Boundaries of Narrative

WITHIN THE SPHERE OF LITERATURE, narrative' may be defined simply as the representation of a real or fictitious event or series of events by language, and more specifically by written language. This common formal definition has the merit of being obvious and simple. Perhaps its principal drawback is precisely that it encloses itself and us within the evidence. This definition masks that which in the very being of narrative creates problems and difficulties by somehow effacing the boundaries of the narrative's practice, the conditions of its existence. To define narrative formally is to accept, perhaps dangerously, the idea or the feeling that the origins of narrative are self-evident, that nothing is more natural than to tell a story or to arrange a group of actions into a myth, a short story, an epic, a novel. However, the evolution of literature and of literary consciousness in the last half century will have had, among other fortunate developments, that of drawing our attention to the singular, artificial, and problematic aspect of the narrative act. We must once again recall the shock of Valery on considering a statement like marquise went out at 5 o'clock. We realize the extent to which modern literature, in diverse and at times contradictory forms, has lived and illustrated this fertile surprise, how it has willed itself and how, in its very meaning, it has made itself an interrogation, a shock, a contestation of the narrative term. The falsely naive question--Why narrative?-should at least be able to incite us to seek or more simply to recognize the negative limits of narrative, to consider the principal plays of oppositions through which narrative defines and constitutes itself in the face of various nonnarrative forms.