Forty-One Questions on the Nature of Narrative - Brief Article

1. What is the difference, if any, between narrative, nonnarrative, and antinarrative?

2. Would a text like Robbe-Grillet's La Jalousie be (a) narrative or (an) antinarrative?

3. Is there more than narrative in a narrative?

4. Can an entity be narrative and not be a narrative?

5. Is a narrative a representation?

6. In Benveniste's terms, is a narrative a semiotic entity (one that is recognized as a narrative) or is it a semantic entity (one that is understood as a narrative)?

7. Does every narrative feature the same representational mode (as Genette has insisted)?

8. Is the live television broadcast of a football game (a) narrative?

9. Can a theatrical play be (a) narrative?

10. Should a distinction be made between narrative as the representation of certain types of content, narrative as a mode of representation (featuring an agent recounting something), and narrative as a genre?

11. Is a memory (a) narrative?

12. Is a dream (a) narrative?

13. Is the presentation of one and only one state--"The ball is red," "Mary was happy," "Sally was cool"--(a) narrative?

14. Is the representation of two or more (unconnected or randomly connected) states (a) narrative?

15. Is the representation of otherwise unconnected states in a temporal sequence (a) narrative?

16. What about the representation of temporally sequenced states that are also related in other ways?

17. Is something like "It was warm and then it was cold" (a) narrative?

18. Is the representation of a single process--like "It was raining," "Peter is knitting," "Mary was cooking," or "They were playing cards"--(a) narrative?

19. Is the representation of a single event, a single happening or action, a single change in a state of affairs (a) narrative?

20. Is the representation of mutually contradictory events (a) narrative?

21. Is the representation of two or more (unconnected or randomly connected) nonsimultaneous events (a) narrative?

22. What, to use Harold Mosher's terms, is the difference between narratized description, descriptized narration, and (a) narrative?

23. If(a) narrative is necessarily tied to temporality and the passage of time, do all representations unfolding in time or taking time constitute narrative(s)?

24. If the representation of at least one change of state is necessary for the constitution of (a) narrative, is a representation of any magnitude (a) narrative simply by virtue of including one such represented change?

25. Is the representation of future change (a) narrative?

26. Is the representation of hypothetical change (a) narrative?

27. Is a prophesy, a horoscope, a set of instructions (a) narrative?

28. If, as Nelson Goodman argued, the picture of a forest implies that trees grew from seedlings and the picture of a house suggests that trees were cut for it, are such pictures narrative(s)?

29. Are all narratives stories?

30. Is "The king died" a story?

31. Is "The king died and then the queen died" a story (in the common rather than E. M. Forster's acceptation of the term)?

32. Do annals--i.e., the account of events in a given set of successive years--constitute stories?

33. What about obituaries?

34. What is a minimal story?

35. What is the difference between a complete story and an incomplete one?

36. Does a recipe or user's manual constitute a story?

37. Aren't some representations more narrative than others?

38. Aren't some nonnarrative representations more narrative than other nonnarrative representations?

39. Is one of the differences between, say, a descriptized narration, a mere chronicle of events, and a story a difference in degree of narrativity?

40. What are the advantages and disadvantages of a restrictive or an expansive definition of narrative(s) and narrativity?

41. What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be (a) narrative?

Gerald Prince (gerry@babel.ling.upenn.edu) is professor of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of several books on narrative, including A Dictionary of Narratology (1987 and Narrative as Theme (1992), and is now writing Le Petite Prince: Guide du roman de langue francaise au vingtieme siecle.

(*.) I would like to thank Brian Richardson for his advice.

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