The successes and failure of narratology

Twentieth-century study of narrative featured many successes and one grave failure. Narratology taught us the basics of how to study the structure of narrative, but proves to be a dead end in the study of texts. This was clear soon after Gérard Genette’s groundbreaking studies, but later works such as Paul Ricoeur’s fail to get beyond narratology. This paper therefore claims that narrative theory has not changed since its inception several decades ago, even though the need for such a change is broadly supported. Attention has been paid to expanding narrative methods to other fields like medicine and education rather than further developing the theory. I advocate a more serious consideration of contemporary literature to renew narrative theory.