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Diegesis

Philosophy
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Diegesis is the narrative or telling aspect of a story, as opposed to mimesis (showing). It is the world created within a narrative, including its events and characters.

Detailed Definition
In narratology, diegesis refers to the story's internal world. Poetry often employs diegetic elements to construct a fictional reality, which can be abstract or concrete. The poet's voice becomes a guide through this created space, shaping the reader's understanding. Manipulating diegesis allows poets to control perspective, time, and distance, creating layered narratives that invite deep interpretation and engagement with the text's crafted world.
Example
Example in poetry:
The narrative voice in a dramatic monologue like Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" creates a diegesis where the Duke's inner world is the primary reality; The story-world of an epic poem, such as Homer's "The Odyssey," is a complex diegesis with its own laws, history, and characters; The constructed world of a sci-fi poem, like "The Unknown Citizen" by W.H. Auden, establishes a diegetic reality of bureaucratic control; The domestic scene in Robert Frost's "The Death of the Hired Man" is a carefully built diegesis that reveals character and conflict through dialogue.
Additional Notes
Diegesis refers to the narrative world, or the story, that is created within a work of fiction, as opposed to the "mimesis" or the act of showing. In narratology, diegesis is the totality of the events, characters, settings, and objects that exist in the narrative's reality. It is the world that the characters inhabit and that the narrator describes or implies. In poetry, diegesis is the fictional or lyrical world that the poem constructs. A poet might build a diegesis of a memory, a fantasy, or a philosophical landscape. Understanding diegesis helps readers and writers analyze the scope and nature of the poem's "world." For instance, a dramatic monologue creates its diegesis through a single character's speech, implying a rich world beyond the words. The poet's control over diegesis determines the perspective, distance, and texture of the narrative.
Other Meanings of “Diegesis”
Also Known As
Story world Narrative realm Fictional universe
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