Narratology as a Complementary Tool in the Stylistic Analysis of Narrative Texts

Narratology as a new field in academic research can be traced back to Aristotle’s Poetics. As a discipline, Narratology is indebted to Russian formalism as well as French structuralism. Its main objective is to determine the principles underlying the narrative fiction. Narratology basically aims to discover the “grammar” of the narrative and to unveil what has been termed as the macrostructure of the story. Likewise, stylistics dates back to ancient antiquity when early sophists taught their clients how to argue and speak eloquently in public arena. Much like narratology, stylistics has as its more immediate ancestor the formalism and linguistics of the early 20th century. However, stylistics tends to reveal a greater tendency toward the analysis of linguistic microstructure which evidently sets it in contrast to narratological concerns with their emphasis on general principles. The present article argues that narratology needs not, as some scholars of stylistics maintain, be considered as a subdiscipline of stylistics (see, for instance, Simpson 2014). Rather, as a more or less independent field of research, it can prove to be an invaluable tool to help the stylistic scholars probe the micro- as well as the macrostructural levels of the narrative text. In other words, drawing on narratological concepts and models which can hardly be found in stylistics per se, stylistics can offer a more comprehensive overview in the study of narratives with the help of narratology. Interfusing the potentials of narratology and stylistics can therefore compensate for the inherent shortcomings of each discipline.