Nick Lacey: Narrative and Genre

"Although narrative progress is necessarily diachronic, this does not mean that we cannot construct narrative from a synchronic text"-(P.102)

Diachronic- Concerned with the way something (especially language) has developed and evolved over time.

Synchronic- Concerned with something (especially language) that exists at one point in time.

"All narrative texts have a narrator: 'someone'' must be 'speaking' in order for the audience to 'hear'."-(P.107)

"Fantastic narratives… assert that what they are telling is real -  relying upon all the conventions of realistic fiction to do so - and then they proceed to break the assumption of realism by introducing what - within those terms - is manifestly unreal." (P.112) 

This quote can be used to describe Pans Labyrinth because the film is set in both a 'fantastic narrative' and a 'realistic narrative'. The two parallel narratives are set at the same time but the 'fantastic narrative' is used to describe how Ofelia's childhood is being ripped away from her due to her mothers choice to marry a Nationalist    

"These are agents who are integral to the narrative development and are most likely to fulfil Propp's hero or villain function."-(P.115)

"Narrative agents are not likely to fulfil the function of Propp's princess which would be too passive."-(P.115)

"Media texts, of course, are nothing if not constructed and the mise-en-scene of audio-visual texts, or the setting in the novel, is often used to indicate what the narrator is stating about a character's situation. For instance, in Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece of horror Psycho (1960), the colour of Marion Crane's underwear indicates the narrator's view of the morality of her actions: white for pre-marital sex but black when she is preparing to flee with stolen money."-(P.117)

"Stereotypes are often deployed and while they are not 'psychologically rounded characters', they are 'psychologically recognisable'. Texts that are intended to be alternative must in some way break these 'rules'; they therefore tend to exist outside the mainstream."-(P.121)