ED250698 84
Narratology: The Study of Story Structure.
ERIC Digest.
Author(s): Pradl, Gordon
ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, Urbana, Ill.
THIS DIGEST WAS CREATED BY ERIC, THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER.
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TEXT: The telling of stories is such a pervasive aspect of our environment
that we sometimes forget that stories provide the initial and continuing
means for shaping our experience. Indeed, without stories our experiences
would merely be unevaluated sensations from an undifferentiated stream
of events. Stories are the repository of our collective wisdom about the
world of social/cultural behavior; they are the key mediating structures
for our encounters with reality.
Thus, it is not surprising that a great deal of scholarly investigation
has focused on both the nature of stories and their central role in human
affairs. Across many disciplines -- including linguistics, literary criticism,
anthropology, psychology, and sociology -- researchers have begun to see
how the analysis of story structure is fundamental to our understanding
of individual intention and potential.
WHAT IS NARRATOLOGY?
This rather pretentious label refers to the structuralist study of narrative.
The structuralist seeks to understand how recurrent elements, themes, and
patterns yield a set of universals that determine the makeup of a story.
The ultimate goal of such analysis is to move from a taxonomy of elements
to an understanding of how these elements are arranged in actual narratives,
fictional and nonfictional.
The intellectual tradition out of which narratology grew began with the
linguistic work of Ferdinand de Saussure. By distinguishing between parole
(specific instances of spoken language) and langue (the idealized abstract
grammar relating all the specific instances of speech), Saussure initiated
"structuralism," the study of systems or structures as independent from
meanings, and the field of semiotics was born (see ERIC Fact Sheet,
"Semiotics").
Roman Jakobson and the Russian Formalists also influenced the study of
narrative, revealing how literary language differs from ordinary language.
Structuralism was further shaped by French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss,
who concluded that myths found in various cultures can be interpreted in
terms of their repetitive structures.
WHAT FUNCTIONS DO STORIES PLAY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS?
Although, strictly speaking, narratology refers only to the particular
research of literary critics and anthropologists who study narrative discourse,
a concern for narrative penetrates many academic disciplines. Significantly,
the words "narrative" and "story" can both be traced back to an original
meaning of "to know." It is through the story that people quite literally
come to know -- that is, to construct and maintain their knowledge of the
world. Through a story, an individual creates meaning out of daily happenings,
and this story, in turn, serves as the basis for anticipation of future
events.
The psychologist George Kelly has described how our personalities grow
out of the stories we have chosen to construct from our perceptions of
what has happened to us, and how these stories influence our future
expectations.
Similarly, sociologist Peter Berger has emphasized the importance of stories
in shaping social realities, showing how people's characteristic stories
change as they progress from one life theme to another.
WHAT HAS STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS REVEALED ABOUT THE NATURE OF NARRATIVES?
For one thing, researchers have found that certain underlying narrative
structures remain constant, despite the apparently endless diversity of
story forms and content. In his study of one hundred Russian folk tales,
Vladimir Propp found that the same types of actions were being performed
(e.g., the hero is transported to another kingdom) even while the personages
and details varied greatly (e.g., the hero might be Sucenko or Ivan; the
vehicle an eagle, a horse, or a magic ring). In all, Propp identified seven
spheres of action and thirty-one fixed elements that fit his sample of
stories; and though tales from other cultures reveal additional elements,
they too are composed of recurring patterns. Structural analysis, then,
uncovers the basic social-psychological tasks that people confront during
their lives -- issues of dependence or independence, selfishness or sacrifice,
birth or death.
For another, structuralists like Tzvetan Todorov, Gerard Genette, and
Roland Barthes have given us new ways to look at how stories (novels) are
constructed, especially across dimensions of time and narration. With regard
to time, in everyday life a speaker relates events according to normal
chronology; but in complex works of fiction, a distinction between "plot"
and "story" evolves. The plot in effect reveals the story, often rearranging
the timeline; and through this the reader "rediscovers" the original events.
For instance, in a mystery story two timelines move in opposite directions
to keep the reader guessing "whodunnit" until the end.
With regard to narration, an oral tale normally consists of a speaker
telling of past events either from a first-person perspective (if the speaker
was involved) or from a third-person perspective (if the speaker was a
mere onlooker). The complicated modern novel, however, destroys such a
neat picture of narrator and voice. Point of view in the modern novel
becomes a powerful tool of the author in revealing subtleties of human
psychology. Mitchell Leaska, for example, has demonstrated how Virginia
Woolf's novels involve a carefully crafted "multiple point-of-view." In
sum, narratology has deepened our insights into both the structure of the
novel and its origins in primal tales, adding to our store of psychological
and social wisdom.
HOW DOES A CHILD'S CONCEPT OF STORY DEVELOP?
Arthur Applebee has studied the stories children tell and children's responses
to the stories they read. His study shows that a child's idea of a story
parallels other cognitive abilities and is related to general growth in
ability to take on others' perspectives. Applebee describes six stages
in children's event-arrangement, a developmental pattern ranging from "heaps"
(mere lists of unrelated perceptions) to "true narratives" (complete events
that reveal a theme or evaluation of experience). Other researchers have
shown that children in the telling of their own stories gradually develop
certain literary conventions ("once upon a time...") as they grow increasingly
sensitive to the overall aesthetic structure of narrative.
Developments that parallel children's storytelling abilities occur in
their responses to narratives. While small children have no abstract system
for categorizing the stories around them, adolescents begin to differentiate
stories on the basis of underlying themes and personal significance. What
children are developing here is a mature use of the "spectator role" of
language, as James Britton has described it. In reacting to narratives,
children grow in their ability to compare their constructs of the world
with others', and they learn to question whether their system of expectations
is adequate for the future. "Storying," in other words, is central to personal
and ethical development.
HOW DOES CULTURE AFFECT THE INTERPRETATION AND TELLING OF STORIES?
Important differences among cultural groups are reflected in their explanatory
stories of the universe. Similar events appear radically dissimilar when
viewed through the lenses of different cultural traditions. For example,
Wallace Chafe and his associates showed a short film (in which some youths
take pears from a man who has been picking them) to subjects of different
nationalities. The result was multiple interpretations and storytelling
performances. The response patterns of Americans focused on details and
temporal sequencing, while Greeks sought a larger story context and ascribed
social motives to the characters. William Labov's research with cultural
subgroups revealed not only different story lines in response to a question
("Have you ever been in a situation where you were in serious danger of
being killed?") but also diverse linguistic strategies for stating
explanations.
HOW DOES THE STUDY OF NARRATIVE RELATE TO TEACHING/LEARNING THE LANGUAGE
ARTS?
Since story forms provide an essential means of organizing material about
human behavior and events in the world, teachers should explore narrative
with their students. Stories will be a major vehicle of our students' language
development. In encouraging their storymaking, along with their personal
responses to the stories they read, we are fostering personal and cultural
development.
Just as narratology reveals certain universals underlying our stories,
it establishes the ground for heterogeneity of values and surface forms,
and thus supports pluralism in the classroom. While the broad, outward
forms of narrative predominate in the language classroom, narratology is
also concerned with how the individual mind seems to encode information
about the world through highly personalized schemata (see ERIC Fact Sheet,
"Schemata"). Finally, storymaking provides a natural transition into more
formal writing tasks. The underlying "moral" or point that stories attempt
to uncover is what eventually gets transformed into the thesis statement
in expository or persuasive essays.
Narratology, then is fundamentally related to teaching and learning at
all grade levels, and even beyond the classroom. From the study of reading
comprehension to the building of models of artificial intelligence, the
more we understand the nature of narrative, the more we understand ourselves.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Applebee, Arthur. THE CHILD'S CONCEPT OF STORY: AGES TWO TO SEVENTEEN.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
Bergold, Sharon. "Children's Growth of Competence in Storytelling". LANGUAGE
ARTS 53 (1976): 874-77.
Britton, James. PROSPECT AND RETROSPECT: SELECTED ESSAYS. Gordon M. Pradl,
ed. Upper Montclair, N.J.: Boynton Cook, 1982.
Chafe, Wallace L., ed. THE PEAR STORIES: COGNITIVE, CULTURAL, AND LINGUISTIC
ASPECTS OF NARRATIVE PRODUCTION. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing Corporation,
1980.
Eagleton, Terry. LITERARY THEORY: AN INTRODUCTION. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1975.
Favat, F. Andre. CHILD AND TALE: THE ORIGINS OF INTEREST. Urbana, Ill.:
National Council of Teachers of English, 1977.
Freedle, Roy O., ed. NEW DIRECTIONS IN DISCOURSE PROCESSING. Norwood,
N.J.: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1979.
Kelly, George. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONAL CONSTRUCTS. New York: Norton,
1955.
Labov, William. "The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax."
In LANGUAGE IN THE INNER CITY. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1972.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. "The Structural Study of Myth." In STRUCTURAL
ANTHROPOLOGY.
New York: Basic Books, 1963.
Leaska, Mitchell A. VIRGINIA WOOLF'S LIGHTHOUSE: A STUDY IN CRITICAL METHOD.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1970.
Pradl, Gordon M. "Learning How to Begin and End a Story." LANGUAGE ARTS
56 (1979): 21-25.
Propp, Vladimir, MORPHOLOGY OF THE FOLKTALE. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1968.
Rouse, John. THE COMPLETED GESTURE. New York: Skyline Books, 1978.
Schank, Roger. DYNAMIC MEMORY: A THEORY OF REMINDING AND LEARNING IN COMPUTERS
AND PEOPLE. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
"Schemata ." ERIC Fact Sheet, Urbana, Ill.: ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading
and Communication Skills, 1983.
"Semiotics." ERIC Fact Sheet. Urbana, Ill.: ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading
and Communication Skills, 1983.
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This publication was prepared with funding from the Office of Educational
Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under OERI contract.
The opinions expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the positions
or policies of OERI or the Department of Education.