Narratology: The Structure, Meaning and Expression of Stories

Although American literary theorists have been interested in the structure, expression, and meaning of stories since the mid-1940’s, that interest has increased substantially in recent time to the point where literary theory is currently the discipline most actively engaged in the study of narrative (Polkinghorne, 1988).  Initial narrative exploration expanded literary theory horizons substantially.  Incorporating the structuralist approach laid a linguistic foundation, and the poststructuralist or (often interchangeably) the postmodern philosophical approach expanded narratology to include society’s impact on human experience and understanding.  Some of today’s best attempts to capture the cultural impacts on the lives of people and the ways in which they come to know have evolved through the cumulative study of written and oral expression.

In literary theory, narrative can be described as a mode of expression most notably represented by written and oral fictional stories.  It has been explored via its structural components in terms of producing meaning and through the functions of author and reader in terms of facilitating the transfer of that meaning into expression.  According to Polkinghorne (1988) the study of narrative by literary theorists has not been progressive in terms of discarding old theories as new ones are developed.  Rather, it has been done in a cumulative fashion, where new theories are added to established ones.  In fact, threads of some of the oldest theories on narrative are still evident in today’s body of knowledge.

Early Narrative Exploration

The first literary context in which narrative was acknowledged in the United States came around 1945 from England.  Its “new criticism” view looked at texts of poetry and drama in terms of their ability to build internal thematic unity through their various parts, and appear as an autonomous whole to the reader without the need for understanding external contexts.  The novel was soon added as a legitimate literary artifact by demonstrating that it too was comprised of similar complex techniques such as images, metaphors, and symbols.  In addition, it identified the author’s unique use of the narrator concept and the ways in which access could be provided to the minds of the characters, adding an interesting dimension to a story’s message.  A primary example of  this kind of novel was the contemporary realistic novel (Polkinghorne, 1988).  Study of this type of work did not focus on plot, but rather on the author’s ability to make the reader aware of the kind of life that its fictional characters lived, generally imitating real life.

The next important studies of narrative formed the view that there was more to overall literary theory than just the examination and interpretation of individual works.  According to Polkinghorne (1988), the quest for a universal narrative plot added value to literary theory in many ways.  One was seeing all of literature as a system through which readers and critics could discern underlying modes and themes.  Another was seeing it as a vehicle for expression of all human desires.   A third was the conceptualization and classification of literary categories (i.e., protagonist power relationships) and audience presentation intentions (i.e., acted vs. sung vs. read).  Still another looked outward in terms of distinguishing literary expression and language structure from scientific expression or objective discourse.

There were some interesting legacies left from this initial period of narrative study as literary theory overall was, in the 1960’s, shifting towards a much more structured linguistics-based model first developed in France.  One lasting impact was the role that stories played in the formation of tradition or continuous threads of cumulated practices and the effect that tradition then had on subsequent story formation.  Also the evolution of narrative as a temporal link between past and present understandings of cultural experiences secured a permanent place in literary theory.  A leading researcher during this time was Northrup Frye who examined the content of a large number of stories, drawing out similarities and themes in an effort to find order in what appeared to be a scattered mix of individual efforts (Polkinghorne, 1988).    Work continued in this area by other theorists who were also looking for an orderly pattern in all of the various ways that cultural traditions were preserved, that personal histories were constructed, and that authors’ imaginations were expressed.  As this period in narrative theory came to a close, the concern with the amount of subjectiveness researchers used to identify potential universal plots and themes led to the conclusion that there was really no way to tell whether these investigations were valid or not, and thus efforts in this area ultimately died out.

Structuralism as a Linguistic Model

Not only adding to the knowledge base now established in narrative theory, but also providing a foundation for the rigorous, systematic, and objective study of the language found within stories was the structuralist approach to literature.  Theorists here set their sights on understanding the structure of narration, or the way stories are told, using research methods borrowed from the field of linguistics.

    What distinguishes the structuralist approach to the way stories are told is their
    systematicity and – inevitably – their focus on the underlying structures that make
    stories (and thus meaning) possible.  The ultimate goal of narratology is to
    discover a general model of narration that will cover all the possible ways in
    which stories can be told and that might be said to enable the production of
    meaning (Bertens, 2001, p.71).

Analysis of narrative study utilizing the structuralist approach focused on a variety of different elements.  Myths were linguistically dissected revealing that individual units similar to basic sound units in language acquired meaning only when combined together in particular ways.  Russian fairy tales were analyzed to uncover a deep underlying structure to help explain why tales from different cultures exhibited similar features.   The method used to study this phenomenon was borrowed from the linguistic analysis of a sentence, with the research culminating in the identification of thirty-one basic units in a fairy tale that function in a narrative to give it meaning much as syntactical units function in a sentence (Polkinghorne, 1988).

In other areas of interest, hierarchies of narrative structural elements were investigated.  Narratives were broken down into molecular structures and then integrated at higher levels.  Rules were articulated that governed how these units were integrated.  Another approach suggested that words create images and that these images are mental constructs generated by a set of logically ordered rules, analogous to computer programs that follow a specific set of instructions.  These constructs only project reality, however.  This highlighted a limitation of the structuralist approach.  Dimension and depth, as in identifying character for example, were difficult to structure and quantify.  The narrative meaning arrived at by looking at how individual units come together to make a story wasn’t the same as when the story was looked at holistically.  Additionally, the structuralist approach proved meaningful for providing data that described the elements that all narratives have in common, but lacked the tools to discern how and why stories are different. 
 
And then there was the compelling example of the French structuralist, Gerard Genette.  One of his models focused and directed the way one looked at texts by, for example, mapping out how stories are embedded in other stories and by examining how the relationship between the narrator and the world shifts during a story, enabling the reader to interpret very complex texts.  This and others of his structuralist models were by all accounts brilliant renditions of narrative strategies and yet even as he “exhaustively mapped the possibilities, the endless combinations of relational positions, that the narrative form offers; the rest is left to the reader” (Bertens, 2001, p. 75).  In the end, it is up to the reader to decide what to interpret and how to receive meaning from the narrative.

Poststructuralist Advances in Narratology

Because of some of the limitations of the structuralist approach to narrative study, different emphases began to emerge in the late 1960’s and 1970’s.  They collected into what was termed the poststructuralist approach.  This effort began to deconstruct some of the assumptions that had guided methods up to this point.  It radically questioned language as a structural building block of literature, as well as the objective analyses on which the structuralist approach is based.  In arguing against the case that language is a stable medium of communication, the poststructuralists maintained that words are always subject to change, and therefore unreliable.  Not only are they related to and gain meaning from the words that precede them, but their meaning is then modified by the words that follow (Bertens, 2001).  The poststructuralist stance then went on to argue that since we articulate our perception and understanding of reality through language, the very elements of human perception and knowledge are unstable; likewise our articulated and perceived sense of identity or “self” is flawed.    Stories and novels that began to appear from this point forward tended to reflect an incoherence in literary text as a result of this belief in language instability.

At this point along the continuum of approaches to literary theory, poststructuralist criticism became intertwined with postmodernism.  An even more liberal attitude towards narrative became the norm as deconstruction blasted through false structures and hierarchies and made way for increased focus on blind spots and differences.  Postmodernism issues such as the absence of closure, the question of identity, the problematic nature of language, the artificiality of representation, and the intertextual nature of texts (Bertens, 2001) – all pointed towards a new style of writing that left the structuralists of the former paradigm scratching their heads over its audacious irreverence.  

Postmodernism not only applied much of poststructuralist thought to its narrative writing, but connected what it found in the texts to a broader social reality.  It questioned the validity and universality of the great narratives (called meta-narratives) that had thus far underpinned Western civilization such as religion, Marxism, capitalism, even modern science, in favor of little narratives or smaller scale belief systems with provisional strength and local validity.  As outlined in recent years the postmodern goal is not, however, to formulate an alternative set of valid assumptions about literature or the world at large, but to unequivocally state that the certainty of any form of knowledge is impossible.    It rejects boundaries between just about any field of human endeavor – natural sciences and social sciences, art and literature, culture and life, fiction and theory, image and reality (Rosenau, 1992).  The liberating postmodern discourse is deemed to be more literary in nature versus the more pragmatic and rigorous structuralist style, yet still concerned with content and meaning.

The postmodern approach has more than its share of critics in terms of its drastic divergence from the more structural view of the past, as well as its focus on a spectrum of alternative notions: indeterminacy, diversity, complexity, relationship, uniqueness, subjectivity, and tentativeness.  Its appeal lies in the discovery of information and viewpoints unseen through the structuralist lens, the excitement of endless creative possibilities, the assurance that no one has or can have all of the answers to life’s mysteries, and in the hope that its emergence at this juncture will bring a welcome change in how we all come to know how to individually and collectively live and thrive in the world.

Relating this grand scheme of postmodernist thought back to narratology brings us up to the present day.  There is now a broader definition of what constitutes narrative text.  In addition to established literary modes, television and motion picture narratives are also routinely created, studied, and critiqued for insights into the human condition.  Narrative is created in an ever-increasing number of unique perspectives as society continues to recognize small group voices of diverse constituents.  And of course, narrative is becoming more and more recognized as an invaluable tool in the social sciences for discovering what the more empirical and objective approaches have been unable to reveal – the reasons how and why a phenomenon occurs outside of normal parameters.  The unique power of narrative to reveal and explain, express imagination, facilitate understanding, and communicate meaning is just beginning to be explored for ways in which we come to know ourselves and the world around us.

Author’s Note

This essay can stand on its own as a chronicle of narrative study to this point.  However, there are some personal insights relevant to the larger “ways of knowing” context that will be discussed here.  First and foremost, I was amazed to discover how closely the evolution of narrative theory mimicked they way in which we’ve come to know how science has evolved.  First a sort of a take-what-you-see approach that looked at individual works as they presented themselves.  Then the whole empirical, objective overlay that attempted to analyze the works by breaking them down into their smallest units linguistically.  They were also studied collectively to derive general themes, modes, and categories applicable to the greater narrative theory.  As anomalies arose that the structuralist view couldn’t seem to capture – like depth or dimension, identity, language instability – theorists looked to other ways to explain and understand.  Enter the subjective, mucky-messy postmodernists who set the world on “tilt” just to see what would happen.  They are now busy creating chaos (…I mean Chaos…) by undermining all that has been known to be universally true and valid.  Next we will examine all the little narratives for some kind of underlying order and create comfort in the world once again.  And down the road, there will still be things left unexplained.  I hope I am around long enough to see how my kids’ kids deal with it.

In regard to narrative theory itself, it has truly been enlightening for me to look at literature in this manner.  I found that the structuralist approach grated against my preferred way of knowing, just as the empirical, quantitative method of scientific research does.  It seemed to just take the heart and soul out of such a wondrously creative mode of human communication.  Conversely I feel that the postmodern approach frees the literary imagination even more.  As I look around these days with a “knowing” eye, I can quite often trace the things that I think are cool to some sort of postmodernism technique that I’ve read about.

Here’s what I think the future holds for narrative research.  I think it is going to be all about the little people.  To some extent it already is.  Voices are being heard that have never been heard before.  And the really little people, the children, I have a sense will come even more to the forefront of study and understanding.  And I do think that we will one day find a way of looking at all of the individual stories holistically and developing appropriate applications for that knowledge  - undoubtedly impacting the overall landscape of each culture in which the stories reside.  

References

    Bertens, H. (2001). Literary theory: The basics. London: Routledge.
    Polkinghorne, D. E. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany: State University of New York Press.
    Rosenau, P. M. (1992). Post-modernism and the social sciences: Insights, inroads, and intrusions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.