Narrative theories

2.  Narrative refers to the formal aspects used in order to
tell a story.
 A story is the narration of a series of events
conveniently organised in a timeline, in order to make
sense.

3.  A conventional narrative
is divided in three acts:
beginning, middle and
end)
 The most conventional
narrative structure is that
of a linear narrative
(chronological order)
with a closed ending
(resolution of the
conflict/end)

5.  Plot
 Story
 Narrative The way in which the story is actually told. The formal
aspects of the storytelling.
A form of text, regardless of medium, describing a
sequence of events, caused and experienced by
characters, conveniently structured into a time
sequence in order to make sense.
Elements and generic conventions from which the
story will be made.

6.  Plot
 Story
 Narrative The way in which the story is actually told. The formal
aspects of the storytelling.
A form of text, regardless of medium, describing a
sequence of events, caused and experienced by
characters, conveniently structured into a time
sequence in order to make sense.
Elements and generic conventions from which the
story will be made.

7.  Plot
 Story
 Narrative The way in which the story is actually told. The formal
aspects of the storytelling.
A form of text, regardless of medium, describing a
sequence of events, caused and experienced by
characters, conveniently structured into a time
sequence in order to make sense.
Elements and generic conventions from which the
story will be made.

8.  Plot
 Story
 Narrative The way in which the story is actually told. The formal
aspects of the storytelling.
A form of text, regardless of medium, describing a
sequence of events, caused and experienced by
characters, conveniently structured into a time
sequence in order to make sense.
Elements and generic conventions from which the
story will be made.

9. We are going to study four main narrative theorists:
1. TzvetanTodorov
2. Vladimir Propp
3. Claude Levi-Strauss
4. Roland Barthes

10.  TzvetanTodorov (born March
1, 1939) is a Franco-bulgarian
philosopher. His main field of
work is literary theory, culture
theory and thought history.
 His most significant essay on
narrative theory is Introduction
à la littérature fantastique
(1970), translated by Richard
Howard as The Fantastic: A
Structural Approach to a
Literary Genre in 1973.

11.  The terms used byTodorov to define the three main parts of
a conventional narrative structure are:
Equilibrium – the balanced normality of the world previous
to the story.
Disequilibrium – Disruption/Recognition of disruption.
The unbalanced world between the
problem and the climax.
New Equilibrium – Attempt to repair/Reinstatement.A
return to normality at the end –
returning the world to balanced state.

12. Equilibrium Disequilibrium New equilibrium
Disruption Recognition Attempt Reinstatement

13.  VladimirYakovlevich Propp (1895 –
1970) was a Russian structuralist scholar
who analysed the basic plot
components of Russian folk tales to
identify the simplest irreducible
narrative elements which are common
to most stories.
 His Morphology of the FolkTale was
published in Russian in 1928; although
it was generally unnoticed in theWest
until it was translated in the 1950s.

14. Conventional narratives use a range of archetypal character roles all
designed to help serve the narrative.
 The Hero(es) – Individual(s) whose quest is to restore the
equilibrium.
 The Villain(s) – who opposes or actively blocks the hero’s quest.
Individual(s) whose task is to disrupt the equilibrium.
 The Dispatcher(s) – Individual(s) who sends the hero on his/her
quest.
 The Donor(s) – Individual(s) who gives the hero(s) something;
advice, information or an object.The donor provides the hero
with training or knowledge.
 The Helper(s) – Individual(s) who aids the hero in his
quest/mission.
 The Princess/the Prince – Individual(s) which need help,
protecting and saving.
 The Father/The King –Who acts to reward the hero for his effort.
 The false hero/anti-hero – Individual(s) who set out to undermine
the hero's quest by pretending to aid them. Often unmasked at
the end of the story.

15. Can you identify the archetypal character
roles in the following films?

17. Identify the archetypal characters in Shrek?
The Hero The helper The helper
The helper The villain
The princess
The King The false hero

21.  Claude Lévi-Strauss (28 November
1908 – 30 October 2009) was a
French anthropologist and
ethnologist, and has been called the
"father of modern anthropology".
 Lévi-Strauss sought to apply the
structural linguistics of Ferdinand
de Saussure to anthropology.
 Ferdinand de Saussure’s work had
given rise, in France, to the
"structuralist movement", which
spurred the Marxist structuralism
of Louis Althusser or the work of
the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan,
among others.

22.  Structuralism is the study of the hidden rules that govern any structure.
Levi-Strauss thought that the way humans perceive the world they live in
could be understood by studying the use of myths and fables from around
the world.
 Lévi-Strauss's theories are set forth in The Structural Study of Myth (1955)
and Structural Anthropology (1958). He considers culture a system of
symbolic communication. In his book The Raw and the Cooked, Levi-Strauss
goes further to discuss how binary pairs, particularly binary opposites, form
the basic structure of all human cultures, all human ways of thought, and all
human signifying systems. If there is a common "human nature" or "human
condition," from this perspective, it's that everyone everywhere thinks--and
structures their worlds in terms of binary pairs of opposites. Even more
importantly, in every binary pair, one term is favored and the other
disfavored: cooked is better than raw, good is better than evil, light is better
than dark, etc.

23.  The anthropologist Levi-Strauss
identified that narratives work
because they are often based around
the conflict between binary
oppositions.
 There is an inherent opposition
between a hero and a villain,
between imprisonment and freedom,
between lies and truth.
 The problems in a narrative stem
from the conflict between one force
and another and it is because of these
conflicts that a narrative moves
forward.

24. “What is important is not the identity of
any individual unit, but the relation
between any two units compared in a
binary pair. Binary pairs, particularly
binary opposites, form the basic
structure of all human cultures, all
human ways of thought, and all human
signifying systems…Even more
importantly, in every binary pair, one
term is favoured and the other
disfavoured.” (Levi-Strauss, Claude.
The structural study of Myth in Journal
of American Folklore,Vol. 68, No. 270,
Myth: A Symposium (Oct. - Dec., 1955),
pp. 428-444)

25.  What interested him was how much of our world
is described in terms of opposites (or binary
oppositions)-night/day, good/bad, light/dark.
 Think about different examples, from the Bible to
action films or news reports (the good guy/the
bad guy) to washing powder or cleaning products
adverts (before/after) and you will find countless
examples of this narrative structure in every sort
of media text.

26. Binary opposites
 Villain………….Hero
 Man……………Woman
 Love…………...Hate
 Truth……...……Lies
 Good…….…….Evil
 Right….…….....Wrong
 Intelligence…....Brute force
 Law …….……..Crime

27.  What are the main binary oppositions in an
action-adventure film? And in a rom-com?

28. What are the main
binary oppositions in
this film poster?

29. What are the main binary
oppositions in this film poster?

30. What are the main binary
oppositions in this film poster?

31. What are the main
binary oppositions in
this film poster?

32. Each one of the
heroes of these films
has their opposite
(the villain)

33.  What are the main binary oppositions in Shrek? Explain your answer.
The Hero
The villain
The princess The King
The false hero

34.  Can you think of an example taken from current
newspapers in which a binary opposition is
used in order to stablish a narrative that
supports a specific ideology?

35. Levi-Strauss selected bibliography:
 Levi-Strauss, Claude. The structural study of Myth in Journal of American
Folklore,Vol. 68, No. 270, Myth: A Symposium (Oct. - Dec., 1955), pp.
428-444
 Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structure and Form: Reflection on aWork byVladimir
Propp.
Extended reading:
 Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Mythologiques.
 Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology.
 Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Elementary Structures of Kinship.
 Lévi-Strauss, Claude. TristesTropiques.
 Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind.

36. Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980)
was a French literary theorist,
philosopher, linguist, critic, and
semiotician.
Barthes' ideas explored a diverse
range of fields and he influenced
the development of schools of
theory including structuralism,
semiotics, social theory and
anthropology.
Influenced by Ferdinand de
Saussure’s structural linguistics.

37. Roland Barthes argues in his text, S/Z (a 1970 structuralist analysis of Sarrasine, the short story by
French realist novelist Honoré de Balzac) that every narrative is interwoven with multiple narrative
codes. He identifies five main narrative codes:
 Proairetic code (the voice of empirics):The code of the sequences of cumulative actions which
constitute the events of the narrative.
 Hermeneutic code (the voice of truth):The code of the enigmas and its interpretation.
 Cultural or referential code (the voice of science [or knowledge]): Though all codes are
cultural we reserve this designation for the storehouse of knowledge we use in interpreting
everyday experience. References to a science or a body of knowledge (physical,
physiological, medical, psychological, literary, historical, etc.)
 Semic [or Connotative code] (the voice of the person):The accumulation of connotations.
Semes, sequential thoughts, traits and actions bear concealed meanings (connotations).
“Connotation is concealed beneath the regular s0und of ‘sentences’”
 Symbolic code (voice of the symbol): Binary oppositions or themes.The inscription into the
text of the antithesis central to the organization of the cultural code.

38.  The proairetic code refers
to the actions that the
characters take to solve
the conflict/problem in the
narrative.
 These actions conform the
characters’ behaviour
(according to their role) and
the storyline of the
narrative.
Proairetic
code

39.  Conventional narrative offers gratifications for audiences and
particular emotions are generated by the narrative.
 Problems and their complications create enigmas for the
audience.We tend not to be satisfied by a narrative unless all
"loose ends" are tied, the final truth is revealed and the
reader/audience achieves closure.
 The audience are engaged by the enigma, and are naturally
curious as to find out what actions will be undertaken and
how the problems will be solved (hermeneutics: interpretation
of the text)

40.  Depending on the genre, particular emotions are generated by
the enigmas in the narrative.Audiences feel:
 Fear in a horror narrative
 Excitement in an action narrative
 Empathy, sympathy and/or identification in a soap or drama
 Suspense and tension in a thriller narrative
 These emotional responses draw the audience into a story and
then encourage them to stay.
 The resolution of the enigma is the reward the audience receives
at the end of the emotional journey the narrative has taken them
on, and provides comfort and reassurance as closure is achieved.

41. As Barthes explains, "The variety of these terms (their inventive range) attests
to the considerable labour the discourse must accomplish if it hopes to arrest
the enigma, to keep it open“
In order to create and maintain interest, some devices are used to conceal
the final truth (the resolution to the enigma):
 The snare – a deliberate avoidance of the truth. A tease or an implication
that sends the audience down a wrong path.
 Partial answers/Suspended answers – revealing some of the final
truth(s)This is used to actually increase suspense.
 Equivocation – a mixture of truth and snare.
 Jamming – Suggesting that the problem may be unsolvable.

42.  The cultural code (or referential
code) designates any element in a
narrative that refers "to a science or
a body of knowledge“.
 In other words, the cultural codes
tend to point to our shared
knowledge about the way the world
works.
 The "gnomic" code is one of the
cultural codes and refers to those
cultural codes that are tied to clichés,
proverbs, or popular sayings of
various sorts

43.  This code refers to the connotations within the story that gives
additional meaning over the basic denotative meaning of the
words and actions.
 It is by the use of semes*, that this extended meaning can be
applied to words, objects and actions that authors can paint rich
pictures with relatively limited text.
 *seme (plural semes or semata: linguistics, semiotics)Anything
which serves for any purpose as a substitute for an object of which
it is, in some sense, a representation or sign.

44.  The symbolic code refers to organized systems of semes (Any
element in the narrative which serves for any purpose as
a representation or sign of an abstract concept, an idea, an object,
a person, etc.)
 When two connotative elements are placed in opposition or
brought together by the narrator, they form an element of the
SymbolicCode.
 The symbolic code can be difficult to distinguish from the
semantic code and Barthes is not always clear on the distinction
between these two codes; the easiest way to think of the symbolic
code is as a "deeper" structural principle that organizes semantic
meanings, usually by way of antitheses or by way of mediations
between antithetical terms.

45. Symbol for the philosophical and literary
tradition. The Thespian Artist is an Englishman
(sign for the Old World=European culture vs. the
New World=America) He recites from memory
Shakespeare, the Old Testament, Shelley and the
Gettysburg Address, all signs for literature,
poetry and politics (art and philosophy)
He appears in the posters as The Wingless
Thrush, as he is just a head (sign for a
brain/mind and symbol for knowledge) with no
arms or legs (signs for the body’s practical
functionality), signifying the apparent lack of
practical value of art and philosophy.
The audience is a sign for the uneducated
masses of the New World and their constant
search for instant gratification without any
intellectual effort. The mass audience is a
symbol for the cultural shift taking place in the
transition from modernity to postmodernity, as
well as the current cinema and theatre audiences
and their preference for the spectacularism of
entertainment products such as blockbuster films
and musicals, instead of more sophisticated and
intellectually challenging texts.
The “mathematical” chicken symbolises both
the commercial, profit driven nature of business,
always quantified in mathematical terms instead
of being qualified by its cultural value or
relevance, as well as the shift in the transmission
of culture characteristic of the digital age through
the use of algorithms (such as political
propaganda feeds in social media, films on online
audio-visual platforms such as Netflix, etc.)
It symbolises the “Disneyfication” of the cultural
industries (in Adorno’s, Horkheimer’s and
Hesmondhalgh’s terms).
The impresario symbolises the materialistic
nature of business. He is not interested in the
cultural value of literature, poetry or philosophy,
but on the revenue that a business can return
and its profit margins.
He is portrayed a simple man with simple
passions (alcohol and sex) who is exclusively
concerned with money. He symbolises the
ruthlessness and lack of moral principles of the
capitalist logics of the business world.
The “mathematical” chicken is a symbol for
the mass audience’s preference for mindless
entertainment.
In its show, the chicken picks numbers 22 and
11. That is an intertextual reference to Chapter
and Verse of The Book of Revelations (22:11):
“Let the one who does wrong continue to do
wrong; let the vile person continue to be vile; let
the one who does right continue to do right; and
let the holy person continue to be holy.”
The short film Meal Ticket is story conceived as
a symbolic narrative. Every character and event
bears a deep symbolic meaning. Additionally,
the narrative uses a number of intertextual
references from Romantic poetry (Shelley’s
Ozymandias and Shakespeare’s Sonnets), to
mythological literature (the Old Testament’s
Genesis and New Testament’s Book of
Revelations, the first and last books of the
Bible) as well as political texts (Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address)