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