SENKA ANASTASOVA

Ss.Cyril and Methodius University, Macedonia

MODES OF REALITY DERIVATION

HOW IS THE NARRATIVE IDENTITY CREATED IN THE TEXT?
I want to come to the point when I have to make the connection of the narrating subject
from the text to reality. The shaping of the narrators identity in the text is creating itself through
the principles (modes) metaphor and story (plot).
1.

Metaphor is substitution, a kind of trope, replacement of the literal meaning with figurative
semantic understanding, which is accomplished on the level of the sentence. It is a transition from
the traditional understanding of metaphors-words reduced to the old rhetorical substitutive
paradigmatic replacement. Look at Ricoeurs metaphor-statements in the sentences which appear
as carriers of minimum of meaning and on whose level the impertinent predication and semantic
syntagmatic innovation is actualized. The new semantic pertinence of the metaphoric statement
escapes from the literal meaning and literal reading of statements and the poetic function of the
language no longer points to its self-exalted focus on itself. I am talking about a particularity in the
sphere of fiction which Ricoeur calls reference accomplished through metaphor. Although it is
secondary, with the help of this reference the metaphoric statement once again describes a reality
which is inaccessible for direct description. This means that the metaphor does not accomplish a
referential attitude towards reality but it rather creates a fiction towards which it assumes a
referential attitude.
It is clear that Ricoeur points to meaning as something which is never final and exclusive,
but it is possible in its own dialogical nature and polyphony. In such case, the investment of the
metaphor in the referential attitude towards reality is one of Ricoeurs most significant principles.
Thus positioned, the relation fiction reality points that the literary discourse is not stabile in
terms of empirical or fictive reference, but rather it is shaped through the modus of reference to
see how''. Figurer is the strategy of figuration and embodiment which is initiated by the ontological
modus to be like, because the location of the action of the metaphor is determined by the verb
copula I am, to be.

The semantic solution of the ontologically-epistemological status of the poetic discourse

(the metaphor) creates bonds with the term truth through the analysis of the capacitance status of
the divided/split referentiality which Ricoeur connects with the semantics of the term truth. It
derives from the logic that language is the only valid reality for immediate objectification of
literature through the creation of an immediate literary-lingual reality. Namely, the reference
shows inside the language as a postulate which cannot be proven immanently.
2.

A parallel modus of reference accomplished through metaphor is the dynamics of

emplotment in the deep narrative structures (the basis of the text). For Ricoeur the plot (figuration)
is an integrative and configurative element which has the role of an intermediary in the mimetic
function of the story through which the relationship of temporality and narrativity is being solved.
As Vladimir Biti notices for Ricoeur figuration is an a priori historical organization of the time,
which precedes the explanation of logic, because it encompasses time.

If writing with the help of metaphor prevails in the domain of sensory, aesthetic and
axiological values, then the mimetic function, as structural category, is the most expressed
dynamics present in the union between action and temporality. The plot is a reconfiguration,
textual cosmization of the time dimension. Ricoeur goes further than Aristotles exclusion of the
time aspect. He includes time a priori in the emplotment. Namely, the referential function of the plot
comes from the refigurative abilities of fiction in relation to temporality, and the modus of
congruity is cosmization harmony, dominance of incongruity in the configurative act which should
signify a poetic solution for the aporias of temporality.
The narrative identity is in direct relation with mimesis. Mimesis is a incision which opens
the space of fiction (Ricoeur). It is a complex process which is accomplished with a trilateral
spreading of events through triple mimesis.

Mimesis I or prefiguration precedes the composition of the plot. This mimesis signifies the
prefigurative time, the time of living, the time before the story was created or the precognition of
the world of the real praksis and recognition of the basic forms of human action in the
understanding of the inteligible, simbolic structures and the time element. Mimesis is also that
which Cassirer calls simbolic mediation of acion.

The core of mimesis, the presentation of action, the shaping of the text is mimesis II. It is the
kingdom of how to or configuration which is a paradigm for the emplotment as a textual
configuration of mimesis and presentation as mediation between the two other mimesis. This
mimesis is used to signify the time of narration, the configurative (shaping) time that is used to
create fiction . Mimesis II is present both in history and in narration; the plot is the intermediary
between the event and the narrated history. Ricoeur supposits the temporal analysis of the
narrating character, creating paradigmatic forms of relations between the agent (the one who acts)
and the event which enables the following of the story. A significant fact is that the plot transforms
events in history.

Mimesis III or refiguration is used to signify the refigurative time, the time of reading or
fusion, the crossing over, the flowing into, the intersection of the world of the text (the world
projected in the text) with the world of the reader or concretization of the text in the mind of the
reader during the process of reception, shaping and reshaping of the temporal structures in fiction.
Through mimesis III the story accomplishes its goal and the reference of the story is realized.
Reconfiguration as final phase of mimetic activity is accomplished through reception of literature,
or rather, perception of time which is shaped in the story, or reshaping of the narrative
configuration of the time which happens in the mind of the reader through the aesthetic-cognitive
effect. That is why refiguration is a hermeneutical process in which the narrative identity is
understood and interpreted in relation to real time, vis--vis the existence which precedes the
shaping of the story, and then in relation to the consciousness of the empiric reader.

In these analyses Ricoeur starts from Aristotles plot 1 (mythos) as a term which is
understood in a dynamic way. Furthermore, he develops this term as emplotment (la mise en
intrigue), as mimicking of action (mimesis praxeos) and as integrative compositional mechanism,
schematized principle which builds a unique, complete, one and whole story, and makes a turn, a
twist (metabole) of the linear line of events in the story. The emplotment as incision in the poetic
composition (Ricoeur) points to the essential artistic narrative configuration. That is the
integrative, organizational and configurative principle which is in the basis of the text. The plot in
this textual field has a transversally-uniting function; in that sense it also has an intermediary
function on a wider level, between precognition and after-cognition of the arrangement of the
action and the time mark. The plot is significant for opening the text outwards. That which is
remarkable in these analyses is that Ricoeur elevates the plot to a degree of recognisability, through
its property of metamorphosis. All the time making sure it does not lose its identity and function.
The dialectic sublimate of the triple mimesis leads to the conclusion that language is directed
outwards, and that means outside its own bonds and it effectuates the juxtaposed relation:
language in relation to the world as otherness, disparity.
Literary work is brought into the language experientially and temporally (the reader
receives not only the meaning of the work, but also its reference).

Narration is funded on cross reference and interactive conjuncture between the text and
the world (the text of historiography and the text of fiction). Cross reference is crossed in relation
to live temporal experience between fiction and history (Ricoeur). Therefore, the emplotment as
textual configuration and constructed time has an intermediary function between the real temporal
experience (which is prefigured in the practice of configuration of the plot) and reconfiguration of
the temporal experience by the reader in relation to the constructed time in fiction.

Ricoeur is the key figure in the analysis of the new identity position and the process of
identification that is accomplished on two levels, namely, through 1) narration and 2)
interpretation. To understand oneself is a matter of interpretation, and the interpretation of oneself
comes from narration. Therefore, the hermeneutics that Ricoeur suggests relies upon the reader
receiving not only the knowledge of the literary work, but also the interaction between the text and
the world on a level of reference and communication. The reader receives the reference and the
experiential load from the text embedded in the language, and assimilates both temporality and the
world concretized in the work. Going back to a narrower domain of narratology, the core of
narrativity in Ricoeurs work is the term named narrative intelligence. It is the intelligible
organization of the story, the strategic ability of building, following and understanding of the story,
a derivation of the experienced narrative communication guided by the rules of the syntagmatic
order of the story and the rules of composition, according to which the events in the past tense are
organized.
The hermeneutical resultant is the axis of the narrative identity.

According to the series of analyses of the key terms in P. Ricoeurs work in relation to which
the narrative identity is built, we come to the conclusion that it is primarily presented as a complex
spiritual content and that it favours the thesis that the character of the individual or the collective is
created through narration and interpretation, and that the identity is shaped, built and expressed
1 For Ricoeur, the term intrigue is the equivalent of the term mythos which Aristotle uses to signify the unity of events. In Ricoeurs work,
the plot is close to what Sklovskij and Tomasevskij call sujet (theme) as artistically built sequence of events in the text or the sum of
motives in the mutual relationship that the text provides for them, unlike the fabula, which is the sum of motives in their temporal
interconnectedness.

through a story. Ricoeur says that to understand oneself is a matter of interpretation, and the
interpretation of oneself comes from narration. Here lies the significance of the closing of the circle
through mimesis or the fusion of horizons (Gadamer), or the intersection of the world of the text
with the world of the reader and active, brave reference to reality outside of language (the nonlingual reality). In such case the language is successfully directed outside of itself and the literary
work bring their own experience into the language and enter the world like any other discourse.
Narrativity comes from the cross-reference of history and fiction.
Therefore, prefiguration accomplished completely through the circle of mimesis, is the
equivalent of Aristotles mimicking of action (mimesis praxeos) (Ricoeur 1991) which points to the
relation of the artistic work and what precedes as notion, as experience or realization in the world
of real practice. The configuration complies with Aristotles thesis that mimicking of the story is the
composition of events and we see that mimesis is mythos. To this mimesis II Ricoeur ads another
charming aspect of configurative dynamics, through the emplotment. In itself, reconfiguration
contains the reception of the text as application of the ontological status of opening the literary
fiction towards context.
This presumes determined change and metamorphosis of the real reader through fusion of
fiction with the existence of the reader (interpreter) himself.