What is a Narrative?

A narrative is defined most simply by Martin Kreiswirth in Merely Telling Stories? Narrative and Knowledge in the Human Sciences in which he says a narrative is “Something happened; or, better, someone telling someone else that something happened” [1]. While this Kreiswirth’s stance functions as a vague definition, the word narrative is most properly defined in greater depth. In order to come up with a proper definition I will examine a couple of other scholarly definitions of narrative.

In The Cambridge Companion to Narrative David Herman provides an in-depth definition of narrative. Herman defines narrative as “a structured time-course of particularized events” introducing “a CONFLICT into a STORYWORLD” that conveys the experience of the conflict in discussion [2]. The one segment that I have a problem with here is that Herman implies that a conflict is necessary for there to be a narrative. I find that a story doesn’t require a disruption to the norm. This is mostly seen in status updates on Facebook or Twitter, in which people share their everyday life through short updates. The flaw with this definition is that it makes a narrative seem to require extreme or bizarre circumstances when it can merely be a casual daily event that is being shared.

The definition of narrative that is amongst the most accurate has to be Gerald Prince’s approach in Dictionary of Narratology. In this work Prince defines narratology as “The representation of one or more real EVENTS communicated by one, two, several (more or less overt) NARRATORS to one, two, or several (more or less overt) NARRATEES” [3]. This approach to defining narrative encompasses what is being shared and the actual “act” of narrative. Instead of alluding to a medium that conveys the story, Prince’s approach is more direct and simplifies the process of actually sharing a narrative between the source and the receiver. It also shows that a narrative doesn’t require disruption, but can be a simple description of any event regardless of how “disruptive” it may be to the norm. In summation Prince’s simplified approach best describes what a narrative conveys and how a narrative is conveyed.


[1] Kreiswirth, Martin: Merely Telling Stories? Narrative and Knowledge in the Human Sciences. Poetics Today 21:2 (Summer 2000), p. 294.

[2] Herman, David (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 279.

[3] Prince, Gerald: Dictionary of Narratology. Revised edition. Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska Press 2003, p. 58.