What is Narrative?

I agree with H. Porter Abbott’s definition of narrative more than I do with the definition put forth by David Herman. Narrative is “the representation of an event or a series of events,” (Abbott, 13). This is a fairly broad definition, but that is the beauty of it; this definition allows freedom and flexibility as to what is defined as a narrative, and oftentimes coincides better with our unconscious judgments of narrative than stricter definitions do. Part of Abbott’s works are included in Herman’s compilation, but overall, Herman’s definition is much more subjective; it has a much longer list of criteria and is much stricter in its labeling of something as a narrative.

It is very probable that Herman’s overly strict definition of narrative is a product of the very problem he includes on page 22 of his compilation: the problem of trivialization of the word narrative, (Herman, 22). While the term narrative is certainly in some cases being over-used as Herman points out through Ryan’s article, it seems as though certain narrative scholars are over-qualifying the definition of narrative in an effort to make it more meaningful.

The problem with this, however, is that it makes the definition much more fuzzy and hard to define. Under Herman’s definition, specifically in the first section written by Ryan (Herman, 28-30), one event can be interpreted completely differently by two people. One person can think a certain subject is clearly a narrative, while the other can think it is clearly not a narrative, and they would both be right.

This is especially true of the eighth criteria: “the story must communicate something meaningful to the audience,” (Herman, 29). Who is to say whether or not a narrative is meaningful? What is meaningful for one person could be completely trivial for another. This fact basically invalidates Ryan’s definition as an objective way to say whether something is a narrative or not. Her definition, perhaps, offers better criteria for determining the degree of narrativity than does Abbot’s, but even in this regard, things get somewhat tricky, as degree of narrativity can become a subjective matter with this eighth criteria.

One other aspect of why Abbott’s definition of narrative is a better one is Ryan’s fourth criteria: “some of the participants in the events must be intelligent agents who have a mental life and react emotionally to the states of the world,” (Herman, 29). Consider Ryan’s little example story about the formation of the universe (Herman, 31). Under her definition, this would not be a narrative, mainly because it does not have intelligent agents in it who react emotionally. Many people, however, would consider this a narrative upon thought. Instinctually, one realizes the narrative within the story. This relates to Abbott’s point about how humans automatically look for the story in everything (Abbott, 8), and is one reason for why narrative should be defined more broadly.

Overall, there are many reasons why narrative should be defined broadly rather than strictly, not the least of which is the fact that humans have the ability and the tendency to imagine and extrapolate things we see into meaningful stories. The movement of the term narrative into the mainstream is no reason to make the category an exclusive club at the expense of practicality.

Abbott, H. Porter. "The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, Second Edition." Cambridge University Press.

Herman, David, ed. “The Cambridge Companion to Narrative.” Cambridge UniversityPress. Cambridge,2007.