NARRATIVE THEORY

 1.1 Problems with Definition

One problem we may face in the definition of narrative is that we all seem to know what stories and narrative are, so one wonders whether one should define it at all. Another problem is that many scholars have a tendency to be circular in their definitions of the word, or of terms which make use of the word narrative.  Quite frequently, the word to be defined is included in the definition itself. Here are some examples,

·        Seymour Chatman (1978: 31) defines narrative as a structure which is made up of narrative statements.

·        Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan (1983: 2) defines narrative fiction as ‘the narration of a succession of fictional events’.

·        Mieke Bal (1985: 3) defines narrative as a corpus which should consist ‘of all narrative texts and only those texts which are narrative’ (my emphasis).

Here are further examples of circular definitions from Bal's book:

·        The definition of narrative text as a text in which an agent relates a narrative (1985: 5).

·       The definition of narrative theory as a ‘theory [which] makes describable only the narrative aspects of a text and not all the characteristics of a narrative text’ (1985: 9; my emphases).

·        The definition of narratology is defined by her as a ‘theory of narrative texts’ (1985: 3; my emphasis).

Although such circularity is difficult to avoid, one must somehow arrive at a greater degree of clarity as to what a narrative is before one can proceed further in its study.

  

1.2 The Dualistic Nature of Narrative

Fortunately, there is broad agreement on the dualistic nature of narrative: that it has a what and a way. The what of narrative can be viewed in terms of narrative content, which consists, as far as the main elements are concerned, of events, actors, time and location.  The way has to do with how the narrative is told.

The what is also called the story; or what is also known as the histoire by the French structuralists, or fabula by the Russian Formalists.  The way is the discourse, or what the French structuralists called discours or the Russian Formalists called sjužet.  These terms and the difference between story and discourse are indicated in the tables below.  This dualism is found in the title of an important book of narrative: Story and Discourse by Seymour Chatman

Table 1.1: The What and The Way of Narrative
	English	French	Russian
what	story	histoire	fabula
way	discourse	discours	sjuzet

                       

Table 1.2: Meaning of Story and Discourse
Narrative Aspect	Meaning
Story	what narrative is: its content, consisting of events, actions, time and location
Discourse	how the narrative is told: arrangement, emphasis / de-emphasis, magnification / diminution, of any of the elements of the content

The binary classification of narrative may be necessary in order for us to conceptualise the idea of the ‘translation’ or conversion of a particular narrative from one art form or medium to another: when one translates, one translates the story and not the discourse. Discourse is obviously different in different art forms, although there may be similarities in the story.  It is also necessary, as we will discover in the next chapter, when we want  to specify what we mean by the beginning and end (or for that matter, the middle) of a narrative, as the beginning and end of a narrative at the story and discourse levels may differ.

1.3 Narrative Discourse: Two Further Aspects

It may be useful to divide narrative discourse into two further aspects: the story-internal aspect, and the aspect which involves an interaction with story-external factors.  The definition of discourse in table 1.2 above as ‘the arrangement, emphasis / de-emphasis, magnification / diminution of any of the elements of the content’ has to do with the story-internal aspect of discourse.  Also important in my view, is the story-external aspect, which tells us how the narrative arises, how it ends, what are the motivating factors in the telling, beginnning, ending and continuation of narrative and so on.  Such a view of narrative does not look at it as an autonomous entity.  Some of these story-external factors will be discussed later in this book.

1.4 Three-Level Descriptions of Narrative

Sometimes, a three-level division of narrative is proposed.  According to Bal (1985: 7-9), for example, we have the fabula, the story and the text: 

·      The fabula is a series of logically and chronologically related events, caused or experienced by actors. Bal calls this the deep or abstract structure of the text.

·      The story is the way the fabula is looked at, and consists of the ‘aspects’or ‘traits’ peculiar to a given story. We must note here that Bal's definition of story is quite different from that given above, and also from the  definitions given by Chatman and Rimmon-Kenan. 

·      Finally, there is the text, by which one uses language signs to relate a story, which is produced by an agent who relates the story.

Another three-level conception is given by Rimmon-Kenan (1983: 3-4).  To her, a narrative consists of story, text and narration.

·      The story is equivalent to the histoire and fabula mentioned above; the story to her is an abstraction of text events. 

·      Text, to Rimmon-Kenan is equivalent to discours, and consists of what we read or hear.  The text is spoken or written discourse as it is told; the events of a text need not be arranged in chronological order. 

·      Narration is the process of production, and involves an agent who produces the text.

In spite of the obvious added advantages of giving a three-level description of narrative, you will notice that for the most part, the two-level division into story and discourse is usually adequate for most purposes.  However, a third level of text may be useful if it refers to the physical entity where the narrative resides: for example, the pages of a book, the acts of a play, etc

 karakter

No one has succeeded in constructing a complete and coherent theory of character.  This difficulty, one suspects, is largely due to the human aspect of characterisation.  By definition, the word character designates a human or human-like individual, and as such, the concept is less amenable to a formulaic or mechanical approach.

The difficulty in arriving at a complete and coherent theory of character or characterisation is thus connected to the equivocation of the term character with regard to

·      its relationship to human beings, and

·      the question of whether it exists only within the text, or have a relationship with entities outside the text. 

These considerations can be described as ontological, as they touch on the origins of characters. The uncertainty in the ontology of characters may affect one’s methodology in character analysis: should characters, for example, be compared with actual human beings, or should we restrict ourselves to the text, and not bother about the comparison?  In this regard, we have an author like William H. Gass, who is of the view that ‘[s]tories and the people in them are made of words’ (quoted in Leitch 1986: 154).  On the other hand, a prominent tendency in pre-20th century research on character attempts to look for prior reasons for a character’s behaviour, even if these reasons are not found in the story itself

But in spite of the problems or negative tendencies noted above, the concept of character cannot be neglected in narrative analysis. 

Characterisation continues to be important

·      in certain genres of narrative, especially with regard to certain types of fiction, such as realistic fiction, and 

·      in relation to the evaluation of narrative.

With reference to the second point above, W.J. Harvey (1986), for example, has noted that ‘most great novels exist to reveal and explore character’ (1965: 23; my emphasis).

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