Narrative and Barthes, Todorov, Levi Strauss

 Roland Barthes

semiotics

• texts communicate their meanings through signs and signification 
• texts can operate at the level of denotation (simple name or meaning) or connotation ( the meanings associated with the sign)
• meanings can become naturalised or accepted, and take on the status of myth

Claude Levi- Strauss 

structuralism

• meaning is dependant upon a series of oppositions 
• the way these binary oppositions are resolved can be ideologically significant.

Vladmir Todorov

• the idea that all narratives share a basic structure
• equilibrium - disruption of equilibrium - new state of equilibrium