Narratology

Structuralism, Narratology • Todorov, “Structural Analysis of Literature” (NATC, 2097-2106)

The 1960’s had a flourish of structuralism theorists within the literary world, dominating the narrative representation of linguistics. Narratology, established from Tzvetan Todorov’s scientific study of narrative, emerged into a variety of theories, concepts, and analytic procedures. Todorov is quick to distinguish his version’s differences from that of New Critics, which focuses on internal literary features, noting that “the structuralist method proposes instead to understand the overall system in which the work is a part” (2098). This would establish concepts and models of Narratology to be used as heuristic tools and theorems, playing a heavy role in the exploration and modeling of the writer’s ability to produce and process narrative in a multitude of forms.

Utilizing the belief that there are two possible attitudes towards interpreting text, a theoretical attitude or descriptive attitude, we can begin to define the systematic laws and patterns that affect our perception. Considering the nature of structuralism as a theoretical and non descriptive approach, Narratology can be interpreted as a focus of a concrete work rather than a description. This concept stems from the belief that there is a common literary language, or universal pattern of codes that operates within a text.

Instances of this ‘common language’ can be attributed to the areas of plot, model of the sentence, as subject, predicate, and adjective, such as Todorov’s discernment of a text’s “grammar rather than semantic meaning of narrative” (2098). These explorations, broken down into separate narrative clauses, can then be distributed in three distinct directions of narrative analysis: the study of narrative syntax, study of theme, and the study of rhetoric. By studying these concrete actions and abstract patterns, one will gain an understanding of more extensive and precise descriptions of other plots. The object of the study is therefore, “the narrative mood, or point of view, or sequence, and not this or that story in and for itself” (2105).


As seen in this section of the NATC, a schematic representation of a clause is as follows:

X violates a law ... Y must punish X... X tries to avoid being punished... Y does not punish X


Y violates a law
Y believes that X is not violating the law

The New Criticism

The New Criticism

•Wimsatt and Beardsley, The Intentional Fallacy and The Affective Fallacy (NATC, 1371-1403)
•Brooks, “The Well-Wrought Urn” (NATC, 1350-65)

Wimsatt and Beardsley stress that the meaning of literary work “is not equivalent to its effects, especially its emotional impact, on the reader” (1371). So what’s important? New Criticism is defined by the emphasis of details when analyzing a text, a movement heavily relied upon for the study of literature and poetry. By examining its structure, imagery, and ambiguities, New Criticism critics found the relevant meaning of the text, disregarding the historical setting or author’s intent as reference.

This 20th century dominating literary criticism has been broken down into two descriptive parts, The Intentional Fallacy and The Affective Fallacy. Wimsatt and Beardsley define poetry as an impersonal art. They believe that the focus should be on the text itself, “one must attend only to the organization of the words on the page and the coherence that the words do or do not posses” (1272). Extraneous references to psychology, social history, author, or period should be disregarded to hone in on the intrinsic matters of a text. Utilizing this approach, the Intentional Fallacy can best be defined as the assumption that the meaning intended by the author is of primary importance, subject to the internal evidence present inside a given work. This interpretation measures the work against something outside of the author: internal evidence, external evidence, and contextual evidence. Allusiveness, however, challenges the premise of intentionalism, a method which cannot provide a certain conclusion.

The Affective Fallacy derives from the standard of criticism, psychological effects of the text, and ends in impressionism and relativism. Confusion between the text and its results, or the Affective
Fallacy, is “a special case of epistemological skepticism…the text itself, as an object of specifically critical judgment, tends to disappear” (1388). It is therefore a reference to a supposed error of judging or evaluation of a text on the basis of its emotional effects on a reader. This concept was a direct result of impressionistic critic’s responses, who believed that the ultimate indication of a text’s value was the reader’s response. Although New Critics Wimsatt and Beardsley advocated the unique nature of poetic language, this antithesis (Affective Fallacy) was needed to elucidate the thematic and stylistic ‘language’ of each text, without outside reference to history, biography, and reader-response.

Semiotics, Russian Formalism, and Structuralism

• Excerpts from Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (NATC, 956-77)

A step into Linguistics:

The human language can be identified as essentially arbitrary because the function of language incorporates arbitrary symbols to connect and communicate amongst one another. Saussure acknowledged that “the word arbitrary means not that individual speakers can just make language up, but precisely that they can’t; the sign is a convention that has to be learned and is not subject to individual will” (958). For instance, each language has its own way of expressing the term bread. Each of the terms is a symbol for what they conceive bread to be, thus using arbitrary language to express and identify the bread which they are speaking of. The representational aspect is a signifier which can be identified by any person, regardless of nationality or region such as the skull and cross-bones for poison. Saussure acknowledges that in studying these rites, customs, etc. as signs (also identified as signifiers), the facts of Semiology can be determined. However, as communicators we typically speak with arbitrary symbols that can only be identified within a group or certain nationality. This linguistic unit is therefore a “double entity, one formed by the associating of two terms” (963). Saussure’s depiction of Semiology (the study of the origin, development, and structure of human societies and the behavior of individual people and groups in society) would show what constitutes signs, and what governs them.

Utilizing this concept of thought recognized as structuralism (an analysis based on the notion of human society as a network of interrelations whose patterns and significance can be analyzed), the components of the sign are broken down into two forms: signifier and signified. Connected by an associative link, the signifier and signified complete the structure of the sign. According to Saussure, the signifier is the sound and the signified is the thought. Consequently the sign does not and cannot exist without both signifier and signified, and vice versa. Additionally, it should be noted that the means by which the sign is produced is unimportant. Saussure states, “Whether I make letters in white or black, raised or engraved…this is of no importance with respect to their significance” (972). In other words, neither ideas nor sounds exist prior to their combination regardless of pen or pencil, dialect or accent.

Signifier = signal = seignifiant Signified = signification= signifie