Tzvetan Todorov’s
Narratology
2003/10/7
Outline
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General Questions
Narratology and Todorov
“The Structure of Narrative”
Examples
General Questions
What are the possible basic
structures of narratives?
 What are the functions in getting the
basic structures? And the possible
limitations?
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Structuralist Narratology
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Narratology – the science of narrative;
popularized in 1970’s.
Contemporary narratology includes
comparative narratolgy, theories of
authorship, enunciation, action, story and
narration, reception, self-referentiality and
intertextuality.
Applied narratology: psychoanalysis,
gender studies, reader-response,
ideological critique.
Narratology
Social contexts,
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History
cultural conventions
3. Point-of-view
authors
narrator
5.
semiologoist,
marxists
narrative
reader
4. readerresponse
Literary
Traditions
2. Russian
formalists
Formal analytic
frameworks
(literary, linguistic,
interdisciplinary)
Martin 29
Structuralist Narratology: Major
Theorists
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Levi Strauss – four terms (2 sets of binaries)
V. Propp –7 spheres of actions (Villain, hero, false
hero, sought-for person, etc.) and 31 functions
out of Russain fairy tales
T. Todorov –focuses more on syntax;
Greimas –focuses on semantics (actants—
Subject/Object, Sender/Receiver,
Helper/Opponent, and 3 structures—contractual,
performative, disjunctive)
Claude Bremond -- virtuality (a situation opening
a possibility); actualization or nonactualization of
the possibility; achievement or nonachievement.
Roland Barthes – 5 different codes (S/Z).
etc.
Structuralist Narratology: Possible
Criticisim
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Reductive;
too static and unable to characterize the very
engine that drives a narrative forward to its end,
the very dynamics that dictate its shape.
Ignore context –depends on how it is used;
The possibility of a coherent narratology, one that
successfully integrates the study of the what and
the way, has been put into question by
poststructuralist theorists and critics invoking the
so-called double logic of narrative (e.g. story and
discourse, event and meaning).
(Ref.
http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory
/narratology.html )
T. Todorov
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3 aspects of the narrative: semantic,
syntactic and verbal (Todorov’s focus is
more on syntax.)
Grammar of narrative –sentence structure
with the following basic units:
1. Propositions and sequences//sentences
and paragraphs
2. parts of speech – characters as nouns;
their attributes as adjectives, actions as
verbs.
T. Todorov:
“Structural Analsys of Narrative”
Outline
1. Structural approach to literature
defined;
2. Exemplified by his analysis of plot
in Decameron;
3. The nature of narrative and the
principles of its analysis.
I. Structural approach to literature
defined
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Theoretic but not descriptive, logical but not
spatial. (2099)
Different from both Marxism (external, an
abstract structure out side of the work) and New
Criticism (internal).
Structuralism – “its object is the literary discourse
rather than works of literature, literature that is
virtual rather than real.” (2100).
New Criticism (description)—articulates a
paraphrase;
Structuralist (poetics) – lit. works  abstract
literary properties
I. Structural approach – further
compared with modernist views
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1)
2)
3)
Henry James – p. 2101 -- disagrees with 1)
isolating a text’s dialogue, description for
analysis; 2) disregarding the novel as ‘a living
thing, all one and continuous.’
T’s responses –
A theoretical concept (e.g. temperature) does
not need to exist in ‘a pure state’;
The fact that we find them (blood, muscle, etc)
together does not prevent us from
distinguishing them.)
Subjectivity is inevitable in studies of
humanities (or social science) but we can limit it.
II. Decameron
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From some stories he finds
Plot unit shown as a clause;
Characters as proper nouns; with adjectives;
three actions as verbs – violate, punish, avoid;
Actions with different statuses (e.g. negation)
Modality – legends –imperative, fairy tale–
optative, a wish;
perception
Relations between clauses (e.g. causal,
temporal, spatial);
common sequence of a group of stories
(punishment avoided)
II. Decameron (2)
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8. further analysis:
a. more concrete analysis of syntax
-- each clause can be written as an
entire sequence;
b. thematic study: study the
concrete actions;
c. rhetoric study: examines the
verbal medium
II. Decameron (3)
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His goal – not knowledge of
Decameron but an understanding of
literature and plot.
1) avoid punishment: From
equilibrium to a new equilibrium.
2) conversion
The story illustrates the superiority
of the individual over the social, or
nature over culture.
III. Conclusion
Literature and poetics
 (2106) Ambiguity in moving back
and forth between the two poles:
auto-reference and its object
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II. Grammar of Decameron
e.g. 3 adjectives – states, interior properties
and exterior conditions (status)
3 verbs – to ‘modify’ a situation, to
‘transgress,’ and to ‘punish.’
(3 modes—indicative, predictive and
obligatory, 3 relations between
propositions, 3 sequences)
Ambiguity – at both the levels of proposition
and sequence.
 Boccaccio – a defender of free enterprise
and even, . . . , of nascent capitalism.
T. Todorov:
Grammar of Decameron e.g.
Peronella’s story (of hiding her lover in
a barrel) –
X commits a misdeed  X modifies the
situation  X is not punished.
T. Todorov:
another example
Given by Robert Scholes
X – A+ (XA) opt X  Xa  XA
X = Boy
A = Love, to be loved by someone
A = to seek love, to woo
Opt X = Boy (X) wishes (opt)
- = negation of attributes: -A lack love
T. Todorov:
another example
Given by Robert Scholes
XA + XB  X-C + YaX + (X-A+X-B  XC)
predX (XbY)predX+XA!  (XB+X-C)!imp
X –Eveline, Y – Frank,
A—a Dubliner, B—Celibate,
C—happy—respected, secure,
a – to offer an elopement; b-to accept
elopement
-- negative of attribute, not negative of verb
pred –predicts or expects, imp – is implied
by discourse
T. Todorov:
Questions for Discussion
1.
2.
What could be the advantages of
scientific and abstract descriptions?
Can we use Todorov’s method on a
novel such as Heart of Darkness?
Or a story from The Dubliners? A
Hollywood film, The Titanic?
Possible Attempts
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Chinese-American uses of traditional
legends (e.g. Fox, Tang-Ao) to re-write
canonical history  as initial causes for
disequilibrium; later confirmed to bring up
a new equilibrium;
How/where modification of situation is
possible.
• The Heart of Darkness: no equilibrium, or in
the final sympathy between Kurtz and Marlow.
• The Titanic: transgression  obstacles (human
and natural)  a new equilibrium in spiritual
love and death.
• The Working Girl: transgression by the women
(first the boss and the secretary), mutual
punishment, modification by the man.
T. Todorov: critique
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Jonathan Culler’s critique in Structuralist
Poetics
• – Modification can be done without the use of
ruse or deception.
• -- anything which modifies a situation will
receive the same structural description.
• “Todorov has not considered what facts his
theory is supposed to account for and so has not
considered the adequacy of the implicit
groupings which it establishes” (217)
• Another example – ‘the sentence “The man out
of the last house passed on his way home” can
be excluded from any account of the plot’ -since it has no consequences. (Barthes
kernels + satellites)
T. Todorov: critique (2)
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Seymour Chatman’s Story and Discourse
• p. 92 to transfer Propp’s and Todorov’s method
to any narrative macrostructure whatsoever is
questionable. Most do not have the necessary
overarching recurrences. The worlds of modern
fiction and cinema are not two-valued, black and
white, as are the Russian tales and the
Decameron.
• P. 93 Whatever success Scholes achieves in his
analysis of ‘Eveline’ depends on his knowledge of
the overriding thematic framework of the
Dubliners. “Why a Dubliner instead of an
Irishwoman or a European or a female? Why
celibate instead of poor. . .?”