ABSTRACT
Jonathan Culler's definition of fabula as a tropological construction, the product, rather than the reality reported by discourse, is in line with Mieke Bal's view in Narratology that the fabula is the most abstract of all narrative levels. Traditional narrative analysis would identify the series of events which constitute the action of the story, and would describe the order and perspective in which these events of the plot are presented in the discourse of the play. This chapter offers examples of an approach to narrative which, unlike studies of point of view that have dominated American narrative theory in the past, explores the complex interaction of two modes of determination. The effect of recent French work in narratology on this tradition has been to provoke more attempts to systematize and refine the models and concepts which had often been used in an ad hoc way to interpret individual texts.
