5 On Narrativity

On Narrativity
Author(s): Algirdas Julien Greimas, Paul Ricoeur, Paul Perron and Frank Collins
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 20, No. 3, Greimassian Semiotics (Spring, 1989), pp.
551-562
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/469353
Accessed: 12-12-2019 09:13 UTC
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/469353?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to New Literary History
This content downloaded from 58.249.112.15 on Thu, 12 Dec 2019 09:13:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
On Narrativity*
Algirdas Julien Greimas and Paul Ricoeur
RICOEUR: It is a pleasure to share once again a discussion session

with Professor Greimas. Our paths have often crossed over
the years and our friendship has increased along with these
exchanges. Let me first say how my own agenda led me not only to
cross Greimas's path but also led me along the same road with him.
Coming from the disciplines of phenomenology and hermeneutics, I
was first interested in the way semiotics responds to the aporias of
hermeneutics, which is fundamentally based on the notion of preun-
derstanding that is necessary before scientific discourse on literature
and more specifically on narrative can be elaborated.
My initial conviction was, and to a large extent still is, that we have
a first mode of understanding narrative configuration before having
the slightest notion about semiotics. When linguists speak of pho-
nemes they are dealing with objects that have no social or institutional
existence. Narratives, by contrast, already have their social functions,
and they are understood in a certain way in social intercourse among
writers, narrators, readers, and speakers, for example. Therefore,
this first order intelligibility, if I may so call it, has in a sense its own
rules which are, if not thought out, at least understood. The best
document concerning this type of understanding prior to any semi-
otics is provided by Aristotle's Poetics, which has a very articulate
system of categories that ignores the difference between deep struc-
tures and surface structures. Aristotle speaks of the "mythos" as the
configuration of incidence in the story and uses the term "sustasis" to
refer to a sort of system of events. But the kind of intelligibility linked
to our acquaintance with the way stories are plotted is closer to what
Aristotle in the rest of his work called "forensis," that is to say, prac-
tical intelligence, which is closer to the way we use our intelligence in
ethical and political matters than it is to the kind of episteme that
functions in physical and social sciences at their systematic level.
* This discussion was the closing session of a colloquium on the "Universals of

Narrativity" held at Victoria College, University of Toronto, on June 17, 1984 during
the Fifth International Summer Institute for Semiotic and Structural Studies.
552 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
My first approach to semiotic

rationality it introduced in th
ity that has as its object not n
standing we have of them. He
work in semiotics derives from
being subordinated to it, for i
it introduces a new kind of rat
and understanding. This can
field of history, where there
having expectations of the f
intelligence, an intelligibility o
But when historians bring t
topic, an inquiry and a dialec
intelligibility, the intelligibility
the writing of history.
My main theme would theref
derstand better, and it is in
better and explaining more t
increases the readability of tex
a certain extent without the h
three problems that we shall
accepted the format of my
grateful.
The first problem I would like to raise is the relationship in Grei-
mas's semiotic system between deep structures, with their para-
digmatic principles, and superficial or surface structures.1 I would
like to go even further and raise the problem of the relationship
between these deeper structures and the text understood at the locus
of figuration, the figurative level of the story. My hunch here would
be that if the rules of transformation that belong to a logic of narrative
have a narrative character, it is to the extent that they go from the
peripeteia of the surface to the dynamics, without which the system
would not exist. My claim here is that surface is more than a kind of
reflection of deep structure, it is more than the instantiation of nar-
rative rules that can be construed at the deeper level. Something
happens at the level of figuration that makes the dynamism of the
processes described possible. In other words, to use vocabulary famil-
iar to semioticians, in the shift from paradigmatic structures to their
syntagmatization, the historicization of the story occurs at the surface
and then it is by reflection of the surface at the deep level that the
deep level itself may be said to transform, to provide transformations
from a first state of effect to a last state of effect.
To illustrate this point I will take two examples, the second from
ON NARRATIVITY 553
Greimas's work itself.

mas's former student
which he examined th
opponent.2 In the acta
the traitor in the system
he has individual chara
in the development of
an increasing enrichm
itself, the plot itself.
tles who shares the sam
the Son of Man will be
thing contingent at ev
connects the function
makes treason happen
introduce a contingen
peripeteia, which belon
therefore seem to me
deep structures and su
close, for example, to
ture and superstructu
a mere reflection of the infrastructure. We have here instead a dia-
lectic of a kind that needs to be recognized.
I will take my second example from Greimas's wonderful book,
Maupassant: The Semiotics of Text: Practical Exercises, a 250-page analysis
of a 6-page short story, "Two Friends."3 The surface of the text nar-
rates the story of a failed fishing expedition that will end with a
reversal of roles because the enemy who has captured the unfortunate
fishermen does not succeed in making them confess they are spies
and that the fishing expedition is a cover story. The two friends refuse
to accept the role of spies, and they are executed by a firing squad.
The important event is that they are cast into the water and given back
to the fish. At the end of the tale the Prussian officer catches the fish
and has them fried up for himself. According to Greimas's analyses,
in fact, it is the unfortunate fishermen who offer the fish to the
officer. Greimas comes to this conclusion by constructing all the
proper semiotic squares. He sets in the right place the oppositions
between life and nonlife, death and nondeath and therefore all the
exchanges among the four poles of the square. But it seems to me
there is something decisive that does not belong to the model as a
logical model, namely, the way in which the homologation of the
individual characters is made in relation to the roles. This homolo-
gation of the sun with cold life, the empty sky with cold nonlife,
Mount Valerian with cold death, and the water with cold nondeath is
brought about through the

important for this homolog
to the whole story and make
ermen into a quasi resurrec
very homologation makes the
the miraculous fishing exped
tory. Therefore one could ask
provides the element of con
decisions which keep the sto
would say finally that the de
the contrary.
GREIMAS: In order to understand the questions raised by Professor
Ricoeur and the objections that could be made to semiotic theory, it is
necessary for me to make the following general points. I feel that not
only in semiotics but also in linguistics more generally, and, again, in
the whole of the social sciences, the first major methodological step
necessary is the identification of pertinent levels. It is only when a
scientific project posits the objects it wishes to describe or construct at
a specific level, and not at ten different levels, that it can hold a
coherent discourse on these objects. This constitutes, I believe, the
superiority of linguistics over the other human sciences. Yet, this is
also the general rule to be followed if one wishes to carry out rigorous
semiotic practice. Thus, the distinction between the deep and surface
levels is an important methodological choice. When developing mod-
els of description of narrative structures, it is necessary once again to
identify two levels: an abstract deep level and a more concrete surface
level. The difference between the two is that the surface level is an
anthropomorphic level, because all syntax of natural languages is
anthropomorphic. There exist subjects, objects, beneficiaries; quali-
fications are attributed to subjects, for example. Linguists generally
try to hide this fact, but it cannot be hidden when one investigates
discourse from a semantic perspective. This narrative level of an an-
thropomorphic nature posits relations between subject and object, the
sender and receiver, which are fundamental. The deeper level we try
to establish is the level of abstract operations, that is to say, operations
in which the operating subject is no longer a human subject but, just
as science demands, a substitutable subject. This is what guarantees
the transmissibility of scientific knowledge. Often people do not un
derstand the necessity I felt to posit the existence of this deep abstrac
level.
As to the semiotic square, it could be a square or a cube or a circle.
The shape is of no importance whatsoever. It was necessary to for-
mulate a minimum number of relational tools, and in this case, a
ON NARRATIVITY 555
fundamental structure
other problem raised i
other. When passing fr
lems for Chomsky's ge
equivalence of forms
syntactic unraveling at
from one level to anot
gressive increase in sig
ing as we go from dee
crease in meaning m
horizontal meaning wh
meaning increases syn
by consulting a reade
Language in Culture an
nities fabricate prover
and that they narrate t
dis, identical.4 Consequ
structures we are in fa
or rather with narrative universals. If we were not afraid of meta-
physics we could say that these are properties of the human mind.
The collective actant possesses these narrative universals and so does
humanity. However, the semio-narrative level must be distinguished
from what I call the discursive level since individuals are the ones who
fabricate discourse. They do so by using narrative structures that
already exist, that actually coexist with individuals. I thus imagine the
subject of enunciation as a kind of funnel into which the narrative
structures are poured drop by drop, and from which discourse
emerges. This discourse, that is the product of the instance of enun-
ciation, can also be divided into levels of depth, a thematic level and
a figurative level. This I feel is the beginning of an answer to your
question.
The set of constraints that is presupposed, that exists prior to all
discourse, language, and thought, is so great that many semioticians
do not know how to come to grips with it. For example, in his inau-
gural discourse at the Colletge de France, my friend Roland Barthes
said that language was fascist. I believe that he attributed too great an
honor to fascism. We live by our organs, by our desires, in a circum-
scribed world, and our possibilities are limited. There are a great
many restrictive things in human activity, and there is nothing fascist
or communist about this. It is simply a question of the common
human condition. However, if we raise the question of the instance of
enunciation, then all of the lovers of liberty can take heart. The sub-
ject of enunciation partakes of all possible liberties. Once again a
semiotic deviation appears wh

sible specificities and liberti
much more seriously. The cha
what happens with the setting
is essentially a phenomenon
actorialization. Actants also ar
that discourse is dependent up
discourse, as well as the subjec
fact, it corresponds to project
enunciation, and starting to r
This level of discourse is ext
least studied of all in semiotic
have only a very few ideas and
it. In any case, a hypothetic
between the thematic and fig
teaubriand says that "my life
off by the wind," you can see
us say, more abstract than "
wind." But one part of the sen
They can thus be superimpose
be the figurative level. The fi
temporal or spatial figures, a
note that everything belongs t
of figures is of major theoret
claim, because in painting we
art, but also because this term
guistic theory, corresponds to
sign. On the other hand, "fig
cept of "gestalt," the psychol
how discourse is composed-n
tations of objects, but with sc
it is used in the most diverse
constitute so-called narrative d
perspective, happens to corre
structures from the deep leve
tures that we need, and we set
our own discourse in a figura
less abstract discourses.
RICOEUR: Figures are much more than a garment. What I mean to
say is that at this level there is more than an investment, in the sense
of an instantiation; in fact, there is something productive. Precisely
what is productive is that you cannot have spatialization, temporal-
ization, and actorialization without plot. The different kinds of plot
ON NARRATIVITY 557
produced in the history

with is not merely an a
that there is something
these rules for plot cons
there is productivity of
this problem later. The p
level provides the dyna
they are projected backw
GREIMAS: You are righ
figurative clothed narr
certainly not the way t
take into account that the mode of existence of narrative structures is
a virtual mode of existence. Narrative structures do not exist per se
but are a mere moment in the generation of signification. When the
subject of enunciation says something, he utters a durative discourse
and proceeds by means of figures that are linked up. It is the figures
that bear the traces of narrative universals.
RICOEUR: I want to approach the problem from a different angle.
Are there not ways of dealing with narrative which, in a sense, bypass
this distinction between deep structure and surface structure? Be-
cause of all the difficulties in connecting the levels, the freedom of
enunciation, and also the constraints of the last level, I insist that on
this last or third level, this level of figurativization has its own rules.
Let us start with a comment made a few decades ago by Kate Ham-
burger in her book The Logic of Literature,5 when she writes that the
great feat of narrative-"epic," in her own terms-is to explore minds
in the third person narrative, to take all the narrative procedures
through which we make judgments on the thoughts, feelings, actions
of third persons, and to transfer them into first person narrative,
thereby creating a pseudoautobiography. If we then say that the func-
tion of narrative is to provide a kind of mimesis of other minds, we
need new categories, and we need to know whether these categories
belong to the development of your own semiotics, or whether they are
foreign to it. This is not a critique but, rather, a question.
Let us therefore look at what is required if we begin this way, the
way Dorritt Cohn did in her work Transparent Minds,6 where she
showed that narratives always have this function of exploring other
minds. If we do so, we get constraints of another kind which are more
of a typological than a structural nature. This is the route first fol-
lowed by Stanzel in his attempt to work out a typology of narrative
situations and, more powerfully, by Lubomir Dolezel in his attempt to
set up a dialectic between the discourse of the narrator and the dis-
course of the character. The next step is to introduce the category of
narrator, a kind of figure tha

says something about other m
discourse, the character's disc
velop a typology to show what
be that these constraints bypa
and surface structure in your
of categorization, and I would
sect with yours. Here, notio
voice would have to be intr
view, I am thinking about the
pensky, for example, who tri
points of view is a principle
following Kate Hamburger, w
and character, we are in fac
itself.This is, I think, a third
Proppian categories of functio
We would then be dealing wit
scribed in the text as narrator
point it is because I think tha
dimension, its own structurat
typology than of a logic of tr
I would also add that I questio
there is an increase in meanin
structures to surface structur
crease in meaningfulness come
only in the transformative cap
constraints.7 But it is a new ki
of figurativization and all the
narrator, characters, point of
are constraints of a different
but not by derivation. I am aw
a closed system but is proceedi
to the more concrete. I feel
where you have to come to gr
from your own semiotics. The
semiotics requires that either
construct them within your o
GREIMAS: I have always claim
rather a scientific project, sti
the task of completing and tra
retical principles that I have a
ations of semioticians. To beg
ward the surface structure
ON NARRATIVITY 559
Personally, and on an a
and Fodor presented sem
They simply took sente
established connections
could be structured in
where a type of text li
surface phenomena.
The second point you r
tion that results from p
the way I present thing
that is to say, I do not u
them to arrive at a m
related to the passage f
see this in the procedur
sion. The production of
production of oppositio
by a sort of series of s
the richness of discour
ine that an analyst deal
the surface before goi
another way of proceed
The third point I would
What I will say about t
sonal research but from
Fontanille, who wrote
discourse.8 He studied c
and also quantum theo
pecially when dealing w
self mentioned. From a
dition to modalities, th
modulation of sentence
alities can be imagined
who is watching the pro
inchoative, durative, or
utilizes the simulacrum
nomena, even at the lev
discourse one sees tha
When analyzing a text b
point of view at almost
posit that all discourse
nitive level that a diad-two actants-is located: the observer-actant
and the informer-actant. Between the two a sort of exchange of in
formation takes place that can be integrated into the total or part
knowledge of either actant ac

enunciation, who can be a narrator. This would then be a case of
syncretism between the actor-subject of the enunciation and the ob-
server. However, this is not a generalizable actantial structure. I
would therefore insist on the need to distinguish in the narrative flow
between different levels--especially the cognitive and the pragmatic
levels, for example.
As for the last question related to figurativity, I must say that I
attach a great deal of importance to research being done in this area.
During a year-long seminar given over to the study of these problems
some progress was made, but it still is not satisfying, since this level of
analysis is extremely complex. My first observation is that we can
encounter figurative expression at different levels of depth. To take
a very simple case, for example indirect discourse, when I say that it
is warm, this can mean "open the window." Therefore, "it is warm" is
a figure for saying something else. Another type is parabolic dis-
course, which is found for example in the Gospels. If you take the
parable of the Prodigal Son you can see that the four or five partial
parables, which do not start at exactly the same point, narrate the
story figuratively. Each parable is displaced a little in relation to the
other, but one can establish, by partial parables so to speak, the com-
mon thematic level that can account for the figurativization of the
whole. This is another way of grasping figurativity, the type of dis-
course which we have studied most.
Finally, figurativity is found at the deep level of discourse, as was
illustrated, for example, by Denis Bertrand in his thesis on Zola's
Germinal.9 In Zola's story about miners living underground, spatial
configurations and spatial figures are transformed and become, so to
speak, an autonomous language. When we read the novel we think
that the lives of the miners are being narrated but, in fact, what is
narrated is the great mystery of the mediation within this under-
ground universe. Spatiality becomes an almost abstract sort of lan-
guage to speak about something other than surface figurativity.
These few examples are meant simply to point out that what I call the
discursive level of semiotics is a level in which there is an articulation,
a level at which other levels of depth can be found. The problematics
of levels is a strategy because the number of levels can be increased or
diminished in order to facilitate the analysis and the construction of
the model.
RICOEUR: I find this answer satisfactory, satisfactory because I ac-
knowledge and welcome this capacity of semiotics to expand. But I
wonder whether the initial model is not undermined by this expan-
sion, and whether the price to pay for such an expansion is not a
ON NARRATIVITY 561
complete reformulatio
not by chance you end
which, if I may say so,
original usage. We are
logical, semantic rule
subsequently invested
those anthropomorphi
figure itself has depth
termfigure than of th
his most extraordinary
mantic capacity of disc
are at the level of the
read in different ways
nature of any story ca
discussed at all. I think
dialectic between the t
ticism. I will give one e
figure, to which we br
thing that Kermode ca
and the strong interpr
rated in order not to b
of secrecy. The actual t
therefore have to take
deep meaning, and in
symbolism concerning
ple. This is a tradition
that of deep structure
stories, those of Kafk
intelligibility but to in
reader's understanding
the more striking as it
GREIMAS: I agree in p
like to make a brief ob
this type of task? Both
but intelligibility can
stand the main line, th
the greater and greate
automatic translation. At that time it was said that to translate the
syntax of simple sentences the computer had to carry out 2000 binar
operations. Now, if we were to take a short story as complex as Mau
passant's "Deux amis," we could ask how many binary operations
would be necessary to analyze such a text. At each level I feel w
would reach the sum of several million at least. Discourse is a complex
object and so is the world. Hen

if we deepen our knowledge o
Now, regarding accessibility
with you, except that the hid
we wish to hide things, or be
matter. I would simply say th
tremely poor tools to speak
about meaning or signification
disposal is transcoding, that is
translate it into another disco
way. This is how we understan
discourse signified. Operations
have to grasp signification an
such as the Prodigal Son, I am
so perhaps I have not exhaus
regrettable, but unfortunately
PARIS
(Translated and adapted by P
NOTES
1 See also, in this issue, Paul Ricoeur, "Greimas's Narrative Grammar."

2 Louis Marin, Semiotique de la Passion: Topiques et figures (Paris, 1971).
3 Algirdas Julien Greimas, Maupassant: The Semiotics of Text: Practical Exercises,
Perron (Amsterdam, 1988).
4 See Language in Culture and Society: A Reader in Linguistics and Anthropology,
Hymes (New York, 1964).
5 Kate Hamburger, The Logic of Literature, tr. Marilyn G. Rose (Bloomingt
1973).
6 Dorritt Cohn, Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fic-
tion (Princeton, N.J., 1978).
7 For a detailed discussion of this point, see Jean Petitot-Cocorda, Morphogenkse du sens
(Paris, 1985), esp. pp. 260-68. See also Paul Perron, Introduction, On Meaning: Selected
Writings in Semiotic Theory, by Algirdas Julien Greimas, tr. Paul Perron and Frank
Collins (Minneapolis, 1987), pp. xxiv-xlv.
8 Jacques Fontanille, Le Savoir Partage: Simiotique et thiorie de la connaissance chez Marcel
Proust (Paris, 1987).
910Denis
FrankBertrand, L'espace
Kermode, The etof
Genesis le Secrecy:
sens: "Germinal" d',mile Zola
On the Interpretation of (Paris, 1985).
Narrative (Cambridge,
Mass., 1979).

5 On Narrativity

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

5 On Narrativity

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

On Narrativity

Algirdas Julien Greimas and Paul Ricoeur

RICOEUR: It is a pleasure to share once again a discussion session

* This discussion was the closing session of a colloquium on the "Universals of

My first approach to semiotic

Greimas's work itself.

brought about through the

semiotic deviation appears wh

produced in the history

narrator, a kind of figure tha

knowledge of either actant ac

object and so is the world. Hen

1 See also, in this issue, Paul Ricoeur, "Greimas's Narrative Grammar."

You might also like