Mediacy and Narrative Mediation

 

http://wikis.sub.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/index.php/Narrative_Levels

 

 

Definition

 

[2]

 

Narrative levels (also referred to as diegetic levels) is an analytic notion whose purpose is to describe the relations among the plurality of narrating instances within a narrative, and more specifically the vertical relations between narrating instances. Thus, three narrative levels can be identified in a story where a narrator reports the telling of a story by a narrator-character within his own story: the level within the global text at which the telling of the narrator-character’s story occurs; the level at which the primary narrator’s discourse occurs; the level of the narrative act situated outside the spatiotemporal coordinates of the primary narrator’s discourse. In a broader sense, however, narrative levels also include horizontal relations between narrating instances situated at the same diegetic level, as when a story is told by several narrators. The notion of narrative levels serves to describe the spatiotemporal relations between the various narrating acts occurring in a narrative, and can thus be thought of more accurately as “narration levels” or “narrating levels.”