Story, Narrative, and Narration in the Two- and Three-Level Concept of the Narrative
Keywords:
narratology, story, narration, narrating, fabula, sujet, narrative discourse, narrative textAbstract
Story, narrative, and narration are common technical terms used in research and other areas today in which the narrative predominates. They are analyzed in relation to other terms (e.g., fable, sujet, narrative discourse, and narrative text) in terms of the two- and three-level concept of the narrative, and at least a temporary definition is provided in all of this terminological confusion. Among these terms, fable and sujet are outdated; as a conceptual pair they already appeared in Russian formalism and have been replaced by story and discourse, and by story and narrative text. Today all of these terms are most commonly replaced by the pair story and narrative discourse, or simply story and narrative. In order to define the most common term and the umbrella term narrative, a descriptive and a defining approach were used: the former provides a broader definition of the narrative as a cognitive, identity, performative, and inventive category, and the latter defines it more narrowly through the perspective of narratology as a concretization of a given narrative structure and as a unique literary organization of the topic and events, in which individual elements are arranged according to their literary effect. This narrower (narratological) definition becomes invalid if it is not addressed in terms of the two-layer (or even three-layer) concept and in connection with the story following the double logic principle of the narrative, when the story is the predecessor of narrative discourse, while also simultaneously proceeding from it. As a sequence of events, the story is recognized as a non-discursive and non-textual feature, and as a phenomenon of the text’s deep and immanent structure. It is also placed in such an important position by its relative simplicity, which defines it as the protoform of the entire body of narrative literature, the simplest literary organism, and at the same time the highest common factor of all narratives. It is well known today that it makes more sense to advocate the intermingling nature of story and discourse rather than their duality, in which the story is not primarily a sequence of events, but their later construct derived from discourse. The broader definition interprets narration as a collective term for all of the epic types and genres referred to as narrative or epic literature or epics, and as the overall process of communication or discourse taking place between the author and the reader, and the narrator and the narratee. The narrow definition delineates narration as the production of what is narrated in the sense of the narrator’s verbal narration or as one of the three message-formation processes of the narrative. In terms of the two- and three-level concept of the narrative, the connection between all three of the terms discussed (i.e., the story, narrative, and narration) proves that the terms and their fields mix and mingle, and their definitions change according to various directions and methods.References
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