Structural Analysis of Narrative by Jean Calloud, and: What is Structural Exegesis? by Daniel Patte (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Structural Analysis of Narrative. By JEAN CALLOUD. Translated by Daniel Patte. Philadelphia: Fortress Press and Missoula: Scholars' Press, 1976. Pp. xv, 108. $3.95. What is Structural Exegesis? By DANIEL PATTE. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976. Pp. vi, 90, with annotated bibliography and index. $~.95. Both books under review offer an exposition and a defense of a method of reading--structural exegesis-together with some examples of the method at work. Both are short, inexpensive, introductory without being simpliste. Together or separately they would be valuable as textbooks in a course on exegesis. Patte's book contains a useful annotated bibliography. Both books are introductory and introductions are typically of two kinds. There is the introduction that leads the novice into an already well-established discipline within which there is broad agreement at that early level, e.g. the average textbook in logic, chemistry, biology etc. Such introductions are pedagogical and are rarely substantively controversial. A second kind of introduction is less an introduction to a discipline as the introduction of one. Calloud and Patte, while relying on a corpus of basic research, tend towards being introductions of the second type. Their style is, accordingly, somewhat contentious; they write, so to speak, against an antagonist; they not only present a theory but presume that there is an opposing theory to be dislodged. This contentiousness is not a fault so much as a contextual characteristic. Calloud's discussion (p. 19 ff) of actantial roles is an example. He claims that"... the actors (or personages) can be reduced into' actantial roles'." (In parentheses may I remark that, while Patte's translation reads well in general, I think that where he uses " personages " he should have used " characters ". We do not in English refer to the personages of a novel but to its characters.) By the reduction of a character to an actantial role Calloud appears to mean the kind of symbolization that is familiar from grammar or logic. Thus, if one is doing logic one is not interested in the details of "John and Mary went to the game"; one is concerned with its logical structure and it is that alone which is symbolized. Calloud's example of a typical reduction is interesting since it shows clearly how what he is doing resembles and differs from the familiar logical reduction. The expression: "Peter got up, said good-bye and went home " can be reduced to the functions disjunction and departure and to the actant. The expression is an instance 596 BOOK REVIEWS 597 of the form "actant: disjunction-departure." This form could be instantiated in other expressions, e. g. " Priscilla waved and ran off," " The dog turned and slunk away." At this level the expressions are equivalent in much the same way as, in grammar or logic, otherwise different sentences may be equivalent. There is, however, a notable difference. In logic the non-formal meaning of the sentence is excluded; in Calloud's analysis the reduction is to a different level. The function departure, for example (the term 'function' comes from Propp's Morphology of the Folktale, a seminal work in the structuralist tradition, the Russian original of which was published in 19~7) , is instantiated in a range of verbs. But it is a restricted range-restricted or defined by the meaning of the term "departure "-and distinct from, or opposed to, another range, e. g. the range designated by the term " arrival." The subject of the verb--" Peter left "-can be reduced to actant. Once again we are familiar with grammatical reduction so that, from the perspective of grammar, "Peter," "Paul," "Petronella" and "Priscilla" may be equivalent or, if they differ, they differ grammatically by being subject, direct object, indirect object, etc. Similarly, from the perspective of criticism, characters identified in a story by proper names are written of as "hero," "villain," "confidant," etc., and sometimes in drama a character is identified only by such a general title as "messenger," "first murderer," etc. I have no desire to claim that the structuralist movement in criticism, or the formalist movement which preceded it, is saying what has been wmmonly said from time immemorial. By no means. But what structuralism has...