Narrative Theory Texts

Hans Christian Andersen was responsible for some of the best-known fairy tales of all time: who hasn't heard the phrases "ugly duckling" or "the emperor's new clothes"? These tales are a good match...

Austen's novel is all about a teenager, Catherine Morland, who is invited to stay with some friends at their home, Northanger Abbey. Catherine is a big fan of Gothic tales and imagines that Northan...

Set during the American Civil War, this story centers on a man named Peyton Farquhar, who has been captured by soldiers yet "miraculously" escapes being hanged after the rope breaks. The story foll...

This short story is made up of a statement written by a former professor, Dr. Yu Tsun, who has been working for the German army as a spy. In this statement, Yu Tsun describes his experience of bein...

Dickens wrote some of the best-loved stories of all time, and this one is definitely up there. Part of its appeal is its simple but effective narrative arc. Even if you haven't read the story, you...

This story is set in a small American town that, for as long as anyone can remember, has held a lottery in which all the town's families take part. For most of the story, we don't know the purpose...

Taken from Kipling's Jungle Books, this is the story of a lively mongoose who, during a flood, is washed out from his burrow and ends up in a ditch. He's then rescued by a human family and settles...

Moby-Dick is narrated by a guy called Ishmael, who gets himself a post on a whaling vessel. For a while, the ship's captain, Ahab, remains mysteriously absent. However, when he reveals himself...

This classic Shakespearean tragedy starts out with King Lear planning to divide his kingdom between his three daughters based on how much they tell him they love him. However, when his youngest dau...

The earliest known philosophical work to focus on literary theory as we understand it today, Aristotle's Poetics takes a look at the various ingredients that make up a successful work of liter...

If you're just getting started with narrative theory, this book is a go-to text for the lowdown on some of the key concepts. It breaks narrative down into segments, looking at stuff like events, ti...

Despite being an academic work, this is one of those books that has crossed over and enjoyed a lot of publicity and fame in the wider world. Like many of the other narratologists discussed througho...

Working as a structuralist and film theorist, Chatman uses this book to study the ins and outs of narrative in a variety of texts. As you'd expect, the act of narration is one of the main topics, w...

Academic theory is usually seen as pretty stuffy, but Eco helps lighten things up by analyzing stuff like Superman and James Bond. This book is made up of eight essays, but it's Eco's analysis of p...

Genette splits this book into five sections: "Order," "Duration," "Frequency," "Mood," and "Voice." As you can see from these titles, the first half is focused on issues having to do with time, whi...

Lévi-Strauss spent his academic career studying tribal cultures and myths, and Structural Anthropology became one of his key works. As is typical of narratologists, he went beyond the surface...

Loads of theorists have come up with narratological models and have coined lots of jazzy terms; Propp, however, is remembered for turning theory into practice with this analysis of Russian wonder t...

This book is all about "mediacy"—basically, the voice of a narrator standing between the reader and the events described. Stanzel defines various types and levels of mediacy, and concludes that t...

This is one of the texts in which Todorov outlines his theory of narrative structure. Basically, Todorov's idea is that a standard narrative starts off with a state of equilibrium that's then inter...