Narrative Voice as Applied to Dhaba Woyessa’s Godaannisa and Gurraacha Abbayyaa: a Comparative Study

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Date

2010-06

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Addis Ababa University

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze how a narrative voice is manifested in two Oromo narratives: Godaannisa and Gurraacha Abbayyaa, written by Dhaba Woyyessa. The intention is to show how an author applies different styles from text to text in terms of narrative voice. It is also attempted to indicate that the application of voice in a narrative can be analyzed not only irrespective of the medium but also irrespective of the language in which the narrative is presented. When analyzed critically, as Genette (1980), Booth (1983), Phelan (1996) and Bal (1997) among others would argue, a narrative voice can help to understand the characteristics of a certain text. So to analyze the narrative voice in each selected narrative, source, level, text and time relationship, and degrees of conspicuousness and reliability of the narrator are used as criteria. The study revealed that the narrative voice in Godaannisa is a personified, extra-homodiegetic, overt, retrospective and unreliable while the narrative voice in Gurraacha Abbayyaa is unpersonified, extra-hetrodiegetic, moderately overt, retrospective and slightly unreliable. The paper is organised into four chapters. The first chapter introduces the problem, objectives, research questions, limitations and significance of the study. The second chapter contains review of related literature where concepts related to narrative voice, an assessment of related studies and a design of a theoretical framework are presented. In the third chapter, an analysis of narrative voice in each selected narrative is presented. The fourth and final chapter consists of comparative summaries of narrative voices in the two narratives by way of conclusion.

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Keywords

Narrative Voice

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