narrative text

Texts

2022

We explain what a narrative text is, its function, structure, types and other characteristics. Also, some examples.

Narrative texts have existed since ancient times.

What is a narrative text?

A narrative text is any text, story or narration tell a certain anecdote, that is, a succession of actions in a period of weather limited. It can have literary or merely communicative purposes. In addition, narrative texts can have many forms and can be in different supports, both oral and written.

The ability and desire to narrate, as it seems, is peculiar to the human and we have put it into practice since Antiquity. For example, paintings of the Altamira Cave are a way of telling, that is, of capturing everyday or extraordinary situations in a language specific, so that future generations can know what happened.

This is how they have been transmitted myths, founding stories, historical anecdotes and even entire mythologies throughout time. This evidences the possible diversity of the narrative texts that the human being is capable of creating.

Many theorists and scholars of language have studied the narrative text.Some of them, such as the formalist theorist Tzvetan Todorov (1939-2017) proposed entire areas of study dedicated to storytelling, that is, the "science of storytelling." In Todorov's case, said discipline got the name of narratology.

Characteristics of narrative texts

Narrative texts are usually characterized by:

  • Telling an anecdote, that is, a set of actions and situations spread over a period of time and in a specific place, and which can be real or fictitious.
  • Consist of characters (protagonists, antagonists, primary, secondary, etc.) that interact with each other through dialogues and actions.
  • Have a narrator, which is the voice that tells the anecdote from a specific point of view and using specific language.

Function of a narrative text

The purpose of every story is always one and the same: to make the receiver imagine the narrated actions as they are told to him, and to make him live the story. experience narrated as his own.

This is easy to observe in a literary narrative, such as a novel or a story, but it is also what is behind much more everyday and common forms of narration, such as the jokes, anecdotes or memories.

According to many theorists of the subject, it is our ability to narrate one of the traits that make us human, since it allows us to put ourselves in the other's shoes and foster a whole sense of empathy, from equality and of society, which cannot be seen in the animals.

Structure of a narrative text

Any narrative text is made up of three clearly differentiated phases, in accordance with what was previously proposed by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC):

  • Approach. Where the reader is introduced to the situation, to the characters and everything you need to know to start the story.
  • Complication. Also called "knot", it is where the actions begin to develop some type of trouble that afflicts the characters and that generates tension, anguish or restlessness in itself.
  • Outcome. The final moment in which the complications are resolved, in one way or another, and a new state of stillness is imposed on the story.

Todorov adds two more items to this structure, which are:

  • Reaction or evaluation. Located after the complication, it occurs when the events are valued or judged by the characters or by the narrator.
  • Final status. After the denouement, it shows the new state of stillness or stability that arises as a consequence of the actions of the denouement of the story.

Narrative text types

Narrative texts can be of different types, depending on whether they have a literary intention or rather of another nature. Thus, we have:

  • Literary narratives. Those that pursue an aesthetic purpose, that is, to move through the stories told, and use all possible poetic resources to beautify themselves. Depending on their composition rules, they can belong to different genders, What are they:
    • Novels. Great fictions with many characters and a long narrative time, divided into chapters and reading more or less long.
    • Stories. Short and intense stories, that are read in one sitting and that involve a fictional world much more limited than that of the novel.
    • Chronicles. Narrations not very fictional or more attached to reality, features of the journalism cultural and that tend to illustrate some real event.
    • Micro-stories. Or very short stories, of few words and that tend to the aphoristic, leaving much to the work of the imagination.
  • Non-literary narratives. These are those that do not pursue aesthetic purposes, but practical or other purposes, not always easily distinguishable, as occurs with intimate diaries, jokes, anecdotes and memories.

Examples of narrative texts

Here are some examples of narrative texts:

  • Short story "The Chameleon", by the Russian author Anton Chekhov.
  • Fragment of the personal diary of the Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus.
  • Fragment of the novel ‘El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha’, by the 15th century Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.
  • Short story "La Oveja Negra", by the Honduran-Guatemalan author Augusto Monterroso.
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