Story, plot and situation

Story

Story as the basis of dramatic and narrative texts

Ever since Aristotle's Poetics (chs. 6 and 14) – that is, from the very beginnings of dramatic theory – critics have agreed unanimously that the macrostructure of every dramatic text is founded on a story, though of course the concept of what actually constitutes a story has given rise to a whole range of different interpretations varying considerably in precision and breadth. At this point we should like to define ‘story’ formally as something that requires the three following ingredients: one or more human or anthropomorphic subjects, a temporal dimension indicating the passing of time and a spatial dimension giving a sense of space. Interpreted this way, story provides the foundation underlying not only every dramatic text, but also every narrative. On the basis of this criterion alone, then, it is not possible to distinguish between these two types of text, though it does set them apart from both argumentative texts, whose macrostructure is based on a logically or psychologically coherent flow of argument (essay, treatise, sermon, ‘reflective poetry’ etc.) and from descriptive texts that describe concrete and static objects or states of affair (topography, blazon, character description etc.).