Not all textbooks on narrative agree on the checklist of characteristics that determine if something is a narrative or not. Those that insist on such a detailed list, moreover, are likely to take issue with the fairly general definition we ourselves will be using throughout this module. With this in mind, we have identified below four of the main criticisms that could be levelled against our definition of narrative, along with our brief responses to them. The fourth and final criticism includes a list of some of the most common additional qualities narratologists believe must be present if something is to be considered a narrative in the fullest sense.
We have not gone into these criticisms in great detail because we believe that the ability to determine whether something is a narrative in the strictest sense is not what is really important in this module. What is important is that you acquire a set of tools and techniques that can help you recognise and analyse any form of verbal, visual or aural communication that includes narrative elements.
Criticism 1: to associate narrative with storytelling is unnecessarily confusing
The problem with defining narrative as storytelling is that the word story is also used to identify one very specific, and actually fairly limited, element of narrative in particular (for this particular meaning of ‘story,’ see here). This is why you may come across textbooks, teachers and/or critics who explicitly advise you not to define narrative as storytelling. They believe we run the risk of becoming unnecessarily confused if we use the word story both in its more limited sense and in the broader sense of “everything a narrative says.”
We disagree. So long as we do not think of narrative as “a story” but place the emphasis on storytelling – the telling of a story – there is no reason for any confusion. We will know what narrative is. To recognise that narrative involves storytelling requires us, after all, to look beyond the story itself and to pay especial attention to the way in which that story is told. It requires us to attend to such things as the order in which the events of the story are narrated (the plot), who is telling the story (the narrator) and to whom it is being told (the narratee). It requires us to attend, too, to the social, historical and personal perspectives and belief systems that inform the telling of the story (focalisation), the manner in which the characters are presented to us (characterisation), and the kind of world in which those characters live and act (the setting or storyworld).
Criticism 2: narrative is not a widespread phenomenon that plays a role in all aspects of human life, but something that appears in literature alone
This criticism is based on the view that the proper definition of narrative is actually very narrow and that if an act of storytelling is to qualify as a narrative it must adhere to a number of very specific criteria (of the kind listed in the next section below). For instance, if you believe that a narrative must a) involve the representation of a particular sequence of events that takes place within an individually configured experience of time, and b) contain a moment of surprise, reversal and/or realisation, it becomes impossible to use the word narrative in anything other than a loosely metaphorical sense in statements such as “Christianity has shaped the narrative of the Western world” or “far right groups across the whole of Europe are offering a much more compelling narrative than their leftwing opponents.”
We find this argument unconvincing. In our view, any attempt to restrict the scope of narrative to literature alone is unnecessarily fussy. Aside from anything else, it threatens to detract from, rather than enhance, our sense of what makes literature so vital a part of human existence and self-understanding. If we are to treat the stories literary narratives tell as capable of referring only to themselves and therefore incapable of intersecting with the stories we and various public practices and institutions tell about ourselves in ‘real’ life, we run the risk of reducing literature to little more than a mere distraction or form of escapism.
Criticism 3: narrative properly understood appears only in certain kinds of literature
Not only does narrative in its strictest sense appear only in literature, some narratologists argue, but it appears only in certain kinds of literature. There are many variations on this view, but perhaps the principal one (which we will use here by way of illustration) is that narrative involves telling what happened (the technical term for which is diegesis) as opposed to showing what happened (which is known in narratological circles as mimesis). Another way of putting this is to draw a distinction between a summary (in which an event or sequence of events is recounted at a later point in time in a manner that involves selection and mediation) and a scene (in which that event or sequence of events is allowed to unfold before us as we watch or read). The first item in both these pairs of characterisations (telling and summary) signifies the presence of narrative, it is argued, while the second item (showing and scene) confirms its absence. Broadly interpreted, this definition excludes from the category of narrative those literary forms such as theatre drama, graphic novels and cartoons (as well as television programmes, films, paintings and sculptures) that offer a direct presentation or enactment of the events involved. In order to count as a narrative, these scholars argue, the story must by contrast be told by a narrator (or collection of narrators) to someone (who in practice is usually the reader) who does not have direct access to the events recounted themselves.
This too is a viewpoint we find unnecessarily restrictive and ultimately somewhat incoherent. We agree that different genres of literature tell their stories in different ways and that this plays a crucial role in the kinds of stories that emerge and in the meanings they convey. Nonetheless, we prefer to view these variations as part of the rich tapestry of narrative rather than as something else entirely. To us, such variations are as much a part of the warp and weft of narrative as are the divergent ways in which plots might be constructed, settings established, characters fleshed out, points of view expressed, and so on.
(The reason we find any attempt to associate narrative with diegesis and to distinguish it from mimesis ultimately incoherent is because these two modes of communication frequently intertwine. Passages of apparent mimesis often contain passages of diegesis – such as the so-called ‘messenger speech’ in Greek tragedy – while passages of diegesis in turn commonly contain moments of mimesis – such as when a narrator records a dialogue in direct speech between two or more characters).
Criticism 4: the definition of narrative as the representation of an event or sequence of events that takes place in time is too general and leaves out too many of the specific qualities that distinguish narratives from other kinds of discourse
We agree with this criticism to the extent that we believe this representation must take the form of the telling of a story, but we would be hesitant to specify what this might involve more precisely. The reason for our hesitation is that storytelling can (and should be allowed to) take many different forms. What follows, then, is a short list of some of the most common requirements narratologists have claimed a story must fulfil if it is to be regarded as a narrative. Given that no narratologist would ever suggest a narrative must fulfil all these requirements, you should evaluate each of these criteria individually and decide which (if any) of them offer you additional insights into the particular narrative you are studying.
Competing definitions of narrative have suggested that narrative must:
- have a human element. It cannot consist solely of a bare transmission of facts (such as we find in railway schedules or recipes). Instead, it should convey the experience of what it feels like to follow that schedule, make that recipe, and so on.
- be particularised rather than general. That is to say, it must convey a sense of what it feels like to be person (or people) x experiencing event y at z moment in time.
- demonstrate how a process of cause and effect is operative in the world it depicts. According to this view, a sentence such as “my cat left the house and the neighbour’s dog ran down the road” is not a narrative because it does not insist on a direct connection between those two events – the timing of the emergence of the cat from the house and the timing of the neighbour’s dog heading down the road could be nothing more than a mere coincidence. The sentence “the neighbour’s dog ran down the road because my cat left the house” is a narrative, by contrast, because it makes it clear that one event caused the other.
- contain some kind of drive or engine that gives the story energy. There are countless alternative ideas about the kind of engine a story needs to qualify as a narrative, but the most common is that it must contain some kind of ‘twist,’ such as an element of surprise or recognition, a change of state, or a general shift in the direction of travel.
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