ABSTRACT
Literary theory has primarily focussed on novels and short stories. It is expected that there will be far greater complexity, artistry and imagination in such written works, compared with the spontaneous, oral non-fictional narratives of personal experience. To define narrative a number of literary theorists have suggested three necessary conditions or criteria. These are temporality, causation and human interest. These three criteria of narrative are important in structuralist models of narrative. Such models examine narratives in order to find common elements which are transferrable to non-literary media and have become the basis of narrative research in studies of popular culture. Greimas suggests that the actants or functions in a given narrative can be invested with further meaning by being inscribed in a 'Semiotic Square' based on logical relations which go beyond a binary model. A semiotic square gives the deeper meaning of narrative as equations of meaning, rather than of action.
