Diegesis

Diegesis (French diegesis, according to Greek διήγησις dihegesis, narration, discussion, design ') is an analytic concept of narrative theory. He draws attention to the issue of whether something is inside or outside of the narrated world.

The term is a variation of the ancient Greek diegesis, which denotes a narrative speech, as opposed to mimesis. However, the diegesis must be clearly distinguished from the diegesis. According to Genette is " the diegesis (...) more of a whole universe as a nexus of actions. It is therefore not the story, but the universe, in which she plays ". For Souriau it includes " everything happens according to the (...) presented fiction and what it implies if you ansähe as true. "

In art history, the term diegesis is used in the context of reception aesthetics. Diegesis provides information on the question in which way the things and people in the pictures within the communication to each other enter into a relationship ( the viewer - or seemingly exclusive ). It provides information about the arrangement of the actors on the scene and / or in perspectival space, the position they occupy to each other and to the viewer (→ deictic means of the work).

Conceptual history

1950 created Anne Souriau in the framework of a working group on the aesthetics at the Institute of Filmologie at the Université de Paris a term that her father Etienne at the beginning of the semester 1950/51 then the first time as part of a lecture on the structure of the cinematic universe and the vocabulary of Filmologie the academic public presented. He draws on Plato's distinction between mimesis and diegesis in whose work Politeia, but differs from it significantly. Diegesis designated by Souriau the spatio-temporal universe that a narrative text, a drama or a movie opened ( l' univers d'une œuvre, le monde et qu'elle Evoque dont elle une partie représente - "The universe of a work and the world, it is generated and to which it itself belongs ").

Anne Souriau goes further and says: " The word diegesis concerns all the arts, in which one represents something ( cinema, theater, representational ballet, literature, painting and sculpture representative, program music, etc.) "

Especially in the analysis of film music, the distinction diegetic - nichtdiegetisch ( diegetic or extra-diegetic - ) since then is often used ( Sounds like the music in the action or is it outside? ). For example, a background music is nichtdiegetisch, a character played by visible instruments ( or visible speakers sounding ) music diegetic.

However, these distinctions are all elements of a narrative central: that single out a narrator or a camera, a detail from a context that has nothing to do with the narrated world, but with the world of the narrator, who is interested in something in particular and this is the listeners, readers, viewers transferred. The detail is part of the narrated world, its emphasis not. Each story contains diegetic and nichtdiegetische ingredients.

In the intermedia research, the distinction is diegetic - nichtdiegetisch often with the distinction " technical process " - " human ingredient" equated, for example, in a " nichtdiegetischen " live commentary on a " diegetic " recording. It is often not that technical procedures are conventions of observers who do not yet contain information about a Observed.

The narrative theorist Gérard Genette has taken up and developed the concept of diegesis.

Terminology according to Genette

Diegetic or intradiegetic is to be called by Gérard Genette everything that belongs to the narrated world. A text can be more than a diegetic level have usually but one calls with diegesis the elements of the main story, where such can be determined.

" Narrative levels " can build on each other, so that a hierarchy is created. In order to separate different levels from each other, Genette introduces relational terms:

• The diegesis upstream narrative level, so for example the framework actions, he called extra-diegetic.
• The actual diegesis, or narrative, the level at which the action figures, called Genette to better distinguish intradiegetic.
• If in turn, are incorporated into the Intradiegese narratives, it is called internal narratives; Genette calls this level metadiegetisch.

And the various " narrator positions " makes Genette in its relation to diegesis fixed.

• Is the narrator simultaneously (side) Figure of the action, he calls the narrative position homodiegetisch.
• Is the narrator even protagonist of the story, the narrative stance is to call a special case of homodiegetischen position autodiegetisch.
• If the narrator in the action itself not before, its position can be described as heterodiegetisch.

The designations of the levels of narration and the narrator positions are independent. A figure can at various levels also take different narrative positions: A narrator who tells autodiegetisch on the extradiegetic level, ie reported a story in which he is the main person may, within this story told, the diegesis, in turn, report a story ( metadiegetisch ), in which he did not happen, so be a storyteller on heterodiegetischer intradiegetischer level.

Terminology by Souriau

According to Souriau the diegesis or the diegetic as a separate dimension of the cinematic universe stands next:

• The Afilmischen (the " regardless of the fact cinematographic " existing reality )
• The profile mixing ( the filmed " objective reality " )
• The filmographic ( " all aspects of the finished drawn film strip " )
• The Filmophanischen ( " everything that happened during the audio-visual projection of the film" )
• The Kreatoriellen ( "anything that relates to the production of the work " )
• And the Spektatoriellen ( " everything that happens subjectively in the mind of the spectator ").

Related theories

A similar theory for the differentiation of the framework, which he calls " frames", the American sociologist Erving Goffman has developed around 1960. However, it does not separate between fiction and reality experience and treats each Unscheduled as something that is not part of the diegesis. Accordingly, his theory is rather taken from sociology, although Goffman numerous examples from literature or film used. ( See also: Fourth wall )