Narrative structure

As an ordered sequence of events that “unfolds” in the course of a reading, a narrative has temporal and chronological dimensions. Yet these events must be held together in a single image if one is to be aware of temporal progression at all. The unity established through the organization of “temporal wholes” derives from the organization of successive events in such a way that they form a unified sequence of change in which there is a beginning, middle, and end. Structuralist definitions of this unity have been advanced from the angle of an elementary actional sequence that also governs the simple macrostructure of the narrative in its temporal synthesis. A composite of these structuralist models yields a five-part sequence that corresponds to the temporal phases of any event, be it an action, a process, a motion, or a communication:

1. Before—Initial state—Equilibrium (before the event)
2. Perturbation—Provocation—Trigger (beginning of event)
3. Event itself—Taking action (the event)
4. Consequence—Outcome of action—Sanction (end of event)
5. After—Final state—Equilibrium (after the event)

This definition of an event-sequence distinguishes static from dynamic situations. A state in itself is by definition a static moment that can remain indefinitely immovable. In order to get the story going, a perturbation must be introduced that destroys the equilibrium of the initial situation and initiates action. This is where V. A. Propp's archetypal folktale begins, in disequilibrium, and it ends with marriage, a sanction. Hence, the before and after of the tale are theoretical and implicit stages that anchor two static situations of equilibrium as fixed points between which something happens: the event itself. In the folktale the event encompasses the three major episodes of the “tests.”

Propp's first seven functions out of a sequence of thirty-one are said to make up “the preparatory part of the tale” whereas the actual movement of the tale is initiated by an act of villainy. These seven functions constitute the perturbation and alienation. For instance, the villain inquires about the location of a precious object and receives information about his victim in order to take possession of him or his belongings. The hero-victim submits to the deception and unwittingly helps his enemy. Finally, the villain does his act of villainy and causes harm to a member of the family. If villainy is absent, the tale proceeds from a situation of insufficiency or lack which Propp considered as an equivalent of seizure.

The first pair of functions, inquiry versus information, is a negative communication where the villain fraudulently and misleadingly swindles information. The second pair of functions, trickery versus complicity, robs the hero of his powers and his potential to be a hero. The third pair, villainy versus lack, an object-value is appropriated by the villain, depriving the hero or his family or people. A crescendo can be easily observed in the progression of negative exchanges. The three pairs of functions appear as an increasing redundancy of privations undergone by the hero, and as acquisitions, equally redundant, by the villain. The extortion of information is followed by the act of deception that is crowned by the villainy. In the final sequence of the tale, the succession of the concluding functions restores to the hero everything of which he was deprived and deprives the traitor of everything he had extorted. The recognition of the hero is followed by the unmasking of the traitor. The hidden nature of the nonrevealed hero turns into his transfiguration at the end. The hero appears in all his splendor, dressed in royal clothes. The trickery of the villain is exposed and the villain is punished. The lack is liquidated first by the restoration of the stolen object-value to the community—the paradigm being the princess—and, second, by sanctioning the hero's victory positively and rewarding him with marriage.

For Algirdas Julien Greimas (1917–1992), a narrative has two complementary dimensions:

1. the narrative model, which accounts for the cohesion of the tale and makes its plot summary possible, and
2. the global semantic structure, which accounts for the meaning of the story.

Narrative Units.
From its very beginning, Greimassian narratology aimed to develop a model that would go beyond the specificities of Vladimir Propp's archetypal folktale and account for the organizing principles of all narrative discourses. Some of the tasks in this development involved identifying elementary narrative units and how they combine into intermediate and recurrent units called “tests.”

Through a critical examination of Propp's Morphology of the Folktale (1928), Greimas set out to reinterpret and formalize both the notion of function and the definition of the tale as a sequence of thirty-one functions. The Proppian function corresponds referentially to an event and linguistically to a proposition. The sentence explanations and variants of the function are formulated by Propp in descriptive, nontechnical language that Greimas compares to a documentary style. Some examples are given by Greimas (1971), but they are not direct quotations from Propp: “The traitor makes off with the king's daughter”; “The king sends the hero off on a mission”; “The hero finds the traitor.”

Propp's descriptions can be generalized and presumably made more rigorous by using linguistic procedures and defining the narrative as a sequence of narrative propositions. Since there are several possible ways of conceiving the nature of the elementary proposition, the selection and commitment to one view has important theoretical ramifications. Rejecting traditional and transformational grammars because they give the subject a privileged focus and subordinate all other terms in its sphere, Greimas turns to the relational grammar of Lucien Tesnière. This grammar, like the grammar of propositions in predicate calculus, starts with the verb as the ultimate nucleus of the proposition and gathers the nouns into its orbit all at the same and equal level, emphasizing “action in concert”—that is, interconnecting the various terms into a semantic and relational network. Looking at Greimas's first Proppian sentence above, we see that traitor and the king's daughter are on an equal syntactical footing relative to the verb, makes off. At a more abstract and textual level of analysis, they are considered the actants, which are related by a function and are represented formally in the following notational frame: Function (Actant) or F(A) or F(A₁, A₂, …, A₆). Function and actant are postulated as the two immediate constituents of the elementary narrative unit, defined as the simplest narrative proposition. The verb, action, or event is the function, and the participant(s) in the event is (are) designated as the actant(s).

The paradigmatic analysis and structuration of the Proppian chain of functions brings out the existence of recurrent episodic units that punctuate the dynamics of narrative progress from beginning to end. These intermediate units are the contract and the test that link together to form a larger test, a recurrent macro sequence in the quantitative organization of plot. The larger test may be viewed as an episode in the conventional sense, as a distinctive story or scene that is integral to but separable from a continuous narrative.

The recognition of the recurrent unit of the contract in Propp's simple folktale makes it possible to extend the range of applications to more complex narratives and to other texts. It is a significant achievement toward reconceiving plot structure in a more palpable and less figurative way than the conventional four-part pattern of the plot with its exposition, rising action or complication, climax, and resolution. The notion of the contract introduces semantic content and rigor into a vague diagram. With this tool, it is possible to interpret the structure of any narrative plot from the perspective of the establishment and breaking of a contract. Indeed, all the units that articulate the contract or the agreement freely made govern narrative development: the establishment of the contract, the suspension, the reestablishment, the execution, the completion, or the breaking of the contract. Polar changes in the status of the contract, from negative to positive or the reverse, describe the movement of most stories. Moreover, they provide the closure to most stories, and this involves a resolution of some kind. The denouement would not take place were it not for the underlying change in the status of the contract, however subtle the manifestation might be.

Propp's archetypal folktale begins with a breach of contract and ends with the establishment of a contract in the form of marriage. The two limits of the story are marked by a contractual event. At the very origin of the tale, a serious conflict is set into motion between the subject's desire and the sender's law or social norms when he or she violates a prohibition, thereby defying the reigning social order and precipitating chaos. The initial breach of contract indicates an inherent normative or legal conflict between the first sender and subject-hero, and it activates an extended sequence of privations and trouble for the hero, figuring forth a society on the brink of dissolution. In this initial sequence, named “breakup of the order and alienation,” the villain tricks the hero into giving him information, deceives him about his possessions, and finally causes the trouble—the act of villainy—that creates the actual movement of the tale, the mainspring of the quest.

Narrative starts when the world is thrown out of kilter and chaos ensues. It ends with marriage, the perfect union and harmony between the individual and the community. From the syntagmatic point of view, the archetypal folktale is framed by a legal system (presupposed by the contract), and the main change that takes place between the two poles is in the social-political order and consists of the agreements that the subject reaches or fails to reach with the senders or powers that be. The subject rejects the legal system at the start and becomes part of a new social order and clinches a contract with the sender at the end.

The tale not only starts and ends with a contract but the passage from one end to the other takes place through three other contracts or three positive exchanges with a different sender on a graduating scale of mutual trust, cooperation, and integration. The archetypal folktale, therefore, manifests five contractual episodes. The macro sequence of the test is a syntagmatic chaining of the contract, the struggle, and the consequence. The discovery of this major recurrent sequence that Propp himself did not recognize is a decisive accomplishment in narratology. The test may be represented summarily as shown below, by the five functions that make it up, and by listing those that pair off into higher units:

CONTRACT	injunction, acceptance
STRUGGLE	confrontation, success
CONSEQUENCE	acquisition

Propp's archetypal folktale manifests the recurrence of three such tests that form the three major episodes of the story as a whole. These are the qualifying test, the decisive or main test, and the glorifying test. All three tests are variations of the generalized-invariant scheme given above. After the hero accepts his or her mission, he or she must undergo a rite of initiation or a rite of passage that will enable him or her to undertake the quest prepared. This rite of passage is the qualifying test, which ends with the hero receiving a magical agent from the donor. The overall process, in general, is the acquisition of competence, know-how, and power needed to qualify the hero as such. The main test and the quest deal with the acquisition of the object of desire and performance of the heroic deed. The struggle between two equal competitors, the hero and the villain, and the hero's victory enact and make real the heroic self, which is also the idealized and masterful self. Following these high deeds, the new self-image and heroic identity of the hero are tested in a social environment and acknowledged. The hero is recognized and glorified as a hero.

By and large, the three tests are the qualification of the subject, his or her achievements, and the recognition of those achievements by society. In the main, these three major episodes also articulate the major stages of an individual's history and growth. If the structures underlying the folktale are identical to those that organize history, biography, and our sense of pattern in our own lives, the question of how they are constituted takes on renewed interest. Identification of universal narrative patterns seems to tell us not just about folktales or literature but about the nature of the mind or universal features of culture.

Even though the test has a syntagmatic character, it maintains a parallel with the actantial structure. Not only are all six actants implied in the test, but the three axes that make up the actantial model also have equivalents in the test. Thus, the axis of communication that is bounded by the sender and receiver corresponds to the contract, subsuming the injunction and acceptance. The struggle, consisting of a fight, expresses the opposition of forces that manifest themselves as helper (external or internal to the hero) and opponent. The consequence shows the various forms of object value that the hero acquires following his or her victory. Since the recurrence of the tests shows semantic redundancy, a single test is sufficient to define the minimal narrative. Thus, the minimal narrative can be defined as a syntagmatic sequence made up of the following propositions:

CONTRACT	(Sender, Receiver)
STRUGGLE	(Helper, Opponent)
CONSEQUENCE	(Object, Subject)

Here, the sequence of the contract and the struggle entail the consequence of getting the desired object. This sequential chaining is necessary since both the contract and the struggle can occur by themselves, outside of the schema of the test.

The test is the irreducible nucleus or kernel that accounts for the definition of the narrative as diachrony. It also operates the transformation of axiological contents that fix the limits of the “reversal of the situation” by marking the end of the narrative before and the beginning of the narrative after.

The test that represents a central point of transformation in the narrative, a locus of decision and denouement, is the main or decisive test. It marks the high point of the action in which the conflict between the subject-hero and the opponent is brought out to the fullest extent as they join in direct combat. The situation is characterized by a polemical antagonism, a genuine contest, and total engagement of forces that are equal and contradictory. At the zenith of this duel, we come to the breaking point, the moment when the stakes will be won by only one party; the victory of the one will be the defeat of the other. The acquisition of the object by the protagonist is at the expense of the antagonist. The conjunction of the subject with the object simultaneously and necessarily corresponds with the disjunction of the opponent from the object.

The other two tests, the qualifying test that precedes the main test and the glorifying test that follows it, are simulated, symbolic tests within the context of an agreement or contract with the sender—hence, their meanings are determined completely by cooperative exchange with the sender. The interaction of subject and sender is mutually beneficial rather than antagonistic, and the victory of the subject will not result in a domination over the sender.

The sender takes on the role of a symbolic, make-believe opponent who tests the hero on his or her competence or identity and rewards him or her with an object value if the hero passes the test. The consequence consists of the sender's sanction, the fulfillment of his or her contractual obligation to the hero and honoring the promise made earlier. We have here an exchange with two objects, and the transaction can be compared loosely to an economic trade. The subject-hero earned an object value from the sender by executing his or her share of the initial agreement.

Narrative Schema.
As noted above, for Greimas the basic and general structure of narrative has two complementary dimensions:

1. the narrative model that summarizes the cohesion of events in a narrative, comparable to a plot summary or a story's schematic structure, and
2. the global semantic dimension or macrostructure, which is manifested by events and through the plot model.

The narrative model is comprised of the narrative schema, which is a paradigmatic projection on the syntagmatic development of stories, and the corresponding actantial model, which focuses not on events but on the actants or the invariant roles that perform them. We might refer to the narrative schema, sometimes also designated the “canonical tale,” as the Greimassian plot model. The schema is depicted in figure 1, together with the traditional plot structure for comparison and contrast. One of the most striking differences between these plot models is that, unlike the traditional plot pattern that isolates a single climax or turning point, the narrative schema highlights two peaks in the tale. The second climax, even though less marked than the first, is a request or second quest that is a demand of recognition due to the hero. Where there is falling action in the traditional model, we have the height of social acknowledgment, sanction, and reward of the hero's deeds in the semiotic model. Linearly, the plot model is represented as an organization of four sequences: Manipulation (establishment of contract), Competence, Performance, and Sanction (of contract). This reduced plotline, however, is not in agreement with the table of the narrative schema: in the table, the tale starts with a breach of contract. Ten years after Vladimir Propp established the classical structuration of the chain of functions, Greimas reinterpreted the final contract, through a reverse order of logical presupposition, as the global, main contract established implicitly from the start. Since the three tests also exhibit a retrogressive logic but are not reversed in the narrative schema, objections to this model arise in the issues of why the retrogression was not carried consistently throughout and why the whole plot model turned backward. As it stands, the linear and reduced version of the narrative schema has two different temporal frameworks superimposed on it, both retrogressive and sequential.

The narrative schema, like the traditional plot model, is a formal framework that takes place in a straightforward, chronological order. Both models offer a general and ideal pattern, whereas actual stories will be variations of it. The narrative schema is said to be canonic because it serves as an ideological reference model relative to which deviations can be noted and evaluated. Unlike the traditional plot model, however, the narrative schema is more than just an ideal pattern or a formal framework. It records the “meaning and form of life” in a complete individual history and presents it as a schema of action—more specifically, as the quest, with episodes of qualification, realization, and recognition. “The Proppian organization,” says Greimas, “suggests to us the possibility of reading every narrative as a quest for meaning, for the meaning to attribute to human action” (1976, p. 10). The actantial structure makes up the second aspect of the narrative model, regrouping the events according to the actants who accomplish them.0195120905.narrative-structures.1.tifFigure 1. Comparitive Formal Frameworks of Narrative Models.

Narrative Semantics.
According to Greimas, narrative semantics and fundamental semantics are complementary. Their units are the elementary structures of signification, which can be articulated on the semiotic square, a diagram through which semantic selections are correlated. Greimas differentiates between signification and meaning by defining the first term as “articulated meaning” and the second as “that which is anterior to semiotic production” and about which nothing can be said (1982). The totality of significations forms the semantic universe. Thus, the key and operational concept in semiotics is articulated meaning, which is signaled by the relation between two terms and the perception of their differences and similarities.

Greimas forms conjectures about the conditions that allow meaning to be grasped. He argues that in constructing cultural objects (literary, mythical, pictorial, etc.) the mind is subject to various constraints that define “the conditions for the existence of semiotic objects.” The most important of these is the “elementary structure of signification,” which is of semantic and logical nature and underlies surface narrative structures. Hence, it is located at the level of deep and abstract structures in the narrative grammar, forming a fundamental semantics and morphology in addition to a fundamental syntax.

Meaning depends on oppositions. The elementary structure of signification is, in its simplest form, a binary opposition such as those between white and black, life and death, and nature and culture. In its more complex form, it is the correlation of two oppositions, represented as a homology (X:Y::–X:–Y) or as the semiotic square has a simple logicosemantic structure. It lays out all the combinational relationships possible among types of oppositions, some of which include: contraries, such as life and death; contradictions, such as life and nonlife; implications or presuppositions, as in nonlife and death; and double presuppositions, or homologies, as those between pairs of oppositions like life and nonlife and death and nondeath. The interrelationships of all these types of oppositions (which are vizualized through a diagram called the semiotic square) is what enables meaning to signify. Dynamically (some would say “syntagmatically”), the semiotic square also indicates the semantic movement of text by punctuating passages from one situation to another, each situation leading to another by being either negated or inverted, thus leading to its contrary or contradictory.

To have meaning, the narrative must form one signifying whole and thus must be organized as a simple semantic structure. The basic configuration of the semiotic square also holds for the semantic macrostructure of the narrative in which a temporal opposition is correlated with a thematic opposition; for example, before:after::inverse content:posited content. In other words, the relation between the situation preceding the “reversal of the situation” or climax and the situation following it is correlated with the opposition between an initial thematic problem and a thematic resolution. Thus, the narrative can be grasped as a whole only by relating its semantic and thematic development to the development of plot. The posited and inversed contents refer to the retrogressive determination of the narrative, which is settled beforehand by its closure, the end determining what precedes it. Hence, the starting point is from the end, with final contents that are posited or resolved. Before the reversal of the situation, the contents are, therefore, inverted.

Another type of articulation allows a distribution of the contents according to the body of the narrative, as opposed to the framing sequences. The body contains two topical contents, whereas the initial and final sequences form two correlated contents that in principle manifest the same type of transformation as the topical contents. With further analytic refinements, the narrative is segmented into six sequences. Figure 2 summarizes both the event-related and semantic structures of the narrative and sets up the correspondences between them (Greimas, 1966a).

This global, unifying model of the abstracted narrative illustrates only formal and invariant properties. By segmenting the text into sequences, the model provides the formal parameters into which the contents can be poured and then analyzed. It allows the analyst to identify the important themes or contents manifested as consequences of tests as object values. Since the main test is the peak of the tale and the manifestation of the transformation of contents, its consequence will indicate the dominant theme or message of the narrative. It is the pivotal area from which the semantic analysis starts by means of the semiotic square. The contents projected upon the square may be articulated in foreseeable positions and constituted in semantic categories. In the analysis and interpretation of a Bororo myth that also served as material for Claude Lévi-Strauss's The Raw and the Cooked (1964), Greimas presents the five stages in the application of the semiotic square and the gradual, elaborate construction of the semantic code underlying and governing the myth (1966a). In the first stage, which starts at the topical content of the main test, the consequences consist of:

1. negating the term raw (nonlife);
2. affirming the term cooked (life);
3. affirming the term fresh (nondeath); and
4. negating the term rotten (death).

Without Greimas's three pages of comment and explanation of how these results were obtained, the semantic categories affirmed or denied in the myth would not be obvious or open to being duplicated by another interpreter. Thus, Greimas's explanation is essential to enable the reader to follow each move on the square and in the semantics of the myth.

The semiotic square plays the role of description procedure and, to some extent, the role of discovery procedure with its basic operations of assertion and negation to obtain a particular microsystem of oppositions in one text or another. But, ultimately, in texts longer than a paragraph that have any complexity whatsoever, the analytic results obtained by the square presuppose a prior interpretation and evaluation that need to be made explicit in order to be comprehensible and for the square to be “readable.” A demonstration is required that in addition to filling the four slots in the square, matches the thought processes of the analyst. Many applications of the square fail in this regard, pressing home a neglect that Greimas (1979) characterized in a different context as courting “the real danger of confusing operational techniques (rewriting rules, trees, graphs, etc.) with scientific doing itself” and confusing taxonomic analysis with a complete as well as textualized analysis, interpretation, and evaluation. 0195120905.narrative-structures.2.tifFigure 2. Relations between Narrative and Semantic Structures.