Tuesday, March 8, 2011

What is Narrative?


Narrative is representing real and imaginary events in story telling forms.[1] The definition of Narrative should also support some statements like: Narrative is about problem solving, conflict, interpersonal relations, human experience, and the temporality of existence, but it does not have to spell them out.[2] Narrative is not only a story telling it should include these kind of emphasizes too.

Narrative remains largely unconcerned with good or bad literature. Like life itself, it is there, international, transhistorical, transcultural. [3] It is fact that there is not always good literature, if there was how people will challenge with their works. However there is also the idea of insignificancy of narrative which is totally not true because the narrative is one of the essential elements in our life. Also narrative is generally caries the reasons behind the events which is helpful to understand them better and communicate well about them.

However the fact that narrative is universal, every single standpoint such as historical, psychological, sociological, and ethnological have almost same situation which show us narratives all over the world with similar ideas. [4]


[1] Fischer, Annemarie. “Defining Narrative.” Global Media Narratives. Binghamton University. Binghamton, NY. Keynote.

[2] Ryan, Marie-Laure. “The Cambridge Companion to Narrative: Toward a Definition of Narrative”. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Print.

[3] Barthes, Roland. “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative”. New Literary History. Vol. 6, No. 2, p. 237. Print.

[4] Barthes, Roland. “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative”.p.237-238.

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