Fork

Fork (pronounced fawrk)

(1) An instrument having two or more tines (popularly called prongs), for holding, lifting, etc., as an implement for handling food or any of various agricultural tools.

(2) Something resembling or suggesting this in form or conceptually.

(3) As tuning fork, instruments used (1) in the tuning of musical instruments and (2) by audiologists and others involved in the study or treatment of hearing.

(4) In machinery, a type of yoke; a pronged part of any device.

(5) A generalized description of the division into branches.

(6) In physical geography and cartography, by abstraction, the point or part at which a thing, as a river or a road, divides into branches; any of the branches into which a thing divides (and used by some as a convention to describe a principal tributary of a river.

(7) In horology, (in a lever escapement) the forked end of the lever engaging with the ruby pin.

(8) In bicycle & motorcycle design, the support of the front wheel axles, having the shape of a two-tined fork.

(9) In archery, the barbed head of an arrow.

(10) To pierce, raise, pitch, dig etc, with a fork.

(11) Metonymically (and analogous with the prongs of a pronged tool), to render something to resemble a fork or describe something using the shape as a metaphor.

(12) In chess, to maneuver so as to place two opponent's pieces under simultaneous attack by the same piece (most associated with moves involving the knight).

(13) In computer programming, to modify a software’s source code to create a version sufficiently different to be considered a separate path of development.

(14) In computer programming, as "fork bomb", a program that creates a large number of self-replicating tasks or processes in a computer system in order to cause a DoS (denial of service).

(15) To turn as indicated at a fork in a road, path etc.

(16) Figuratively, a point in time when a decision is taken.

(17) In fulminology (the scientific (as opposed to the artistic or religious) study of lightning), as "forked lightning", the type of atmospheric discharge of electricity which hits the ground in a bolt.

(18) In software development, content management & data management, figuratively (by abstraction, from a physical fork), a departure from having a single source of truth (SSOT) (unintentionally as originally defined but later also applied where the variation was intentional; metonymically, any of the instances of software, data sets etc, thus created.

(19) In World War II (1939-1945) era British military jargon, the male crotch, used to indicate the genital area as a point of vulnerability in physical assault.

(20) in occupational slang, a clipping of forklift; any of the blades of a forklift (or, in plural, the set of blades), on which the goods to be raised are loaded.

(21) In saddlery, the upper front brow of a saddle bow, connected in the tree by the two saddle bars to the cantle on the other end.

(22) In slang, a gallows (obsolete).

(23) As a transitive verb, a euphemistic for “fuck” one of the variations on f***, ***k etc and used typically to circumvent text-based filters.

(24) In underground, extractive mining, the bottom of a sump into which the water of a mine drains; to bale a shaft dry (still often spelled forcque).

(25) As the variant chork, an eating utensil made with a combination of chopstick & fork, intended for neophyte chopstick users.

(26) In literature, as "silver fork novel" a genre in nineteenth century English literature that depicted the lives of the upper class and the aristocracy (known also as the "fashionable novel" and "drawing room fiction").

Pre-1000: From the Middle English forke (digging fork), from the Old English force & forca (pitchfork, forked instrument, forked weapon; forked instrument used to torture), from the Proto-West Germanic furkō (fork), from the Latin furca (pitchfork, forked stake; gallows, beam, stake, support post, yoke) of uncertain origin. The Middle English was later reinforced by the Anglo-Norman & Old Northern French forque (it was from the Old French forche which French gained fourche), also from the Latin.  It was cognate with the Old Frisian forke, the North Frisian forck (fork), the Dutch vork (fork), the Danish vork (fork) and the German Forke (pitchfork).  The evolved Middle English form displaced the native Old English gafol, ġeafel & ġeafle (fork) (and the apparently regionally specific forcel (pitchfork) though the use from circa 1200 to mean “forked stake or post used as a prop when erecting a gallows” did for a while endure, probably because of the long-life of the architectural plans for a structure which demanded no change or functional improvement.  The alternative spelling forcque is used in mining and describes the "bottom of a sump".  Perhaps surprisingly, dictionaries don't list forkish or forkesque as standard adjectives.  Fork is a noun & verb, forking is a noun, verb, adjective & adverb, forklike is an adjective and forked is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is forks.

Representation of the forks the Linux operating system.  Software forks can extend, die off or merge with other forks.

The forks of The Latin furca (in its primary sense of “fork”) may be from the primitive Indo-European gherk & gherg (fork) although etymologists have never traced any explanation for the addition of the -c-, something which remains mysterious even if the word was influenced by the Proto-Germanic furkaz & firkalaz (stake, stick, pole, post) which was from the primitive Indo-European perg- (pole, post).  If such a link existed, it would relate the word to the Old English forclas pl (bolt), the Old Saxon ferkal (lock, bolt, bar), the Old Norse forkr (pole, staff, stick), the Norwegian fork (stick, bat) and the Swedish fork (pole).  The descendants in other languages include the Sranan Tongo forku, the Dutch vork, the Japanese フォーク (fōku), the Danish korf, the Kannada ಫೋರ್ಕ್ (phōrk), the Korean 포크 (pokeu), the Maori paoka, the Tamil போர்க் (pōrk) and the Telugu ఫోర్క్ (phōrk).  In many languages, the previous form was retained for most purposes while the English fork was adopted in the context of software development.

Forks can be designed for specific applications, this is a sardine fork, the dimensions dictated by the size of the standard sardine tin.

Although visitors from Western Europe discovered the novelty of the table fork in Constantinople as early as the eleventh century, the civilizing influence from Byzantium seems not routinely to have appeared on the tables of the English nobility until the 1400s and the evidence suggests it didn’t come into common use before the early seventeenth century.  The critical moment is said to have come in 1601 when the celebrated traveller and writer Thomas Coryat (or Coryate) (circa 1577–1617) returned to London from one of his tours, bringing with him the then almost unknown "table fork" which he'd seen used in Italy.  This "continental affectation" made him the subject of mirth and playwrights dubbed him "the fork-carrying traveller" while the street was earthier, the nickname "Furcifer" (from the Latin meaning "fork-bearer, rascal") soon adopted and despite the early scepticism, there soon were many types of "specific purpose forks (cake fork, cocktail fork, dessert fork etc).  Mr Coryat thus made one of the great contributions to the niceties of life, his other being the introduction to the  English language of the word "umbrella", another influence from Italy.

Cause and effect: The fork in the road.

In Lewis Carroll’s (1832–1898, the (pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898)) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), when Alice comes to a fork in the road, she encounters the Cheshire Cat sitting in a tree:

Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”

Alice: “I don’t know.”

Cat: “Then it doesn't matter which way you go.”

One can see the cat’s point and a reductionist like Donald Rumsfeld (1932–2021: US defense secretary 1975-1977 & 2001-2006) there would have ended the exchange but the feline proved more helpful, telling Alice she’ll see the Mad Hatter and the March Hare if she goes in certain directions, implying that no matter which path she chooses, she’ll encounter strange characters.  That she did and the book is one of the most enjoyable flights of whimsy in English.

The idiomatic phrase “fork in the road” wasn’t in use early in the seventeenth century when translators were laboring to create the King James Bible (KJV, 1611) so “…the king of Babylon so stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways…” appeared whereas by 1982 when the New King James Version (NKJV, 1982) was released, that term would have been archaic so the translation was rendered as “…the king of Babylon stands at the parting of the road, at the fork of the two roads…”.

Ezekiel 21:19-23; King James Version of the Bible (KJV, 1611):

Also, thou son of man, appoint thee two ways, that the sword of the king of Babylon may come: both twain shall come forth out of one land: and choose thou a place, choose it at the head of the way to the city. Appoint a way, that the sword may come to Rabbath of the Ammonites, and to Judah in Jerusalem the defenced. For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he made his arrows bright, he consulted with images, he looked in the liver. At his right hand was the divination for Jerusalem, to appoint captains, to open the mouth in the slaughter, to lift up the voice with shouting, to appoint battering rams against the gates, to cast a mount, and to build a fort. And it shall be unto them as a false divination in their sight, to them that have sworn oaths: but he will call to remembrance the iniquity, that they may be taken.

Ezekiel 21:19-23; New King James Version of the Bible (NKJV, 1982):

And son of man, appoint for yourself two ways for the sword of the king of Babylon to go; both of them shall go from the same land. Make a sign; put it at the head of the road to the city. Appoint a road for the sword to go to Rabbah of the Ammonites, and to Judah, into fortified Jerusalem. For the king of Babylon stands at the parting of the road, at the fork of the two roads, to use divination: he shakes the arrows, he consults the images, he looks at the liver. In his right hand is the divination for Jerusalem: to set up battering rams, to call for a slaughter, to lift the voice with shouting, to set battering rams against the gates, to heap up a siege mound, and to build a wall. And it will be to them like a false divination in the eyes of those who have sworn oaths with them; but he will bring their iniquity to remembrance, that they may be taken.

The KJV & NKJV closely are related but do in detail differ in the language used, the objective of the latter being to enhance readability while retaining the stylistic beauty and literary structure of the original.  Most obviously, the NKJV abandoned the use of archaic words and convention of grammar (thee, thou, ye, thy, thine, doeth, speaketh etc) which can make it difficult for modern readers to understand, rather as students can struggle with Shakespeare’s text, something not helped by lecturers reminding them of its beauty, a quality which often escapes the young.  The NKJV emerged from a reaction to some of the twentieth century translations which traditionalist readers thought had “descended” too far into everyday language; it was thus a compromise between greater readability and a preservation of the original tone.  Both the KJV & NKJV primarily used the Textus Receptus (received text) for the New Testament and Masoretic Text for the Old Testament and this approach differed from other modern translations (such as the New International Version (NIV, 1978) & English Standard Version (ESV, which 2001) used a wider sub-set of manuscripts, including older ones like the Alexandrian texts (Codex Vaticanus, Sinaiticus etc)  So, the NKJV is more “traditional” than modern translations but not as old-fashioned as the KJV and helpfully, unlike the KJV which provided hardly any footnotes about textual variants, the NKJV was generous, showing where differences existed between the major manuscript traditions (Textus Receptus, Alexandrian & Byzantine), a welcome layer of transparency but importantly, both used a formal equivalence (word-for-word) approach which put a premium on direct translation over paraphrasing, the latter technique much criticized in the later translations.

Historians of food note word seems first to have appeared in this context of eating utensils in an inventory of household goods from 1430 and they suggest, because their influence in culinary matters was strongest, it was probably from the Old North French forque.  It came to be applied to rivers from 1753 and of roads by 1839.  The use in bicycle design began in 1871 and this was adopted directly within twenty years when the first motorcycles appeared.  The chess move was first so-described in the 1650s while the old slang, forks "the two forefingers" was from 1812 and endures to this day as “the fork”.  In the world of cryptocurrencies, fork has been adopted with fetish-like enthusiasm to refer to (1) a split in the blockchain resulting from protocol disagreements, or (2) a branch of the blockchain resulting from such a split.

Lindsay Lohan with Tiramisu and cake-fork, Terry Richardson (b 1965) photoshoot, 2012.

The verb dates from the early fourteenth century in the sense of (1) “to divide in branches, go separate ways" & (2) "disagree, be inconsistent", both derived from the noun.  The transitive meaning "raise or pitch with a fork" is from 1812, used most frequently in the forms forked & forking while the slang verb phrase “fork (something) over” is from 1839 while “fork out” (give over) is from 1831).  The now obsolete legal slang “forking” in the forensic sense of a "disagreement among witnesses" dates from the turn of the fifteenth century.  The noun forkful was an agricultural term from the 1640s while the specialized fourchette (in reference to anatomical structures, from French fourchette (diminutive of fourche (a fork)) was from 1754.  The noun pitchfork (fork for lifting and pitching hay etc.) described the long-used implement constructed commonly with a long handle and two or three prongs first in the mid fourteenth century, altered (by the influence of pichen (to throw, thrust), from the early thirteenth century Middle English pic-forken, from pik (source of pike).  The verb use meaning "to lift or throw with a pitchfork," is noted from 1837.  The spork, an eating utensil which was fashioned by making several long indents in the bowl to create prongs debuted in 1909.

Dining room of Huis Doorn.

Huis Doorn (Doorn House) near Utrecht in the Netherlands, was the country house in which the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941; Emperor of Germany & King of Prussia 1888-1918) would live until his death.  Confiscated by the state at the end of World War II (1939-1945), Huis Doorn is now a museum, maintained much as the former Kaiser left it.  At his place on the dining room table sits one of his special forks with three tines, the widened one to the left a blade serving as a knife because a congenitally withered left-arm made the use of a conventional utensil too difficult.

Compelled by circumstances to abdicate at the end of World War I (1914-1918) Wilhelm was granted asylum by the neutral Netherlands, the cabinet insisting his status would be that of a private German citizen; to the status-conscious former Kaiser, it remained for the rest of his life a disappointment that Wilhelmina (1880–1962; Queen of the Netherlands 1890-1948) would neither receive nor visit him.  He’d arrived in the Netherlands accompanied by a reputed 64 train carriages of imperial household goods (furnishings, art, bibelots and such) and an unknown slice of the German exchequer so was able to purchase and adequately decorate Huis Doorn which he purchased, taking up residence in May 1920.  However much of the Imperial Treasury came with him remains a matter of speculation but until his death, he maintained a household staff sufficient to ensure “a certain grandeur”.  Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) did on several occasions pay a visit but that stopped as soon as the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933; the former sovereign had out-lived any potential usefulness to the party.  Indeed, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) would have preferred if the old man had had the decency quietly to drop dead because the last thing he wanted was any possibility the monarchy might be restored.  He regarded Benito Mussolini’s (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) greatest mistake (and there were a few) as having not deposed the Victor Emmanuel III (1869–1947; King of Italy 1900-1946) when he had the chance and to his dying day suspected a conspiracy between the Freemasons and the royal court was behind the Duce’s downfall in 1943.  There may be something in that because Marshal Pietro Badoglio (1871–1956; Prime Minister of Italy 1943-1944), appointed by the King as Mussolini’s replacement, was a confessed Freemason.

Speciale vork voor Willem II: One of Wilhelm's silver Kaisergabels (Imperial fork).

In a coda which would have amused those who remembered Winston Churchill’s (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) glee at hearing the chant “Hang the Kaiser!” at the end of World War I, after the Netherlands was invaded in 1940, fearing the Nazis might murder their former ruler, through diplomatic channels he offered to receive Wilhelm “with dignity and consideration” if he chose to seek refuge in the UK.  The offer was declined and he remained safely in Huis Doon until his death, the Nazis simply ignoring him because in the euphoria of victory, there was in Germany no longer a significant pro-monarchist movement.  Churchill's offer has been treated by some historians as “a humanitarian gesture” but he always had a fondness for monarchical government (his wife called him “the last man in Europe still to believe in the divine right of kings”) and it's suspected he may have pondered the idea of a restoration (possibly Crown Prince Wilhelm (1882–1951)) in constitutional form.

Der Gableschwanz Teufl: The Lockheed P-38 Lightning (1939-1945).  During World War II, the Luftwaffe’s (German air force) military slang for the twin-boomed Lockheed P-38 Lightning was Der Gableschwanz Teufl (the fork-tailed devil).

Novelty nail-art by US restaurant chain Denny's.  The manicure uses as a base a clean, white coat of lacquer, to which was added miniature plastic utensils, the index finger a fork, the middle finger a knife, the ring finger a spoon, and the pinky finger presumably a toothpick or it could be something more kinky.

The idiomatic “speak with forked tongue” to indicate duplicitous speech dates from 1885 and was an invention of US English though reputedly influenced by phrases settlers learned in their interactions with first nations peoples (then called “Red Indians”).  The earlier “double tongue” (a la “two-faced”) in the same sense was from the fifteenth century.  Fork as a clipping of the already truncated fork-lift (1953) fom the fork-lift truck (1946), appears to have enter the vernacular circa 1994.  The adjective forked (branched or divided in two parts) was the past-participle adjective from the verb and came into use early in the fourteenth century.  It was applied to roads in the 1520s and more generally within thirty years while the use in the sixteenth and seventeenth century with a suggestion of "cuckold" (on the notion of "horned") is long obsolete.    Applied in many contexts (literally & figuratively), inventions (with and without hyphens) include fork-bomb, fork-buffet, fork-dinner, fork-head, rolling-fork, fork-over, fork-off & fork-up (the latter pair euphemistic substitutions for "fuck off" & "fuck-up).

Führerspork: Spork (left) from a flatware set (right) made for Adolf Hitler's 50^th birthday, sold at auction in 2018 for £12,500.  The items had been discovered in England in a house once owned by a senior military officer, the assumption being they were looted in 1945 (“souveniring” or “spoils of war” in soldiers' parlance), the items all bearing the Nazi eagle, swastika and Hitler's initials.  Auction houses can be inconsistent in their descriptions of sporks and in some cases they're listed as splayds, the designs meaning sometimes it's a fine distinction.

1979 Benelli 750 Sei (left) and Benelli factory schematic of the 750 Sei’s fork (series 2a, right).

One quirk in the use of the word is the tendency of motorcyclists to refer to the front fork as “the forks”.  Used on almost every motorcycle made, the fork is an assembly which connects the front axle (and thus the wheel) to the frame, usually by via a pair (upper & lower) of yokes; the fork provides both the front suspension (springs or hydraulics) and makes possible the steering.  The reason the apparatus is often called “the forks” is the two most obvious components (the left & right) tubes appear to be separate when really they are two prongs connected at the top.  Thus, a motor cycle manufacturer describes the assembly (made of many components (clamp, tubes, legs, springs, dampers etc)) “a fork” but, because of the appearance, riders often think of them as a pair of forks, thus the vernacular “the forks”.  English does have other examples of such apparent aberrations such as a “pair of spectacles” which is sold as a single item but the origin of eye-glasses was in products sold as separate lens and users would (according to need) buy one glass (what became the monocle) or a pair of glasses.  That is a different structural creation than the bra which on the model of a “pair of glasses” would be a “pair of something” but the word is a clipping of “brassiere”.  English borrowed brassiere from the French brassière, from the Old French braciere (which was originally a lining fitted inside armor which protected the arm, only later becoming a garment), from the Old French brace (arm) although by then it described a chemise (a kind of undershirt) but in the US, brassiere was used from 1893 when the first bras were advertised and from there, use spread.  The three syllables were just too much to survive the onslaught of modernity and the truncated “bra” soon prevailed, being the standard form throughout the English-speaking world by the early 1930s.  Curiously, in French, a bra is a soutien-gorge which translates literally and rather un-romantically as “throat-supporter” although “chest uplifter” is a better translation.

2004 Dodge Tomahawk.

There have been variations on the classic fork and even designs which don’t use a conventional front fork, most of which have been variations on the “swinging arm” a structure which is either is or tends towards the horizontal.  One of the most memorable to use swinging arms was the 2004 Dodge Tomahawk, a “motorcycle” constructed around a 506 cubic inch (8.3 litre) version of the V10s used in the Dodge Viper (1991-2010 & 2013-2017) and the concept demonstrated what imaginative engineers can do if given time, money, resources and a disconnection from reality.  Designing a 500 horsepower (370 kW) motorcycle obviously takes some thought so what they did to equalize things a bit in what would otherwise be an unequal battle with physics was use four independently sprung wheels which allowed the machine to corner with a lean (up to 45^o said to be possible) although no photographs seem to exist of an intrepid rider putting this projection to the test.  Rather than a fork, swinging arms were used and while this presumably enhanced high-speed stability, it also meant the turning circle was something like that of one of the smaller aircraft carriers.  There were suggestions a top speed of some 420 mph (675 km/h) was at least theoretically possible although a sense of reality did briefly intrude and this was later revised to 250 mph (400 km/h).  In the Dodge design office, presumably it was thought safe to speculate because of the improbability of finding anyone both sufficient competent and crazy enough to explore the limits; one would find plenty of either but the characteristics rarely co-exist.  Remarkably, as many as ten replicas were sold at a reputed US$555,000 and although (mindful of the country’s litigious habits) all were non-operative and described as “art deco inspired automotive sculpture” to be admired as static displays, some apparently have been converted to full functionality although there have been no reports of top speed testing.

Britney Spears (b 1981): "Video clip with fork feature", Instagram, 11 May 2025.

Unfortunately, quickly Ms Spears deleted the more revealing version of the clip but for those pondering the messaging, Spearologists (a thoughtful crew devoted to their discipline) deconstructed the content, noting it came some days after she revealed it had been four months she’d left her house.  The silky, strapless dress and sweat-soaked, convulsing flesh were (by her standards) uncontroversial but what may have mystified non-devotees was the fork she at times held in her grasp.  Apparently, the fork was an allusion to her earlier quote: “Shit!  Now I have to find my FORK!!!”, made during what was reported as a “manic meltdown” (itself interesting in that it at least suggests the existence of “non-manic” meltdowns) at a restaurant, following the abrupt departure of her former husband (2022-2024) Hesam "Sam" Asghari (b 1994).  The link between restaurant and video clip was reports Mr Asghari was soon to be interviewed and there would be questions about the marriage.  One of her earlier posts had included a fork stabbing a lipstick (forks smeared with lipstick a trick also used in Halloween costuming to emulate facial scratches) and the utensil in the clip was said to be “a symbol of her frustration and emotional state.”  Now we know.

Großadmiral (Grand Admiral, equivalent to an admiral of the fleet (Royal Navy) or five star (fleet) admiral (US Navy)) Alfred von Tirpitz (1849–1930; State Secretary of the German Imperial Naval Office 1897-1916).

He's remembered now for (1) his role in building up the Imperial German Navy, triggering events which would play some part in the coming of World War I, (2) his distinctive twin-forked beard and (3) being the namesake for the Bismarck class battleship Tirpitz (1939-1944) which, although she hardly ever took to the high seas and fired barely a shot in anger, merely by being moored in Norwegian fjords, she compelled the British Admiralty to watch her with a mix of awe and dread, necessitating keeping in home waters a number of warships badly needed elsewhere.  Such was the threat his namesake battleship represented, just the mistaken belief she was steaming into the path of a convoy (PQ 17, June 1942) of merchant ships bound for the Russian port of Archangel caused the Admiralty to issue a “scatter order” (ie disperse the convoy from the escorting warships), resulting in heavy losses.  After a number of attempts, in 1944, she finally was sunk in a raid by RAF (Royal Air Force) bombers but, because some of the capsized hull remained visible above the surface, some wags in the navy insisted the air force had not "sunk the beast" but merely "lowered her to the waterline".  It wasn't until after the war the British learned the RAF's successful mission, strategically, had been unnecessary, earlier attacks (including the Admiralty's using mines placed by crews in midget submarines) having inflicted so much damage there was by 1944 no prospect of the Tirpitz again venturing far from her moorings.

Lieutenant General Nagaoka Gaishi san, Tokyo, 1920.

When Großadmiral von Tirpitz died in 1930, he and twin-fork beard were, in the one casket, buried in Bavaria's Münchner Waldfriedhof “woodland cemetery”.  The “one body = one casket” protocol is of course the almost universal practice but there have been exceptions and one was Lieutenant General Gaishi Nagaoka (1858-1933) who served in the Imperial Japanese Army between 1978-1908, including as vice chief of the general staff during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905).  While serving as a military instructor, one of his students was the future Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975; leader of the Republic of China (mainland) 1928-1949 & the renegade province of Taiwan 1949-1975).  After retiring from the military, he entered politics, elected in 1924 as a member of the House of Representatives (after Japan in the 1850s ended its “isolation” policy, it’s political and social system were a mix of Japanese, British and US influences).  After he died in 1933, by explicit request, his impressive “handlebar” moustache carefully was removed and buried in a separate casket in Aoyama Cemetery.

Narratology

Narratology (pronounced nar-uh-tol-uh-jee)

The study of narrative & narrative structure and the ways these affect human perception (with some mission creep over the years).

1967: The construct was narrate +‎ -ology, an Anglicization of the French narratologie, coined by Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher & structuralist literary critic Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017), it first appeared in his book Grammaire du Décaméron (1967), a structural analysis of Decameron (The Decameron (1348-1353)) by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375).  Although once thought an arcane appendage to literature and a mere academic abstraction, structuralism and narratology in the 1970s and 1980s became a very popular (and controversial) field and while postmodernism’s historic movement may have passed, the tools are an important part of the “learning” process used by generative AI (artificial intelligence) to produce meaning from the LLM (large language models.)

Title page from a 1620 printing of Decameron.

Boccaccio’s Decameron (literally “ten days”) was a collection of short stories, structured into a hundred tales of seven young women and three young men who had secluded themselves in a villa outside Florence, seeking to avoid the Black Death pandemic (1346-1353) then sweeping Europe.  Although not too much should be made of this comparison, the work in some aspects is not dissimilar to reality television, being a mash-up of erotic scenes, set-piece jokes, suspense and unrequited love.  Todorov’s Grammaire du Décaméron was a literary analysis of the work but “grammaire” must be understood as meaning “grammar” in the sense of the structural or narratological principles rather than as its used in its “everyday” sense.  Historians and literary scholars have for centuries regarded Decameron as a valuable document because, written in the Florentine vernacular of the era, although fictional, it’s a kind of “snapshot” of life in what was one of Europe’s many troubled times.  It was Boccaccio who dubbed Dante’s (Dante Alighieri (circa 1265–1321)) Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy (circa 1310-1321)) “divine” (in the sense of “very good” rather than “holy”).

Narrate (to relate a story or series of events (historically in speech or writing)) may for years (or even decades) have been in oral use in English before the first known use in print in 1656, etymologists noting that until the nineteenth century it was stigmatized as “Scottish” (long a slur among the more fastidious) although it’s thought it was derived from the “respectable” narration.  Narrative ((1) a story or account of events or (2) the art, process or technique or telling the story) was in use by the 1440s and was from the Middle French noun & adjective narrative, from the Late Latin narrātīvus (narration (noun) & suitable for narration (adjective)), the construct being narrāt(us) (related, told), past participle of narrāre (to relate, tell, say) + -īvus (the adjectival suffix).  Again, like “narrate”, narrative was once used exclusively of speech or writing but in recent decades the terms have been more widely applied and not restricted to describing the efforts of humans.

Since the nineteenth century, “-ologies” have proliferated.

The suffix -ology was formed from -o- (as an interconsonantal vowel) +‎ -logy.  The origin in English of the -logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg astrology from astrologia) since the sixteenth century.  French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía).  Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account, explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story).  In English the suffix became extraordinarily productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study, analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie).  Within a few decades of the intrusion of modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology (1820); hatology (1837)).  In this evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism et al).

A narrative is a story and it can run to thousands of pages or appear in a few words on a restaurant menu describing their fish & chips: “Ethically sourced, line-caught Atlantic cod, liberated from the frigid depths, encased in a whisper-light, effervescent golden shroud of our signature micro-foamed artisanal lager batter and served with hand-sliced, elongated potato batons fried to a crisp perfection in sustainably produced vegetable oil.”  In the age of every customer being able to post from their phone a rating and review of a restaurant, wisely, some institutions include a footnote along the lines: “These narratives are a guide and because natural products vary greatly, there will be variation.”  That’s an aspect of narratology, a process which is not the reading and interpretation of individual texts but an attempt to study the nature of “story” itself, as a concept and as a cultural practice or construct.

Crooked Hillary Clinton's book tour (2017).

Narratologists know that what to a narrator can be a narrative, a naratee will receive as spin.  In What Happened (2017), a work of a few dozen pages somehow padded out to a two-inch thick wad of over 500 using the “how to write an Amazon best-seller” template, crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) explained who was to blame for her loss in the 2016 US presidential election (spoiler alert: it was everybody except her).

Presumably not comparing what they’re doing with making “fish & chips” sound like something expensive, politicians and their operatives will often describe something they offer as a “narrative” although were mush the same stuff to come from their opponents it might be dismissed as “spin”.  A political narrative functions as a cognitive schema intended to simplify complexity, motivate support and legitimizes particular courses of action.  The concept has a long history but in recent decades the emphasis has been on “simplicity”, something illustrated by comparing a narrative like The Federalist Papers (1878-1788; a collection of several dozen essays advocating the ratification of the Constitution of the United States) with how things are now done (mostly fleshed-out, three-word slogans endlessly repeated).  That descent doesn’t mean both are not narratives in that both are crafted interpretive frame rather than objective descriptions although the extent of the deception obviously had tended to change.  Political spin can also be a narrative and should be thought a parallel stream rather than a tributary; variations on a theme as it were.  Although the purpose may differ (a narrative a storyline intended to set and define and agenda whereas spin is a “damage control” story designed to re-shape perceptions.  Given that, a narrative can be thought of a “macro-management” and spin “micro-management”, both providing fine case-studies for narratologists.

Narratology is a noun; the noun plural is narratologies.  The derived forms are the noun antenarratology (the study of antenarratives and their interplay with narratives and stories), the noun antenarrative (the process by which a retrospective narrative is linked to a living story (the word unrelated to the noun antinarrative (a narrative, as of a play or novel, that deliberately avoids the typical conventions of the narrative, such as a coherent plot and resolution)), the noun  econarratology (an approach to literary criticism combining aspects of ecocriticism (the interdisciplinary study of literature and ecology) and narratology), the noun narratologist (one who (1) studies or (2) practices narratology), the adjective narratological (of or pertaining to narratology) and the adverb narratologically (in terms of narratology).  Remarkably (given the literary theory industry), the adjective narratologistic seems never to have appeared; it can be only a matter of time.

Tzvetan Todorov on the rooftop of Casa Milà (La Pedrera), Barcelona, Spain, November 2014.

Although not a lineal descendent, what Todorov did in Grammaire du Décaméron was in the tradition of Aristotle’s (384-322 BC) work, especially ποιητικῆς (Peri poietikês (De Poetica De Poe in the Latin and traditionally rendered in English as Poetics).  Poetics is notable as the earliest known study of the structure of Greek drama and remains the oldest known text written exclusively in the form of what now would be called literary theory.  To a modern audience the word “poetics” can mislead because the author’s focus was ποιητική (literally “the poetic art”, from ποιητής (poet, author, writer) and his scope encompassed verse drama (comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play), lyric poetry, and the epic.  For centuries, Poetics loomed over the Western understanding of Greek theatre; it was revered by scholars of the late Medieval period and especially the Renaissance and their influence endured.  As far as is known, the Greeks were the first of the tragedians and it’s through the surviving texts of Aristotle that later understandings were filtered but all of his conclusions were based only on the tragedies and such was his historic and intellectual authority that for centuries those theories came to be misapplied and misused, either by mapping them on to all forms of tragedy or using them as exclusionary, dismissing from the canon those works which couldn’t be made to fit his descriptions.  However, as well as being an invaluable historic text explain how Greek theatre handled mimesis (imitation of life, fiction, allegory etc), Poetics genuinely can be read as proto-critical theory and in it lies a framework for structuralism.

Paintings of Claude Lévi-Strauss: Portrait de Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1991 (1991), oil on panel by Bengt Lindström (1925-2008) (left) and Claude Lévi-Strauss (undated), oil on other by Cal Lekie (b 1999).

Narratology as a distinct fork of structuralism does pre-date Todorov’s use of the word in 1967, the seminal work in the parameters of the discipline by Russian folklorist & literary historian of the formalist school Vladimir Propp (1895-1970) who doubtlessly never anticipated “formalism” would come to be weaponized by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953).  Indeed, by the late 1920s the school of formalism had become unfashionable (something which in the Soviet Union could be dangerous for authors) and their works essentially “disappeared” until being re-discovered by structuralists in the 1950s.  In the West, the idea of narratology as the “theory, discourse or critique of narrative or narration” owes a debt to Belgian-born French anthropologist & ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) who defined the structural analysis by narrative as its now understood.  His landmark text Anthropologie structurale (Structural Anthropology (1958)) suggested myths are variations on basic themes and that in their totality (which runs to thousands) their narratives contain certain constant, basic and universal structures by which any one myth can be explained.  In that way, myths (collectively) exist as a kind “language” which can be deconstructed into units or “mythemes” (by analogy with phonemes (an indivisible unit of sound in a given language)).  Although he didn’t pursue the notion of the comparison with mathematics, others did and that (inherently more segmented) field perhaps better illustrates “structural roles” within language in elements which, although individually standing as minimal contrastive units, can be combined or manipulated according to rules to produce meaningful expressions.  As in formal language theory, in mathematical logic, the smallest units are the primitive symbols of a language which can be quantifiers, variables, logical connectives, relation symbols, function symbols or punctuation.  Broken into the individual parts, these need have no (or only minimal) semantic meaning but gain much meaning when assembled or otherwise handled through syntactic combination governed by a recognized grammar (ie although conceptual primitives rather than “building blocks”, complex meaning can be attained by applying axioms and rules).

Azerbaijani folk art, following Layla and Majnun (1188), a narrative poem by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi (circa 1141–1209), printed in Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928) by Vladimir Propp.  In something of a Russian tradition, there are no known photographs of Propp smiling.

Levi-Strauss’s contribution was that myths can be read in relation to each other rather than as reflecting a particular version, thus the his concept of a kind of “grammar” (the set of relations lying beneath the narrative’s surface), thus the general principle of the “collective existence of myths”, independent of individual thought.  That was of course interesting but the startling aspect was the implication myths as related to other myths rather than truth and reality; they are, in a sense, “outside” decentred, and possess their own truth and logic which, when contemplated in a “traditional” way, may be judged neither truthful nor logical.  In that, Levi-Strauss applied something of the method of Propp who, in Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928), “reduced” all folk tales to seven “spheres of action” and 31 fixed elements or “functions” of narrative.  In Propp’s scheme, the function was the basic unit of the narrative “language’ and denoted or referred to the actions which constitute the narrative while the functions tend to follow a logical sequence.  The concept would have been familiar to engineers and shipbuilders but genuinely there was some novelty when applied to literature

Lithuanian semiotician A. J “Julien” Greimas (1917–1992) was among the many academics working in France who found Propp’s reductionism compelling and in Sémantique Structurale Recherche de méthode (Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method (1966)) he further atomized things, apparently seeking something like a “universal macro language”, a grammar of narrative which could be derived from a semantic analysis of sentence structure.  That was as ambitious as it sounds and to replace Propp’s “spheres of action” he suggested the “actant” (or role): a structural unit which is neither character or narrative.  To handle the mechanics of this approach he posited three pairs of binary oppositions which included six actants: subject/object; sender/receiver; helper/opponent.  The interactions of these binary oppositions served to account for or describe the three basic patterns which are to be found in narrative: (1) desire, search or aim (subject/object), (2) communication (sender/receiver) and (3) auxiliary support or hindrance (helper/opponent).

An eleven-volume first edition of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (published originally in seven (1913-1927); in the the original French it contained some 1.267 million words.  By comparison, Leo Tolstoy's (1828-1910) War and Peace (1898) ran ran (depending on the edition) to 560-590 thousand.

While Greimas didn’t explicitly claim his model successfully could be mapped on to “any and every” narrative, he does appear to have built his model as a general theory and while not all critics were convinced, it seems generally to have been acknowledged his toolbox would work on a much wider range than that of Propp which did break down as narrative complexity increased.  Another French literary theorist associated with the structural movement was Gérard Genette (1930–2018) and in choosing a case study for his model he described in Discours du récit est un essai de méthode (Narrative Discourse: An essay in method (1972)) he selected Marcel Proust’s (1871-1922) À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–1927) (originally translated in English as “Remembrance of Things Past” and of late as “In Search of Lost Time”) which spans many volumes and narrative streams.  This time the critics seemed more convinced and seem to have concluded Genette’s approach was “more accessible” (these things are relative).  Noting the distinctions made in Russian Formalism between fabula (story) & syuzhet (plot), Genette distinguished between récit (the chronological sequence of a narrative’s events), historie (the sequence in which the event actually occurred and narration (the act of narrating itself); atop that framework, he built a complex discussion.  Being a French structuralist, he of course added to the field some new jargon to delight the academy, concluding there were three basic kinds of narrator: (1) the heterodiegetic' (where the narrator is absent from his own narrative), (2) the homodiegetic (the narrator is inside his narrative, as in a story told in the first person) and the autodiegetic (the narrator is inside the narrative and also the main character).  Genene’s approach was thus relational, envisaging narrative as a product or consequence of the interplay of its different components, meaning all and all aspects of narrative can be seen as dependent units (or, debatably, layers).

Narrator & protagonist: Lindsay Lohan as Cady Heron in Mean Girls (2004).  What in literary theory is known as homodiegetic narration is in film production usually called “subjective narration” or “first-person narration”, realized usually in a “voice-over narration by the protagonist”.

In formulating his three categories Genene nodded to Aristotle and Plato (circa 427-348 BC), the ancient worthies distinguishing three basic kinds of narrator: (1) the speaker or writer using their own voice, (2) (b) one who assumes the voice of another or others and (3) one who uses both their own voice and that of others.  These categories need not be exclusive for a story may begin in the voice of a narrator who may then introduce another narrator who proceeds to tell the story of characters who usually have their own voices and one or more of them may turn to narration.  Structurally (and even logically), there’s no reason why such a progression (or regression) cannot be infinite.  Although it’s obvious the term “narrate” denotes the person to whom a narrative is addressed, just because there is a narrative, it need not be axiomatic a narratee is present or ever existed, T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) in The Three Voices of Poetry (1953-1954) discerning three modes (voices) of poetic expression: (1) the poet speaking to himself, a personal, often obscure meditation, (2) the poet addressing an audience, aiming to teach, persuade, or amuse and (3) the poet creating a dramatic character, as in verse drama, something demanding complex communication between imagined characters.  Eliot argued that “good” poetry often was a blend of these voices and distinguishing them helps in understanding a poem's social and artistic purpose, beyond its mere self-expression.  However, Eliot did note that in “talking to himself”, the writer could also be “talking to nobody”.  He was at pains also to point out that when speaking in the third voice, the poet is saying not what he would say in his own person, but only what he can say within the limits of one imaginary character addressing another imaginary character.  More than many, Eliot knew narrative was not always reliable but the techniques of narratology (and structuralism generally) exist for purposes other than determining truth.

Roland Barthes (2015), oil and acrylic on canvas by Benoit Erwann Boucherot (b 1983).

Layers in narrative structure were identified by the French philosopher & literary theorist Roland Barthes (1915–1980) and his work had great appeal, something of an academic cult once surrounded him and, almost half a century after his death, he retains a following.  In Introduction à l'analyse structurale des récits (Introduction to Structural Analysis of Narrative (1966)), Barthes presumed a hierarchy of levels existed within narrative, suggesting that, up to a point, they can be discussed separately.  Narrative (at least for this purpose), he conceived as a “long sentence”, just as every constative (in linguistics, pertaining to an utterance relaying information and likely to be regarded as true or false) sentence can be the “rough outline” of a short narrative.  Barthes’ model was more building block-like in that he selects basic units of narrative (such as “function” & “index”, functions constituting a chain of acts while indices are a kind of metadata containing information about characters.

François Mitterrand (1984), acrylic on canvas by Bryan Organ (b 1935).

On X (formerly known as Twitter), one tweeter analysed the images on Barthes which exists and the indexed web, finding in 72% he was smoking a cigarette or cigar.  The statistical risks associated with routinely inhaling a known carcinogen have for decades been well-known but Barthes didn’t live long enter the age of “peak statistical risk”.  In February, 1980, having just taken lunch with François Mitterrand (1916–1996; President of France 1981-1995) in a restaurant on Paris’s Rue des Blancs-Manteaux, Barthes was using a zebra crossing on the Rue des Ecoles when knocked down by a laundry van; never recovering from his injuries, he died a month later.  The van’s driver was one Yvan Delahov, of Bulgarian nationality who tested positive for alcohol, but his reading of 0.6 fell below the legal maximum of 0.8; admitting he was late delivering his shirts, he claimed he’d not exceeded 60 km/h (37.3) mph.  At the time, Barthes was carrying no identity documents but was identified his colleague, the philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984).

Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (first edition, 1957).

Finally must be acknowledged the contribution of Canadian literary critic & literary theorist Northrop Frye (1912–1991) whose Anatomy of Criticism (1957) is regarded still as one of the more “remarkable and original” (in the words of the English historian and critic J.A. Cuddon (1928-1966)) works of literary theory in the English-speaking world.  In the narrow technical sense, Frye's theory is not structuralist (something which doubtless burnished its reputation among many) but it certainly contains strands which can be seen as structuralist.  Frye positioned literature as an “autonomous verbal structure”' unrelated to anything beyond itself, a world which contains “life and reality in a system of verbal relationships”.  In this “self-contained literary universe”, there were four radical “mythoi” (plot forms and basic organizing structural principles) which corresponded to the four seasons of the natural order and constitute the four main genres of comedy romance, tragedy and satire.  For those non-postmodernists who still long for l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake), Frye’s mythois are there to be used and he proved their utility in a wide range of texts, including the Bible.