Sunday 14 September 2014

Narrative Theory: Tzvetan Todorov and Claude Levi-Strauss

Russian Theorist, Tzvetan Todorov, suggests that all narratives follow a four part structure:
  1. a state of Equilibrium at the outset
    1. a disruption of the equilibrium by some action
    2. a recognition that there has been a disruption
    3. a reinstatement of the equilibrium (new to the beginning)
    Equilibrium:
    When in a state of equilibrium everything is balanced.

    Disequilibrium:
    A situation where external and/or internal forces, this causes the state of equilibrium from being reached or it will cause the lose of balance again.

    Claude Levi-Strauss:
    He was born in Brussels, his father was a painter. He grew up in Paris and he was named after the artists Claude Lorrain, who Claude Levi-Strauss admired and wrote about in later life. During World War One he lived with his grandfather who was a rabbi for the Synagogue of Versailles.

    Levi-Strauss looked at binary opposition in narrative, these are sets of opposite values. An example would be Good and Evil, we know what comes of being good and we understand that evil is the opposite. Levi-Strauss looked at the arrangements of binaries in films, for example in a science fiction film:
    • Earth and Space
    • Good and Evil
    • Humans and Aliens
    • Past and Present
    • Known and Unknown

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