Narratology

About: Narratology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2833 publications have been published within this topic receiving 50998 citations. The topic is also known as: narrative theory.

Creating Scientific Narratives: Experiences in Constructing and Interweaving Empirical and Theoretical Plots

Abstract: Taking an interpretive perspective, this chapter argues that practice research has a narrative character in the sense that it is a speech act that retrospectively verbalises something (namely practices) that did not exist previously, and that is written from the (unique) perspective of its author. Although the narrative turn in research methodology is gaining significant scholarly attention, little is known about how scientific narratives are created by researchers and how researchers can be held accountable for them. We present two autoethnographies, to obtain insight into our own practice as scientific narrators. Our analysis reveals that our scientific narratives were created by interweaving an empirical plot and a theoretical plot. It also shows that researchers can be held accountable for their narratives by means of a ‘narrative contract’ with the narrative’s audience according to which the researchers must deliver (1) meaning, by means of a plot that offers a certain criticality (both empirically and conceptually) and (2) ‘truthfulness’, by resonating with the standards that their audience adheres to. We conclude by discussing the implications of such a narrative turn in research methodology for the conceptualisation of practices, practice based research and practice theory.

Students As Historians: The Historical Narrative Inquiry Model's Impact on Historical Thinking and Historical Empathy

Abstract: The dissertation explores middle-school students' abilities to engage in historical thinking. I dispute the Hallam-Piaget model, which discourages analytical thinking through the assumption that children lack skills to think critically about history. My historical narrative inquiry model (1) teaches procedural knowledge (the process of "doing" history); (2) enhances interpretative skills; (3) cultivates historical perspectives based upon evidentiary history; and (4) encourages student authorship of historical narratives. In the fall semester of 2006, with a classroom of twenty-five seventh-graders, I initiated a research study designed to explore the impact of the historical narrative inquiry model through a sequence of thirty-two lessons. The lessons involved small- and large-group activities, including oral presentations, discussions about primary documents, and consideration of the relation between narratology and the creation of written history. Students generated their own historical narratives in order to articulate their perspectives. Eight students having varied reading-level proficiency served as primary participants in the study. Each of these students received pre- and post-intervention interviews. Outcomes reflected the enhancement of pedagogy intended to facilitate historical thinking and historical empathy in the classroom.

On the Epistemology of Narrative Theory: Narratology and Other Theories of Fictional Narrative

Abstract: This article is made up of two talks presented in French and English, at two conferences : a symposium organized by Matti Hyvarinen and Kai Mikkonen, at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki, and a series of conferences which I organized at Paris 7-Denis Diderot University. The title, which is borrowed from Marc Dominicy's work on Jakobsonian poetics, sets out to analyze narrative theory from an epistemological viewpoint. On the one hand, I focus on Genette's narratology as it is presented in "Discours du recit", Figures III and Nouveau discours du recit (I also take into account Rene Rivara's attempt in La Langue du recit to give narratology a linguistic base, using enunciative linguistics). On the other hand I explore what I call, following S.-Y. Kuroda's cue, "non-communicational" theories of fictional narrative, of which Ann Banfield has developed the most formalized version. In spite of their very unequal popularity, I consider these theories as objective, which is to say, debatable and capable of being the object of a rational critique. Moreover, it is a matter of choosing between the two. The analysis is developed in three parts. The first concerns the object of narrative theory, in other words, the narrative as a constructed object, both in narratology (where the narrative is likened to a narrative discourse and attributed, in the case of fictional narrative, to a fictive narrator) and in Kate Hamburger's narrative theory (where the fictional narrative and discourse are mutually exclusive categories): this part poses the problem of the encounter between a theoretic object, defined by a certain number of properties and historical or empirical factors (notably those which deal with the distinction between "first person" narrative and "third person narrative"). The second part of the article examines whether or not the theory's assertions lend themselves to falsification. I consider in particular Gerard Genette's assertion, according to which "all narrative is, explicitly or not, in the first person, because its narrator can at any moment designate himself by the pronoun I", in light of Ann Banfield's theory of narrative and free indirect speech (free indirect speech as Ann Banfield defines it constituting a singular case of observation that falsifies the hypothesis of Genette and narratology). The third part of the article concerns the "reductionism" of narrative theory (or the way in which the theory's assertions are reducible to another level, in this case the linguistic level). Leaving aside Genette's narratology which never took interest in the "language of narrative", this part considers, successively, Rivara's enunciative narratology and Ann Banfield's theory of narrative and free indirect speech. This part shows that Rivara's program of enunciative narratology is based on a series of reductions that are difficult to justify and which leave room for real contradictions (in particular concerning the status of the "omniscient" narrator). It also shows that the assertion by Ann Banfield according to which the behavior of elements and constructions characteristic of free indirect speech, considered as a sub-category of narrative style, is part of the language and is capable of being formalized in the grammar of this language. It shows as well how Ann Banfield's assertion that the behavior of elements and characteristic constructions of free indirect speech, considered as a sub-category of narrative style, is part of language and can be formalized in the grammar of this language, this assertion is inseparable from the elaboration of "another grammar", which is to say, another conception of language. The conclusion proposes that the relation between the theory and the analysis of fictional narratives be reconsidered.