Narratology

1
Narratology

• The study of how stories are told

2
Stories and Narratives

• A story is what happens.
• A narrative is how we learn what happens.
• The narrative (method of telling a story) is
  shaped by
• Who tells it
• The purpose for telling it
• The medium through which it is told

3
Narrative Theory

• Narrative theory suggests that no matter what
  media is used to deliver the story and no matter
  where the story is told, stories contain common
  features.

4
Stories all have

• Cause and effect events
• Conflicts
• Characters
• Perspectives
• A narrative is a way of organising spatial and
  temporal data into a cause-effect chain of events
  with a beginning, a middle and an end that
  embodies a judgment about the nature of those
  events.
• Branigan, 1993

5
Analyzing a story means

• Considering the design grammars of the medium.
  (What are the rules for this medium? How do they
  influence the way the story is told?),
• Considering the structure of the story,
• Considering the cultural codes and symbols, and
• Considering our responses to the story and our
  experiences reading the story.

6
Structure
Freytags Triangle
7
Structure

• EQUILIBRIUM (the status quo)
• DISEQUILIBRIUM
• EQUILIBRIUM
• Todorov suggests that the beginning, middle, end
  of a story is marked by a state of equilibrium, a
  disruption of the equilibrium, and a return to
  the equilibrium.

8
Structure / Binary Opposition
Another theorist, Levi-Strauss suggested that all
meaning making is driven by a need to resolve
oppositions.
9
Characters are constructed

• The vilian
• The hero
• Seeks something, the one who carries the events
  of the story (Bart Simpson)
• The donor
• Provides an object with a magical property
• The helper
• Aids the hero

• The Sought for Person
• Reward for the hero and object of the villians
  schemes
• Her father
• The dispatcher
• The false hero

Eight types based on Propps analysis of fairy
tales.