Gimlé

The Theories.

1. Bakhtin’s Polyglossia:

   How various ways of speaking and writing styles interact and form a narrative structure.

   
   

2. Lévi-Strauss’ Binary Oppositions:

   How binary opposites become focal points that change our understanding of the rest of the story.

   
   

3. Derrida’s Parergon:

   How Context changes a structure’s meaning without actually being a part of it.

   
   

What Structure.

1. Polyglossia:

   For example: A poem and a prose monologue can be analysed as separate wholes.

   But if you combine the two with a third cynical narration—one that comments harshly on the romantic naivety of the poem and talks with sadness how the gloomy pessimism of the character speaking in the monologue ended in suicide—you end up with a multivocal narrative structure.

   A work that behaves in a way that is completely different from that of traditional narrative structures. Bakhtin called this a novelistic structure.

   
   

2. Binary Oppositions:

   Looking at binary oppositions draws out the prevailing relationships in the structure.

   By looking at several separate pairs of opposites and analysing how those oppositions—their tensions—affect other components a theorist can gain an understanding of the flaws and qualities of that structure as a whole.

   
   

3. Parergon:

   A set of analytical methods specifically designed to analyse the relationship of meanings between comment structures (such as footnotes, picture frames) and narrative structures.

   A commenting structure, such as a footnote or accompanying essay, can have a completely different style and structure from the main work and yet completely change our understanding of the work—its meaning—by delineating which readings of the work are and are not possible.

The Story.

Penguin edition of Egil’s Saga.