Towards a Theory of Narrative

T HE ELEMENTS OF THE formalist-structuralist theory of narrative, with which I basically concur, can be epitomized as follows. Each narrative has two parts: a story (histoire), consisting of the content, the chain of events (actions and happenings), and what may be called the existents (characters and settings), the objects and persons performing, undergoing, or acting as a background for them; and a discourse (discours), that is, the expression, the means by which the content is communicated, the set of actual narrative statements.