The art of narrative – narrative as art: Sameness or difference?

Abstract

Abstract This paper is a critique of narratology’s generality thesis and especially focused on a corollary of that thesis, the “sameness premise”. It says that all objects designated by the noun “narrative”, whether actual, possible, or fictional, are defined by some basic intrinsic properties. This goes for ordinary informative telling of events as well as for literary art, such as novels and short stories. The latter assumption is rejected by me and theorists taking up a “difference premise” instead. Literary art should not be included within a general category of narrative. It would be more correct to regard it as sui generis, since it manifests a system quite different from and incompatible with narrative as this system is defined by standard narratology. For example, ordinary narrative accounts display logically a two-place relation between the denoting signs and the denoted contents (events); while the artistic representations produced by literary art and other art-forms do not denote anything outside themselves– the relation between signs and content is one-place. I discuss this theoretic problem from two sources: modern narratology in conflict with artistic/aesthetic theory and the mimesis-debate in Greek antiquity between Plato and Aristotle, where Plato is advocating a sameness and Aristotle a difference premise.