Abstract
'Narrative Theory' is an online introduction to classical structuralist narratological analysis. The second section addresses the structure of the action or fabula provided by the Russian Formalists, notably by Boris Tomashevski, contemplated from the standpoint provided by Mieke Bal's structuralist theory of narrative. The paper addresses the Formalist definitions of fabula and siuzhet, the formalist notions of motifs and narrative macrostructures, the two logics of narrative, kinds of motifs, horizontal sections of the fabula, the vertical integration of narrative levels, with an an approach to exposition and motivation, and concluding with the Formalist views on time, space, and character.
Highlights
The finished work is nothing but form: subject matter exists not as such, but as a series of formal relationships
Henry James is careful to distinguish the subject he deals with from the finished product, the novel, which is a subject matter told in a special way, seen from a special point of view.[4]
We may observe here that none of the elements Shklovski mentions as setting apart fabula and siuzhet is open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API
Summary
Boris Tomashevski gave in the last section of his Theory of literature what is perhaps the clearest and most systematic contribution to narrative theory made by the Russian formalists.[1]. Shklovski's conception, seems to be moving beyond those of James or Bradley because it is narratological and, as such, more analytical This first definition opposes fabula and siuzhet as a series of events to a finished form. In a work by Shakespeare the doings of the characters and the language they speak are one: as a late follower of the Romantic tradition, Shklovski believes that all the elements of the literary work form an organic whole In this first definition, fabula is an abstract (or actual?) series of events, while siuzhet is the work itself considered as form: a complex verbal structure in which the fabula has experienced a sea change. Let us look closer at the concepts used by Tomashevski in his analysis of the fabula, we should not forget that his work is important in the systematization of analytical concepts at siuzhet level
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