Understanding Narrative Structure and Dramatic Texts

Posted on Jan 16, 2025 in Arts and Humanities

The Area: The Environment

In relation to reality, space can be categorized as:

  • Real Space: Corresponds to real and identifiable places.
  • Imaginary Space: Exists in reality but has been created from similar places in reality.
  • Fantasy Space: Does not exist in real space.

The Time

The events described occur in a temporal succession. We distinguish two types of narrative time:

  • External Time: The time when the action unfolds.
  • Internal Time: The way in which events are arranged chronologically in the story.

The most common is the linear order (technical management of flashback or backward) or otherwise (future management). In addition to the linear or chronological order, the narrator can begin the act of narration following other guidelines:

  1. In Medias Res: The narrative begins in the middle of the story, turns to the start, and when it reaches the center, continues linearly.
  2. In Extremis Res: The narrative or story starts with the final outcome.
  3. Counterpoint: Juxtaposition of various narrative situations that develop in sequences that are happening alternately.

Discourse Patterns of Report

A feature of the story is the discursive plurality. There may be fragments of descriptive methods to show the space of action or what the characters are like, fragments of modality, and dialogued fragments. Leaving aside the description, a story can be found as discursive modes:

  • Narrated Text: The narrator refers in his words to what the characters do, without showing what they say.
  • Speech: The narrator introduces what the characters say – but they never speak for themselves.
  • Direct Style: The narrator transcribes the conversation of the characters literally, writing their own words.
  • Monologue: Voice and vision of the character, but the narrator is still present, ordering the logical discourse.

Theatre: The Dramatic Text

Theatre refers to those literary works that are written for representation by actors on a stage. Its characteristic features include the use of dialogue and not the figure of the narrator. On stage, we distinguish between drama and theatrical performance on stage. In a dramatic text, we note the following basic features:

  • Action
  • Character
  • Dramatic Tension

Dramatic action must have these attributes:

  1. Unity: The classic story represented demanded that it fulfill the “rule of three unities” (a place, date, and action).
  2. Integrity: The action must be complete: exposition, climax, and denouement.
  3. Likelihood: If the drama is related to the life depicted, it must look real.
  4. Interest: To attract the viewer’s attention.

Structure of a Dramatic Play

A play consists of two types of text: main text and secondary text.

Main Text

A main text may contain the following divisions:

  • Act: A unit of time and narrative, marked by the raising and lowering of the curtain. Greek theatre was unaware of the subdivisions into action. Latin writers, and especially the Renaissance, divided the work into five acts: (presentation, escalation, climax, decline, and end). The theatre of Lope reduced the number of acts to three: exposition, climax, and denouement.
  • Setting: Some text that is marked by a total or partial change of scenery.
  • Scene: Part of the work that is determined by the input or output of actors.