ENG 6283: Narrative Theory

This week's readings were a struggle, to say the least. The problem I ran into in trying to understand the different arguments being put forth about what narrative is and how to identify it is the same problem I run into in many theory-intensive readings; namely, I don't see the point.  Don't get me wrong, when I go into these readings, I have a strong (if not terribly clear) sense that narrative is one of the most important ways human beings communicate with each other and understand the world. Therefore, to understand ourselves, our history, and each other, we need to understand how narrative works. In fact, in order to question, challenge, subsume, and replace old, harmful worldviews that have justified atrocities with new ones which might bring us together, we have to understand narrative so well that we can consciously use it. However, as is the case in many humanities disciplines, it can seem to the beginner like many of the theorists simply enjoy chasing their prov...

So I heard something funny on a podcast this weekend and it really struck a chord. The hosts, sweet souls that they are, were talking about people who become professors and how they must do it because they really care. After all, it’s not like they’re trying to get famous. I laughed, a lot, because seriously, what academic isn’t trying to make a name for themselves? Becoming faculty means writing and publishing, and getting your name out there while trying to break fresh ground on old material. That’s incredibly clear, given the amount of narrative theory ideas we read about this week.   And the more theories that are created, the more TERMS there are. They’re just everywhere… chrono-logic, fabula, sjuzet, catalyzers.   I mean, I get it, in the basics, but what kills me is how many  different ideas can be created to explain the how’s and why’s of story and narrative. I’ve tried to find a kind of unified theory of narrative theory, and so fa...

Disclaimer: This is almost as scattered as the arguments presented in this week’s readings. I won’t lie. This week’s readings had me stressed. I felt like I was trying to herd a group of kittens. Just when I had one idea pretty well down, five more would spring up and contradict everything I thought I had figured out. So when we are asked what is up with these narratologists, I’m inclined to ask the question, do they even know?? Seriously. For a bunch of incredibly smart people, no one seems to be able to find a way to describe the study of narrative in a way that makes everyone happy. This problem ultimately comes down to the question of what counts as a narrative and what gets left behind . I personally like Barthes’ inclusiveness when it comes to describing what could potentially be narrative. I think this is due to how I personally define a narrative – something that tells a story, regardless of the discourse, events, sjuzets, fa...

I can understand how theorists have come up with so many different terms for the same concepts, as well as so many different concepts for the same terms. It can be hard to assimilate the theory language of those who came before, especially when you have ingrained connotations for certain words that refuse to fit the accepted standard. There are a multitude of factors at work, like a scholar's understanding of writing or trends in genre or simply the evolution of language, all of which are environmental factors somewhat outside an individual's control. There's also personal bias and preference playing a role in how each narratologist chooses to define terms and term definitions. That being said, this is kinda ridiculous. It seems like each new narratologist we are introduced to wants to change the language of narratology. Granted, that is the easiest way to make your mark on a field: agree with a known scholar’s definitions, except… However, that causes a lot of discrep...

Once upon a time a long time ago, the first story happened. Was it spoken? Was it drawn on the wall of a cave? Was it danced? Was it sang? Did it have rhythm? Was it memorable? Who was the witness and who was the storyteller? Only God knows and that’s only if there’s a God. Millions of years later, not only were humans still sharing stories, some of these humans got curious about why we are drawn to stories, what deeper meanings lie in the forms we use to tell them, and how we could define the parts of these stories. You want to know what’s wrong with these narratologists? They’re putting clashing definitions on what we call stories. Each of them is interested in some sub-genre of narrative study, and it shows. For the life of me, I can’t get the definitions straight. So, let’s check our handy-dandy notebook and see what we’ve got. Ah, yes. “The narrative paradigm is a worldview of human communication,” says Walter Fisher. “Narrative is the process of grammatical structurati...

youtubeembedcode de w://add-link-exchange.com Okay, but really though, why can't all the narratologists just get along? I mean, they seem civil enough, I suppose. We haven't read any attack threads yet (though, I'm sure there are some out there). But it seems like nobody can agree on what's what. As Hernstein Smith stated, narrative theory is "afflicted...with a number of dualistic concepts and models" (138). Everyone has a different opinion in this school of theory. That said, what is a narrative? Honestly, I no longer have any idea. Why you ask? Because neither do any narratologists. They started out more or less referring to what we call a narrative today as a tragedy per Aristole. Nowadays, at least according to Abbott, it's "the representation of an event or series of events" (13) that consists of "story and narrative discourse" (19). McQuillian suggested it was a form of knowledge. Some theorists say narratives are o...

I want to break down some of the definitions of particular terms I encountered this past week- or at least the way I’ve come to interpret them. If you can bare with me through this, then I promise I’ve got a story for you that will make it worth your while. Also, while some of you may have heard this story before, I’ve never had a chance to tell it from my perspective, and I’m super excited to try this out! I apologize if it’s a complete failure. I actually typed this story earlier in the week because I needed to get it out. It’s amazing how different readings and just crazy events in our current history start to make your own stories (although, this isn’t really my story- I’m just trying to narrate it?) feel insignificant or worse- boring. Our readings this week made me start to think about how I can tell a story and keep its representation...exciting Based on my readings of Abbott and Meister, narratologists today would like to consider the definitions of narratology and narra...

As someone new to the study of narrative, I am frustrated by the discrepancies in definitions between narratologists. If narratology is the science of literature, an idea repeated often throughout our readings, then shouldn't there be clearly defined concepts for narratologists to work with? Imagine the chaos if chemists did not agree upon the foundational chemistry concepts.  Narratologists seem to agree on the bases of their study; they want to study the events within a story. However, each narratologist has their own interpretation and definition of concepts such as fabula, plot, sjuzet, and story. The various interpretations are not wildly different, either. They are just different enough. How I see it, narratology has a decent foundation but everyone within the field is working with different colored and sized bricks.  I think it finally clicked for me once I read Barbara Hernstein Smith's "Narrative Versions, Narrative Theories." She recognizes the complexit...

Quite frankly, I had to annotate these readings just to keep up with what was going on. Who was who? When was what? What was when? What did he just say? (And they’re all guys, right up to Barbara Hernstein Smith. What a relief she was, after all that … stuff!) But seriously. Under Levi-Strauss, I wrote, “Charts! Feels like math!” Beside Bal, I noted, “What is  fabula  again?” Aristotle: beginning, middle, end. Todorov. I couldn’t think of a thing to say about him. Now that old Russian structuralist, Propp, he traced the Oedipus myth across space and time, looking for the basically basic story, or narrative, underpinning them all. “Interesting!” I wrote, like Spock on  Star Trek  saying, “Fascinating!” Barthes, however, set my annotations into real motion. That is, he registered in my brain as familiar, sensible, comfortable. I sidetracked for a bit, though, to remind myself the difference between  la langue  and  le langage , e.g. the French ...

This question hints at what I think is the most fascinating aspect of narrative: how we understand the world and how we invest it with meaning. I think the fact that so many of us, academics included, have such a hard time answering this question hints at how mind-boggling and far-reaching it actually is. I will try my best to follow a few threads here.              If someone asked me, personally, what kind of story I’m living in, I would classify it as a character study within the larger narrative of an apocalyptic drama. This isn’t to say I feel myself to be some kind of hero or to paint my life as a sweeping epic; rather I mean to situate my own internal struggles within the very real existential crises I exist in as part of the human community. I think most people tend to think that when the troubles of the world reach such a grand scale, our personal problems and quests for meaning become dwarfed, insignificant even to...

The very ambitious goal of this blog is to answer the question “what kind of story are we in?” Now, I’m not sure if this prompt was meant to inspire an existential crisis, but it did and here we are. For some reason it made me instantly default to wondering if we’re all just in a giant simulation and that’s the kind of story we’re in. I decided not to expand on that idea, so, you’re welcome.  I want to dive right in, but I feel that I can’t answer this question effectively without first addressing some of the vocabulary I will be using in this blog. After reading the introduction of the Narrative Reader, I harborded a lot of mixed feelings about what constituted a “narrative” and a “story” and whether or not the distinction really needed to be made at all. For the purposes of this blog, the words “narrative” and “story” will be used interchangeably, as will “narrator” and “storyteller.” So many of the ideas we’ve encountered about narratives thus far show that trying to separ...

It’s like one of my buddies from high school always said: “Life sucks, and then you die.” We all have at least one thing in common – we’re all going to die. Maybe we die heroes, maybe we die alone in a hospital bed, maybe we die fast or slow. Whatever way our bodies break down, there’s a definite ending for all of us when our bodies ultimately fail. So, what kind of story are we in? We? This single word is throwing me off. I can tell you all about MY story, but I falter every time when it comes to OUR story. We’re born and we die. What happens in between is life, and that’s the story, at least on an individual level. But maybe it's true too on a mass scale, all of humanity.  I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m in all kinds of stories. My life, if it were in book form, would most likely be more of an anthology of short stories than a standard genre novel. Just in 27 years, I’ve got adoption, adventure, law-breaking, ghost-sightings (yes, really!), achievement, rape, a...

When I thought about what kind of story we're in, my instinctive response was a smartass remark about how this is clearly the precursor to a dystopian hellscape straight out of a YA novel. You know the kind, the ones that eventually get turned into a summer movie that erases any actual social commentary the author intended in favor of focusing on the inevitable love triangle. However, when I thought about it more, the part of me that once described myself as "a happy endings kind of girl" remembered one of those quotes with no real, traceable attribution: "Everything is okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end." This essence of this quote got me through some of the worst years of my life, and it still gives me a bit of hope now. The story we're in may be dystopian, but it's also unfinished. If life imitates art, this is the rising action, or maybe even the exposition. We just have to keep writing towards the denouement and hope that ...

The question, "what kind of story are we in?" has me in some sort of existential crisis. It is a simple question, really. It's a question I've been asked in grief therapy, at church (though it was what's your testimony?), and it's a question I have asked myself after reading a good book. I feel as though my answer changes for whoever is asking. For my grief counselor, my stories in therapy sessions always included my great-grandmother. Most of the time, she was the protagonist and I was a secondary character. Her passing was the reason I was there. I suppose I was in a different story in that time of my life than I am now, and even now, doesn't it change based on who I'm interacting with? If I think of my life as a giant narrative, I imagine it as a series. A broken, but generally pretty happy childhood, an angsty teenage phase, undergraduate days where I was figuring out who I am, who I want to be and where I want to go, and now, graduate school and a...

My grandmother Gilberta Williams told stories. Quite often, there was no particular narrative, no structure threading the things together, other a haiku-like zen-ness. Like, every time we were in the car together, riding down Government Boulevard in Mobile, Alabama, she’d look at some fancy big-ass mansion or other and say, “Oh, that’s where Dr. So-and-so committed suicide. 1972, I think.” The end. What? Neither of us were driving this narrative. Granddaddy was driving, because I was, like 10. And Grandmother never drove. Why? What was her story? I didn’t ask because I was wondering, What is “suicide?” Anyway, I just looked at the live oak trees, whose giant limbs draped over Government Boulevard and made a dark green tunnel accented by Spanish moss. After the trees and the Admiral Semmes Hotel came a real tunnel, the Bankhead, which went under the Mobile River, and I always looked at the gleaming white tiles and wondered what would happen if the river ever bust thro...