Structural Analysis of Narrative

Abstract

The theme I propose to deal with is so vast that the few pages which follow will inevitably take the form of a resume. My title, moreover, contains the word structural, a word more misleading than enlightening today. To avoid misunderstandings as much as possible, I shall proceed in the following fashion. First, I shall give an abstract description of what I conceive to be the structural approach to literature. This approach will then be illustrated by a concrete problem, that of narrative, and more specifically, that of plot. The examples will all be taken from the Decameron of Boccaccio. Finally, I shall attempt to make several general conclusions about the nature of narrative and the principles of its analysis. First of all, one can contrast two possible attitudes toward literature: a attitude and a attitude. The nature of structural analysis will be essentially and non-descriptive; in other words, the aim of such a study will never be the description of a concrete work. The work will be considered as the manifestation of an abstract structure, merely one of its possible realizations; an understanding of that will be the real goal of structural analysis. Thus, the term structure has, in this case, a logical rather than spatial significance. Another opposition will enable us to focus more sharply on the critical position which concerns us. If we contrast the internal approach to a literary work with the one, structural analysis would represent an internal approach. This opposition is well known to literary critics, and Wellek and Warren have used it as the basis for their Theory of Literature. It is necessary, however, to recall it here, because, in labeling all structural analysis theoretical, I clearly come close to what is generally termed an external approach (in imprecise usage, theoretical and external, on the one hand, and descriptive and on the other, are synonyms). For example, when Marxists or psychoanalysts deal with a work of literature, they are not interested in a knowledge of the work itself, but in the understanding of an abstract structure, social or psychic, which manifests itself through that work. This attitude is therefore both and external. On the other hand, a New Critic (imaginary) whose approach is obviously internal, will have no goal other than an understanding of the work itself; the result of his efforts will be a paraphrase of the work, which is supposed to reveal the meaning better than the work itself. Structural analysis differs from both of these attitudes. Here we can be satisfied neither by a pure description of the work nor by its interpretation in terms that are psychological or sociological or, indeed, philosophical. In other words, structural analysis coincides (in its basic tenets) with theory, with poetics of literature. Its object is the literary discourse rather than works of literature, literature that is virtual rather than real. Such analysis seeks no longer to articulate a