narrative analysis [Lat. narrare ‘to relate, tell’]

An area of text linguistics which deals with the analysis and text typology of narrative texts, i.e. stories, everyday narratives, fairy tales, literary types of text. Narrative analysis finds its roots in Russian formalism (Vladimir Propp) and is developed from the narrative theory of structural literary theory (Roland Barthes, Claude Bremond), it occupies the middle ground between linguistics and literature studies nowadays. The point of departure for research is the acceptance of abstract narrative structures as the basis of the narrative text which are formed in a hierarchical fashion from narrative categories.