Theorists

Whilst doing some research I thought it would be a wise idea to look into theorists for my exam preparation. I found some very useful information on some websites which helped me understand narrative theory.

Barthes narrative codes.

Reality is difficult to understand, and we struggle to construct meaning out of our everyday experience. Media texts are better organized; we need to be able to engage with them without too much effort.

Roland Barthes describes a text as

"a galaxy of signifies, not a structure of signified; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable...the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language..."

What he is basically saying is that a text is like a tangled ball of threads which needs unravelling so we can separate out the colours. Once we start to unravel a text, we encounter an absolute plurality of potential meanings. We can start by looking at a narrative in one way, from one viewpoint, bringing to bear one set of previous experience, and create one meaning for that text. You can continue by unravelling the narrative from a different angle, by pulling a different thread if you like, and create an entirely different meaning. And so on. An infinite number of times. If you wanted to.

Barthes also decided that the threads that you pull on to try and unravel meaning are called narrative codes and that they could be categorised in the following five ways: (ie Answers & questions)

• Symbols & Signs
• Points of Cultural Reference
• Simple description/reproduction
• Action
  

Todorov

Todorov, suggests that all narratives follow a three part structure. They begin with equilibrium, where everything is balanced, progress as something comes along to disrupt that equilibrium, and finally reach a resolution, when equilibrium is restored.

Here is a diagram of his narrative theory.