1. NARRATIVE RESEARCH
CERISE CLARKE

2. WHAT IS A NARRATIVE?
• Narrative is the organization of events
that are presented in a story.
• The audience need and use the narrative
to make sense of things inside their head.
• Genre, form, character and time are the
elements which create a narrative.

3. TVZETAN TODOROV
• A Bulgarian theorist.
• He came up with the idea
that all narratives start
with equilibrium where
everything is balanced.
Then a problem comes
along where the balanced
is disrupted and to close
the problem is
solved, returning to the
equilibrium.
Equilibrium Disequilibrium (problem) New equilibrium

4. Vladimir Propp
•Russian
•Born 17th April 1895
•Died At 75
•Russian& Soviet Formalist
Vladimir Propp developed a character theory
for studying media texts and
productions, which indicates that there
were 7 broad character types in the 100
tales he analysed.
He studies Russian fairytales and discovered
that in stories there were always 8 types
of characters evident. These are: the
hero, the villain, the donor, the
dispatcher, the false hero, the helper, the
princess and her father.

5. Hero Father
Mentor Person with
Male or female is
Teaches/aids the authority
usually looking for
hero position who
something or trying
to solve a offers the
problem/mystery heroine (prize)
Villain
Characters Donor
Simply, conflic
ts with the Give the hero
hero something to help
them along. Can
be anything from
a map to a car
Heroine Helper
The ‘prize’ for The hero’s
the hero in sidekick, eg Robin
what ever task to Batman or
they are on Donkey to Shrek
(above)

6. CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS
•French
•Born 28th November 1908
•Died 30 October 2009(Aged 100)
Levi-Strauss looked at narrative structure in terms of binary
oppositions.
Binary oppositions are sets of opposite values which reveal the
structure of media texts. An example would be GOOD and EVIL
– we understand the concept of GOOD as being the opposite of
EVIL.
Levi –Strauss was not so interested in looking at the order in
which events were arranged in the plot. He looked instead for
deeper arrangements of themes. For example, if we look at
Science Fiction films we can identify a series of binary
oppositions.

8. TERMS
• Equilibrium – when something is in balance. (the
beginning of a story)
• Disequilibrium – lack of balance. (when a
problem/conflict comes up in the narrative)
• New equilibrium – when balanced is returned (when the
problem is solved)
• Binary opposition – each main event has an equal and
opposite reaction. (old & young people, good & evil
ect)
• Flashbacks – looking back on an event (holding a photo
then fading into a past event)
• Flashforwards – looking forward to an event that is yet
to happen (a character daydreaming thinking ahead)