Narrative Re-Cap

Although these words are often used interchangeably, they have very distinct meanings.

PLOT – everything visibly and audibly present in the text (including non-diegetic material).

STORY – all the events in a narrative, both those explicitly depicted and those the viewer infers.

Plot and Story

Todorov is a narrative theorists who argues many stories share a fundamental structure

1. A state of equilibrium (a peaceful seaside town)

2. A disturbance of the equilibrium – disequilibrium (swimmers meet horrible deaths)

3. Attempts to deal with the disturbance (identifying the cause – a shark & hunting it down)

4. Restoration of the equilibrium – New equilibrium (shark is killed the town is peaceful again)

Tzvetan Todorov

Narratives work through the use of binary oppositions Narratives take various oppositions & attempt to resolve

them in some way Examples:

- Good vs Evil- Young vs Old- Night vs Day- Us vs Them- East (the Orient) vs West (the Occident)

Claude Levi Strauss

Studied folk tales and concluded hat most narratives contained the same seven broad character types. These are:

The hero (or protagonist) The villain (or antagonist) – works against the hero The dispatcher – the person who sends the hero on

their quest The donor – prepares the hero or gives them a magic

object The helper – helps the hero in their quest The blocker (or false hero) – attempts to thwart the

hero The princess (and/or her father) - a sought-for person

who exists as a goal to the hero

Vladimir Propp

Barthes claimed that narratives work with codes which activate the audience to make sense of it.

Proairetic (or Action) Codes (pronounced pro-a-ret-ick)– we follow narrative, observe actions & anticipate what might happen.Examples:- Someone plants a bomb in an office. Will it explode or will anyone find it first?

Hermeneutic (or Enigma) Codes (pronounced her-men-u-tick). – narratives progress through a process of revealing truth by solving enigmas.

Cultural codes – ideas shared by a culture. Examples:- If we didn’t know that the Eiffel Tower was in Paris we wouldn’t know where the action was set

Roland Barthes

Below is a list of commonly used narrative techniques.

CHRONOLOGY – the order in which events are presented. FLASHBACK - a shot, scene or sequence which has taken

place in the past. FLASHFORWARD - A shot, scene or sequence which will

take place in the future. VOICE-OVER – diegetic or non-diegetic. CAPTIONS – text that provides anchorage. ELLIPSES – the parts of the story that the plot misses out.

MOTIF – recurrent theme, idea, image or saying, etc. INTERTEXTUAL REFERENCES – references to other

texts.

Narrative Techniques