Narrative is a universal subject matter. People deal with narrative just about every day of their life, conscience of the fact or not. H. Porter Abbot’s description of narrative has an almost eye-opening characteristic to it. He states, “Caring nothing for the division between good and bad literature, narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural; it is simply there, like life itself. [1]” Abbot goes on to define narrative as, “The representation of a story (an event or series of events). [1] ”

In a broad sense, narrative is simply a form of story telling or communication. What goes INTO a narrative is really the subject matter of importance here. While narrative is a universal act, very few tend to analyze the content of the process. Roland Barthes and Lionel Duisit extensively reflect upon the composition of narrative in their literary work, An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative.

One interesting thought these two individuals bring up is the regulation of narrative. They present three different models as illustrated by Claude Bremond, Levi-Strauss Greimas, and Tzvetan Todorov respectively, to explain this logic. The first describes narrative as, “properly logical in its approach, [2]” meaning that the path a narrative takes is purely based in logistics. The second model (Greimas) describes narrative as being “linguistic [2].” The third and final model is more analytical in it’s regulation, stating that, “it sets up the analytical process on the level of “actions” [2].” All three are very different, yet it is easily conceivable that all three are correct by their own merits.

Another notion prescribed by Barthes and Duisit is that, “Narration can indeed receive its meaning only from the world which makes use of it… [2].” This is a powerful quotation because it implies that narrative parallels life itself. Without life, narrative would not exist. Which could also lead into the question, is narrative essential to life? The answer may not be black and white, but it seems that the one can conclude that, if not essential, it may at least be extremely important to the structure of life.

[1] Abbot, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Page 2, Page 237-238 .

[2] Barthes, Roland and Duisit, Lionel. “On Narrative and Narratives”. New Literary History. Vol.6 No.2 (1975), Page 252, Page 264.