The Importance of The Narrative

Narratology has made it clear that, while narrative can have any number of functions (entertaining, informing, persuading, diverting attention, etc.), there are some functions that it excels at or is unique in fulfilling. As well as being a particular mode of knowledge, the narrative always reports one or more changes of state. It does not merely reflect what happens; it discovers and invents what can happen.

Gerald Prince, On Narratology (Past, Present, Future), French Literature Series (Columbia, 17(1) (1990), pp. 1-2.

There is a second point here with even broader implications for narrative theory. Not only will different summaries of the same narrative be produced by people with different conventions, habits, and models of summarizing, but even given the same conventions, their summaries will be different if the motives and purposes of their summarizing are different. Thus, one would present a different plot summary of a given novel if one's motive were to advertise it to potential buyers or to deplore its sexism to a friend and still different if one were summarising the novel in the course of presenting a new interpretation of it or of writing a critical biography of its author. Each of these summaries would simplify the narrative at a different level of abstraction, and each of them would preserve, omit, link, isolate, and foreground different features or sets of features in accord with the particular occasion and purposes of the summarizing.

It is the novel: an abridged, and simplified version, to be sure, but, in that respect, like the one-volume version of Clarissa constructed for busy or impatient readers or like the abridged and simplified Gulliver's Travels constructed for the amusement of children. Narratives are therefore quite manifest, material, and are just retellings. The importance comes from the different versions- of those same narratives, which are carefully constructed by someone in particular, on some occasion, for some purpose in order to suit a particular target audience.

For example there are many versions for Cinderella; some may not be suitable for the younger audience but may interest the older generation:

"...the one that appears in Julius E. Heuscher's volume, A Psychiatric Study of Myths and Fairy Tales: Their Origins, psycho-sexual development. The three visits to the prince's ball, he suggests, are occasions for erotic arousal from which the young girl flees, trying to evade sexual maturity..."

This reading is, of course, an 'interpretation' of Cinderella. It is also a retelling and thus a version of the tale; indeed, it also represents an attempt to identify the basic story of Cinderella, though it is certainly not the same basic story that might be identified by most people and it is far from the Disney version suited for the younger audience.