2. What is Narrative?
A narrative is a story that is created in a constructive
format (as a work of
speech, writing, song, film, television, video
games, photography or theatre) that describes a sequence
of fictional or non-fictional events.
Information from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative
4. Examples of Narrative films.
Non- linear Narrative Films:
The Social Network (2010)
Director: David Fincher
500 Days of Summer. (2009)
Director: Marc Webb
5. Tvzetan Todorov
General Information.
Tvzetan Todorov was born on the 1st of March 1939 in
Sofia. He has lived in France since 1963 with his wife
Nancy Huston and their two children, writing books and
essays about literary theory, thought history and culture
theory.
Theory
TZVETAN TODOROV (Bulgarian structuralist linguist publishing influential
work on narrative from the 1960s onwards) Todorov suggested that stories
begin with an equilibrium or status quo where any potentially opposing forces
are in balance. This is disrupted by some event, setting in chain a series of
events. Problems are solved so that order can be restored to the world of the
fiction.
http://pt.scribd.com/doc/8332523/Narrat
ive-theory-notes
7. Claude Levi-Strauss
General Information.
Claude Lévi-Strauss born in 28th of November 1908, died 30th of
October 2009. Was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has
been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern
anthropology“.
Theory.
Levi-Strauss looked at narrative structure in terms
of binary oppositions. Binary oppositions are sets of opposite values which
reveal the structure of media texts. An example would be GOOD and EVIL - we
understand the concept of GOOD as being the opposite of EVIL. Levi -Strauss
was not so interested in looking at the order in which events were arranged in
the plot. He looked instead for deeper arrangements of themes. For example,
if we look at Science Fiction films we can identify a series of binary
oppositions which are created by the narrative:
Earth, Space, Good, Evil, Humans, Aliens, Past, Present, Normal, Strange, Known and Unknown.
http://pt.scribd.com/doc/8332523/Narrat
ive-theory-notes
9. http://pt.scribd.com/doc/8332523/Narrat
ive-theory-notes
Vladimir Propp
General Information.
Vladimir Propp born on the 17th of April 1895 died on the
22th of August 1970. Was a Russian and Soviet formalist
scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of
Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible
narrative elements.
Theory.
(A Russian critic who examined 100s of examples of folk
tales to see if they shared. any structures. His book on this 'Morphology of the
Folk Tale' was first published in 1928) Propp looked at 100s of folk tales and
identified 8 character roles and 31 narrative functions. The 8 character roles are
1. The villain(s) 2. The hero 3. The donor - who provides an object with some magic property. 4. The
helper who aids the hero. 5. The princess (the sought for person) - reward for the hero and object of
the
villain's schemes. 6. Her father - who rewards the hero. 7. The dispatcher - who sends the hero on his
way. 8. The false hero
The character roles and the functions identified by Propp can be applied to all
kinds of narrative. In TV news programmes we are often presented with
'heroes' and ‘villains'. Just think of the media portrayal of Saddam Hussein or
Princess Diana.
