Who Are We? Narratologists! What Do We Want? Uhhhh....A Nap? A Snack? Someone to Recognize How Special I Am?

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 only things written down. Some say that even if it's written down it has to be only text for it to count. (Sorry comic books, you're SOL in the eyes of old white theorists. Don't worry, though, I'll still take you seriously and call you a narrative, Wonder Woman). Some people like Barthes and Rimmon-Kenan require something to have more than two events to be a narrative and Bal, Bordwell, and Richardson all want these events to be "causally related" to be considered a narrative (Abbott 13).

Forster's example of asking three different men what does a novel do is a pretty good example of the narratology community. They all basically say the same thing in slightly different words, but we are supposed to see them as being radically different due to these changes in tone, inflection, and slightly different diction. So when you ask me what is wrong with narratologists, I'm inclined to suggest that's it's that they can't get along.

More specifically, however, it seems as if they all don't want to get along. They all have a different idea that they want to be the idea, and they all have a different analysis method that they want to be the method. Reading these articles reminds me somewhat of when I was a fifth-grade teaching intern. Every student wanted attention. They would do anything to get attention. When one did something and got attention, the rest of the students would notice. Then one of them would adapt that thing that got attention to their own needs and do it so they could get attention. And so on. Basically, narratologists are fifth graders looking for attention. They're all arguing in the sandbox over what a story is and setting such strict guidelines that they can't expand as the world changes. (See my comment about comic books above).


In the simplest words, narratologists need a nap, snacktime, and to feel important. They're all a little tired, a little hangry, and feeling a little ignored.

Honestly, though, just about every theorist and academic feels this way. We all want our thing to be the thing. What makes narratologists special, however, is they're taking commonly used words and ideas, things that steeped in colloquial attachments, and trying to reframe them into something uniquely theirs. Aka, they're trying to create a whole new definition of the word "story," which already has hundreds of years of history and definitions. This is, as one would expect, very difficult. Add on top of that to the inflexibility of these theorists and inability to envision a future in which narratives don't just exist on the page and, well, we have a whole mess of a bunch of cranky old guys who are the definition of a special snowflake who just can't get along.