Narratology theory examines how narrative structure affects readers’ interpretations of the story. This theory assumes that discourses are constructed explain certain effects and perceptions from the reader.
Questions Narrative Thoery May Ask:
- What order are events revealed?
- This question is important because the author may have a unorthadox timeline that makes the reader focus on other subjects first before the author unviels the bigger picture. This was done in “A Rose for Emily” where the author started off the story with the resolution for a variety of apparent reasons.
2. (narration) Who does the telling? Is the voice reliable and how do we know?
- This is the most important question for narrative thoery because we must figure out who is narrating the story. The narrator can give us many implication on what the underlying messages of the story. Sometimes the narrative voice can be unasuring of untrustwory and can throw the reader off. That is why we must be aware of who is speaking and how reliable their voice is because it can change the whole meaning of the text
Pros of theory
- Can see how narrative structures effect our perceptions
Cons of theory
- Cannot work on non-narritive forms of rhetoric
- Story can be one sided
Contributors
Genette argued that literature tells a story. That argument seems like it was trying to narrow the focus of what literature meant and how it telling the reader something can impact them differently than showing. Genette was more concerned with how a story was told rather than taking the story for what it is. The other two contributors Greimas and Todrav were adopting forms of structuralism into their analysis, which lead to using characters as binaries. Honestly, I don’t see much on how Greimas and Todrav influenced narratology but Genette shaped it to be what it is now. He created the main elements of narratology such as narrative time, storytime, perspective, order, and duration. It is easy to examine what is going on with the author using this theory but the problem is that we mainly get a one-sided story.