Definition and Examples of Narration

In writing or speech, narration is the process of recounting a sequence of events, real or imagined. Its also called  storytelling. Aristotles term for  narration was  prothesis. The person who recounts the events is called a narrator. Stories can have reliable or unreliable narrators. For example, if a story is being told by someone insane, lying, or deluded, such as in Edgar Allen Poes The Tell-Tale Heart, that narrator would be deemed unreliable. The account itself is called a narrative.  The perspective from which a speaker or writer recounts a narrative is called a point of view. Types of point of view include first person, which uses I and follows the thoughts of one person or just one at a time, and third person, which can be limited to one person or can show the thoughts of all the characters, called the omniscient third person. Narration is the base of the story, the text thats not dialogue or quoted material. Uses in Types of Prose Writing Its used in fiction and nonfiction alike. There are two forms:  simple narrative, which recites events  chronologically, as in a newspaper account; note William Harmon and Hugh Holman in A Handbook to Literature, and  narrative with  plot, which is less often chronological and more often arranged according to a principle determined by the nature of the plot and the type of story intended. It is conventionally said that  narration  deals with time,  description  with space. Cicero, however, finds three forms in De Inventione, as explained by Joseph Colavito in Narratio: The first type focuses on the case and...the reason for dispute (1.19.27). A second type contains a  digression...for the purpose of attacking somebody,...making a  comparison,...amusing the  audience,...or for  amplification (1.19.27). The last type of narrative serves a different end—amusement  and training—and it can concern either events or persons (1.19.27). (In Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age, ed. by Theresa Enos. Taylor Francis, 1996) Narration isnt just in literature, literary nonfiction, or academic studies, though. It also comes into play in writing in the workplace, as Barbara Fine Clouse wrote in Patterns for a Purpose: Police officers write crime reports, and insurance investigators write accident reports, both of which narrate sequences of events. Physical therapists and nurses write narrative accounts of their patients progress, and teachers narrate events for disciplinary reports. Supervisors write narrative accounts of employees actions for individual personnel files, and company officials use narration to report on the companys performance during the fiscal year for its stockholders. Even  jokes, fables, fairy tales, short stories, plays, novels, and other forms of literature are narrative if they tell a story, notes  Lynn Z. Bloom in The Essay Connection. Examples of Narration For examples of different styles of narration, check out the following: ​The Battle of the Ants  by Henry David Thoreau  (first person, nonfiction)The Holy Night by Selma Lagerlà ¶f  (first person and third person, fiction)Street Haunting  by Virginia Woolf  (first person plural and third person, omniscient narrator, nonfiction)