Narrative: Barthes and Todorov

Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism,semiotics, social theory, anthropology and post-structuralism.

Roland Barthes describes a text as: 

"a galaxy of signifier's, not a structure of signified and it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable...the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language"

What he meant was the text is like a tangled ball of threads. The thread needs to unravelled. Once unravelled, we encounter an absolute wide range of potential meanings. We can start by looking at a narrative in one way, from one viewpoint, one set of previous experience, and create one meaning for that text. You can continue by unravelling the narrative from a different angle and create an entirely different meaning.

Barthes said that texts may be open or closed. He narrowed down the action of a text into Five Codes which are applied to any narrative:

• The Hermeneutic/Enigma Code (HER) - (the voice of the truth)

Is the way the story avoids telling the truth or revealing all the facts, in order to drop clues in through out to help create mystery.

• The Proairetic/Action Code (ACT) - (empirical voice)

The way the tension is built up and the audience is left guessing what happens next

• The Semantic Code (SYM)-(the voice of the person)

The semantic code points to any element in a text that suggests a particular, often additional meaning by way of connotation which the story suggests

• The Symbolic Code (REF)- (the voice of symbols)

This is very similar to the Cultural Code, but acts at a wider level, organizing semantic meanings into broader and deeper sets of meaning. This is typically done in the use of antithesis, where new meaning arises out of opposing and conflict ideas.

• The Cultural Code (SEM) -(the voice of science)

Looks at the audiences wider cultural knowledge, morality and ideology.

Tzvetan Todorov

Tzvetan Todorov is a Franco-Bulgarian philosopher. He writes books and essays about literary theory, thought history and culture theory.

Todorov’s 5 stages of narrative are:

• A state of equilibrium - The state of equilibrium is the point in the film mainly at the beginning where there is a calm ambience that is eventually destroyed towards the middle of the film. It is where the happiness is shown in a family, or a group of friends.

• A disruption of that order - This is when the equilibrium becomes destroyed, becoming the disequilibrium through a problem the protagonist comes across, such as an argument or something that would abolish the happiness created at the beginning. It is used to show the rising action and it helps to build up tension within the media

• The recognition that the order has been disrupted - For there to be a solution to the disequilibrium that has occurred the protagonist has to recognise the problem or the destruction of joy. Moreover, there has to be some glimmer of hope for the protagonist, so an epiphany must become apparent.

• An attempt to repair the damage -
  Before the central protagonist ‘saves the day’ there has to be a unsuccessful attempt at the same situation to give the determined attitude typical of the archetypal protagonist. This also helps to build the tension, as the audience begins to doubt the indomitably of the protagonist.

• A state of new equilibrium - This is when the equilibrium at the beginning is restored to its original calm and tranquil ambience that occurred before its destruction. This stops the audience’s doubt of the protagonist’s invincibility as they have finally completed the ‘impossible’ task.