Narrative Theory

Ryan Soanes

Narrative Definition

A spoken or written account of connected events; a story: "a bare narrative of the details".

Vladamir Propp

He was Russian Soviet Formalists Scholar who analyzes basic plots of Russian Folk Tales in their simplest forms.

What’s the Point?

The proposal of Vladamir Propp was that actions and characters can all fit into defined roles and functions.

An example where this works is Star Wars but there are also lots of films where it doesn’t work such as Pulp Fiction (not a linear narrative, flash backs and starts from the middle)

Character RolesHero Good, Seeks Something

Villian Bad, Stops Hero

The Donor Prepared Hero (Gives Magical Object)

The Princess and her farther Gives a task to the hero and identifies the false hero

The dispatcher Sends hero on his way to do his task

False hero Someone who pretends to be the hero

Morphology of Folk Tale

Published in 1928 (in Russian) it then became popular in western culture in 1958 when it was translated. His character types can be applied to any story.

Narrative Structure

He broke up fairy tales into sections, from this he managed to turn this into a sequence of events that happened in Russian fairytales.It starts off with an initial situation which is followed by 31 functions.

31 FunctionsAll the 31 functions can be seen here with a description of each one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp#Functions