Structuralist analysis of narrative (narratology)

Provider: Kate Liu / 劉紀雯

I. narrative structure: Vladmir Propp and Greimas

syntax as the basic model for their analysis: Subject + predicate = Actant + function

Propp: for him there are 7 "spheres of action" (villain, hero, false hero, donor [provider], helper, dispatcher, princess [and her father].) and 31 functions.
- e. g. Cinderella and its modern versions: do we have fairy godmother as the helper today?
- e.g. education of the Hero: Hercules, Lion King, Mulan
- "Should Wizard Hit Mommy?" Is the wizard or Mommy the "villain"?
- "Young Goodman Brown" : Brown (Subject) + [going to the forest]+ Object? (Is black sabbath his object?) -->
  What is his opponent at the end, the whole town, or himself?
  *Suggestion:
  1. Usually interesting analysis happens when the characters break these categories or confuse them.
  2. You can set up your own categories.
  3. This kind of structuralist analysis is useful on popular cultural products or shorter texts.
Greimas: refines and develops Propp's work Example: "The Purloined Letter";
Greimas: some notes and an introductory essay.
- three pairs of actants: Helper/Opponent, Sender/Reciever, Subject/Object
- three basic patterns of action: contractive, disjunctive, and performative.
  　
Greimas' semiotic rectangle: four terms, instead of two.
e.g. "The Purloined Letter"

II. thematic structure: scapegoat; Oedipus complex (e.g. model: Levi Strauss's over-evaluation of kinship and under-evaluation of kinship )

III. structure of narration (narrator-narratee)

Genette
- text, story, narration
- tense: order, duration, frequency
- mood: distance and perspective (focus) --regulation of information
- voice: time of narrating, narrative levels (the level of the story, the level of the narrating), and "person"
Jonathan Culler (The Pursuit of Signs)
- story and discourse: A distinction should be made between the sequence of events and the way they are told. The critic should also decide if the the former's revelation depends on the latter.
  - For example, in the story of Oedipus the King, Oedipus admits to killing the king after he knows that he is the king's son, whereas in the witness's account it's "three robbers" that kills the king, but not three "travellers."
  - Seymour Chatman ("What Novels Can Do That Films Can't [and Vice Versa]") uses the distinction between the story time and discourse time to talk about the differences between film narration and novelististic narration. He argues that films (because of the illusion of motion, or visual continuity) cannot really stop and describe, whereas novels can.