The familiar terms from literary scholarship, story and plot, are aimed at the narrative framework of one particular text (or in some cases, multiple texts); they are defined through textual criteria (on the history of research and the various terminologies see the concise summary in Schmid 2007, 104-107).
A key difference between the literary terms “story/plot” and the hylistic term “narrative/narrative material” (German: “Erzählstoff”) lies in the fact that “story/plot” are text-related concepts, whereas “narrative material” is understood in a transmedial sense. However, there are further differences.
References: C. Zgoll 2020, 17-23.34-38; 2021, 12-16.
3.1 Story/plot vs. narrative/narrative variant
Story, plot, and happenings
1. “Story”: For the underlying sequence of events of a text in the sequence of the natural chronology, literary scholarship has developed a variety of expressions; the most widely-used term in English-language publications is “story” (cf. French histoire, German Geschichte, and fabula in Russian formalism). Unfortunately, sometimes “plot” is used as well, so that there is no clear distinction between plot (1) as sequence of events in its ordo artificialis and plot (2) or story as sequence of events in its ordo naturalis.
2. “Plot”: In the field of narratology, the term “plot” usually denotes the sequence of events not in their natural order but as they occur in a given text (cf. French discours, Russian sjužet). In German-speaking scholarship a variety of terms are used side by side; cf. Martínez 2003, 92, who proposes the use of Fabel instead. However this is problematic not least because fabula is the term established in Russian formalism for the sequence of events in its chronological sequence; Schmid 2010, 190, prefers narrative (Erzählung).
A different approach to defining plot and story forms the basis of E. M. Forster’s work, which in its conceptual distinction does not prioritize the chronological arrangement of the material (ordo naturalis vs. ordo artificialis), but relies instead on the presence or absence of causality: cf. Forster 1927.
3. “Happenings”: In literary narratology an even more intricate model has been developed which distinguishes further between story (Geschichte) and happenings (Geschehen; Schmid 1982; he is on the whole followed by Martínez 2003, 92; see also the summarizing overview in Schmid 2007, 104-107, and Schmid 2010, 192 f, with diagram). “Happenings” are understood as the totality of actions, situations, and characters, without spatial or temporal limitations, from which the story in turn presents a selection.
Distinctions between “story/plot” and “narrative/narrative variant”
A key difference between the literary terms “story/plot” and the hylistic term “narrative/narrative material” (German: “Erzählstoff”) lies in the fact that “story/plot” are text-related concepts, whereas “narrative material” is understood in a transmedial sense. Sometimes the plot, or story, of a concrete text are roughly congruent with one (e.g. mythical) narrative, as for instance in Claudian’s epyllion De raptu Proserpinae. In many cases, however, one concrete text contains multiple narratives. An extreme example are Ovid’s Metamorphoses. From the perspective of literary scholarship, the sequence of events in the sense of the story that is being told in the Metamorphoses is a depiction of world history from the days of the creation to the author’s own Augustan age, but the one “story” makes use of vastly more than 250 mythical narratives. A distinction must be drawn, therefore, between the plot structure of a concrete text and that of a narrative, as the two are not always congruent, or interchangeable.
Therefore no comparable, corresponding term for the hylistic concept of “narrative” exists in the field of narratology. The totality of all narrative steps in a concrete text, whether in their natural sequence (ordo naturalis) or in their artificial order, as a literary scholar would describe the story or the plot of a text, does not correspond to the hylistic concept of “narrative” or “narrative material” (German: Erzählstoff). Even where a given text deals exclusively with one narrative, it will still deal only with one particular, concrete variant of a narrative.
Narrative material ≠ story/plot
Story or plot
- refer specifically to the content of texts
- are media-related and therefore also media-bound terms; i.e. the component of transmediality is missing
- can only contain part of a narrative variant or several narrative variants
Implications/ consequences:
One single text can (in literary terms) contain only one story (formed as a plot),
but (in terms of hylistics) it can contain several narratives (in certain variants).
Even if a text (in terms of hylistics) contains only one mythical narrative variant, the story of the text (in literary terms) is not the same as the narrative variant. Why?
Reasons:
The narrative variant
- includes not only explicit, but also all implicit elements of the given variant that can be clearly reconstructed from what is explicitly presented in the medium (based on logical criteria or specific cultural knowledge)
- does not include all elements that do not belong to the given variant (e.g. incorporation of other narratives, references to other narratives, narrator comments, paratexts such as genre designations or colophons, etc.)
Narratological terms:
Story = sequence of events in a text in chronological order
e.g. the story of Ovid’s Metamorphoses: from the creation of the world to Augustus
Plot = sequence of events in a text in textual order
e.g. in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: plot as artificially formed story, with prolepses or analepses
Hylistic terms:
Narrative = all existing (and potential) variants of a narrative (not media-bound)
e.g. the existing and potential variants of the myth Apollo loves Daphne
Narrative variant = specific variant of a narrative (not media-bound)
e.g. Ovid’s variant of the myth Apollo loves Daphne in the Metamorphoses
Reference: C. Zgoll 2021, 12-16
3.2 How to define “narrative”?
If the hylistic term “narrative” does not correspond to the literary terms “story” or “plot”, how can it be distinguished from these terms? What is meant when, for example, the hylistic perspective refers to “the” myth Apollo loves Daphne?
Indeed it can be observed that the problem of finding a definition for “the” narrative X is not addressed directly in many literary or mythological studies, or it is not being addressed at all. Often the function of a narrative is discussed, which themes it presents, or what it means, before an adequate explanation is provided of what is meant when mention is made of “the” narrative X, what it is made up of, in short, what it is – and in connection with that, how we can get hold of it in the first place. And this despite the fact that different options of defining “the”narrative X do exist and have been used. The method applied in each individual case must often be derived from implicit clues in the studies rather than an explicit and substantiated outline of the chosen methodology. The list below can only give a brief overview of some of the options, or paths, scholars have taken in the past to arrive at “the” narrative X:
- The glamour version: “the” narrative X is the most famous variant Xbest, which has also had the most profound impact on the transmission of the (e.g. mythical) narrative in question (see e.g. Frenzel 1978, 27), for instance an outstanding work of poetry (on previous ideas of “myth as poetry” see Graf 1985, 11; Ludwig Preller and Karl Simrock, among others, represent such a position, see Beth 1935, 721 f).
- The Urversion: “the” narrative X is the most ancient and therefore the “original” version Xfirst; all later variants can be traced back to this version (see the summary of these endeavours in the field of fairy-tale scholarship, with consideration of the suggested criteria for the determination of an Urversion, and the critical responses, in Lüthi 2004, 70-79). Scholars in the field of literary themes and motif studies also operate with the concept of “archetypes” (see Frenzel 1993, 101 f, with examples; on more recent attempts to reconstruct e.g. the Urform of an individual or the “one” Indo-European or Indo-Iranian creation myth, see Janda 2010, and Kreyenbroek 2013).
- The minimal version: “the” narrative X is the smallest common denominator of narrative elements Xmin present in all variants (thus in the definition of Keim 1998, 101, n. 1, “Mythologem” serves as “Bezeichnung der kleinsten, semantisch und historisch invariablen, konstitutiven Einheit des Mythos”; this she claims was e.g. “beim Medea-Mythos der Kindermord”).
- The standard version: “the” narrative X represents the normal course of the proceedings Xnorm which can be derived from multiple variants and joined together in a kind of composite Vulgate. The idea of the “narrative core” as a prerequisite for poetic or other adaptations which then leave it largely unchanged, already occurs in Müller 1825, 103. Similar is Albert Henrichs’ programme of “applied mythography, which is instrumental in establishing the essential elements of a given myth” (Henrichs 1987, 267), which he demonstrates by conducting an analysis of “the” Kallisto myth (ibid. 254-267). See also Blumenberg 1985, 34: “Myths are stories that are distinguished by a high degree of constancy in their narrative core and by an equally pronounced capacity for marginal variation” (ibid. 149 he refers to the “iconic constancy” of the “core contents” of mythical narratives). Such an idea of what would in essence be an invariable “narrative core” also seems to be at the heart of Jan Assmann’s reflections on mythology. With reference to Egyptian myths, Assmann distinguishes between “the” mythical Stoff, which he calls the “geno-text”, and the individual manifestations of the mythical Stoff, which he describes as “mythical statements” or “pheno-texts” (Assmann 1977, 37-39). Assmann apparently assumes that the mythical Stoff, the “geno-text”, is something homogenous and uniform that can be reduced to a specific “narrative core” (Burkert 1982, 63, also supports this view); Assmann 1977, 38: “Jedenfalls handelt es sich bei mythischen Aussagen um konkrete Realisierungen (Vergegenwärtigungen) eines Mythos. ‘Mythos’ dagegen ist etwas Abstraktes: der Kern von Handlungen und Ereignissen, Helden und Schicksalen, der einer gegebenen Menge mythischer Aussagen als thematisch Gemeinsames zugrunde liegt.”
- The maximum version: “the” narrative is the sum of all attested variants Xmax. See Lévi-Strauss 1955, 435: “Thus, our method eliminates a problem which has been so far one of the main obstacles to the progress of mythological studies, namely, the quest for the true version or the earlier one. On the contrary, we define the myth as consisting of all its versions; […] If a myth is made up of all its variants, structural analysis should take all of them into account”. See e.g. also Powell 2009, 16: “the Oedipus myth is the collection of all the extant variations, however many there may be.”
It is impossible to discuss here the inherent problems of each method in detail (see in detail C. Zgoll 2019, 53-86). The problems can only be briefly touched upon here:
- Ad “glamour version”: When narratives (e.g. myths) are imagined as narrative material rather than as texts there is no valid reason why one polished presentation of a given narrative in textual form (the “glamour version”) should be given preference over another variant when the object under discussion is the variant itself, not the presentation.
- Ad “Urversion”: As seductive as the idea of an Urversion appears to be, efforts to reconstruct such a version from the transmitted narrative variants will always be troubled by the fact that the reconstruction criteria are controversial, which means the results will remain hypothetical and thus forever questionable. The search for an original Urversion becomes even more futile if a complex concept of “narrative” is used which introduces an additional distinction between a concrete narrative (variant) and an abstract narrative pattern underlying the concrete narrative or narrative variant.
- Ad “minimal version”: The reconstruction of a “smallest common denominator” (the “minimal version”) is often hampered by “exceptional cases” where it becomes necessary to justify the fallibility, or a certain alteration, of the denominator, and also by the question exactly what the criteria are for defining one particular narrative feature as such a common denominator, while ignoring others.
- Ad “standard version”: Similar problems emerge with the solution preferred in several other cases, where a “Vulgate” is compiled (the “standard version”), but the questions by what standards individual narrative sequences are declared “normal” and within the parameters for a particular narrative, or why they fail to meet those standards, cannot be answered objectively and according to general principles.
- Ad “maximum version”: Even the concept of a “maximum version” to define “the” narrative in question is still lacking in scope. To claim that a maximum version has been compiled is to suggest that the totality of all extant versions constitutes the maximum of possible variants, and that the narrative material has thus been defined because its “limits” have been reached. This is not really the case: “the” narrative is not limited by the totally of all known variants displayed in such a synopsis, because numerous other variants have existed that were never written down, and because many variants that were recorded in writing have not survived and because contained in every narrative are endless possibilities for further manifestations in the future.
One possible strategy, in view of the less than optimal efforts outlined above, could be a more open understanding of “narrative” as a generally open field of possibilities; in analogy to the terms discussed above, an appropriate suggestion for this potentially infinite set of variants could be a newly-coined “approximal version”. The shape of a narrative is open, both with a view to the past as well as into the future. To put it another way: the potential in a particular narrative is inexhaustible. The actual maximum of the complete spectrum of possible narrative variants is infinite; a narrative imagined in this way cannot be defined; any description of it can only be an approximation (see also Kühr 2006, 17: “Deshalb gibt es keine ursprüngliche oder einzig ‘wahre’ Variante eines Mythos, vielmehr konstituiert er sich aus allen Varianten, die je existierten und noch existieren werden […].”).
For the study of (mythical) narratives we must take leave of the notion that “the” narrative X can be reduced to a single shape, an entity which by and large still retains a relatively rigid, singular shape – a shape which can be extracted from the corpus of all possible variants with pinpoint precision and then be used to determine deviations and exceptions. “The” narrative X is not a singular entity, something uniquely distinguishable; it must instead be understood as a “polymorphous” phenomenon. Every change in individual or societal interests, ideas, interpretations, conditions, preferences, etc. can lead to modifications in a given narrative. These modifications can range from the tiniest interventions to substitution, new insertion, or deletion of individual elements, also fundamental revisions of certain narrative units, or in the structure of a narrative sequence overall. Each narrative variant adds a new variation to those already in existence and in doing so contributes to the fundamental polymorphy of a narrative material.
Aside from bidding farewell to the idea of “the” narrative X as a “uniform” entity, we also must distance ourselves from the traditional text-driven approaches of literary scholarship and literary history. If we intend to be serious about the concept of narratives as transmedial entities, and make the study of these narratives the focal point of our efforts, we must give up the exclusive dependence on textual material and a text-based terminology, because narratives do not solely manifest themselves in texts but in countless other media as well.
3.3 Hylistic definition of “narrative” and “narrative variant”
Building upon the hyleme concept of hylistics, and the fundamental polymorphy of narratives, the hylistic terms “narrative variant” and “narrative” can be summarized and defined as follows:
A narrative variant is a self-contained sequence of multiple interdependent hylemes of a specific narrative; a narrative variant is determined in its details with regard to specific protagonists, places, objects, and events.
A narrative comprises a non-finite quantity of variants of a polymorphic hyleme sequence, which can be circumscribed only approximately with regard to specific protagonists, places, objects, and events.
To put it in another way: a narrative variant is a hyleme sequence; this hyleme sequence is a segment from among the vast volume of hyleme sequences of a given narrative X, the number of which can only be approximated. These hyleme sequences can be realized in a variety of medial manifestations, and as a field of potential options they constitute a particular narrative X.
The description of the hylemes of a narrative variant as “interdependent” deliberately avoids the criterion of a causal-logical link, as used by E. M. Forster in his definition of plot as opposed to story (also Tomashevsky 1985, 215: “Es ist zu unterstreichen, daß die Fabel nicht nur ein temporäres, sondern auch ein kausales Merkmal verlangt. […] Je schwächer diese kausale Verknüpfung ist, desto stärker rückt eine rein temporale Verknüpfung in den Vordergrund.”), since the connection can already be given through chronological references alone, and causal-logical connections at any rate do not need to be explicit (a similar definition is offered by Echterhoff 2002, 268, from the perspective of cognitive psychology: “Als Hauptfunktion und zugleich psychologisch zentrales Merkmal des Narrativen ist also bislang die Stiftung eines Zusammenhangs zwischen einzelnen, aufeinander folgenden Ereignissen festzuhalten.”).
A narrative, concrete only in the form of medial manifestations of a particular narrative variant, can be said to be “self-contained” when the narrative variant in question displays a uniformity with reference to the TTEPP-criteria, i.e. to the
- themes/problems inherent in this sequence
- time frame of the narrated occurrences, events, and activities
- events (German: Handlung)
- participating protagonists and
- place(s)
Any observation of one or more of these factors diverging simultaneously may help us decide where one narrative (variant) ends and another begins.
3.4 How a narrative comes into being
Wolf Schmid (1982) has developed an “ideal genetic model of narrative tiers”, which distinguishes four tiers, or levels: “happenings” (Geschehen), “story” (Geschichte), “plot” (Erzählung), and “presentation of the plot” (Präsentation der Erzählung; see also Schmid 2010, 193, and the diagram ibid. 210). According to Schmid’s ideal genetic model, a certain, still unformed “story” is extracted from a number of “happenings”. It is then moulded into the artificial, or artistic, form of a “plot” before it is “presented” (in textual form).
Although this narratological model and its terminology is defined and used with reference to textual material and therefore of limited use for hylistics that is not confined to one particular medial manifestation (such as e.g. texts), one can either adopt these narratological terms or employ them as analogies when distinguishing among multiple planes from the perspective of hylistics – with one proviso: we need to add another term, the term “narrative” (German: Erzählstoff).
From the perspective of hylistics, it is not four but five narrative tiers we need to consider, and “narrative” constitutes an important fifth category. A concrete, straight-forward example:
From the totality of all that can be narrated (Geschehen/ happenings) or, to limit the range somewhat, from the totality of all Greek myths, an author such as Ovid, for instance, extracts
the narrative of the rivalry between the Theban queen Niobe and the goddess Leto, which exists in a wide variety of variants and carries the potential for countless more. From these variants he then generates
a specific, still unformed, narrative variant (cf. narratological “story”, but only in relation to texts in their entirety, not in relation to a specific narrative that can be represented in different media), e.g. one where all of Niobe’s children are killed by Artemis and Apollo, and none are spared. Through artistic intervention, e.g. the introduction of proleptic allusions to the dreadful ending, this unformed narrative variant becomes
a well-formed narrative variant (cf. narratological “plot”, but only in relation to texts in their entirety, not in relation to a specific narrative, that can be represented in different media), which is eventually presented in
a particular media manifestation, in our case in textual form, namely in lines 146-312 in Book 6 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. And finally, in the diagram below we have prepared an overview of the ideas developed thus far.
The narratological terminologies (“story”, “plot”) are only referenced here as approximate analogies for clarification purposes; as has been noted above, they are usually defined and employed exclusively in relation to texts and therefore of little value to the study of narratives, which encompasses all kinds of medial manifestations and is not limited to one particular type (such as texts).
As the phrase “ideal genetic” suggests, this theoretical model does not necessarily reflect the actual process of production. An inductive analysis will moreover reverse the direction and, departing from the media manifestation, will reconstruct first the formed and in the next step the unformed narrative variant contained within it, and it will then determine its affiliation with a concrete narrative.
Model transferred and expanded from narratology to hylistics (see C. Zgoll 2020, 37 f)
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