will keep to this pattern in the coming years remains to be seen. Since the genre is already popular with mainstream audiences, it is possible that its ability to develop new styles and voices—or to remain "authentic," in the words of some critics—may be a thing of the past.
Balkanization of American literature?
Despite these views, some conservative academics and intellectuals argue that African American literature only exists as part of a balkanization of literature over the last few decades or as an extension of the culture wars into the field of literature. According to these critics, literature is splitting into distinct and separate groupings because of the rise of identity politics in the United States and other parts of the world. These critics reject bringing identity politics into literature because this would mean that "only women could write about women for women, and only Blacks about Blacks for Blacks."
People opposed to this group-based approach to writing say that it limits the ability of literature to explore the overall human condition and, more importantly, judges ethnic writers merely on the basis of their race. These critics reject this judgment and say it defies the meaning of works like Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, in which Ellison's main character is invisible because people see him as nothing more than a Black man. Others criticize special treatment of any ethnic-based genre of literature. For example, Robert Hayden, the first African-American Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, once said (paraphrasing the comment by the black composer Duke Ellington about jazz and music), "There is no such thing as Black literature. There's good literature and bad. And that's all."
Proponents counter that the exploration of group and ethnic dynamics through writing actually deepens human understanding and that, previously, entire groups of people were ignored or neglected by American literature. (Jay, 1997)
The general consensus view appears to be that American literature is not breaking apart because of new genres like African American literature. Instead, American literature is simply reflecting the increasing diversity of the United States and showing more signs of diversity than ever before in its history (Andrews, 1997; McKay, 2004). This view is supported by the fact that many African American authors—and writers representing other minority groups—consistently reach the tops of the best-seller lists. If their literature only appealed to their individual ethnic groups, this would not be possible.
African American criticism
Some of the criticism of African American literature over the years has come from within the African American community; some argue that Black literature sometimes does not portray Black people in a positive light.
This clash of aesthetics and racial politics has its beginnings in comments made by W.E.B DuBois in the NAACP publication The Crisis. For example, in 1921 he wrote, "We want everything that is said about us to tell of the best and highest and noblest in us. We insist that our Art and Propaganda be one." He added to this in 1926 by saying, "All Art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists." DuBois and the editors of The Crisis consistently stated that literature was a tool in the struggle for African American political liberation.
DuBois's belief in the propaganda value of art showed most clearly when he clashed in 1928 with African American author Claude McKay over McKay's best-selling novel Home to Harlem. To DuBois, the novel's frank depictions of sexuality and the nightlife in Harlem only appealed to the "prurient demand[s]" of white readers and publishers looking for portrayals of Black "licentiousness." DuBois also said, "Home to Harlem ... for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath." This criticism was repeated by others in the Black community when author Wallace Thurman published his novel The Blacker the Berry in 1929. This novel, which focused on intraracial prejudice between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned Blacks, infuriated many African Americans, who did not like such a public airing of their culture's "dirty laundry."
Naturally, many African American writers did not agree with the viewpoint that all Black literature should be propaganda, and instead stated that literature should present the truth about life and people. Langston Hughes articulated this view in his essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926), when he said that Black artists intended to express themselves freely no matter what the Black public or white public thought.
A more recent occurrence of this Black-on-Black criticism arose in charges by some critics that Alice Walker's novel The Colour Purple unfairly attacked Black men. In addition, African American author Charles R. Johnson, in the updated 1995 introduction to his novel Oxherding Tale, criticized Walker's novel for its negative portrayal of African-American males, adding "I leave it to readers to decide which book pushes harder at the boundaries of convention, and inhabits most confidently the space where fiction and philosophy meet." Walker later refuted these charges in her book The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult.


To learn the skill of narrating a story in fiction, authors, teachers, and students must know what words mean and not confuse terms or use them interchangeably. Note, in particular, the difference in meanings of narrative the noun and narrative the adjective, narrator and character, and literary fiction and memoir.
- Narrate v: to give an account of something in detail.
- Narrator n: somebody who tells a story or gives an account of something.
- Character n: one of the people portrayed in a story.
- Narration n: the act of telling a story or giving an account of something.
- Narrative (1) n: an account of a sequence of events in the order in which they happened.
- Narrative (2) n: a discussion or speech about the policies, opinions, or proposals of a political party. The senator’s narrative . . .
- Narrative adj: having aim or purpose of telling a story, or involving the art of story telling.
- Author n: the creator or originator of something.
- Fiction — stories that describe imaginary people and events.
- Literary fiction — serious, character-based fiction, as opposed to genre or popular fiction, that is plot based.
- Story — an account of a series of events.
- Memoir — an account of events written from personal knowledge.
- Autobiography — an account of someone’s life written by that person.
- Biography — an account of someone’s life written by another person.
- Creative nonfiction — literary or narrative journalism, using literary skills in writing nonfiction.
In scene vs. narrative telling
Authors must clarify their own thinking about how to provide story information: 1) story advanced by telling a sequence of events, 2) in-scene reader involvement by showing character action, 3) descriptive narrative, 4) dialogue, 5) images and setting. Show-don’t-tell has been the imperative in literary fiction for centuries, but increasingly fewer authors respond. The result is fewer good stories created as an art form.
Point of view
Character “points of view” are often used by a narrator to tell a story. First person and third person are most commonly used. (Second person is trendy but rarely provides lasting reader satisfaction necessary for great storytelling.) The narrator has a point of view that may be used for improving time management of story progression or for information that is not within the reasonable range of the character’s senses, memory (life experiences), education, or intelligence. Point of view has many definitions. Most commonly writers think of point of view as 1) a position in space, time, or development from which something is considered. But point of view can also be 2) a manner of evaluating something, or 3) a reasoned opinion about something. In essence, a character point of view is not simply a position for considering physical action in a story, it is a character-revealing way for the narrator to present story information to the reader. And there are complexities of point of view that, if not appreciated–or if mismanaged, will cause the reader to question unnecessarily the character’s reliability—and credibility.
It is not helpful to think of a point of view in storytelling as a camera, as is often taught. The concept of writing a fiction or real scene from a specific angle in the scene and a specific distance from the action allows staging and reader orientation visually through imagery and human sensation. But evaluating story action and opinions are also involved, things a camera does not do. This broad, all-definitions approach to point of view is especially useful when considering use of narrator and character points of view together.
Example: point of view.
I despised Amy. She was beautiful, I’ll give her that, but she thought the world revolved around her–-that God made other people to admire her. Never once did she think of me, or anyone, as a human with feelings.
The structure of this paragraph in 1st person point of view is common, acceptable, and useful. But 1st person point of view is tricky. Consider that we, as readers, don’t know the story-truths. Did the point of view character really despise Amy, or was he (or she) madly in love but unwilling to reveal feelings? And then, he (or she) makes a judgmental statement that she is “beautiful.” Is that true? And by whose standards? Then he (or she) states Amy’s thoughts about God, motivations, and refusal to think of others. Is it true that Amy thought this?
When we, as readers, don’t know what is true about the speculation of first person, we don’t have reliable information to build character, to become attached, or form opinions. First person is a point of view that removes a reader from knowing facts and the result is a lack of reliable information the build’s character and promotes understanding of motivation and first person point of view a reader to suspend disbelief in the character’s capabilities. In essence, telling what Amy thought and wanted is not within reasonable boundaries of the 1st person point of view. Of course, it is acceptable as speculation but fact is stated as truth [what she thought]). Yet, it is necessary information that is best thought of as “narrator-information” since a narrator usually knows all about the story world and has the reader-acceptable gift of knowing what all characters think and feel.
I was so in love with Amy I had come to despise her. She was sitting at her dressing table in front of a mirror, admiring her vibrant youthful skin, her full head of coal-black hair, and dark brown eyes. I moved to her side to look at her. She shifted her gaze to avoid me .
“Did you ever love me?” I asked. “You let me think that you cared.”
She turned her back to me.
“You witch. No one could ever love you,” I said, angry now that even when I was with her, she thought of no one but herself.
“Just go. Jason is coming,” she said, without emotion, in a soft, restrained whisper that hurt me to the core.
This passage, a little over written for emphasis, reveals probably story-world truths about both characters: the man is in love and dealing with his rejection, the beauty and the vanity of the woman, and her callous lack of empathy. By moving in scene and creating dialogue conflict and emotional depth, we bring probably story truth to the reader and it strengthens characterization and story impact.
Here’s another alternative to avoid the awkwardness of first person narration and unreliability of truth that deadens characterization and story, third-person narration in scene. 1) in scene. 2) in descriptive narrative.
Amy refused to look at Bobby, whose abrupt entry into her bedroom frightened her. She laid her hairbrush down and with both hands gathered her shoulder-length black hair behind her head and fastening it with a silver clip. Her face had lines of apprehension, and she had a brief anxiety that they might forever remain and spoil the beauty she held in pride. She could see him in the mirror as he shut the door behind him. He moved toward her.
“I’ve had it,” he said.
“Please,” she said avoiding his angry stare at her in the mirror.
“I’ll kill him,” he said.
He had no right to threaten. She’d never led him on. He was a nobody.
Now the information–pride in beauty, no empathy, religiosity delivered in narrative.
Amy sat at her dresser in her bedroom. She saw Bobby enter uninvited through door and approach her from behind. She refused to turn around. She would ignore him. He threatened to kill her finance. Her heart raced. She looked in the mirror to control any hint of fear. That would only inflame him. He told her to listen up; he was serious. She prayed silently for her safety but he refused to leave.
Again, information imparted; there is no question of the characterization, even though the in-scene presentation is probably more effective than the straight narrative.
Information provided through a character—first or third person–-that is not reasonable makes that character unreliable, either intentionally or unintentionally. A character does not know the truth of Amy’s thoughts, and also shows arrogance in telling the reader these impossibilities. But won’t that build character? Yes, but character aspects should be what the author always wants to imply. In essence, it is perfectly reasonable, and often necessary, to use a first person character as the more story-wise narrator but it must not be accidental, it must not be obvious, and it must be consistent for the story being written.
In general, it is useful to resist thinking that unraveling complexities of point of view is unnecessary–the if-it works-and-I wrote-it, it-must-be-good approach to creating fictional stories. Authors must be aware of the subtle and complex layers of point of view so that they can use point of view effectively. It is inescapable. Well-reasoned opinions about point of view are essential for all authors who want to be in control of the storytelling process as an art form and what they provide for a reader.
Voice and point of view, although related, must not be equated. Voice is everything a character does and says that helps identify the character. Point of view is the microscopic (close) or telescopic (distant) way a character delivers story information. And while characters deliver story information in their own voice, a narrator is telling the story—even in first person. Multiple voices are often used but should remain consistent and identifiable.
Principles of narration.
Great stories are told by a narrator, not a character. A narrator uses a point of view to deliver the story. (When done seamlessly, the reader becomes engrossed and does not register how the narrator is delivering story information, either directly or through a character. It is most effective if a narrator is present both in first person or third person points of view, although the narrator may be more submerged in 1st person point of view.) One often used technique in first person to deliver”narrator” information is to use a “double ‘I.'” That is, the story being told with the “I” in the story and also the story being told by the “I” from a different point on the story time line, the older “I.” The older “I” charcter delivers story information from a narrator’s perception that can’t be known by the younger “I.”
The takeaway principle is: a narrator is created by an author but should be thought of as a distinct intellect who is telling the story.
Thinking of oral story tradition when writing
In academic discussions and workshops, terms are frequently used without common understanding as to their meaning. It is a practice that has resulted in entire careers riddled with confusions about the basics of storytelling—and the unique problems in the written story. It is often helpful, in discussions of point of view and narrators, to think to an oral storytelling tradition. The storyteller is always telling the story. And the teller, who is often not the author of the story, is in control of narrative passages, action, dialog, and internal reflection.
At times, the storyteller relies on suspension of disbelief—that the storyteller could know the information presented—to increase tension and infuse drama. And listeners can have transcendence as if they were within the character’s living self.
Imagine Ornesto, a storyteller, telling Henry James’s story, “Turn of the Screw,” in 2007 to a high school literature class. James published “Turn of the Screw,” in 1898. Ornesto, to be effective in his dramatization will make the presentation as familiar to his contemporary (2007) audience as possible. Ornesto, telling a story already open to decades of interpretations, will tell it in his way, in 2007. He might dip into Flora or Mile’s minds choosing most relevant facts for his purpose, or characterize Mrs. Grose with room left for the 2007 listeners to fill in their own details. Ornesto may make Peter Quint as evil as he can, choosing his words (mostly if not all from James) for best effect.
Ornesto is the narrator—knowing all about the story world and choosing story facts from a limited story-world perspective. (James is considered the creator of the story world with knowledge outside the story world.) Note that as narrator, Ornesto will make the best choices about story information for his audience. It is this separation advantage of author from narrator from character(s) that fiction writers often ignore. Now Ornesto, to keep his story moving, will narrate, and may well use different points of view, other than what author Henry James would, to be effective. Here is a useful rule: although the fiction author writes the story, the author should not tell the story. The narrator tells the story (that is created by the author) and moves within the limits of the story world. And, at times, the narrator uses the narrator’s voice for certain story information, and uses character point of view—or points of view—to deliver other story content. This prevents stray authorial ideas into the story. There are two difficult concepts to digest: 1) by clear conceptualization of author-narrator-character delivered information, authors add ease to reader understanding, and 2) when contemporary writers choose a single character’s point of view exclusively, as if it were a selective filter, they often limit the potential of the story.
Narrators contribute to the story presentation and direct decisions about character contribution. A narrator’s contribution is an intrusion to be excised from the story if it creates a diversion to excuse the author’s inability to write effective prose. But good judgment is necessary. If narrator information does not fit into the continuous fictional dream of the story provided for the reader at that moment, it is an intrusion and should not be included. Authors must use narrative techniques while remaining true to quality and “veracity” of storytelling that minimizes the need for suspension of disbelief.
Any thought, opinion, emotion of the author in a story should be removed as detrimental to creating a story as an art form. Most common are political ideas or needs to comment on real-world social change. (The story may deal with these issues, but through action-enlightenment, not narrative emotional descriptions.) Author intrusion often borders on essay and propaganda and is not compatible with great fiction stories. (This does not mean that themes and meaning important to the author are not a integral part of great stories. They are, but they are expressed through careful story structure and skillful, craft-savvy presentation.) It is also important that the authorial morality be understood and be consistent. All good literary stories are constructed on a moral framework that is easily perceived by the reader. Moral fiction is the cardiovascular system of a literary fictional story, and is provided by the author as a matrix in which the characters and narrator act. Of course the morals of characters and narrator differ–this provides conflict, suspense, and change in character in the story. Yet presence of authorial morality provides the mirror surface off which different moralities will reflect.
1st person point of view is the same as the narrator
When the narrator collapses into the first person character, although it seems logical and acceptable, it sets up often-unaddressed questions–but perceived questions–in the reader’s mind as to who is telling the story, credibility of the narrator, and whether the suspension of disbelief should be continued. Many contemporary stories don’t differentiate information sources and if the information delivered is credible from the source.
For example, in first-person in-scene construction of a story passage, to be accurate, the first person can only tell and comment on what is happening in the story within the range of five senses at the the moment in story time. Along the same line, if the first person comments on the past, it has to be within the intellectual capabilities, memory for story events–and when speculating–within the characters capabilities and established sensitivities. But narrators are different. Every narrator tells about something that has happened, that is from a period where time has progressed, knowledge has increased, history expanded, understanding explored. For a reader to accept information outside the logical thoughts and perceptions of the first person character, the reader must believe the first person character is older and looking back on the story–that is wiser and acting as a narrator–or accept a narrator’s contribution to the a story as created by the author to help the reader understand the story. This takes considerable author skill; most authors, with little concern for logic, don’t consider attention to a sliding scale of reliability for story-credible information delivery. Probably few readers care about details, but many readers stop reading when they think the writing is bad, and bad fiction can come from the lack of clarity in storytelling that confusion over first-person/narrator relationships can cause.
Close (or tight) vs. distant character points of view
The sense of the reader of how close the character is to the story action is created by syntax, word choice, imagery, and ideation. This is true in all choices for story including presentation, dialog, narration, description, internal reflection, even exposition. As a character seems more distant from the action, they function more and more as a narrator. The author who recognizes character and narrator information in close and distant terms is able to present more consistent voicings, more in-depth character reliability, more easily grasped imagery–and will be in better control of the writing process. In essence, use of narrator information (that is information not filtered through a character point of view) provides flexibility to provide essential story information that is outside the character senses and knowledge and/or intellectual capabilities. This is useful technique in all but the rare story.
Narrator point of view
The narrator point of view is not a silo in a field of character-point-of-view silos. Narrators tell stories and it is not useful to consider a narrator point of view as similar too—or equivalent—to a character’s point of view. Narrators float above the story in a hot-air balloon with useful overviews that characters cannot achieve from their restricted silos.
Omniscient narrator. (Omniscient: knowing everything.)
Narrators know only about their story worlds. They know more than is told in the story by a character but they do not know all that the author knows and they should not tell what the author knows and believes outside the story world. It is an important distinction for an author who wants to tell stories clearly, logically, and effectively.
This implies the author knows all truths. Impossible. Authors know only what they perceive of their world and think in their insular minds, and it is never omniscient. Omniscience is reserved for deities. To apply “omniscient” knowledge to a story becomes distracting and ineffective for story and the restrictions of being human and being unique direct and intensify the storytelling in ways that being universal and “omniscient” as an author will not achieve. The term “omnicient point of view” applied to the use of multiple points of view of characters and narrator is not useful. Use of multiple points of view provides different information about stories that should not be considered collectively as “ominsicent.” Thinking of, and use of, the term “omniscient” for multiple perceptions in telling of a fiction story can produce confusion in understanding and accptance in the storytelling . . . and restrict the quality of of story.
So, multiple 3rd person points of view is not an “omniscient point of view.” Points of view in a story are not spices in a stew that give a blended effect. Points of view are pears, figs, cashews, marshmallows, all in a bowl that are consumed separately (even if simultaneously) with sometimes memorable and always distinct individual effects that contribute to the whole experience of eating. “Omniscient point of view” is not a term equal to multiple points of view, but is often implied as equal in discussions of the craft of writing.
Story world is restricted, selective, purposeful, intense, directed and never random. It is where the characters act and it is what the narrator delivers to the reader. In good fiction, its boundaries are sacrosanct and should not be violated.
In general, narrators tell stories and may or may not change. Usually characters change from revelations or change in the way they think about something brought about by story action. To avoid confusion about who the story is about, narrators tell a story and usually do not always change significantly. But there are many exceptions. Many stories have very effective narrators blessed with revelations and reversal in thinking that may be or may not be similar to a character. Note too that when the author is considered to be equal to the narrator, a narrator enlightenment is awkward if not often impossible. Strong ironic meaning is also often lost when there is loss of character and narrator distinction. As a useful rule, how characters–and sometimes narrator–change in a story needs to be under the author’s control and thoroughly considered before and during writing . . . and in revision.
Time line and point of view
A character’s point of view changes with the advancement of the story time (as does every human in real time). Here is a review of the three elements of point of view, all of which are a part of our understanding what point of view can be: (1) position in space or time, (2) a mental attitude or opinion, (3) a manner of evaluating.
Thank you for reading,
William H. Coles