To narrate means to construct a world. Eco affirms this, and adds that such a world must be “so concrete that one can imagine stepping into it.” A world that stands “before our eyes,” where even the smallest details can be perceived, and that becomes populated with words almost spontaneously, as soon as we visualize it. Narration requires a setting: events must unfold in a specific place and time, and must involve acting and acted-upon subjects, portrayed through gestures, smiles, and the tone of their voices. This is the operation that Eco calls “furnishing a world.”
Narrativization is described by Patrizia Magli as a process that transforms state utterances into action utterances. Narrative syntax is understood as the organization of these transformations through operations of conjunction and disjunction between subjects and objects, according to a logic governed by a limited number of actants. At this stage, actants appear as simple syntactic operators, executors of predetermined schemes.
In its initial formulation, narrative syntax takes the form of a pure algorithm: an abstract, generic, and therefore universal structure, capable of functioning as a heuristic model for analyzing any text. Yet this very generality also marks its limitation. The model risks remaining too far removed from the concrete reality of actual texts.
Texts, in their concreteness, are not mere narrative algorithms: they are composed of specific situations, of characters with physical appearance and temperament, of settings that can be visualized in detail, with colors, sounds, and tastes. They are the site of a rich perceptual representation, one that goes far beyond the formal logic of actantial syntax.
It is the task of semantics to bridge this gap between the abstraction of structure and the concreteness of the narrated world. Two levels, in particular, are distinguished: Narrative Semantics, which deals with the deep level of the narrative program (PG), and Discursive Semantics, which intervenes at the level of manifestation. Characters, objects, and situations are defined as true loci of semantic investment. Within this perspective, Greimas reintroduces the value of the lexicon into syntax.
Bibliographic reference: Patrizia Magli, Semiotica. Teoria, metodo, analisi, Marsilio, 2004.