Talk:Narrative

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Contents 1 Plot? 2 Cleanup 3 Narrative Paradigm 4 Story (disambiguation) 5 Pointer for "Narrative Text" 6 Story 7 ghnu : Proto Indo European 8 Narrative as a mode

[edit] Plot?

"This page, for example, is not written with human characters and a plot." Oh no? :). PiCo 06:50, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Can you name A character? Describe the plot? Hyacinth 01:59, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

Sorry, must point out this is an incredibly badly written page, quite obviously cobbled together. Request for cleanup? - Lawrence Dunn LozDunn@gmail.com

I agree. It's not written like an encylopedia article at all. Valerie 23:56, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

What I would desperately desperately want is for articles dealing with new-fangled ways of describing literature be written clearly and without jargon. I've got a Ph.D., I'm not dumb as a brick, all I need is to find out what, exactly, "narrative discourse analysis" means, and I'm faced with articles like this, written by great experts for the edification of other great experts. I'm a historian, not a litsy critsy type, and I'm as befogged as before by this and other articles on the modern concepts of dealing with literature. [sigh] StJ. Tremayne 20:37, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

It still looks cobbled together to me. The 'literary theory' section is mostly structuralist narratology - and there are separate articles for structuralism and narratology, so I'm not sure that this stuff belongs here (except perhaps in precis). Come to that, why do we need a section called "literary theory" in an article on narrative anyway? "Narrative" is a much bigger topic than "literature". I vote we cut the whole section and replace it with a link to the page on literary theory. Or maybe we could call the section "theories of narrative" and have links to a range of other pages, including both of the above. And Tremayne, I don't think the problem here is that the page is written by, or for, 'great experts'...

Ninj 00:57, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

PS. I've just deleted from the introduction the assertion that humans use narrative to better understand the world - it was vague (note the "etc") and it unbalanced the introduction since sense-making is just one use of narrative and no other uses are mentioned at this point in the article. And I really don't know what's meant by "a number of specialised applications", but I'll let that stand for the time being. If anyone can make it less vague, I'll be happy for it to stay. Ninj 01:05, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

PPS. The "conceptual issues" section is also in serious need of clean-up - not so much because of the content but because it's clearly been edited together from several different people's contributions without much in the way of organising being done on the way. Also, what does "conceptual issues" mean? It strikes me that the main issue - of those mentioned here - is the distinction between literary and non-literary narratives, and the remainder relate (again) to the development of structuralist narratology. Could we possibly try for a more informative heading? Ninj 01:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Narrative Paradigm

I don’t think Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm, if it is “outside the mainstream of semiotics”, deserves that much space on this page.

--TowerDragon 11:21, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. It has a whole article devoted to it anyway. What's more, it's a theory of communication, not a theory of narrative. Saying "all communication is narrative" tells you nothing about narrative as such. I'm going to delete it, except for the link to the aforementioned article.

Ninj 00:37, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Story (disambiguation)

This links to story, which is a disambiguation page that links back here. Obviously, this is neither productive or desirable. None of the alternatives seem particularly appropriate, so I suggest that "story" be de-linkified. But I'm open to other suggestions. - Xtifr 08:13, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pointer for "Narrative Text"

A search for "Narrative Text" should point to this page. When I searched for "Narrative Text" I didn't see this page until I instead searched for "Narrative". --Gellender 02:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Story

This first line of this article defines a narrative as a "story", and links to the "Story" article, which defines a "Story" as a narrative and (among other places) links back here. LOL?>>> HI FROM WOODENBONG!!

[edit] ghnu : Proto Indo European

If someone has access to JSTOR, see if "A West Germanic Reflex of the Verscharfung" has a ciation for 'ghnu'. J. D. Redding 03:37, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I have access to an American Heritage Dictionary (2002) with a fairly serious Appendix, which contains roots. In the meantime we could just go with: gnō-, which has yet another Indo-European root, but, also another Latin root. Here's how this part of the citation goes: NARRATE, from Latin narrāre (< *gnarrāre), to tell, relate, from gnārus, knowing, expert.71.167.159.143 15:30, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Narrative as a mode

I know that mimetic approaches to literature are reasonably unfashionable in literary theory at the moment, but nonetheless I think that it is important that somewhere in this article, probably in the introduction, the classical distinction of modes is included in the definition of narrative. That is, to quote Aristotle's Poetics:

"For the medium being the same, and the objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration—in which case he can either take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged—or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us" (section III).

That is, the classical distinction between narrative and dramatic modes: narrative establishes a subject-object relation (the poet speaks directly to the 'audience') while drama creates an autonomous interpersonal dynamic (the poet speaks only through the indirect medium of the characters).

"This is not merely a technical distinction but constitutes, rather, one of the cardinal principles of a poetics of the drama as opposed to one of narrative fiction. The distinction is, indeed, implicit in Aristotle's differentiation of representational modes, namely diegesis (narrative description) versus mimesis (direct imitation). It has, as we shall see, important consequences for both the logic and the language of the drama." (Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, 111; my bolds)

The definition that the article offers at present, which makes narrative synonymous with 'story' does not take account of this classical distinction. It is important outside of literary theory; for example, it is difficult to make sense of what Bertolt Brecht is on about when he says that his epic theatre is a shift of emphasis from the dramatic towards narrative if one thinks that narrative is the same as story. I believe this all comes down to the classical distinction between the lyric, the drama and the epos (i.e., there is a third term here, the lyric, in which the poet turns their back on their audience and addresses a muse; hence in modern terms, poetry, drama, novels). The central point here, I believe, is that the definition of narrative has to include the process of telling rather than showing (drama). DionysosProteus 03:24, 25 August 2007 (UTC)