Narrative

The word narrative may make a person think of a story or a piece of art. However, the true meaning of the word goes deeper than that. As Abbott states, “We make narratives many times a day, every day of our lives. (Abbott 1). Narratives can be any type of story telling, even a three word sentence, as Abbott points out. The statement “Able to be carried by articulated language, spoken or written, fixed or moving images, gestures, and the ordered mixture of all of these substances; narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting (think of Carpaccio’s Saint Ursula), stained-glass windows, cinema, comics, news items, conversation” shows the numerous items that can be described as a narrative (Abbott 1-2). The basis of describing one word, as is done with the word narrative, by using so many other things, shows that no definition of the word can be precise.

When talking about a narrative book, the meaning is just as unclear. Abbott states, “Narrative, in other words, is a ‘scalar’ category in that there are degrees of narrativity, ranging from pronounced signs that a story is being narrated to so slight a narrative quality that a text fails to justify the overall category of narrative but is instead recognized as something else” (Abbott 148). Taking the meaning of scalar to mean broad, it is proven that even when trying to define a novel as a narrative, it is still an unclear and imprecise term.

The language and tone in which we speak when telling narratives is also important, which is what Barthes and Duisit state in their article. They state “…it is in that self-emphasis of narrative that the units at the lowest level take on their full significance. This ultimate, self-designating, form of narrative [i.e. the narrational level] transcends both its contents and its properly narrative forms (functions and actions)” ( Barthes and Duisit 264). The statement describes the fact that the way people talk affects what they are saying.


Abbot, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

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