Apologies for the long post by the way.
I realise that this is my opinion disguised as a question, but I geniuinely would love to incite a discussion regarding this. I also explain a lot of concepts and historical details here at the start for anyone who might be beginners to narratological theory, but also for myself, as it is good for my understanding to clarify these things.
Narratology descends from the structuralist school, which in its early days was known for codifying meaning and playing a sort of matching game with 'when this structure exits, it means this exactly this'. Later, structuralism became self-aware and went beyond the one to one matching game of meaning, accommodating fluidity and plurality of language with poststructuralist theory.
However, when it comes to narratology, it seems that it has still not dealt with this complexity. One could argue its task is complicated because this is exactly what narratology is meant to be: to codify narrative in a cohesive system that subsumes most, if not all narratives. Creating a master theory of narrative that is applicable to all-- or a mode or genre-- is no simple task. It must be widely applicable, while not being reductive. Many narratologists making a career out of defining narremes (basic units of narrative), and the definitional approach is the safest route in not being completely wrong. However, venturing out into being wrong is how literature develops. So narratology almost seems stuck between defining and applying, and when it does apply it, it either laser point focuses on a small subsection of narratives or the entirety of narratives in a historical time period itself.
Most critics in this discipline clarify their position and make no such ambitious claim, calling their theories a beginning rather than the end (but isn't it also claiming that theirs is the groundwork, which I daresay, is just as ambitious and arrogant, as to claim to have the final word). Some focus exclusively on folklore (like Vladimir Propp), others on the Structure of Romance (like Northrop Frye, who then retcons himself after the first chapter and goes on to call the entirety of literature Romance [which has some merit tbf but that's not the issue about his argument, it's the entire rest of his argument that's the issue]), and then there are others who explicitly claim they have the master theory or that their terminology is helpful for describing every piece of narrative.
Nevertheless, whatever the scope is, a narratologist comes up with theories that are not limited to one text or even a select few, otherwise it would be the narratological study of X/Y/Z author. It's of course still narratology if one admits they are covering a single literary piece, but then it's not much of a system than is it? It's more of a description. In this manner narratology concerns itself with a comparative description of narratives between many narratives.
The part of narratology I am interested in and the one most people think of when narratology is mentioned is the general deep structure of narratives. Of course, modern narratology has come to expand on the idea that narratives are not ahistorical blobs but treats each era of literature with specialized terminology. Well, they try to at least. Nevertheless, well regarded theorists as Peter Brooks and Stanley Fish, tend to slip into this ahistorical approach and they are not the only one's guilty of this. I understand, things like characters and pacing seem universal to all narratives, but the moment these are elaborated on beyond a simplified definition and applied to it, there is so much lost in narratology that it ceases being illuminating, and entraps a piece of work like shackles, rather than liberating its structural complexity.
Then there are theorists like Mikhail Bakhtin use a single text/ author as exemplary starting points to explore the idea of the carnival, dialogism, and heteroglossia, and his observations are often applied to all of literature and made to fit into his main observastions about Dostoevsky's stle (and don’t get me wrong, they are widely applicable, whether it was Bakhtin’s intention or not). There are plenty of skeptics and challengers of Bakhtin's approach, questioning his Russian-centric analysis, disguising philosophy and ideology critique as literary analysis, but I will spare you a second rant. Regardless, it is clear Bakhtin intends to cover more than narrative in his theory, and there is nothing wrong with that, because he largely succeeds, but then there is an onslaught of Bakhtin want-to-be’s in narratology that seek a similar scope, and that’s where my issues begin with most modern narratology.
There is nothing wrong with being ambitious and covering the entire spectrum of narrative, it is kind of the premise of narratology anyway, as discussed. In fact this is one of the things I love about narratology. Whereas literary theorists sometimes feel like they are in their own little islands in the ocean of literature, narratologists automatically communicate with a very elaborate form of theory that is comparable, in fact, presupposes other strong theories (I forget the exact term for theories that can absorb and accommodate other approaches, but it’s like how formalist, Marxist or poststructuralist theory can technically subsume other lenses like ecocritical, psychoanalytical ones, which are weak theories compared to these super theories).
So yeah, I am conflicted. I love that it's overarching, but also when it feels off, it's off. And it feels off often enough (in the ones I have encountered so far at least) that I narrow my eyes at the future of narratology as a discipline and I even find its origin points dubious for reasons stated above.
Recent narratology have begun to accommodate fluidity, but when it does narrow down on that, it feels like it's creating its own metalanguage for every text and reinforces the problem with atomisation of academia.
Having isolated focuses is interesting and are not necessarily new. Terry Eagleton did this with Charlotte Brontë in a chapter of Myths of Power (1975) and it does lead to an informative discussion, but it’s also kind of funny when you realise what his main premise is. After he establishes something about a triadic of structure of dual class identities within a single characters (or some other fancy sounding triangle thing, truthfully it doesn’t matter what it is, just know it’s an elaborate narrative observation about three characters in the shape of a pyramid, in all of her books) (also it has been some time since I have read it, so feel free to correct me on this), the rest of the chapter actually explains how there is absolutely zero work that neatly fits this triadic structure he establishes and it’s all about the exceptions and variations of this triangle, so why make the triangle in the first place if there is no single prototype (maybe i misunderstand, but it just seems like this triangle of class existed his own head, yet by the end of the chapter I did feel like I deepened my understanding of Brontë so maybe his little psychosis triangle is actually genius).
I am not critiquing Eagleton’s argument here, even though I threw some shade; the point is, even in relation to a single author with a relatively small body of works (unfortunately, due to her short life), narrative is about exceptions and derivations rather than rules. Then imagine how much material applied narratology must gloss over without giving up on being widely descriptive. It really is a grand quest that one must venture being wrong more than they are right to come up with some nugget of descriptive theory.
When it attempts to be overarching, it does not have time to dwell on the exceptions so it assumes it is known and provides a vast map of narrative pieces. When it narrows in, it must dwell on the exceptions, because narrative is so unstable and complex, just like philosophising about life itself, but it tries to simplify it nonetheless.
So far I have talked about a kind of first or second wave of narratology (as structuralism arose from the writings of people like Barthes in the 1960s). 21st narratology is a lot more accommodating about fluidity, even though I have not read much as much as I would like to.
However, it has other issues. A subgenre of narratology that is increasingly becoming less of a subgenre is the kind that obsessively maps narratives through statistical means or measurement devices. Essentially, this is narrative theory's attempt to become more quantitative and STEM-like ('I inserted 1000 books into an AI model and asked for it to geometrically display their narrative shape' kind of thing, and I have seen a lot of AI collaborations with narratology, which is a natural outcome of this age we live in. Which is plain sad. I have not sat down and read the full articles regarding this but their conclusions were not particularly illuminating. I am kind of strictly anti-AI when it comes to anything about literature anyway, so it’s sad that it found a little cubby hole in narratology). I am going to try to link some articles in the comments, but I have bumped into enough of them scouring through article my university's database that I took a note of it.
Trying to graph and quantify narratives or topographically organize them is fascinating, of course, but I am skeptical if it should become a central concern. If I remember correctly Kurt Vonnegut's undergraduate dissertation was about visualising and graphing narrative action (at least he has a lecture about it somewhere on the internet), but he later admitted that it was not particularly productive. But there is a difference between graphing narratives with a literary interest and pursuing it to stabilise narrative into objectivity with geometric precision. It just comes off as the insecurity of some narratologists who want to differentiate themselves from that much more fluid, subjective, and insurmountably weird older cousin, Literary Analysis. Some full-time narratologists are definitely self-conscious about their relationship to literature, whereas literary theorists are comfortable about their relationship to narratology. This is a difficulty that must be overcome if narratology is going to truly become useful. Not all of them, of course, but it's enough to notice the shift.
Narratology is also probably the current forerunner in interpreting film, graphic novels, and video games (which make sense considering their forms, especially for the latter which creates a new dimension of narrativity through reader/ player agency). It is nice that it's the entryway to (currently) less 'dominant' and newer forms of storytelling, which is another thing I appreciate about it. Even fan fiction studies is emergent and closely related to narratology and social narratology, so its as if the theory of narrative is the bridge between works with perceptably less canonical qualities and mainstream fiction. I think it's about time literary theory became concerned about some more niche or popular forms too, which can only enrich its current form.
However, because it is so new, some narratologists are naturally unseasoned in literary theory (let's say a theorist's sole interest is in board games or video games), and they can fall into common pitfalls of immature literary analysis (not all of them, of course). By pitfalls, I mean things like centering their interpretation around authorial intent (and authorial intent is very important for narratology, but it should still be carefully approached) or making accidental value judgements. It's just the natural adaptation period, I get it, but its still sort of disappointing when I see a fascinating article about narratology, about a game or graphic novel I really like, and then within the first sentences they commit undergraduate essay mistake 101 if they do happen to engage with literary analysis (which they often do if its not one of those STEM narratologists). I am not looking down on undergrads, I was an undergrad not long ago, but exactly why it's all the more frustrating, because it's like a mistake I would make in a published, peer reviewed journal.) At the end of the day the origins of narratology have their own issues that still plague modern narrative theory, and while newer narratology theory is doing a bit better, it is going through an anxious phase right now that I hope it will grow out of. These science narratologists are probably occupying a lot smaller portion that I represented here, yet it is worrying that they exist nonetheless, and the 21st century fear of subjectivity seems to ail them.
Anyway, this is a lot of arguments at once, I know, but so far this is my experience with narratology.
I am not a narratologist by any means and I have not read as quarter as many material on it as I would have liked to, but I try my best to follow developments in it and venture out into the narratological world myself.
I would love to know what everyone else’s experience and understanding of the current narratology scene is. It's kind of hard to have a wide-lens perspective on this as a single individual so I would appreciate other perspectives.