Narrative Theories

Vladimir Propp was a Russion scholar who analysed the narrative structure of Fairy tales. He found common themes of the narrative, and of characters within the story. He identifies 31 functions of a fairy tale, in 4 speres of the story; 1st sphere: the introductory sequence, 2nd sphere: the body of the story, 3rd Sphere: the donor sequence, and the 4th sphere: the hero's return. Within these spheres are several parts of the narrative. He also propsed 8 character types; the villain, the hero, the donor ( a magical character that gives advice to the hero), the helper, the princess/prize, the princesses' father, the dispatcher and the false hero.

Tzvetan Todorov  is a French-Bulgarian philosopher. His narrative theory suggests that all stories begin with an equilibrium; everything is fine. Then there is a disruption of this peace, which has to be solved by the end, for everything to be restored as it should be, creating a new equilibrium.

Roland Barthes was a french literary theorist. He described text as "a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable...the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language..." He categorised narrative codes in five ways; Hermeneutic Code: elements of the storyline that are unexplained and therefore remain a mystery to the audience, Proairetic Code: action or events that cause tension, Semantic Code: connotations of the story, Symbolic Code: similar to semantic code, but organises semantic meaning in a broader and deeper way, and Cultural Code: the basis of which everything is founded upon, which is not challened and is assumed to be true. 

Claude Levi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist. He focused on narrative theory specifically to do with binary oppositions. These opposite values could be the cause for conflict. e.g. good & evil, alien & human, known & unknown.




Reference: Wikipedia, changingminds.org