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Narrative
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A narrative or story is a constructive format (as a work of speech, writing, song, film, television,
video games, photography or theatre) that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events.
The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus,

Current events

"knowing" or "skilled".[1]

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"The story is a imaginative product, which is shown as reality in the own world." [2] The word "story"
may be used as a synonym of "narrative", but can also be used to refer to the sequence of events
described in a narrative. A narrative can also be told by a character within a larger narrative. An
important part of narration is the narrative mode, the set of methods used to communicate the
narrative through a process narration.

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Along with exposition, argumentation and description, narration, broadly defined, is one of four
rhetorical modes of discourse. More narrowly defined, it is the fiction-writing mode whereby the
narrator communicates directly to the reader.
Stories are an important aspect of culture. Many works of art and most works of literature tell stories;
indeed, most of the humanities involve stories. Owen Flanagan of Duke University, a leading
consciousness researcher, writes that Evidence strongly suggests that humans in all cultures come
to cast their own identity in some sort of narrative form. We are inveterate storytellers.[3]
Stories are of ancient origin, existing in ancient Egyptian, ancient Greek, Chinese and Indian culture.
Stories are also a ubiquitous component of human communication, used as parables and examples
to illustrate points. Storytelling was probably one of the earliest forms of entertainment. Narrative may
also refer to psychological processes in self-identity, memory and meaning-making.
Semiotics begins with the individual building blocks of meaning called signs; and semantics, the way
in which signs are combined into codes to transmit messages. This is part of a general
communication system using both verbal and non-verbal elements, and creating a discourse with
different modalities and forms.
In On Realism in Art Roman Jakobson argues that literature does not exist as a separate entity. He
and many other semioticians prefer the view that all texts, whether spoken or written, are the same,
except that some authors encode their texts with distinctive literary qualities that distinguish them
from other forms of discourse. Nevertheless, there is a clear trend to address literary narrative forms
as separable from other forms. This is first seen in Russian Formalism through Victor Shklovsky's
analysis of the relationship between composition and style, and in the work of Vladimir Propp, who
analysed the plots used in traditional folk-tales and identified 31 distinct functional components. [4]
This trend (or these trends) continued in the work of the Prague School and of French scholars such
as Claude Lvi-Strauss and Roland Barthes. It leads to a structural analysis of narrative and an
increasingly influential body of modern work that raises important epistemological questions:

Norsk (nynorsk)

What is text?

Polski

What is its role in the contextual culture?

Portugus

How is it manifested as art, cinema, theatre, or literature?

Why is narrative divided into different genres, such as poetry, short stories, and novels?

Svenska

Why are narratives put into literature?

Tagalog

Contents [hide]

Trke

1 Literary theory
2 Narrative aesthetics

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Narrative - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

3 Narration as a fiction-writing mode

4 Psychological narrative
5 Narrative case studies in the social sciences
6 Narrative in music
7 Historiography
8 See also
8.1 Other specific applications
9 References
10 Further reading
11 External links

Literary theory

[edit]

For general purposes in semiotics and literary theory, a "narrative" is a story or part of a story. It may
be spoken, written or imagined, and it will have one or more points of view representing some or all
of the participants or observers. In stories told orally, there is a person telling the story, a narrator
whom the audience can see and/or hear, who adds layers of meaning to the text non-verbally. The
narrator also has the opportunity to monitor the audience's response to the story and modify the
manner of the telling to clarify content or enhance listener interest. This is distinguishable from the
written form in which the author must gauge the readers' likely reactions when they are decoding the
text and make a final choice of words in the hope of achieving the desired response.
Whatever the form, the content may concern real-world people and events; this is termed "personal
experience narrative". When the content is fictional, different conventions apply. The text projects a
narrative voice, but the narrator belongs to an invented or imaginary world, not the real one. The
narrator may be one of the characters in the story. Roland Barthes describes such characters as
"paper beings", and fiction comprises their narratives of personal experience as created by the
author. When their thoughts are included, this is termed internal focalisation: when each character's
mind focuses on a particular event, the text reflects his or her reactions.
In written forms the reader hears the narrator's voice both through the choice of content and the style
the author can encode voices for different emotions and situations, and the voices can be either
overt or covert , and through clues that reveal the narrator's beliefs, values and ideological stances,
as well as the author's attitude towards people, events and things. It is customary to distinguish a
first-person from a third-person narrative: Grard Genette uses the terms homodiegetic and
heterodiegetic narrative respectively. A homodiegetic narrator describes his or her personal and
subjective experiences as a character in the story. Such a narrator cannot know anything more about
what goes on in the minds of any of the other characters than is revealed through their actions; a
heterodiegetic narrator describes the experiences of the characters who appear in the story and, if
the story's events are seen through the eyes of a third-person internal focaliser, this is termed a
figural narrative. In some stories, the author may be overtly omniscient, and both employ multiple
points of view and comment directly on events as they occur.
Tzvetan Todorov (1969) coined the term "narratology" for the structuralist analysis of any given
narrative into its constituent parts to determine their function(s) and relationships. For these purposes,
the story is what is narrated as usually a chronological sequence of themes, motives and plot lines;
hence, the plot represents the logical and causal structure of a story, explaining why its events occur.
The term discourse is used to describe the stylistic choices that determine how the narrative text or
performance finally appears to the audience. One of the stylistic decisions may be to present events
in non-chronological order, using flashbacks, for example, to reveal motivations at a dramatic
moment.

Narrative aesthetics

[edit]

The art of narrative is by definition a highly aesthetic enterprise. There are a number of aesthetic
elements that typically interact in well-developed stories. Such elements include the essential idea of
narrative structure, with identifiable beginnings, middles and ends, or exposition-development-climaxdenouement, with important inciting incidents, normally constructed into coherent plot lines; a strong
focus on temporality that includes retention of the past, attention to present action and
protention/future anticipation; a substantial focus on characters and characterization which is

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arguably the most important single component of the novel (David Lodge The Art of Fiction 67); a
given hetergloss of different voices dialogically at play, the sound of the human voice, or many
voices, speaking in a variety of accents, rhythms and registers (Lodge The Art of Fiction 97; see
also the theory of Mikhail Bakhtin for expansion of this idea); possesses a narrator or narrator-like
voice, which by definition addresses and interacts with reading audiences (see Reader Response
theory); communicates with a Wayne Booth-esque rhetorical thrust, a dialectic process of
interpretation, which is at times beneath the surface, conditioning a plotted narrative, and other at
other times much more visible, arguing for and against various positions; relies substantially on
now-standard aesthetic figuration, particularly including the use of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche
and irony (see Hayden White, Metahistory for expansion of this idea); is often enmeshed in
intertextuality, with copious connections, references, allusions, similarities, parallels, etc. to other
literatures; and commonly demonstrates an effort toward bildungsroman, a description of identity
development with an effort to evince becoming in character and community.
Narrative Essay[1]

Narration as a fiction-writing mode

[edit]

As with many words in the English language, narration has more than one meaning. In its broadest
context narration encompasses all written fiction.
As one of the four rhetorical modes of discourse, the purpose of narration is to tell a story or to
narrate an event or series of events. Narrative may exist in a variety of forms, including biographies,
anecdotes, short stories and novels. In this context, all written fiction may be viewed as narration.
Narrowly defined, narration is the fiction-writing mode whereby the narrator is communicating directly
to the reader. If, however, the broad definition of narration includes all written fiction, and the narrow
definition is limited merely to that which is directly communicated to the reader, what comprises the
rest of written fiction? The remainder of written fiction would be in the form of any of the other fictionwriting modes, such as description, exposition, summarization, etc.

Psychological narrative

[edit]

Within philosophy of mind, the social sciences and various clinical fields including medicine, narrative
can refer to aspects of human psychology.[5] A personal narrative process is involved in a person's
sense of personal or cultural identity, and in the creation and construction of memories; it is thought
by some to be the fundamental nature of the self.[6][7] The breakdown of a coherent or positive
narrative has been implicated in the development of psychosis and mental disorder, and its repair
said to play an important role in journeys of recovery.[8] Narrative Therapy is a school of (family)
psychotherapy.
Illness narratives are a way for a person affected by an illness to make sense of his or her
experiences.[9] They typically follow one of several set patterns: restitution, chaos, or quest
narratives. In the restitution narrative, the person sees the illness as a temporary detour. The primary
goal is to return permanently to normal life and normal health. These may also be called cure
narratives. In the chaos narrative, the person sees the illness as a permanent state that will
inexorably get worse, with no redeeming virtues. This is typical of diseases like Alzheimer's disease:
the patient gets worse and worse, and there is no hope of returning to normal life. The third major
type, the quest narrative, positions the illness experience as an opportunity to transform oneself into
a better person through overcoming adversity and re-learning what is most important in life; the
physical outcome of the illness is less important than the spiritual and psychological transformation.
This is typical of the triumphant view of cancer survivorship in the breast cancer culture. [9]

Narrative case studies in the social sciences

[edit]

Narrative is often used in case study research in the social sciences. Here it has been found that the
dense, contextual, and interpenetrating nature of social forces uncovered by detailed narratives is
often more interesting and useful for both social theory and social policy than other forms of social
inquiry. Prominent social scientists have pointed out that a social science expressed in terms of
narrative case studies would provide better access for policy intervention than the present social
science of variables.[10]

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Narrative in music

[edit]

Linearity, is one of several narrative qualities that can be found in a musical composition. [11] As
noted by American musicologist, Edward Cone, narrative terms are also present in the analytical
language about music. [12] The different components of a fugue- subject, answer, exposition,
discussion and summary- can be cited as an example. [13] However, there are several views on the
concept of narrative in music and the role it plays. One theory is that of Theodore Adorno, who has
suggested that music recites itself, is its own context, narrates without narrative. [13] Another, is that
of Carolyn Abbate, who has suggested that certain gestures experienced in music constitute a
narrating voice.[12] Still others have argued that narrative is a semiotic enterprise that can enrich
musical analysis. [13] The French musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez contends that the narrative,
strictly speaking, is not in the music, but in the plot imagined and constructed by the listeners.[14] He
argues that discussing music in terms of narrativity is simply metaphorical and that the imagined plot
may be influenced by the works title or other programmatic information provided by the composer.
[14] However, Abbate has revealed numerous examples of musical devices that function as narrative

voices, by limiting musics ability to narrate to rare moments that can be identified by their bizarre
and disruptive effect. [14] Various theorists share this view of narrative appearing in disruptive rather
than normative moments in music. The final word is yet to be said, regarding narratives in music, as
there is still much to be determined.

Historiography

[edit]

In historiography, according to Lawrence Stone, narrative has traditionally been the main rhetorical
device used by historians. In 1979, at a time when the new Social History was demanding a socialscience model of analysis, Stone detected a move back toward the narrative. Lawrence Stone started
it in 1979. He defined narrative: it is organized chronologically; it is focused on a single coherent
story; it is descriptive rather than analytical; it is concerned with people not abstract circumstances;
and it deals with the particular and specific rather than the collective and statistical. He reported that,
"More and more of the 'new historians' are now trying to discover what was going on inside people's
heads in the past, and what it was like to live in the past, questions which inevitably lead back to the
use of narrative."[15]
Historians committed to a social science approach, however, have criticized the narrowness of
narrative and its preference for anecdote over analysis, and clever examples rather than statistical
regularities. [16]

See also

[edit]

Applied Drama

Narratology

Case study

Narrator

Fiction-writing modes
Folklore

Narreme as the basic unit of narrative

structure

Knowledge management

Organizational storytelling

Literary technique

Organization story

Monogatari

Phronetic social science

Narrative structure

Scenario
Storytelling

Other specific applications

[edit]

A narrative case study is a case study that tells a story.

Narrative environment is a contested term that has been used for techniques of architectural or
exhibition design in which 'stories are told in space' and also for the virtual environments in which
computer games are played and which are invented by the computer game authors.
Narrative film is film which uses filmed reality to tell a story, often as a feature film.
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Narrative history is a genre of factual historical writing that uses chronology as its framework (as
opposed to a thematic treatment of a historical subject).
Narrative poetry is poetry that tells a story.
A narrative verdict is a verdict available to coroners in England and Wales following an inquest.
Metanarrative, sometimes also known as master- or grand narrative, is a higher-level cultural
narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge and experience you've had in life.

References

[edit]

1. ^ Oxford English Dictionary Online, "narrate,

v.". Oxford University Press, 2007
2. ^ Ranjbar Vahid. The Narrator, Iran:Baqney.
2011
3. ^ Owen Flanagan Consciousness
Reconsidered 198
4. ^ Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folk Tale,
p 25, ISBN 0-292-78376-0
5. ^ Hevern, V. W. (2004, March). Introduction
and general overview. Narrative psychology:
Internet and resource guide . Le Moyne
College. Retrieved September 28, 2008.
6. ^ Dennett, Daniel C (1992) The Self as a
Center of Narrative Gravity.
7. ^ Dan McAdams (2004). "Redemptive Self:
Narrative Identity in America Today" . The
Self and Memory 1 (3): 95116 .
8. ^ Gold E (August 2007). "From narrative
wreckage to islands of clarity: Stories of
recovery from psychosis" . Can Fam
Physician 53 (8): 12715. PMC1949240 .
PMID17872833 . Hyden, L.-C. & Brockmeier,
J. (2009). Health, Illness and Culture: Broken
Narratives. New York: Routledge.
9. ^ a b Gayle A. Sulik (2010). Pink Ribbon Blues:

How Breast Cancer Culture Undermines

Women's Health. USA: Oxford University
Press. pp.321326. ISBN0-19-974045-3.
OCLC535493589 .
10. ^ Bent Flyvbjerg, 2011, "Case Study,"
in
Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln,
eds., The Sage Handbook of Qualitative
Research, 4th Edition (Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage), pp. 301-316.
11. ^ Kenneth Gloag and David Beard, Musicology:
The Key Concepts (New York: Routledge,
2009), 114
12. ^ a b Beard and Gloag, Musicology, 113-117
13. ^ a b c Beard and Gloag, Musicology, 115
14. ^ a b c Beard and Gloag, Musicology, 116
15. ^ Lawrence Stone, "The Revival of Narrative:
Reflections on a New Old History," Past and
Present 85 (1979), pp 3-24, quote on 13
16. ^ J. Morgan Kousser, The Revivalism of
Narrative: A Response to Recent Criticisms of
Quantitative History, Social Science History vol
8, no. 2 (Spring 1984): 13349; Eric H.
Monkkonen, The Dangers of Synthesis,
American Historical Review 91, no. 5
(December 1986): 114657.

1. Kelley, Stephanie R, Rumors in Iraq: A Guide to Winning Hearts and Minds. Storming Media,
2004. ISBN 1423522494
2. Asimov, Nanette. "Researchers help U.S. Military track, defuse rumors."
Chronicle. October 14, 2011.

San Francisco

3. Hardin, Jayson. The Rumor Bomb: Theorizing the convergence of New and Old Trends in
Mediated U.S. Politics, Southern Review: Communication, Politics & Culture 39, no. I (2006):
84-110
4. New cinema chair studies "narrative IEDs"

. SF State News. 09/29/11

5. DOC Film Institute

Further reading

[edit]

Bal, Mieke. (1985). Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: Toronto University Press.
Clandinin, D. J. & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research.
Jossey-Bass.
Flyvbjerg, B. (2001). Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). "Five Misunderstandings About Case Study Research"
21945. doi:10.1177/1077800405284363 .
Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method
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. Qualitative Inquiry 12 (2):

Narrative - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Genette, Grard. (1980 [1972]).
Oxford: Blackwell.

. (Translated by Jane E. Lewin).

Hunter, Kathryn Montgomery (1991). "Doctors' Stories: The Narrative Structure of Medical Knowledge."
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Jakobson, Roman. (1921). "On Realism in Art" in Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist.
(Edited by Ladislav Matejka & Krystyna Pomorska). The MIT Press.
Labov, William. (1972). Chapter 9: The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax. In: "Language in
the Inner City." Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. (1958 [1963]). Anthropologie Structurale/Structural Anthropology. (Translated by
Claire Jacobson & Brooke Grundfest Schoepf). New York: Basic Books.
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. (1962 [1966]). La Pense Sauvage/The Savage Mind (Nature of Human Society).
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. Mythologiques I-IV (Translated by John Weightman & Doreen Weightman)
Linde, Charlotte (2001). Chapter 26: Narrative in Institutions. In: Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen & Heidi
E. Hamilton (ed.s) "The Handbook of Discourse Analysis." Oxford & Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Norrick, Neal R. (2000). "Conversational Narrative: Storytelling in Everyday Talk." Amsterdam &
Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Ranjbar Vahid. (2011) The Narrator, Iran:Baqney
Quackenbush, S.W. (2005). Remythologizing culture: Narrativity, justification, and the politics of
personalization.
Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61, 67-80.
Polanyi, Livia. (1985). "Telling the American Story: A Structural and Cultural Analysis of Conversational
Storytelling." Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishers Corporation.
Shklovsky, Viktor. (1925 [1990]). Theory of Prose. (Translated by Benjamin Sher). Normal, IL: Dalkey
Archive Press.
Todorov, Tzvetan. (1969). Grammaire du Dcameron. The Hague: Mouton.
Toolan, Michael (2001). "Narrative: a Critical Linguistic Introduction"
Turner, Mark (1996). "The Literary Mind"
White, Hayden (2010). The Fiction of Narrative: Essays on History, Literature, and Theory, 1957-2007.
Ed. Robert Doran. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

External links
Some Ideas about Narrative
an academic perspective

[edit]
notes on narrative from

Wikiversity has learning

materials about storytelling

Manfred Jahn. Narratology: A Guide to the Theory of

Narrative
Narrative and Referential Activity

Narrative

vde
Character
Plot

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Antagonist/Archenemy Characterization Deuteragonist False protagonist Focal character

Foil character Protagonist Supporting character Tritagonist Viewpoint character
Climax Conflict Dnouement Dialogue Dramatic structure Exposition Falling action
Plot device Subplot Trope-Clich

Setting

Dystopia Fictional city Fictional country Fictional location Fictional universe Utopia

Theme

Leitmotif Moral Motif

Style

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Suspension of disbelief Symbolism Tone

Form

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Genre

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Horror Magic realism Mystery Paranoid Philosophical Political Romance Saga Satire
Science Speculative Superhero Thriller Urban

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Narrator
Tense

Alternating person First-person Second-person Third-person (Limited Objective Omniscient

Subjective) Stream of consciousness The narrative types of the narrator Unreliable
Past tense Present tense Future tense

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