From Plato to Lumière : narration and monstration in literature and cinema /

This is a long-awaited English translation of a major intervention into narratological theory originally published in French (Du litteraire au filmique, 1988; rev. ed., 1999). In it, Gaudreault (Univ. of Montreal) seeks to expand the study of narration from written to staged and filmed texts. Beginning with Plato's and Aristotle's differing discussions of mimesis and diegesis, Gaudreault builds on a distinction between "diegesis through mimesis" and "diegesis without mimesis" to review a series of oppositional terms narratologists (ranging from Algirdas Julius Greimas, Gerard Genette, and Percy Lubbock to Claude Bremond and Tzvetan Todorov) use to classify different narrative texts. Gaudreault reworks these concepts to create a binary model suitable for film based on the difference between monstration (presenting directly) and narration (re-presenting by means of some mediation). He argues that film is characterized by a so-called "double agent" in that it monstrates as it narrates: monstration pertains to the shooting of the film (what the camera records), whereas narration is the province of the editing of the film. The historical development of early cinema (Lumiere) exemplifies Gaudreault's thesis, but his notion that "film narrative originates with editing" tends to minimize the roles played by mise-en-scene and sound. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. J. Belton Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick