David, Herman (2005) “Histories of Narrative Theory (I): A Genealogy of Early Developments” in A Companion to Narrative Theory (eds.) James Phelan & Peter J. Rabinowits: 19-35. Oxford: Blackwell.

Introduction

Theory of Literature and Narrative Theory: A Case Study

Early Twentieth-Century Narrative Poetics: “Morphological” Models in Germany and Russia

“Anatomy and morphology share the assumption that an organism is a set of parts… [But whereas] anatomy is satisfied with separating and identifying the parts, morphology informs us that the diverse parts make up a higher-order, structured whole. Morphology is a theory of the formation of complex structures from individual parts.” (Doležel 1990: 56) – 23

German scholars […] distinguished between disposition (logical arrangement) and composition (artistic arrangement) of the structural elements contained within narratives. – 23

Like Dibelius, Propp subordinated character to plot, focusing not on particularized actors but on recurrent, plot-based “functions” instantiated by various individuals across the tales. – 23

in distinguishing between “bound” (or plot-relevant) and “force” (or nonplot-relevant) motifs, Boris Tomashevsky provided the basis for Barthes’s distinction between “nuclei” and “catalyzers” in his “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives”. Renames kernels and satellites by Seymour Chatman, these terms refer to core and peripheral elements of story-content, respectively. Delete or add to the kernel events to the story and you no longer have the same story; delete or add to the satellites and you have the same story told in a different way. – 25

the fabula-sjuzet or story-discourse distinction, that is, the distinction between what and the how, or what is being told about versus the manner in which it is told. – 25

Morphology II: Organic Form, Anglo-American Formalism, and Beyond

The Structuralist Synecdoche: Narratology after Russian Formalism

In Jonathan Culler’s phrase, “linguistic is not hermeneutic”; that is, linguistic analysis seeks to provide not interpretation of particular utterances, but rather a general account of the conditions of possibility for the production and processing of grammatically acceptable forms and sequences. – 30

Structural analysis of stories concerned itself not with what narratively organized sign systems mean but rather with how they mean, and more specifically with how they mean as narratives. – 30

Wellek and Warren Revisited: A Genealogical Perspective