Narrative Theory

There is a distinct difference between a narrative and a story. A story is a sequence of events, which are also called the plot of the story. The narrative is the way that those event are put together to be presented to the audience. This would suggest that every bit of media has a narrative, they could be long TV programs or a one paragraph newspaper story.

Vladimir Propp

A Russian theorist, Vladimir Propp, used fairy tales to help create a theory that analysed the generic content of every Fairy tale he read. Using this theory he systematically managed to decipher Russian Folklore and fairy tales. He created 31 different functions that each tail would follow after the initial story is depicted. While some of the functions may be slightly different, the premise behind each function is the same. Propp also believed that all the characters could be included into 7 broader character functions and relationships. This could be; The Villain - an evil character that creates struggles for the hero. These roles can sometimes be distributed among several characters or one character could engage in more than one role as the story develops.

Tzvetan Todorov

A Bulgarian-French historian names Tzvetan Todorov created a narrative theory that states, most story's or plot lines follow the same pattern of five separate stages. The first part is the equilibrium, which is when everything seems normal and the majority of characters are content. There is then a disruption that begins to effect the happiness of the characters. The realisation from the characters that there is a problem. The forth point is restoring the order from before by fixing or solving the original problem and then the final part is another equilibrium, when the problem is fixed and life can resume as normal.

Levi Strauss was a French anthropologist that thought of a lot of different theories in his lifetime. For narrative theory, he believed that we see the world, people and places by forming Binary Oppositions. His theory states that in all narrative, the stories are arranged around conflict between opposites. Some examples are;

Levi Strauss

Good vs Evil

Men vs Women

Light vs Dark

Technology vs Nature

War vs Peace

Age vs Youth

Strong vs Weak

This can typically only be applied in creative texts such as films and fairy tales as in reality, the two character types will not directly oppose each other. In a film where the Hero is Kind and thoughtful, whereas the villain is horrible and thoughtless.

Roland Barthes was a literary theorist from France, who is credited with producing his own narrative theory. He believed that the main difference between media text was that some had an open and others had closed meanings. An open meaning, is a story that's meaning is open to interpretation from the audience. A story with a closed ending has a single very obvious meaning to it. This wasn't the theory he was best known for. His best known theory was that there were 5 different narrative codes, that are integral to interpreting media narratives. He believes that every story has at least one of these narrative codes.

Roland Barthes

Enigma Code - A mystery or hook that is to be solved by or for the audience.

Action Code - Includes action and suspense, is used traditionally for escapism to entertain the audience and entertain them with the text.

Semantic Code - Elements of the text which imply, suggest or refer to additional meanings in the media text (Extra meaning aside from the literal denotation).

Symbolic Code - This code is about the eponymous (giving a name to something) symbols which can be found in media texts. e.g. calling someone the hero of a story.

Referential Code - This code relates to references within a media text to an external area of knowledge, such as historic, scientific or cultural references.