Narrative: The Basics - Notes
What is Narrative?
Narrative is pervasive in human existence, shaping our sense of reality and influencing how we interact with the world. Roland Barthes argued that narrative is fundamental to human life, encompassing various forms and media, including visual and multimodal expressions. Narrative is not neutral; it is political, shaping our responses to the world and influencing our actions. Narrative helps us make sense of the world by organizing experiences into meaningful sequences.
The Development of Narrative Theory
Narrative theory has evolved over time, starting with early roots in Aristotle's Poetics, which emphasized plot as a unified structure with a beginning, middle, and end. Aristotle viewed plot (mythos) as the most important element of tragedy, focusing on the arrangement of incidents to evoke pity and fear. The rise of the novel led to the refinement of narrative techniques, particularly the role of the narrator in guiding the reader through the story. Barthes and other thinkers in the 1960s and 1970s transformed the study of narrative, leading to the 'narrative turn' that influenced various disciplines by applying narrative concepts to fields like history, sociology, and psychology. Some theorists believe the human impulse to create narratives offers insights into how our minds work, reflecting our cognitive processes and structures.
Narrativity
Narrativity refers to the essential properties of a narrative that make it recognizable as a story. Definitions often include events, sequence, and causality, which are key components that link incidents in a meaningful way. However, there is no consensus on key issues such as the degree of causality required or the role of the narrator. The concept of narrativity has become increasingly important, especially with emerging media forms like video games, virtual reality, and interactive narratives.
Two views on Narrative
Traditionalist view: Narrative has an invariant core of meaning that distinguishes it from other forms of discourse. This view emphasizes specific structural elements and features that define what a narrative is.
Reader-focused view: Narrativization is a reading strategy where readers actively seek to understand events as part of a cohesive narrative. This perspective highlights the role of the audience in constructing meaning from narrative elements.
Monika Fludernik argues that narrativity is centered on experientiality, relying on a conscious and embodied self that connects readers to the experiences of characters. Marie-Laure Ryan defines narrative as a medium-free cognitive construct that creates an image of a concrete world evolving in time, emphasizing the mental model created in the reader's mind. Narrativity may also be understood as fundamental to human existence, shaping how we process time, memory, and identity, helping us organize and understand our experiences.
Constructivist View of Narrative
The constructivist view suggests that stories are not just events that happen, but are actively created and shaped by the culture or society we live in. This perspective emphasizes that narratives are socially constructed and reflect cultural values and norms. Therefore life imitates narrative and narrative imitates like, shaping our understanding of the world and our sense of self. This reciprocal relationship highlights how narratives influence our perceptions and behaviors.
Narrative and the Mind
Narrative forms, especially novels, can enhance our ability to understand others' minds and empathize with them, improving our social cognition and emotional intelligence. Cognitive narratology explores how narrative forms provide scripts for navigating shared human experiences, encompassing emotions and the ability to think beyond personal needs, offering frameworks for social interaction and understanding.
Critiques of Narrativity
Despite the expansion of narrative theory, some critics argue that the notion of narrativity as an inescapable aspect of life is flawed. Galen Strawson argues that a preoccupation with narrativity can be destructive for those whose lives do not fit the narrative model, suggesting that not everyone organizes their experiences in a narrative format. Other ways of showing or recording experience, such as ritual, song, poetry, or dance, are also important, providing alternative modes of expression and meaning-making.
New technologies may challenge our understanding of narrative, especially where the real and fictional become indistinguishable, blurring the lines between reality and simulation.
Narrative Across Media and Culture
The idea that we are surrounded by stories is reinforced by ubiquitous computing and social networking, creating a constant stream of narratives in our daily lives. New technologies may offer new ways of understanding narrative, such as databases or algorithms that generate narratives, presenting new possibilities for storytelling and analysis. However, we should avoid fitting all media into language-based narrative models and take into account the medium-specific features of each platform, recognizing that different media have unique narrative capabilities and constraints.
Narrative theory has become interdisciplinary, applicable across various narrative forms and media, with applications in fields ranging from literature and film to digital media and marketing. In an age of media convergence, narrative theory is a useful lens for understanding how stories are created, disseminated, and consumed across different platforms. Postclassical narratology addresses the need to embrace a wide range of narrative forms and media, engage with issues of power and marginalization, and explore new ways of thinking about narrative, encouraging a more inclusive and nuanced approach.
Book Structure and Approach
This book explores how narratives shape and define our reality, potentially limiting our perspectives, examining how narratives can both enlighten and constrain our understanding of the world. It also examines how narratives are used for persuasion in corporate, commercial, and political contexts, looking at the strategies and techniques used to influence audiences. The book introduces the basic building blocks of narrative, including point of view, and key theories, providing a foundation for understanding narrative structures. It explores how narratives shape and distort events, the gendered nature of narratives, and specific genres such as crime narratives, examining how narratives reflect and reinforce social norms. The role of the reader/viewer is examined, as well as the impact of digital technologies, assessing how audiences interact with and interpret narratives in the digital age. The conclusion considers future directions for narrative and its study, anticipating emerging trends and challenges.
The book aims to avoid jargon and provides a glossary of key terms, making complex concepts accessible to a broader audience. It encourages readers to apply narrative theory to familiar stories and to challenge theories that seem rigid or inflexible, promoting critical thinking and engagement. Examples from global narratives are used where possible, and context is provided for unfamiliar examples, ensuring inclusivity and relevance.
The book does not provide a comprehensive history of narrative study or propose a new model. It focuses on demonstrating the applicability of narrative theories, with an emphasis on how narratives enthrall, move, and unsettle us in an age of blurred boundaries, highlighting the emotional and intellectual impact of narratives.
Key Terms in Narrative Theory
Story
The chronological sequence of events that underlies the narrative; the 'bare bones' of the story, representing the raw material from which narratives are constructed.
Plot
The shaping of the story into a logical structure that shows the causal connections between events. E.M. Forster's example: Story: ‘The king died and then the queen died.’ Plot: ‘The king died and then the queen died of grief.’ which illustrates how plot adds meaning and causality to a sequence of events.
Character:
A participant in the world depicted by the narrative, contributing to the action and themes of the story.
Narration:
The telling of the story, which involves choices about perspective, voice, and style that shape the reader's experience.
Storyworld:
The real or imaginary environments in which the action of the narrative takes place, providing context and background for the events and characters.
Narratology
Narratology is a term for theories that provide a systematic model for narrative, while postclassical narratology focuses more on context and embraces new perspectives, engaging with postmodernism, poststructuralism, and postcolonialism, reflecting a broader range of theoretical influences. Postclassical narratology also explores how people respond to stories and includes discussion of media and new media narratives, acknowledging the impact of technology on storytelling.