Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature

Extract

The concepts of histoire (story) and discours (discourse) constitute the fundamental elements of the formalist (see formalism ) theory of narrative. Story resides in the content, the chain of events (the actions or happenings), and what is often labeled the “existents”: the characters, settings, and the objects or persons that serve as a background for these events. Discourse refers to the means by which the content is communicated. In short, the story is that which is depicted, and the discourse is the actual narrative statements, the form of expression. While the distinction between story and discourse is most often associated with practitioners of narratology (the study of narrative) who can be classified as formalist, to a lesser extent it has also been incorporated into the arguments of structuralist and poststructuralist theorists of narrative (see structuralism ). Indeed, as Jonathan Culler emphasizes, most strands of narratology are united by the recognition that any theory of narrative requires a distinction between story and discourse. Conventional theorizing about the story/discourse dichotomy is said to begin with the Russian formalists, and in particular with Boris Tomashevskii's Theory of Literature (1925) and Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folktale (1928). The Russian formalist employed the concepts of fabula (story) and siuzhet (discourse) to distinguish ... log in or subscribe to read full text