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 Décaméron. 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 représentations. 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 Symbol(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 Research(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(mimesis)/叙事(diegesis)的著名二分说可以被看成是这些讨论的发端。

18th 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。 19th 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(E.M.Forster)和马克·肖尔(M.Schorer)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 19th 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，由“故事”层深层结构的探索发展为对“话语”层叙事结构的分析。

6 从思想渊源看，叙事学理论起源于20世纪20年代的俄国形式主义及弗拉基米尔·普洛普(Vladimir Propp)所开创的结构主义叙事先河。俄国形式主义者什克

洛夫斯基、艾享鲍姆等人发现了“故事”和“情节”之间的差异，“故事”指的是作品叙述的按实际时间顺序的所有事件，“情节”侧重指事件在作品中出现的实际情况，这些直接影响了叙事学对叙事作品结构层次的划分。他们提出“故事”和“情节”的概念来指代叙事作品的素材内容和表达形式，大致勾勒出其后经典叙事学研究所聚焦的故事与话语两个层面，以此来突出研究叙事作品中的技巧。 最直接的影响还是来自于普洛普的《民间故事形态学》，这本书被认为是叙事学的发轫之作。普洛普打破了传统按人物和主题对童话进行分类的方法，认为故事中的基本单位不是人物而是人物在故事中的“功能”，由此从众多的俄国民间故事中分析出31个“功能”。他的观点被列维—斯特劳斯接受并传到法国。这个观点不同于传统的叙事理论对作品内容及社会意义的重视，而立足于现代语言学结构主义文化理论，更注重作品本文及其结构分析：注重作品的共性而不是具体的艺术成就；主要研究作者与叙述人，叙述人与作品的人物，作者与读者等相互关系，以及叙述话语，叙述动作等。列维—斯特劳斯主要研究神话之中内在不变的因素结构形式，并试图用语言学模式发现人类思维的基本结构。

作为一门学科，叙事学是20世纪60年代，在结构主义大背景下，同时受俄国形式主义影响才得以正式确立。它“研究所有形式叙事中的共同叙事特征和个体差异特征，旨在描述控制叙事（及叙事过程）中与叙事相关的规则系统”。 格雷马斯和托多罗夫都开始译介俄国形式主义的论述。1966年，《交流》杂志第8期以“符号学研究——叙事作品结构分析”为标题发表的专号宣告了叙事学的正式诞生。

罗兰·巴特正是在这一专号上发表了著名的《叙事作品结构分析导论》，为以后的叙事学研究提出了纲领性的理论设想。这篇论文中，巴特总结前人成果，并阐发了自己独特的观点。他建议将叙事作品分为三个描写层次：功能层、行为层、叙述层，任何语言单位可能结合到各个层次之中产生意义。

也是在1966年，格雷马斯的《结构语义学》问世，他主要研究意义在话语里的组织，还编制出符号学方阵作为意义的基本构成模式，并进一步深入研究了叙述结构和话语结构。 托多罗夫就是建议在“故事”和“话语”两个大层次上进行叙事作品的研究。他在《〈十日谈〉语法》中，从分析文学作品的语法结构入手来研究其文学性，把叙事分为三个层面：语义，句法和词汇，把叙事问题划归时间，语体和语式三个语法范畴。通过对《十日谈》的分析，把每个故事都简化为纯粹的句法结构，得出“命题”和“序列”两个基本单位，试图建立一套叙事结构模式。

热奈特吸收了托多罗夫的叙述话语的研究成果。在1972年发表的收在《辞格三集》中的《叙事话语》是他对叙事学研究的重大贡献。该文以普鲁斯特的小说《追忆似水年华》为研究对象，总结文学叙事的规律。他从时间、语式、语态等语法范畴出发分析叙事作品，这些范畴实质上表示的是故事、叙事和叙述之间的关系——他在引论中首先对故事、叙事和叙述作了界定。他的分析以叙事话语为重点，同时注重叙述话语层次与所叙故事层次之间的关系。

1983年热奈特又撰写了《新叙事话语》，回答了范·雷斯、朵丽特·高安、米克·巴尔等学者对《叙事话语》的批评，对自己的某些论点作了修正或进一步的阐释。