Chic

Chic (pronounced sheek)

(1) Attractive and fashionable; style and elegance, especially in dress (particularly when applied to women).

(2) Modishness, a casual and understated style, as in dress or décor, that expresses a specified trendy lifestyle or activity.

(3) As a noun, when used with an attributive noun or adjectival modifier, a descriptor for just about any defined style (shabby chic, boho chic etc).

1856: Adopted in English with the general sense of “style in fine art, artistic skill, faculty of producing excellence rapidly and easily”, from the French chic (stylishness; elegant (the original sixteenth century meaning was "subtlety")), of unknown origin but probably from the German Schick (elegant appearance; tasteful presentation) & Geschick (tact, skill, aptness), from Middle Low German schikken (arrange appropriately), from the Middle High German schicken (to outfit oneself, fit in, arrange appropriately), causative of the Middle High German geschehen & geschēn (to happen, rush), from the Old High German giskehan (to happen), from the Proto-West Germanic skehan, from the Proto-Germanic skehaną (to run, move quickly), from the primitive Indo-European skek- (to run, jump, spring).  The Germanic forms were akin to the Dutch schielijk (hasty) & schikken (to arrange) and the Old English scēon (to happen).  The alternative etymology is a link to the French chicane, from chicanerie (trickery) which in the 1610s English picked up as chicanery (legal quibbling, sophistry, mean or petty tricks).

The meaning "Parisian elegance and stylishness combined with originality" emerged in English by 1882, used to convey the sense of a style which was tied specifically to the most identifiably elegant street wear of the ladies of Paris, the influencers of the day noting chic was "an untranslatable word, denoting an indispensable quality"; something of the je ne sais quoi then.  The use as an adjective to describe the appearance of individuals dates from 1879 in English but interestingly, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) pointed out the use of chic was nowhere near as frequent among French speakers in France although Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) in Madame Bovary (1857) used chicard (one who is chic), the then current Parisian slang for "classy" before waspishly adding that it was “bourgeoisie”, one indication of why it's as rewarding (and less time-consuming) to read Flaubert as it is Proust (Marcel Proust (1871–1922; author of the multi-volume À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time (1913-1927))).

Felicia Montealegre Bernstein (1922-1978, left), her husband the composer & conductor Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990, seated) and Black Panther Field Marshal DC (Donald Lee Cox, 1936–2011) in Bernstein’s apartment, Park Avenue, New York, January 1970.  This photograph appeared in the New York magazine article in which Tom Wolfe (1930-2018) introduced the term “radical chic”.

The phrase “radical chic” was coined in 1970 by Tom Wolfe, a writer associated with the so-called “New Journalism” (a movement that incorporated techniques and devices from various strains of literature; it was (and remains) influential but has always attracted criticism).  Wolfe’s inspiration was a benefit event given by Leonard Bernstein for the Black Panther Party (1966-1982 and the best-known of the “black power” organizations which emerged during the civil rights era; it was interesting in that as well as being concerned with the civil rights of African-Americans, it was very much in the Marxist–Leninist tradition of the US far-left but also contained a distinctive feminist element).  The term caught on and was used to describe what would later come to be called “virtue-signalling”: the rich adopting the symbols of radical political causes while maintaining a distance from the people and the conditions they purported to support.  Examples live on in upper middle-class suburbs in which BLM (black lives matter) signs might be displayed although no black families live anywhere close.  Wolfe likened radical chic to a trendy romanticizing of “primitive souls” (such as Native Americans (then called American Indians) or Chicano grapeworkers) and compared it to the nineteenth century French phenomenon denoted by the phrase nostalgie de la boue, (literally hankering after mud), coined in 1855 by the dramatist Émile Augier (1820-1899).  What Augier described was prosperous people who were somehow unhappy and, feeling “alienated” from a “natural existence”, sought to “rediscover their essence” although this was usually “temporarily experiential”, few apparently inclined to exchange financial stability for the struggles of the working class.  Wolfe’s experience at Bernstein’s Park Avenue party in 1970 was a case study Augier would have understood: “It was at this party that a Black Panther field marshal rose up beside the north piano—there was also a south piano—in Leonard Bernstein’s living room and outlined the Panthers’ ten-point program to a roomful of socialites and celebrities, who, giddy with nostalgie de la boue, entertained a vision of the future in which, after the revolution, there would no longer be any such thing as a two-story, thirteen-room apartment on Park Avenue, with twin grand pianos in the living room, for one family.”

One adjectival variation was chi-chi (extremely chic, sophisticated) which by 1908 was recorded also as a noun meaning “pretentious fussiness", from the French chichi (airs, fuss).  Etymologists think this, like frou-frou (showy or frilly ornamentation but in its original sense "the rustling of a woman's skirt as it swishes around the legs"), likely imitative.  Chic is either used invariably, in which case the spelling of the plural is chic, or has the plural chics for both the masculine and the feminine forms.  While the spelling chic is correct for the uninflected adjective, all inflected forms are nonstandard (to be correct, inflected forms must be derived from the preferred spelling schick).  The accepted homophones are sheik & sheikh, the pronunciation “chik” is non-standard except when used facetiously.

Lindsay Lohan in zettai ryouiki mode, Jingle Ball, New York City, 2013.

Chic fills a most narrowly specific niche and is thus without no exact synonym.  Words like exclusive, mod, modern, current, sharp, smart, dap, dapper, dashing, faddish, modish, natty, with it, elegant, stylish, dapper, fashionable, natty, trendy, voguish, fancy, posh or swank tend in the direction and in many cases run at least in parallel but none quite capture the sense of chic.  Nor are the likely antonyms (inelegant, unfashionable or unstylish helpful; there is unchic but is so rare as to be probably obscure and it’s unnecessary: someone or something is either chic or not.  Chic is a verb & noun, chicly an adverb, chicness a noun and chicer & chicest are adjectives.  The noun chic is very often used with an attributive noun or adjective modifier, indicating the kind of style, such as boho-chic, heroin-chic, shabby-chic, eco-chic, geek-chic, radical-chic, porno-chic, communist-chic, terrorist-chic, Ayatollah-chic, scruffy-chic, super-chic, uber-chic, goth-chic, ultra-chic, industrial-chic etc.  There were also forms designed deliberately to insult such as chav-chic (also in the form council house-chic), gypsy-chic & hillbilly-chic.  Chiconomics was a clever coining which deconstructed the ways of looking chic on a budget and très chic (very stylish) was a way to emphasize the French connection.

Heroin chic

Anjelica Huston (b 1951) photographed by Bob Richardson (1928-2005), 1971.

Heroin chic, an aesthetic characterized by a painfully thin (preferably tall) build, pale skin, dark circles under the eyes, disheveled hair and a vacuous, haunted expression, was first noted in the late 1980s before the following decade becoming prominent in the modeling industry, an allusion not only to (a not actually typical) the look of an addict but also the alleged popularity of the drug in the business.  The motif however wasn’t new, examples existing from the early twentieth century and Bob Richardson photographed Anjelica Huston very much in the mode as early as 1971.  For those who wish to perfect the look, on the internet there are tutorials detailing how to apply makeup in the appropriate way although, to avoid the thought police, the word "heroin" tends not to appear in the tags or titles; it's just not TikToker-friendly. 

When first coined, heroin chic was intended as a criticism but, in the democratic way English works, it was quickly embraced by popular culture and soon, even in the early days of the internet and long before even embryonic social media platforms, guides were soon circulating, detailing how to achieve the look which, proved so popular they were reprinted in mainstream magazines.  Had it been just a fashionable look it might not have attracted the disapprobation but, for all sorts of reasons (in part related to the symbiotic economics of drug production, distribution and enforcement regimes), the look happened at a time when heroin use in the West spiked, along with a sudden increase in overdoses and drug-related deaths.

Echoes of an earlier chic:  Models at the BCBGMAXAZIRA show, New York Fashion Week, 2012.  BCBGMAXAZIRA (bon chic, bon genre max azira) was created as a Max Azira sub-brand.  Bon chic, bon genre (literally "good style, good attitude") in this context translates as something like the philosophical statement  “dress stylishly and you'll feel self-assured and project confidence".  This slender pair may be happier than they appear.

Itself a reaction to the more voluptuous models in the 1980s, heroin chic departed the catwalks rather abruptly, 1997 noted as the end-point, induced by what was a classic moral panic, ostensibly in reaction to a general concern about heroin use and overdoses but really triggered by the drug-related deaths of a number of white pop-culture celebrities.  Although seemingly oblivious to the the death-rate among ethnic minorities and the poor, the toll of the high-profile caught the attention of the White House staff and in May 1997, Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001) became involved, his speech on the subject a carefully choreographed interruption to a prayer breakfast (readers should pause to imagine what goes through Bill Clinton's mind when he's at prayer) in which he condemned heroin chic, saying “You do not need to glamorize addiction to sell clothes, the glorification of heroin is not creative, it’s destructive. It’s not beautiful; it’s ugly. And this is not about art; it’s about life and death. And glorifying death is not good for any society.”

The allure: controversial but undeniable.

Still, the thought police can only suppress but not kill an idea.  Given the political pressure, the industry remains too timid to reprise the look on covers or cat-walks but there remains a counter-culture which finds irresistibly alluring the sight of a slender models walking as if in a drug-induced stupor and although it never entirely went away, impressionistically, it does appear heroin-chic is enjoying, on-line and on the street, a post-pandemic renaissance.  The pro-ana community, always supportive of forks of fashion which build on their framework, will sometimes include style-guides but does caution it’s an aesthetic which works only on the thin (you need not be statuesque; any height can work but not any weight).  So, the first goal is to be thin and pro-ana is there to help with any number of guides available and all work but only if rigidly they’re followed.  Techniques can vary but an indicative approach to the mechanics of the heroin-chic look is:

(1) Get thin.  This is the essential pre-condition.

(2) Begin the process formerly when able successfully to shop in the (US) size zero to one section.  Clothes need to be loose and baggy (if they’re not, return to step (1)).

(3) Never buy anything clingy or with a bare back.  Structurally, the core elements you’re trying to achieve are emaciation and androgyny.

(4) Never buy anything with giant polka dots or made with fabrics of bright colors.  It sounds an unimportant point but is essential; heroin-chic simply doesn’t work with vibrant colors or certain designs.  The preferred colors are black, white, grey, the darker purples and navy blue.

(5) Buy layered items or those made with fluffy fabrics.

(6) Avoid vertical lines unless the stripes are really wide and the color contrasts distinct.

(7) Wear boots wherever possible.

(8) Prime the eyelids, then use a medium to dark brown eye shadow, packing it on to the eyelids.  Unlike the conventional approach to eye-styling, using the fingers is best because it creates an inherently messy finish and the result will inevitably be asymmetric which is good.  When content, add some eye shadow under the eyes and again, strive to achieve coverage but not neatness.

(9) Wait a few minutes (which isn’t a necessity with all eye shadows but there are variations even within the ranges of the one manufacturer.  When ready, run jet-black eye shadow along the top and bottom lash-lines.  This is best done with a small eye shadow brush and, once applied, smudge as desired using the fingers.  Experienced users claim Nyx Cosmetics eyebrow cake is the best product available and for touch-ups or quick corrections, recommend Urban Decay’s 24/7 pencils.

(10) The look is convincing only with clumpy eyelashes.  Take a mascara and use the tip to stick the lashes together, forming something which looks vaguely what you imagine spider legs so treated might resemble.  What you’re after is a variation of what eyelash stylists call “the spiky” except instead of being neatly separated, the lashes are in irregular clumps.

(11) The rest of the make-up should tend to the neutral.  The aim remember is pale skin (avoid exposure to sunlight) so use just a BB cream rather than foundation, accentuated only with just a bronzer to emphasize the shape of the cheekbones.  Illamasqua’s cream pigment is highly regarded.

(12) Perhaps counter-intuitively, the hair needs to be washed and conditioned according to the normal routine (heroin-chic is a curated look, not a consequence of neglect).  The idea is to achieve a stringy, un-kept look but, again counter-intuitively, that can really be constructed only if the hair is clean and well kept and with most hair-types, it’s not difficult using nothing more exotic than inexpensive product such as spray, wax or fudge.  In most cases the styling technique is a variation of what hair-dressers call the JBF but because hair types vary, you may need to experiment.  However it’s done, heroin-chic works best with straight hair so, if you’re after the optimal look, straighten first.

(13) There’s no consensus about which color should be used on the lips or even if it should be glossy or matt.  However, unlike the eyes, lipstick should be applied with precision; it’s just a convention of use.

(14) Juxtaposition.  As a look, heroin-chic works only if, at a second glance, it's apparent everything is expensive (think of it as a sub-set of shabby chic); it's not something done with cheap clothing and needs a pair of diamond studs and a good watch to complete the effect but jewelry should be chosen with some restraint, too much and it detracts from what is a very specific construction and silver will always work better than gold.

Inkhorn

Inkhorn (pronounced ingk-hawrn)

A small container of horn or other material (the early version would literally have been hollowed-out horns from animals), formerly used to hold writing ink.

1350-1400: From the Middle English ynkhorn & inkehorn (small portable vessel, originally made of horn, used to hold ink), the construct being ink +‎ horn.  It displaced the Old English blæchorn, which had the same literal meaning but used the native term for “ink”.  It was used attributively from the 1540s as an adjective for things (especially vocabulary) supposed to be beloved by scribblers, pedants, bookworms and the “excessively educated”).  Inkhorn, inkhornery & inkhornism are nouns, inkhornish & inkhornesque are adjectives and inkhornize is a verb; the noun plural is inkhorns.

Ink was from the Middle English ynke, from the Old French enque, from the Latin encaustum (purple ink used by Roman emperors to sign documents), from the Ancient Greek ἔγκαυστον (énkauston) (burned-in”), the construct being ἐν (en) (in) + καίω (kaíō) (burn). In this sense, the word displaced the native Old English blæc (ink (literally “black” because while not all inks were black, most tended to be).  Ink came ultimately from a Greek form meaning “branding iron”, one of the devices which should make us grateful for modern medicine.  Because, in addition to using the kauterion to cauterize (seal wounds with heat), essentially the same process was used to seal fast the colors used in paintings.  Then, the standard method was to use wax colors fixed with heat (encauston (burned in)) and in Latin this became encaustum which came to be used to describe the purple ink with which Roman emperors would sign official documents.  In the Old French, encaustum became enque which English picked up as enke & inke which via ynk & ynke, became the modern “ink”.  Horn was from the Middle English horn & horne, from the Old English horn, from the Proto-West Germanic horn, from the Proto-Germanic hurną; it was related to the West Frisian hoarn, the Dutch hoorn, the Low German Hoorn, horn, the German, Danish & Swedish horn and the Gothic haurn.  It was ultimately from the primitive Indo-European ḱr̥h-nó-m, from ḱerh- (head, horn) and should be compared with the Breton kern (horn), the Latin cornū, the Ancient Greek κέρας (kéras), the Proto-Slavic sьrna, the Old Church Slavonic сьрна (sĭrna) (roedeer), the Hittite surna (horn), the Persian سر (sar) and the Sanskrit शृङ्ग (śṛṅga) (horn

Inkhorn terms & inkhorn words

The phrase “inkhorn term” days from the 1530s and was used to criticize the use of language in an obscure or way difficult for most to understand, usually by an affected or ostentatiously erudite borrowing from another language, especially Latin or Greek.  The companion term “inkhorn word” was used of such individual words and in modern linguistics the whole field is covered by such phrases as “lexiphanic term”, “pedantic term” & “scholarly term”, all presumably necessary now inkhorns are rarely seen.  Etymologists are divided on the original idea behind the meaning of “inkhorn term” & “inkhorn word”.  One faction holds that because the offending words tended to be long or at least multi-syllabic, a scribe would need more than once to dip their nib into the horn in order completely write things down while the alternative view is that because the inkhorn users were, by definition, literate, they were viewed sometimes with scepticism, one suspicion they used obscure or foreign words to confuse or deceive the less educated.  The derived forms are among the more delightful in English and include inkhornism, inkhornish, inkhornery inkhornesque & inkhornize.  The companion word is sesquipedalianism (a marginal propensity to use humongous words).

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

Inkhorn words were in the fourteenth & fifteenth centuries known also as “gallipot words”, derived from the use of such words on apothecaries' jars, the construct being galli(s) + pot.  Gallis was from the Latin gallus (rooster or cock (male chicken)), from the Proto-Italic galsos, an enlargement of gl̥s-o-, zero-grade of the primitive Indo-European gols-o-, from gelh- (to call); it can be compared with the Proto-Balto-Slavic galsas (voice), the Proto-Germanic kalzōną (to call), the Albanian gjuhë (tongue; language), and (although this is contested) the Welsh galw (call).  Appearing usually in the plural a gallipot word was something long, hard to pronounce, obscure or otherwise mysterious, the implication being it was being deployed gratuitously to convey the impression of being learned.  The companion insult was “you talk like an apothecary” and “apothecary's Latin” was a version of the tongue spoken badly or brutishly (synonymous with “bog Latin” or “dog Latin” but different from “schoolboy Latin” & “barracks Latin”, the latter two being humorous constructions, the creators proud of their deliberate errors).  The curious route which led to “gallipot” referencing big words was via the rooster being the symbol used by apothecaries in medieval and Renaissance Europe, appearing on their shop signs, jars & pots.  That was adopted by the profession because the rooster symbolized vigilance, crowing (hopefully) at dawn, signaling the beginning of the day and thus the need for attentiveness and care.  Apothecaries, responsible for preparing and dispensing medicinal remedies, were expected to be vigilant and attentive to detail in their work to ensure the health and well-being of their patients who relied on their skill to provided them the potions to “get them up every morning” in sound health.  Not all historians are impressing by the tale and say a more convincing link is that in Greek mythology, the rooster was sacred to Asclepius (Aesdulapius in the Latin), the god of medicine, and was often depicted in association with him.  In some tales, Asclepius had what was, even by the standards of the myths of Antiquity, a difficult birth and troubled childhood.

The quest for the use of “plain English” is not new.  The English diplomat and judge Thomas Wilson (1524–1581) wrote The Arte of Rhetorique (1553), remembered as the “the first complete works on logic and rhetoric in English” and in it he observed the first lesson to be learned was never to affect “any straunge ynkhorne termes, but to speak as is commonly received.”  Wring a decade earlier, the English bishop John Bale (1495–1563) had already lent an ecclesiastical imprimatur to the task, condemning one needlessly elaborate text with: “Soche are your Ynkehorne termes” and that may be the first appearance of the term in writing.  A religious reformer of some note, he was nicknamed “bilious Bale”, a moniker which politicians must since have been tempted to apply to many reverend & right-reverend gentlemen.  A half millennium on, the goal of persuading all to use “plain English” is not yet achieved and a fine practitioner of the art was Dr Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010 & 2013): from no one else would one be likely to hear the phrase “detailed programmatic specificity” and to really impress he made sure he spoke it to an audience largely of those for whom English was not a first language.

An inkhorn attributed to Qes Felege, a scribe and craftsman.

Animal horns were for millennia re-purposed for all sorts of uses including as drinking vessels, gunpowder stores & loaders, musical instruments and military decoration and in that last role they’ve evolved into a political fashion statement, Jacob Chansley (b 1988; the “QAnon Shaman”) remembered for the horned headdress worn during the attack on the United States Capitol building in Washington DC on 6 January 2021.  Inkhorns tended variously to be made from the horns of sheep or oxen, storing the ink when not as use and ideal as a receptacle into which the nib of a quill or pen could be dipped.  Given the impurities likely then to exist a small stick or nail was left in the horn to stir away any surface film which might disrupts a nib’s ability to take in free-flowing ink, most of which were not pre-packaged products by mixed by the user from a small solid “cake” of the base substance in the desired color, put into the horn with a measure starchy water and left overnight to dissolve.  The sharp point of a horn allowed it to be driven into the ground because the many scribes were not desk-bound and actually travelled from place to place to do their writing, quill and inkhorn their tools of trade.

A mid-Victorian (1837-1901) silver plated three-vat inkwell by George Richards Elkington (1801–1865) of Birmingham, England.  The cast frame is of a rounded rectangular form with outset corners, leaf and cabuchons, leaf scroll handle and conforming pen rest.  The dealer offering this piece described the vats as being of "Vaseline" glass with fruit cast lids and in the Elkington factory archives, this is registered: "8 Victoria Chap 17. No. 899, 1 November 1841".

“Vaseline glass” is a term describing certain glasses in a transparent yellow to yellow-green color attained by virtue of a uranium content.  It's an often used descriptor in the antique business because some find the word “uranium” off-putting although inherently the substance is safe, the only danger coming from being scratched by a broken shard.  Also, some of the most vivid shades of green are achieved by the addition of a colorant (usually iron) and these the cognoscenti insist should be styled “Depression Glass” a term which has little appeal to antique dealers.  The term “Vaseline glass” wasn’t used prior to the 1950s (after the detonation of the first A-bombs in 1945, there emerged an aversion to being close to uranium) and what's used in this inkwell may actually be custard glass or Burmese glass which is opaque whereas Vaseline glass is transparent.  Canary glass was first used in the 1840s as the trade name for Vaseline glass, a term which would have been unknown to George Richards Elkington.

English silver plate horn and dolphin inkwell (circa 1909) with bell, double inkwell on wood base with plaque dated 1909.  This is an inkwell made using horns; it is not an inkhorn.

So inkhorns were for those on the move while those which sat on desks were called “ink wells” or “ink pots” and these could range from simple “pots” to elaborate constructions in silver or gold.  There are many ink wells which use horns as part of their construction but they are not inkhorns, the dead animal parts there just as decorative forms of structure.

Dr Rudolf Steiner’s biodynamic cow horn fertilizer.

Horns are also a part of the “biodynamic” approach to agriculture founded by the Austrian occultist & mystic Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), an interesting figure regarded variously as a “visionary”, a “nutcase” and much between.  The technique involves filling cow horns with cow manure which are buried during the six coldest months so the mixture will ferment; upon being dug up, it will be a sort of humus which has lost the foul smell of the manure and taken on a scent of undergrowth.  It may then be used to increase the yield generated from the soil.  It’s used by being diluted with water and sprayed over the ground.  Dr Steiner believed the forces penetrating the digestive organ of cows through the horn influence the composition of their manure and when returned to the environment, it is enriched with spiritual forces that make the soil more fertile and positively affect it.  As he explained: “The cow has horns to send within itself the etheric-astral productive forces, which, by pressing inward, have the purpose of penetrating directly into the digestive organ. It is precisely through the radiation from horns and hooves that a lot of work develops within the digestive organ itself.  So in the horns, we have something well-adapted, by its nature, to radiate the vital and astral properties in the inner life.”  Now we know.

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.