naratologiei

Naratologiei, commonly rendered as narratology in English, is the interdisciplinary study of narrative and narrative structures. It examines how stories are told, the devices and conventions they use, and how these elements influence interpretation, experience, and meaning. Core concerns include the distinction between story (the sequence of events) and discourse (the presentation of those events), as well as the roles of character, plot, setting, time, point of view, voice, and focalization.

Historically, narratology drew on structuralism, semiotics, and linguistics in the mid-20th century. Pioneering work includes Vladimir Propp’s morphology of the tale, Gérard Genette’s analyses of order, duration, and voice, Tzvetan Todorov’s equilibrium-based theories, Roland Barthes’s ideas on readerly and writerly texts, and Algirdas Julien Greimas’s structural models. Since then, the field has expanded to cognitive narratology, reception theory, and cross-media studies, applying narratological methods to literature, film, television, comics, and digital media. Notable scholars include Mieke Bal, Marie-Laure Ryan, and others who extend narratology beyond traditional print texts.

Methods in naratologiei combine close textual analysis with formal modeling, semiotic interpretation, and interdisciplinary approaches drawn from linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and media studies. The framework supports comparative studies of narrative across cultures and genres, and it informs analyses of how readers and audiences construct meaning from narratives in diverse media.

Critiques of naratologiei often address its potential overemphasis on structure at the expense of historical and cultural context, and concerns about Eurocentric bias. Proponents argue that its systematic tools illuminate how narratives organize experience and facilitate cross-cultural comparisons of storytelling.