Narratology

Narratology

1 Definition

Narratology is a humanities discipline dedicated to the study of the logic, principles,

and practices of narrative representation.

Dominated

by

structuralist

approaches

at

its

beginning,

narratology

has

developed

into a variety of theories, concepts, and analytic procedures. Its concepts and models

are widely used as heuristic tools, and narratological theorems play a central role in

the

exploration

and

modeling

of

our

ability

to

produce

and

process

narratives

in

a

multitude of forms, media, contexts, and communicative practices.

Narrative:

refers

to

the

narrative

statement,

the

oral

or

written

discourse

that

undertakes to tell of an event or series of events.

Narrating:

the

producing

narrative

action;

the

event

that

consists

of

someone

recounting something.

2

Coining of the Term “Narratology”

The French term

narratologie

was coined by Todorov.

Todorov, Tzvetan

Belgium French,(1969)

Grammaire du Dé

camé

ron

. The Hague: Mouton,1969: 10

argued

for

a

shift

in

focus

from

the

surface

level

of

text- based

narrative(i.e.

concrete

discourse

as

realized

in

the

form

of

letters,

words

and

sentences)

to

the

general logical and structural properties of narratives as a univers de repré

sentations.

Todorov thus called for a new type of generalizing theory that could be applied to all

domains of narrative, and in fact for a hypothetical “

science that does not exist yet;

let’

s call it NARRATOLOGY, or science of narrative

.”

Tzvetan Todorov (

茨维坦·托多洛夫

)

Tzvetan Todorov (Bulgaria,1939) comes from the Russian formalist tradition and has

contributed to the development of literary structuralism. He has examined the notion

of the symbol and redefined the fundamental concepts of semiotics (

符号学

), a field

which he says derives from

“

symbolics

”

, he says.

Todorov’

s two major works on semiotics are

Theories of the Symbo

l(1982)[1977] and

Symbolism

and

Interpretation

(1982)[1978].

His

theory

defines

the

relationship

between

history,

discourse

and

enunciation,

and

proposes

a

definition

of

the

symbolism

of

language

based

on

the

distinction

he

makes

between

language

and

discourse.

Todorov

also

defines

the

distinction

between

the

sign

and

the

symbol,

which are based on a text

’

s direct meaning and indirect content, respectively.

Todorov

is

currently

a

director

of

research

at

the

National

Center

for

Scientific

Re search(CNRS).

是第一个将侦探故事分解为两个故事的人：一个是犯罪故事 ，

一个是解罪故事。

3 Hesitant acceptance of narratology

One

of

the

reasons

for

the

scientific

community’s

hesitant

acceptance

of

the

name

“narratology” was the proliferation of related and more general concepts as well as of

alternative research agendas concerned with narrative.

In

Germany,

the

terms

Erz?

hltheorie

and

Erz?

hlforschung

were

already

well

established and had been in use since the mid-1950s (L?

mmert 1955), which might

also explain why Ihwe’s 1972 attempt to introduce the term “narrativics” (Narrativik)

met with limited success.(Ihwe, Jens)

Among the Russian avant-garde(

先锋派

), for whom poetry dominated literature, the

call

for

a

“theory

of

prose”

amounted

to

a

plea

for

a

revaluation

of

the

other

hemisphere,

while

important

American

contributions

such

as

Booth,

Wayne

C.

(American literary critic) or Chatman, Seymour (American film and literary critic, a

profssor emeritus of rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley) evolved from

the tradition of New Criticism and rhetoric.

Finally,

French

narratologists

were

rooted

in

structural

linguistics

and

semiology

in

logic or in rhetorical and traditional grammatical categories.

4 Development of N

Precursors (former type, pioneers)

Core

elements

and

ideas

at

play

in

the

narratological

modeling

of

narrative

were

introduced as early as Greek antiquity. Plato Aristotle:

叙事进行的模仿

(mime sis)/

叙

事

(diegesis)

的著名二分说可以被看成是这些讨论的发端。

18

th

C. Novel became an accepted genre in literary field:

对叙事

(

尤其是小说

)

的讨

论更加充分全面

:

从小说的内容到小说的形式，

再到小说的功能和读者的地位等。

19

th

C. Novel was very prosperous.

李斯特

(Thomas Lister)

于

1832

年就利用“叙事视点”来分析小说作品。

洛克哈特

(John Gibson Lockhart)

更是使用这一术语来探讨如何使作者与自己的

作

品保持恰当的“距离”

。

现代小说理论奠基人：法

福楼拜

(Flaubert),

美

亨利·詹姆斯

(Henry James)

福斯特

( r)

和马克·肖尔

(r)

等的深入发挥 ，叙述视点成为小

说批评

(

自然也包括 叙事学

)

中最为重要的术语之一。

1920s-1930s:

Modernism

prevailed,

while

others

originated

from

the

late

19

th

century

onward,

particularly

in

the

context

of

phenomenological

and

hermeneutic

taxonomies and theories of literary and folk narratives.

现象学的，形态学的，阐释学，分类学

French writer of novels and short stories(1821-1880)

5 1960s-1980s:

经典叙事学

托多洛夫、热奈特、罗兰·巴特、格雷玛斯、布雷蒙等老一辈叙事学家以对

< br>叙事文本的故事及话语的深度剖析为据点开疆辟土，

使叙事学经由法国为轴心辐< /p>

射至世界各地，成为文艺理论大家族中朝气蓬勃的“新贵”

。

可见，

在叙事学被正式作为一门学科提出以前，

它的发展已经蔚为壮观，

由

神话和民间故事等初级叙事形态的研究走向了现代文学叙事形态的研究，