I.

Early models for the analysis of narrative

discourse
II. Grard Genettes theory of narrative
discourse
III. Structuralist narratology at the turn of the
millennium : Mieke Bal

From the Aristotelian mimesis to early twentiethcentury typologies of point of view.

Story and Plot.
Wayne Booths Neo-Aristotelian approach to
narrative discourse.
The Formalist fabula/sjuzet distinction.
The Structuralist histoire/rcit or story/discourse
distinction.

Plato (The Republic)

Mimesis/Diegesis = imitation/copy of reality

direct imitation of speech (dialogue)/ vs./ indirect

imitation of reality (summarising narration)

Artistic representations of material objects are too far from

reality, being imitations of imitations. (Kenny, 2013: xii)
Copies of reality, mere substitutes for the things themselves
may, unfortunately, be false or illusory substitutes that stir up
antisocial emotions (violence or weakness) and they may
represent bad persons and actions, encouraging imitation of
evil.
(Mitchell, 1995: 14-15)

Aristotle (Poetics)

Mimesis related to truth and likelihood (not to truth/

falsehood) Mimesis = a representational model of reality
(not a mere, perfect imitation/copy of reality). The writers job
is not to relate what actually happened, but rather the kind of
thing that would happen, either necessarily or probably. In
addition, (s)he tells about truths that, even if not necessarily
in the philosophical sense, are universal in their application to
human nature. Literature is supposed to teach lessons based
on necessity or probability. (Kenny, 2013: xxvii, xxviii)
Both indirect narrative and direct representation become
varieties of mimesis.
Forms of mimesis distinctions in terms of their medium
(epic, drama, painting, sculpture, dancing and music), their
object (people in action), and their mode of representation
(the narrative/epic and the dramatic) (Poetics. I. Various Kinds
of Poetry) the first plot and character typologies.

The understanding of a piece of writing fictional

or non-fictional can only be explained in terms
of our existing model(s) of reality that are
influenced by:

the structure of fact, explanation, supposition, which

draws on our already existing knowledge ;
the plausibility of the report, i.e. the possibility of
making plausible connections between one act and
another. (Leech, 1992: 154)

the written text = a representational model which

may turn out to be more or less faithful to the

represented reality

Model of reality

Model of reality

Message

Writer
encodes

Message

Semantic level

Semantic level

Syntactic level

Syntactic level

Graphological level

Graphological level

Text

Reader
decodes

Until the end of the nineteenth century, writers and

critics have drawn upon the Aristotelian theory of
mimesis, showing more concern with the extent to
which literary works managed to comply with the
constantly debated upon and redefined principle of
verisimilitude. There have been, of course, some who,
more or less explicitly, have investigated different
aspects of narrative structure, calling into question
the pre-established conventions of novel writing and
challenging
the
readers
expectations.
(e.g.
Cervantes, Diderot, Sterne, etc.). Nevertheless, it is
only from the nineteenth century on that narrative
techniques become the subject of more systematic
analysis and Flaubert or Henry James are among the
first to pave the way for the development of
narratology as a well-defined approach to narratives.

Percy Lubbock (The Craft of Fiction, 1921)

Norman Friedman (1955)

a typology of narrative situations in which two sets of criteria

are combined: on the one hand, the opposition between
showing/telling (as a result of Lubbocks enlarging on
mimesis/diegesis), on the other hand, the distinction between
different modes of representation or points of view (i.e. the
panoramic survey, the dramatized narrator, the dramatized
mind and pure drama).
eight narrative situations, the distinctions being given by the
same criterion of the point of view (i.e. editorial
omniscience, neutral omniscience, I as a witness, I as
protagonist, multiple selective omniscience, selective
omniscience, dramatic mode and camera).

E. M. Forster (1927) the distinction between the

what and the how = story and plot
(1) The king died and then the queen died.

(2) The king died, and then the queen died of grief.
(3) The queen died, no one knew why, until it was discovered

that it was through grief at the death of the king.

Story: a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence

(1).
Plot: a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality
(2); a narrative of events with more mystery in it, with the
time-sequence suspended and capable of further high
development (3). (Forster in Scholes 1966: 221)

The Chicago School/ Neo-Aristotelianism: Its

theoretical basis is principally derived from
Aristotles concepts of plot, character and genre, as
presented in his Rhetoric and Poetics.
Wayne Booth (The Rhetoric of Fiction, 1961)
basic premises:
All narrative is a form of rhetoric.
The distinction between showing and telling in fiction too
simplistic.
distinctions between different instances involved in the
communication process in literature.

Booth does not see the author as the only person involved in creating a
work of fiction. Instead, he sees this creation as comprised of both
author and reader with a narrator to guide the reader through the
maze of the text. For Booth, the reader and the author cannot be
separated because of the power both author and reader exert on the
text and the power the text exerts on the author and reader. Booth
argues that the author constructs an implied author and a narrator,
both of whom connect to a specific reading community. implied
author (the authors official scribe or second self) whom the reader
invents by deduction from the attitudes articulated in the fiction.
The implied author chooses, consciously or unconsciously, what we
read; we infer him as an ideal, literary, created version of the real man;
he is the sum of his own choices in:
style (providing insight into the authors norms);
tone (through which the author implies his judgment of the material
presented);
technique (the artistry of the author).

It is only by distinguishing between the author and his implied image

that we can avoid pointless and unverifiable talk about such qualities
as sincerity or seriousness in the author. (Booth, 1983: 74-5)

Narrator typologies (1):

Undramatized narrators (that are not given personal characteristics):
In so far as a novel does not refer directly to this [implied] author,
there will be no distinction between him and the implied,
undramatized narrator. (151)
Dramatized narrators: () even the most reticent narrator has been
dramatized as soon as he refers to himself as I. The range of
dramatized narrators is usually wide, from vivid narrator-characters,
disguised narrator-characters telling the audience what it needs to
know or seemingly acting out their roles to third-person centers of
consciousness through whom authors have filtered their narratives.
Hence the further distinction between mere observers and narratoragents (who produce measurable effect on the course of events).
(152-3)

Modes of representation and narrator type (2):

All narrators and observers, whether first or third person,

can relay their tales to us primarily as scene (), primarily as
summary () or, most commonly, as a combination of the
two. [] the contrast between scene and summary, between
showing and telling, is likely to be of little use until we specify
the kind of narrator who is providing the scene or the
summary. (154-5)
Commentary: (1) merely ornamental, serving a rhetorical purpose,
without being part of the dramatic structure; (2) integral to the
dramatic structure.

self-conscious narrators, aware of themselves as writers (Such

fiction shatters any illusion that the narrator is telling something
that has actually happened by revealing to the reader that the
narration is a work of fictional art, or by flaunting the
discrepancies between its patent fictionality and the reality it
seems to represent.) /versus/ narrators who rarely, if ever, discuss

their writing chores or who seem unaware that they are

writing/thinking/speaking/reflecting a literary work.

Narrator typologies (3):

reliable narrator: usually in the third person, coming close to the

values of the implied author (he speaks for or acts in accordance
with the norms of the work, which is to say, the implied author's
norms);
unreliable narrator: often a character within the story, deviating from
the values of the implied author.
It is true that most of the great reliable narrators indulge in large amounts of
incidental irony, and they are thus unreliable in the sense of being potentially
deceptive. But difficult irony is not sufficient to make a narrator unreliable. Nor is
unreliability ordinarily a matter of lying (). It is most often a matter of what [Henry]
James calls inconscience; the narrator is mistaken, or he believes himself to have
qualities which the author denies him.
Unreliable narrators thus differ markedly depending on how far and in what direction
they depart from their authors norms; the older term tone, like the currently
fashionable terms irony and distance, covers many effects that we should
distinguish. (158-9)

The author also creates an implied/postulated reader whose values and

background represent the ideal reader: The author creates, in short, an
image of himself and another image of his reader; he makes his reader,
as he makes his second self, and the most successful reading is one in
which the created selves, author and reader, can find complete
agreement. (138)
Real author implied author narrator ----- narratee implied reader
real reader

Russian Formalism: Refuting the earlier perspectives which

regarded literature as a mere reflection of biographical, historical
or social reality, it insisted on its specificity so it aimed at finding

a "scientific", objective method for defining the specific features

of literature, its methods and devices.

What constitutes literature is its difference from other orders of

fact; literature is defined by its special use of language deviating
from and distorting practical language. The object of literary
studies = LITERARINESS of the poetic and fictional works, their
specific organization and the structural devices that differentiate
them from other types of discourses. DEFAMILIARIZATION: Art
defamiliarizes things that have become habitual or automatic. It
makes objects unfamiliar, in order to help us experience the
artfulness of objects, in other words to ensure our fresh, nonhabitual, non-automatic perception of words and ideas. The
purpose of a work of art is to change our mode of perception
from the automatic and practical to the artistic. (Viktor Shklovsky,
1917)

Fabula/Sjuzet:

Fabula (story) = the raw material, the chronological sequence of

events.
Sjuzet (plot) = the order and manner in which they are actually
presented in the narrative. It prevents us from regarding the
incidents as typical and familiar.

The relation between fabula and sjuzhet is roughly analogous

to the one between practical and poetic language. The sjuzhet
creates a defamiliarizing effect on the fabula; the devices of
the sjuzhet are not designed as instruments for conveying the
fabula, but are foregrounded at the expense of the fabula.
E.g. Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy (Skhlovsky) The
constructional devices (chaotic narrative order, prominent
self-conscious authorial commentary, transposition of
material, temporal displacements, the inclusion of secondary
anecdotes, digressions of all kinds) are laid bare and not
motivated by the events or situations in the story.

Vladimir Propp (Morphology of the Folktale) establishes the important

principle according to which personages are variable, but their functions
are constant and limited.

The functions of characters serve as stable, constant elements in a tale,

independent of how and by whom they are fulfilled and they constitute the
fundamental components of a tale.
The number of functions known to the fairy tale is limited.
The sequence of functions is always identical.
All fairy tales are of one type in regard to their structure.

Propp organizes the quest of his heroes into six main stages
(preparation; complication; transference; struggle; return; recognition)
and thirty one different functions.
Propp also identifies several spheres of action (the evil doer/the villain;
the giver donor, provider; helper/assistant; the emperor and his
daughter; the sender/dispatcher; the hero seeker or victim; the false
hero) with three possible situations:
1. The sphere of action corresponds exactly to one character.
2. One character functions in several spheres of action.
3. One sphere of action includes several characters (one role may employ more
than one hero).

Structuralism: The essence of structuralist theories is

the belief that things cannot be understood in

isolation, they have to be seen in the context of the

larger structures (hence, the term structuralism). Its

most revolutionary feature: the importance that it

attributes to language used as a model for all sorts
of non-linguistic institutions.
Literature is not only organised like language, but it
is actually made of language (Todorov literature is
always about language) and thus it makes us aware
of the nature of language itself. Language is not just

the means of communication in literature, but it is

also the content of literature. Therefore, the

relationship between literature and language is one

of parallelism/homology: literature is organised at
every level like language the task of creating a
universal grammar of narratives.

Structuralist narratology (Roland Barthes, Tzvetan

Todorov, etc.) the two-fold distinction of fabula/
sjuzet translated it into French terms as
histoire/rcit. (On English grounds, the French terms
will be transposed by Seymour Chatman, for
instance, into story/discourse.)
Events

Histoire/ Story

Characters

Setting

Narrative
Rcit/ Discourse

Structuralist Narratology: Andr J. Greimas

According to Greimas, human beings make meaning by structuring the

world in terms of two kinds of opposed pairs: A is the opposite of B
and -A is the opposite of B. It is this fundamental structure of binary
oppositions that shapes all human languages, human experience, and
consequently, the narratives through which that experience is
articulated. plot formulas (conflict and resolution, struggle and
reconciliation, separation and union) are carried out by actants
(character functions).
six character functions: subject/object; sender/receiver; helper/opponent.
three main patterns of plot:

Stories of Quest/Desire: a Subject (hero) searches for an Object (person/state/thing).

Stories of Communication: a Sender (person/god/institution, etc.) sends the Subject in
search of the Object which the Receiver ultimately receives.
Stories of Auxiliary Support or Hindrance (sub-plots): A Helper supports the Subject in
the Quest; an Opponent hinders the Subject from carrying on his Quest.

20 functions grouped into three main types of structures (syntagms):

Contractual structures (making/breaking agreements; establishment/violation

prohibitions; alienation/reconciliation);
Performative structures (performance of tasks, trials, struggles);
Disjunctive structures (travel, movement, arrivals, departures).

of