Narratology

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521300131.007

5 - Narratology

from STRUCTURALISM: ITS RISE, INFLUENCE AND AFTERMATH

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Gerald Prince

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Raman Selden

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Gerald Prince: Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania

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Narratology is a theory of narrative. Rather than being concerned with the history, meaning, or function of particular (sets of) narratives, it examines what all and only possible narratives have in common as well as what enables them to differ from one another qua narratives and it aims to characterize the narrative-pertinent system of rules presiding over narrative production and processing. The term ‘narratology’, which prevailed over such (near-)synonyms as ‘narrativics’, ‘narrative semiotics’, and ‘structural analysis of narrative’, is a translation of the French term ‘narratologie’, introduced in 1969 by Tzvetan Todorov who wrote in Grammaire du Décaméron: ‘this work pertains to a science which does not yet exist – let us say narratology, the science of narrative’. As for the theory, it falls historically into the tradition of French structuralism. Narratology exemplifies the structuralist tendency to consider texts (in the broad sense of signifying matter) as rule-governed ways in which human beings (re)fashion their universe. It also exemplifies the structuralist ambition to isolate the necessary and the optional components of textual types and to describe the modes of their articulation. As such, it constitutes a subset of semiotics (see above, chapter 4), the study of the factors operative in signifying systems and practices. If structuralism generally focuses on the langue or code underlying a given system or practice as opposed to focusing on a parole or instantiation of that system or practice, narratology concentrates specifically on narrative langue as opposed to narrative parole.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism , pp. 110 - 130

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521300131.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 1995

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