The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory, 2nd Edition

3NARRATIVE AND NARRATOLOGY

PAUL WAKE

 

 

 

 

Narratology, which has roots in structuralism and which draws much of its terminology from linguistic theory, is the study of the ways in which narratives function. Rather than being the study of any one particular narrative, an individual novel for example, narratology begins from a consideration of the ways in which narrative itself operates. This said, the value of narratology lies in its application, and the narratologist Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan makes a valuable point when she suggests that narratology should have a ‘double orientation’ that allows it to ‘present a description of the system governing all fictional narratives’ and, at the same time, ‘to indicate a way in which individual narratives ...