Key Narrative Theories

Barthes' concept of narrative enigma:

Roland Barthes

A puzzle created within a narrative; a random women comes into the scene, who is she? where did she come from? These are narrative enigmas. Trying to figure out these puzzles is part of the pleasure of watching fictional texts.When the US drama Dallas ended a season with the main antagonist getting shot, watched by 25 million UK viewers way back in 1980, the nation was gripped, and speculation raged for months as to the identity of the killer. The tapes containing the episode revealing the killer had to be imported under armed guard, and the outcome was reported as a lead news story in the paper and on TV news.

Todorov's 5-part narrative formula:
Todorov is associated with the theory that every narrative can be broken down into three basic stages: situation, conflict, resolution (or equilibrium, dis-equilibrium, new equilibrium). Crucially, your protagonist is not the same as at the outset, but has been changed in some way from events.
1. A state of equilibrium at the outset.
2. A disruption of the equilibrium by some action.
3. A recognition that there has been a disruption.
4. An attempt to repair the disruption.
5. A reinstatement of the equilibrium.
Levi-Strauss binary opposites & dramatic conflict:

Levi-Strauss

When we consider the use of stereotypes, it is often evident how a binary opposition is at play: how we describe a stereotypical poor or working class person, for example, is normally the opposite of how we'd describe a middle or upper class person.

Scenes within dramas often reflect a use of this idea, with clashing pairs (male/female; rural,urban; rich,poor; heterosexual  homosexual; good,bad; dominant,submissive) of opposites, in other words binary opposites, sparking conflict or tension.

There is a philosophical argument underpinning this idea: when the world around us (so, not just fictional texts) is organised and categorized through pairs of binary opposites, there is generally a powerful, or 'good', side:
Men are powerful, women submissive; the poor unintelligent, the wealthy intellectual. In other words, the very existence of these binary opposites contains a value judgement in itself, with one side of the equation being negatively cast as the other, or simply wrong/lacking in some way.

Propp's 8 recurring character types:

Vladimere

1. The villain - struggles against the hero.
2. The donor - prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object.
3. The (magical) helper - helps the hero in the quest.
4. The princess or prize - the hero deserves her throughout the story but is unable to marry her because of an unfair evil, usually because of the villain. The hero's journey is often ended when he marries the princess, thereby beating the villain.
5. The princess and her father - gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, marries the hero, often sought for during the narrative. Propp noted that functionally , the princess and the father can not be clearly distinguished.
6. The dispatcher - character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.
7. The hero or victim - reacts to the donor, weds the princess.
8. False hero/anti-hero/usurper - takes credit for the hero's actions or tries to marry the princess.

These roles could sometimes be distributed among various characters, as the hero kills the villain dragon, and the dragon's sisters take on the villainous role of chasing him. Conversely, one character could engage in acts as more than one role, as a father could send his son on the quest and give him a sword, acting as both dispatcher and donor.