(Alison Gazzard Lecture on 3rd November)
Starting this blog post with
Aristotle’s quote
“We’ve
considered that a tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete in
itself because it’s a whole of some quantity (because a whole doesn't’t have to
have a quantity). Now a whole in something that has a beginning, a middle,
and an end. A beginning isn’t necessarily after something else but it is
followed by something. An end naturally follows something – either as necessary
or as consequential – and has nothing following it. And a middle follows
something and is followed by something else. Therefore a well-constructed plot
cannot begin or end at any point the author would like”
–
Book 7, Poetics
Nice words from Aristotle,
one of the Greek legends! Now what he said, basically he said every story
always have a beginning, a middle and an end.
Now some definitions!
narrative [na-ra-tiv], a telling of some true or
fictitious event or connected sequence of events, recounted by a narrator to a
narratee (although there may be more than one of each)… A narrative will
consist of a set of events (the story) recounted in a process of narration (or
discourse), in which the events are selected and arranged in a particular order
(the plot). The category of narratives includes both the shortest accounts of
events (e.g. the cat sat on the mat, or a brief news item) and the longest
historical or biographical works, diaries, travelogues, etc., as well as
novels, ballads, epics, short stories, and other fictional forms.
Chris Baldick, Concise Oxford
Dictionary of Literary Terms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 145.
What a mighty long
definition, Narrative in short definition is either a spoken or written account
of connected events; a story of a bare narrative of the details.
Narrative = story + plot
Story
= what it is about?
Plot
= how it is told?
Now one of the best parts!!
I think this theory is really interesting and very seemingly correct as I’ve
been reflecting on all those movies I have watched in my lifetime (those I can
remember!)
The theory is called
“Freytag’s triangle”
Gustav Freytag’s theory is a
narrative structure that divided a story into five parts, which play the
important parts in narrative story. These parts are: exposition (of the
situation); rising action (through conflict); climax (or turning point);
falling action and resolution.
Now next one is about
“Propp’s Character Types”, this made up of seven roles which, by the way, are
always available in any narrative story out there.
The seven parts are
•The villain—struggles
against the hero
•The donor—prepares the hero
or gives the hero some magical object
•The (magical) helper—helps
the hero in the quest
•The princess and her
father—gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, marries the hero,
often sought for during the narrative. Propp noted that functionally, the
princess and the father can not be clearly distinguished
•The dispatcher—character
who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.
•The hero or victim/seeker
hero—reacts to the donor, weds the princess
•False hero—takes credit for
the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess.
I applied that theory to one
of “The Simpsons” episodes in our lecture seminar, it was very challenging,
because you cant tell which role but hard to apply to the characters in The
Simpsons because some of the characters, i.e. Lisa Simpson, is she the Hero or
False Hero, its hard because some of the characters does share two types or
even three. It was fun! Mind-numbling it was.
