Narratology A Review of the Book Narrative Discourse: An Essay In Method by Gerard Genette

The structuralist study of literature, associated with the names of Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, Genette, and others, sought not to interpret literature but to investigate its structures and devices. Gerard Genette (1930- 2018) is a French theorist and semiotician, one of the prominent figures of contemporary intellectual movements and has been associated with the structuralist movement and personalities such as Roland Barthes and Claude Levi-Strauss. Much of Genette's fame and influence goes back to the structuralist study of narrative, which provides one of the most comprehensive frameworks for analyzing narrative texts. The major theory of Genette on narratology is derived of his most influential text on narrative discourse: an essay on method. This essay is a portion of three volumes of his Figures and the major part of Figure 3. from In this work, Genette presents his view of narrative structure, according to which narrative discourse consists of three distinct levels called story, narrative and narrating. Genette's Narrative Discourse is a major work, as well as an indispensable tool for students who are interested in narrative theory.