What is Narratology?

Defining narratology

Narratology is the study of narrative form and function. Tzvetan Todorov coined the term in Grammaire du Décaméron (1969), calling for “la science du récit” (the science of narrative). Describing narratology as a “science” emphasizes its systematic approach. Influenced by semiotics, linguistics, anthropology, and literary studies, narratology breaks down narratives into their essential elements. Traditionally, the field is unconcerned with a work’s context or aesthetics; instead, as Gerald Prince writes in Narratology (1982, [2012]), narratologists decipher “the traits which distinguish narrative from other signifying systems” and propose tools for “the explicit description of narratives and the comprehension of their functioning.”

Jan Christoph Meister argues narratology is best defined as a discipline, “acknowledging narratology’s dual nature as both a theoretical and an application-oriented academic approach to narrative” (“Narratology,” Handbook of Narratology, 2014).

Emerging from structuralism in the 1960s and 1970s, narratology originally attempted to define universal narrative structures and elements. In the 1980s, however, narratology responded to post-structuralist critiques, beginning to address cultural context and reader interpretation. Since then, narratology has become increasingly multi-disciplinary, addressing media from advertisements to video games.

Development of narratology

Although “narratology” is a relatively recent term, the study of narrative dates back to Plato and Aristotle. In The Republic (c. 375 BCE), Plato writes, 

Here, Plato draws a distinction between a story told through a narrator (simple narration) and a story that imitates life (mimesis), like a play.

Aristotle’s Poetics (c. 330 BCE, [2020]) is often considered the foundational work of narratology. For Aristotle, narrative works are based on incidents and events. Focusing on tragedy, he lists a hierarchy of essential elements, with plot (muthos) as the most important.  Aristotle’s ideas — like his definition of plot as “an ordered sequence of events” — continue to influence narratology today (c. 330 BCE, [2020]).

Another foundation for narratology is late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century studies of folklore. Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928, [2010]) attempts to comprehensively catalog fairy tales. Borrowing the word “morphology” from botany, Propp scientifically examines narratives:

Propp examines the essential components and “functions” of fairy tales. His rigorous, empirical approach inspired Russian formalists. This movement — which flourished from 1916 to the late 1920s — aimed to describe literature in terms of form, autonomous from biological and historical influences. Russian formalist Mikhail Bakhtin introduced important literary concepts such as heteroglossia (the belief that each work is in conversation with countless other works), carnivalesque and chronotope (a term used to describe how temporal-spatial relationships are expressed in literature). 

Narratology emerged decisively from French structuralism, an intellectual movement lasting roughly from 1966 to 1980. Structuralism proposes that human behavior and culture are dictated by underlying systems. Structural narratology combines elements of Russian formalism and Propp’s Morphology with Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (1916) — which treats language as a scientific system of signs — and Claude Lévi-Strauss’ structural anthropology. A leading structuralist, Lévi-Strauss approaches myth as high-level language that can be broken into component parts. This desire to identify universal structures is central to narratology’s initial project.

Roland Barthes bridged narratology’s structuralist and post-structuralist periods. Revising models proposed by Propp and Lévi-Strauss, Barthes introduces concepts like narrative levels (see “Key concepts in narratology” below) and argues that narration is signaled by signs of narrativity (e.g., saying “once upon a time”). Barthes writes,

Importantly, Barthes differentiates between the author, the implied author, and the narrator. He defines narrative as necessarily communicated to a receiver, an idea that would influence Prince’s concept of the “narratee” (see “Key concepts in narratology” below).

Influenced by structuralism, narratology was initially invested in defining narrative universals. However, as post-structuralism questioned structuralism’s emphasis on fixed binaries and stable systems, narratology evolved. From 1980 to the present, narratology has developed new methodologies.

In Reading for the Plot (1984), excerpted in Narratology (2014), Peter Brooks moves beyond a structuralist account of plot as organization, “a matter of typology or of fixed structures.” For Brooks, plot is “the logic and dynamic of narrative, and narrative itself a form of understanding and explanation,” so plot must take into account intentionality, psychology, and desire (1984, [2014]). 

Since the 1980s, narratology has increasingly considered social and cultural factors and, as we explore in the next section, re-evaluated its definitions of “narrative” and “text.” 

Defining narrative and text

If narratology is the study of narrative, what exactly is a narrative? The answer is not straightforward. Susana Onega and José Àngel García Landa note that the “conceptual ambivalence of ‘narrative’ is present [...] from the very beginning of the discipline” (Narratology [2014]).

In Narratology (2010), Wolf Schmid discusses two concepts of narrativity. Classical narrative defines narrative by the presence of a mediator, a narrator. Structural narrativity defines a narrative not by how it’s communicated but by what is narrated: narrative texts “contain a temporal structure and represent changes of state” (Schmid, 2010). Onega and García Landa summarize these two definitions: “a work with a narrator” and “a work with a plot” (2014).

Schmid argues that both definitions have shortcomings:

To have temporal structure and represent a change of state, a work must represent an event. Acknowledging this need, Prince defines a narrative as “the representation of at least two real or fictive events or situations in a time sequence, neither of which presupposes the other” (emphasis original, 1982, [2012]). 

Modern narratology borrows from all these definitions to analyze complex narratives and unorthodox texts. While narratologists still study traditional literature, they increasingly recognize a text as anything made of signs — linguistic, pictorial, gestural, musical, or a combination of these. As Onega and García Landa write,

Narratives are all around us — in novels, movies, TV shows, bedtime stories, video games, TikToks, advertisements, paintings, songs, and more. 

Key concepts in narratology

Narratology employs specific terms and concepts; here are the most essential. For more in-depth entries and other concepts, see Handbook of Narratology (2014) and the glossary in An Introduction to Narratology (2009).

Author: The author is the intellectual creator of a text, the real person who composes the work.

Implied author: The implied author is the “author-image evoked by a work and constituted by the stylistic, ideological, and aesthetic properties for which indexical signs can be found in the text” (Schmid, “Implied Author,” Handbook of Narratology, 2014). The implied author arises from the text itself and can be perceived differently by each reader. 

Narrator: Distinct from the author or implied author, the narrator is the textually encoded voice through which events, actions, characters, etc. are conveyed. The narrator is a communicative role. The narrator can be, for example, an anonymous, omniscient presence (as in War and Peace [1869]); a character implicated in the narrative’s events (as in The Great Gatsby [1925]); or, as in multi-narrator works (like As I Lay Dying [1930]), a series of consciousnesses.

Reader: The reader experiences the text and helps shape it; the reader is a “decoder, decipherer, interpreter” (Prince, “Reader,” Handbook of Narratology, 2014). Audience-oriented branches of narratology (such as reader-response theory) interrogate texts by asking questions about how readers encounter them.

Implied reader: The implied reader is “the author’s image of the recipient that is fixed and objectified in the text” (Schmid, “Implied Reader,” Handbook of Narratology, 2014). While the author may have a “real” intended reader, this is not the implied reader. Like the implied author, the implied reader is a function of the text, emerging from its signs. As Wayne C. Booth writes,

Narratee: The term narratee, coined by Prince (see “Introduction to the Study of the Narratee,” reprinted in Narratology [2014]), describes the entity to whom the narrator directs their narration. There are two kinds of narratees: the addressee (the intended recipient) and the receiver (the actual recipient). Like the narrator, the addressee can be implicit or explicit. 

Perspective/point of view: These terms describe how the story’s presentation relates to the experience of the narrator/other characters. From whose perspective do we see? Common perspectives in narratives include “first person” (the narrator describes the action through their eyes, e.g., “I rode over the field”) and “third person” (the narrator describes the action as an uninvolved observer, e.g., “Sally rode over the field”). Third-person narration may be omniscient (speaking to the knowledge/experience of all characters) or limited (filtered through the knowledge/experience of a specific character).

Focalization: Focalization was introduced by Gérard Genette in Figures III (1972) as a reformulation of perspective/point of view. Focalization describes how narrative information is selected or restricted based on the knowledge of the narrator and their relationship to other entities. Its core question is “who sees?” Genette proposes three kinds of focalization: zero, internal, and external. In zero focalization, sometimes called the “omniscient narrator,” the narrator says more than any of the characters knows (Narrator > Character). In internal focalization, the narrator says only what a given character knows (Narrator = Character). In external focalization, the narrator says less than the character knows, adopting an objective, detached perspective (Narrator < Character). 

Fabula: The term fabula was used by Russian formalists to indicate the essence of a story. The tale of Cinderella may be told in various ways, with different narrators or even different plot points, but the term fabula indicates the story’s essence, the motif, myth, or fable at its heart.

Plot: Plot describes how events and actions are arranged and related based on motivations and consequences. Narratologists conceive of plot in three essential ways: 

1. Plot is the global, fixed structure of story events, configured from beginning to middle to end.
2. Plot is progressively structured as readers perceive and consider the connections between events.
3. Plot is intentionally structured by the author to achieve certain effects.

Narrative levels: Narrative levels describe the relationships between narrator, narratee, narrative act, and larger narrative structure. They shift when a narrator changes or when the relationship between the act of narration and the storyworld changes. For example, a novel may be mostly narrated by a single character but feature a long letter in which another character explains events that happened years prior: the narrative level has changed.

Vertical/horizontal narrative changes: Narratologists track narrative changes vertically and horizontally. A vertical change indicates a shift between narrative levels. This shift may be accompanied by a change in narrator (e.g., the primary narrator listens to a “story within a story” told by a different character). A vertical change can also occur when the narrator stays the same, but the narratee changes. During a horizontal change, the narrative level remains consistent, but the narrator or the nature of the narration changes. For example, parallel narrators may operate on the same narrative level, or a narrator may enter a dream state. 

Frame/frame narrative: “Frame” or “embedded” narratives operate across multiple narrative levels. Specifically, a “frame” creates a scenario for the act of narration. For example, in the film The Princess Bride (Reiner, 1987), the frame is a grandfather reading a book to his grandson. The frame motivates the telling of the embedded tale. Introductory framing occurs at a work’s beginning to introduce the primary narrative, whereas terminal framing appears at the work’s end (e.g., revealing it was all a dream). Framing can be interspersed throughout, or there can be multiple levels of framing, stories told by characters within stories (as in Ovid’s Metamorphoses [8 CE]). See Chapter 4 of Monika Fludernik’s An Introduction to Narratology (2009) for a discussion of frame narratives, accompanied by diagrams. 

Metanarration/Metafiction: The terms metanarration and metafiction indicate moments when a work self-reflectively comments on an act as it accomplishes it. Metanarration describes narration which comments on the act of narrating, while metafiction refers to moments in fiction that reflect on fictionality or the constructedness of language.

In the next section, we’ll apply some of these terms to an analysis of Frankenstein (1818, [2012]).

Case study: narratology and Frankenstein

Looking at Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, we can see various narratological ideas in action.

Frankenstein’s publication history helps us see the difference between author and implied author. Shelley is Frankenstein’s author, but the novel was initially published anonymously. As readers speculated about the book’s authorship, they likely used their conception of the work’s implied author to make assumptions about its true author. For example, because the text’s narrators are largely male, a reader may interpret the implied author as a man.

Frankenstein operates on several narrative levels. The novel is framed as letters from Captain Walton, a man on an expedition to the North Pole, to his sister. In this outermost narrative level, Walton is the narrator and his sister is the narratee. We shift levels vertically when we enter the story told by Victor Frankenstein (the new narrator) to Robert Walton (the new narratee), which Walton transcribes for his sister. Victor’s lengthy story features other epistolary narrative shifts. For example, Victor’s beloved Elizabeth takes on the role of narrator in a letter to him: “I must tell you a little story that will please, and perhaps amuse you” (Shelley, 1818, [2012]). While Victor narrates most of the novel’s first and third volumes, much of the second volume is narrated by the creature to Victor. At the end of the novel, we return to Walton, and shorter letters from Walton to his sister relate Victor’s end.

Yoon Sun Lee argues that Shelley’s novel uses framing to ask questions about plot, knowledge, and representation. Lee writes,

Discussing narrative levels, Lee notes that “Shelley’s tales [...] exist side by side, but they also contain each other, nested within” (2020). For Lee, the novel’s plot, represented by the pieced-together creature itself, “arises as much from its layout, its structure, as from the events that make up its stories,” while the use of framing conveys a shift from viewing knowledge as attainable to inaccessibly infinite (2020). Lee’s analysis reveals how narratological concepts can reveal not only a text’s form but also its meaning. 

(For more on Frankenstein, you can explore our study guide "Gothic Fiction - Key Elements of Gothic Literature & Film".)

Interdisciplinary and “new” narratologies

In recent decades, narratology has broadened in scope to address various narrative forms and draw upon other disciplines. Here we highlight three areas of growth for narratology since 1980: feminist narratology, narrative approaches to video games, and narrative medicine.

Feminist narratology

Feminist narratology (and queer narratology) examine how sex, gender, and sexuality shape narratives. Emerging with force in 1986 with Robyn R. Warhol’s “Toward a Theory of the Engaging Narrator” and Susan S. Lanser’s “Toward a Feminist Narratology,” feminist narratology challenged narratology’s traditional approach: feminist narratologists argued that classical and structuralist narratology was shaped by gendered assumptions and overlooked how sex, gender, and sexuality influence not only how a reader interacts with a text but also the text’s own form and function.  

In Alice Doesn’t (1984) and Technologies of Gender (1987), Teresa de Lauretis draws upon both narratology and feminist theory with a special interest in cinema. De Lauretis reads conventional understandings of narrative structure and plot as gendered, and analyzes how 

Lanser’s Fictions of Authority (1992, [2018]) brought feminist narratology to prominence through a wide-ranging study of novels by women from the 1740s to the 1990s and the challenges their narrative voices post to “Western” conventions. Lanser argues that

For more on feminist narratology, see “Gender and Narrative” in Handbook of Narratology (2014), Ambiguous Discourse (2000), and Literary and Linguistic Approaches to Feminist Narratology (2006).

Approaching video games: ludology vs. narratology

As video games have grown in complexity and gained scholarly attention, the question of narrativity in these games arose, sparking the Ludology vs. Narratology Debate. Some scholars denied the narrative potential of computer games altogether, while others sought to directly apply narratological principles to this new medium. Those championing ludology (the study of games) argued that applying a narratological approach positioned video games as derivatives of literature and film, and overlooked the specificities of their status as games. Britta Neitzel argues that both positions — treating games as simple narratives or denying the similarities between narratives and games — are too narrow. She writes,

In Understanding Video Games (2019), Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Jonas Heide Smith, and Susana Pajares Tosca point out that a narrative or story of some kind is almost always present in video games but that literary theorists and video game designers often use the term narrative differently. Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith, and Tosca write,

For more on narrativity and video games, see also The Meaning of Video Games (2008) and Video Games and Storytelling (2015).

Narratives and medicine

Narrative medicine is a growing interdisciplinary field of research. While narratology and medicine may at first seem disparate, stories frequent medical settings. The two most relevant medical narratives are the case history (the physician’s account of the patient’s condition) and the illness narrative (the sick person’s account of their own experience).

The illness narrative is of particular interest to scholars in the medical humanities and practitioners aiming to develop patient-focused, individualized practices. In Illness as Narrative (2012), Ann Jurecic challenges literary theorists’ unwillingness to treat illness narratives as literature. Jurecic explores “how writers and readers use narratives of illness to make meaning of the experiences of living at risk, in prognosis, and in pain” and “how narratives of illness invite reflection about the purpose and future of literature, the arts, and literary criticism” (2012).

Understanding medical experiences through the language of narrative can not only provide tools for understanding, communicating, and responding to illness but also provoke us to reconsider assumptions regarding the narrative trajectory we ascribe to illness, the roles we ascribe to ill people, and the function of illness in the stories we tell. For more on narrative and medicine, see The Wounded Storyteller (1995, [2013]), Stories Matter (2004), and Psychoanalysis and Narrative Medicine (2008).

As narratology continues to address new forms of media and intersect with other disciplines, we will gain new insights into the stories and forms of storytelling that structure our world. 

Further reading on Perlego

Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957, [2020]) by Northrop Fry

A Grammar of Stories (1973, [2012]) by Gerald Prince

On Literature (2005) by Umberto Eco

Body Work: Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative (1993, [2009]) by Peter Brooks

Current Trends in Narratology (2011), edited by Greta Olson

Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-Narratology (2010) by Arthur W. Frank

Neverending Stories: Toward a Critical Narratology (1991, [2014]), edited by Ann Fehn, Ingeborg Hoesterey, and Maria Tatar

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