The Basic Logical Structure of Fictional Expression (Translation)

The French coined the term narratology, the study devoted to the structure of narrative.

Although there is a vast body of work on specific literatures such as the long novel, the epic, the short story, folklore, and the fable, not much has been written to discuss the discipline of narrative in general.

In addition to the analysis of genre distinctions, there is also the question of defining 'what narrative essentially is'.

Literary critics have been too inclined to consider the written medium, even though they consume stories every day through movies, comic strips, paintings, sculpture, dance theater, and music.

Between these artifacts there must be some sub-level of ****similarity.

Literary theory, among its many imperatives, is to rationalize the structure of narrative, the elements of storytelling, their combination and expression.

It is not concerned with the evaluation and description of any particular work, and of itself.

It is not a criticism of literature, but a study of the assumed facts of criticism, of the nature of the literary object and of its parts.

If narrative is to be taken as a rational study, what are the necessary constituents of narrative?

Structuralist theory holds that every narrative has two components,

? One is the story, which is the chain of content or events (actions, accidents), plus the so-called actualities (characters, components of the background) ? The second is the discourse, or expression, the way in which the content is communicated.

In layman's terms, the story describes the what of the narrative, and the discourse is the how of it

The Russian formalists made their own structure, but used only two ideas.

? Story material ? Plot

In fact, story material is the sum of events to be told in the narrative.

And plot is the actual story that connects the events together.

For the formalist, story material is a series of events bound together that are gradually conveyed to the reader as the work takes shape.

And the plot is how the reader knows what happened.

Basically that is, the order in which events appear in the work, including normal, flashback, and from the middle.

Every narrative is a whole because it is made up of factors such as events being actualized.

Events are separate and discrete, whereas narratives are continuous composites.

In addition, events in a narrative tend to be related, or need each other.

Arbitrarily take a set of events that happen at different times, in different places, to different people, then he is clearly not a narrative.

A true narrative, on the contrary, is one that manifests itself in an already arranged sequence. Unlike a bunch of randomly assembled events, this is a perceptible organizational structure.

Second, narratives need to be transformed, and they need to be self-regulating, and self-regulation means that the structure maintains itself and ends.

The process through which a narrative event is expressed is its transformation. Whether the author chooses to order them according to cause and effect, or to invert them with a flashback effect, it only happens when a particular possibility arises.

Of course, some event or actuality that is not directly relevant may be introduced, but its relevance has to be tabulated at some point or it is constructed incorrectly.

Having so far only talked about the story structure of the narrative, next comes the discourse of the narrative, the how (HOW).

It can be divided into two subcomponents, the narrative form itself, and its performance.

Narrative conveyance involves the temporal relationship between story time and the telling of the story.

But what does it actually mean when we say that the narrative itself is a structure of meaning?

The question is not what is the meaning of a particular story? Rather, the question is what is the meaning of the narrative itself?

What is meant is precisely three things:

? Events ? Characters ? Description of the setting