The History of Narrative Theories, an Overview

Manُ s natural inclination towards rational detection of the surrounding realities, which has been manifested in the forms of oral and visual storytelling about his physical and intellectual experiences throughout history, was allegedly studied in a systematic way by Russian, in tandem with, Anglo- American formalists for the first time ever at the outset of the twentieth century. Then their intellectual legacies passed on to the francophone narratologists through the works of the Prague school structuralists and from the mid- twentiethe century on, were embodied under the rubric of Narratologie and fostered in a very broadr sense including modern literary narratives. However, reviewing certain binary, taxonomic, and typological concepts underlying the structural – narrotological outlook, in this article we have followed up the diverse genealogical lines of the "morphological narrative studies"- especially those based on the linguistically oriented theories- a little bit further beyond their very well acknowledged formalist ones, into the German tradition. We could not have started the venture, had we not drawn briefly on the most fundamental ideas put forward by such outstanding figures in the discipline as Barthes, Genette, Stanzel, Bremond, Ball, Chatman, Prince, Todorov, as well as many others. Finally, we have touched upon the recent developments brought about in the field of narrative studies, directly under the impact of cognitive linguistic pragmatics.