The Big Names in Narrative Theory
There's a handful of dudes who usually get name-checked in discussions of narrative theory. We're here to tell you all about 'em.
First on the roster is Vladimir Propp, whose study of Russian folktales ("wonder tales," specifically) was all about getting to the core of these narratives. For Propp, it was important not to get distracted by the seeming variety of these tales but to focus instead on what they've got in common. In the end, Propp found that these tales usually contained 31 narrative functions: they'd start with a family member leaving home and would end with the hero getting married and being rewarded or promoted. Propp also found that there were seven character types, including familiar faces such as the hero, villain, and princess.
Then there's Tzvetan Todorov, who came up with a model of narrative theory based on what he called equilibrium. Todorov noticed that most narratives start out in a state of equilibrium, or harmony: everything is A-Okay to begin with, but something then happens to throw things out of whack. Once folks realize that something's amiss, they try put things right again. So for Todorov, the driving force of the narrative is the quest to restore equilibrium.
We can't talk about Todorov without giving a shout-out to his mentor, Roland Barthes, whose many achievements include coming up with a model of narrative analysis. Barthes decided that narratives were made up of five "codes": the hermeneutic or "enigma" code (something that's not explained in the narrative and becomes a mystery); the proairetic or "action" code (an action or event that suggests something is going to happen and gets us wondering about what that something will be); the semantic code (which includes implied meanings or associations we may draw from any part of the text); the symbolic code (meaning at the deeper, structural level of the text); and the cultural code (made up of our shared knowledge of cultural norms).
According to Barthes, texts may weave theses codes together in different ways, but any text will always have one or more of these codes.
Claude Lévi-Strauss, on the other hand, was all about those binary oppositions. Er, those what? Well, basically, "binary opposition" is just a fancy-shmancy way to say a pair opposites or contrasts, like black/white or hot/cold. (Lévi-Strauss himself was totally into raw/cooked.)
During his many travels, Lévi-Strauss realized that these sorts of contrasts play a major role in shaping human thought and culture—including literature. We're not gonna argue, either: who doesn't instantly recognize binaries such as good/bad, male/female, young/old, and hero/villain? These contrasts are super obvious in fairytales but, as Lévi-Strauss argues, they're a major force in cultural thinking and in narrative structures in general.
And finally, these dudes may not be household names, but F. K. Stanzel and Gérard Genette are a couple of guys whose work took narratology to a new level. Stanzel highlighted the importance of narration in its various forms, outlining three "narrative situations": authorial (when the narrator is outside the characters' world); first person (when the narrator is part of the characters' world); and figural (when there's no obvious narrator—it's as though we're seeing through the eyes of one of the characters).
Genette, meanwhile, though narrative was made up of five key ingredients: order, frequency, duration, voice, and mood. By giving examples from the writings of Marcel Proust, in particular, Genette helped show that narratology doesn't just apply to basic stories like fairy tales but can also be applied to some of the most sophisticated texts in the world, like Proust's.