Narratology strives to be a veritable 'science' of the story -- it is the analysis of culture, media, and, of course, literature from the perspective of the narratives it employs and enacts. The premise here is that every representation of an... [more]

Narratology strives to be a veritable 'science' of the story -- it is the analysis of culture, media, and, of course, literature from the perspective of the narratives it employs and enacts. The premise here is that every representation of an event involves mediation by a narrative of some kind; every event is filtered through narrative structure. Singular, exceptional events may take place, but the representation of such events is never singular or exceptional. It always involves filtration through a narrative lens, the superimposition of structure on that which may or may not have one. Does reality conform to the structure of a story, or do we only impose our stories upon it in order to understand it, make it bearable? Are there explicit causal connections between events themselves, or are these only retroactively -- and fictitiously -- recreated? To what extent are narratives immanent to the movement of matter? These and other questions are tackled by the field of Narratology, which has its inception in the kind of Structuralism practiced by Levi Strauss. Some Narratologists, including Franz Stanzel and Vladimir Propp, attempt to make typologies of the different narratives employed and enacted in various cultures, fusing the genre to certain anthropological approaches. Others, such as Miek Bal, use it to interpret media strategies of popular culture that are employed in television, news, and film. For the Narratologist, culture is the set of all its stories. [show less]