The Johns Hopkins University Press New Literary History

Introduction: A. J.
Greimas
Author(s): Paul Perron
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 20, No. 3, Greimassian Semiotics (Spring, 1989), pp.
523-538
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/469351
Accessed: 28-04-2018 09:59 UTC
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Introduction: A. J. Greimas*
Paul Perron
NTIL RECENTLY, English readers have had access to Algirdas

Julien Greimas's theories mainly through the commen
of critics,1 or the numerous more or less well-founded
plications that often consist in simply projecting the elementar
ture of signification (the semiotic square) on various cultu
social objects. However, in the last few years most of A. J. G
major texts have appeared, or are about to appear, in E
translation,2 finally giving critics direct access to his work and
it possible for them to evaluate for themselves the importanc
heuristic value of the global theory in the analysis of literary
The first article written by A. J. Greimas, on Cervantes an
Quixote, was published in 1943 in the Lithuanian journal Varp
manach littiraire. His most recent important work, de l'imperfectio
published some forty-four years later and focuses on a series o
ary texts composed by five authors from different countries a
ditions: Michel Tournier, Italo Calvino, Rainer Maria Rilke,
Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, and Julio Cortaizar.3 One might assume that Grei-
mas has come full circle and returned to his first literary concerns.
But on closer examination, it can be seen that, throughout his career,
literature has been an ongoing preoccupation; he has written, and
continues to write, on a wide variety of topics directly and indirectly
related to this domain: the Russian folktale and the folktale in general
("Le conte populaire russe, analyse fonctionnelle" [1965]; with Joseph
Court6s, "Cendrillon va au bal ... Les r6les et les figures dans la
litterature orale franpaise" [1978]), structural linguistics and poetics
("Les relations entre la linguistique structurale et la po6tique" [1967]),
ethnic literature ("La litterature ethnique" [1970]), mythology ("Com-
parative Mythology" [1963]; "116ments pour une th6orie de
l'interpr6tation du r6cit mythique" [1966]; Des dieux et des hommes
[1986]), semiotics and poetics (Essais de sbmiotique poetique [1972]), the
* I would like to thank Frank H. Collins, who coedited and cotranslated the texts of
the first part of this volume, including Paul Ricoeur's paper "Greimas's Narrative
Grammar," and who also read over and commented on this introduction.
524 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
novel ("A Sample Description:

short story ("Description et
Maupassant" [1973]; Maupassant
cises [1976]; "Essai sur la vie se
prefaces to studies on narrativ
La Structure semantique: Le Le
[1976]; "Les acquis et les projec
duction a la simiotique narrativ
Joseph Court6s, "La 'lettre'
frangais-Contribution a l'6tud
Gueuret, L'engendrement d'un re
[1983]), as well as an introduct
text about his own If on a Win
comprehension of Greimas's co
is necessary to examine these w
semiotic theory.
In his programmatic lecture
volume, Greimas defines some
otics rests, then traces the pro
mapping out future areas of
work within the intellectual co
importance for him of anthro
(Vladimir Propp), linguistics
Louis Hjelmslev), mythology
ogy (Marcel Merleau-Ponty)
whose research can be consid
surian epistemological break
others, such as Roland Barthes
Roman Jakobson, Jacques Laca
ing his own work during the 1
that Greimas conceived his p
"scientific," or at least system
attitude as an ideology, as a qu
ized subject renounces this obje
the sender, society.6 Furtherm
mas's project must be unders
European intellectual tradition
narratology). Thus his semioti
semiotic theories, for examp
different anthropological and
For Greimas's theoretical dev
somatics and Hjelmslev's conc
tant than Saussure's.9 Greimas
INTRODUCTION 525
of semantic universe
fined as the totality
semiotic existence of
ture that links the su
the semantic univer
conceived of in its to
mantic microuniverses and universe of discourses. The semantic mi-
crouniverse, which is apprehensible as meaningful only if particular-
ized and articulated, is paradigmatically and syntagmatically
manifested by means of discourses. The semantic universe, however,
can be reconstituted by reestablishing isotopies and the basic axiolo-
gies; it is self-sufficient and allows for the occurrence of intertextu-
alities and semiotic syncretisms; whereas the discourse universe in-
cludes references to the "exterior" world (SL 361).
From this perspective, literary discourse is defined as a specific re-
alization of the discourse universe, with the difference that, compared
to other semiotic systems, for example, legal or religious discourse, it
cannot be characterized by a specific content. Its content plane i
coextensive with the semantic universe encompassed by a natural lan-
guage, whereas the literary plane provides expressive forms that are
responsible for its organization and are identified by discursive lin-
guistic articulations (SL 179). Hence, the discursive universe encom-
passing literary discourse is seen as a mediating instance articulating
the two macrosemiotics of language and the natural world, which are
vast reservoirs of signs where numerous semiotic systems are mani-
fested. The natural, or extralinguistic world (the world of "common
sense") is given form by human beings and constituted by them as
signification. Far from being the referent (the denotative signified of
natural language), such a world is a biplanar language,'0 a natural
language. These theoretical distinctions make it possible to reduce the
question of "reference" in literary discourse to a problem of in-
tersemioticity, that is to say, to the correlation between two semiotic
systems. Conceived as a natural semiotic system, the referent and/or
the extralinguistic context have no need to exist as linguistic concepts
and the question of reference in literary discourse can be relegated to
a problem of veridiction, an intrinsic property of the saying and th
said, and to the construction of an internal referent and a referential
discursive level that provides a basis for other levels (SL 260-61). The
problem that needs to be addressed here is not that of the referent,
but rather, that of referentialization. We need to examine the proce-
dures by which the "reality" and "truth" meaning effect is estab-
lished-to examine, for example, how the figures of the plane o
expression of the natural world (perceptible figurative, spatial, and
temporal categories), and those

syntactic investments that de
world already constituted as r
that natural language takes up
an identity independent from
tract from the relatively auto
sion of literary discourse."
The criterion of figurativity
discourses is opposed to nonfi
philosophical ones but allows f
urative discourse (for example
omy makes it possible to cons
eral typology of discourses a
literary semiotics, to distingu
concerned with discourses o
groups, and a socio-literary se
of industrial macrosocieties. T
encompassing both ethno an
focal point of Greimas's wor
Greimas's concerns are not sim
his theoretical practice is fou
Since literary discourse can b
literary text as syncretizing s
first of all in showing how th
otics constituting it. This mea
or classes of operations, which
tive language, thereby makin
linguistic levels-the object l
metalanguage. Hence, coming
tion in a literary text consists
a different language by const
working out techniques of tra
Nevertheless, a fundamental
attempt to master the intricacie
rigorous conceptualization of i
own rules and constitutes a
definitions.'3 Furthermore, th
postulates, are integrated into
sure its internal coherence. An
that concepts drawn from oth
respect to those of the host sy
necessary theoretical mediatio
ory to another.
INTRODUCTION 527
The concept of narra

ratology are at the ve
semantic universe co
narrativized. So too w
only when manifested
production of meaning
ing with form, indiffer
in the sense of the form
transforming meaning
possible to analyze nar
connected actions and showed the existence of more abstract and
deep organizations, narrativity, on the other hand, appeared as the
organizing principle of all discourse, whether figurative or nonfigu
rative (SL 209). Yet, though narratology provided Greimas with sev-
eral fundamental concepts (for example, LUvi-Strauss's paradigmatic
organization of narrative and Propp's syntagmatic cover), it should be
stressed, once again, that these concepts were not simply borrowed
but were modified, transformed, problematized, and redefined be-
fore being integrated into the global theory. A case in point is Propp
thirty-one functions, which were initially defined to account for the
morphology of the folktale. But what initially described the morphol
ogy of the folktale at the level of events was transformed over the
years by Greimas into a model of syntactic structures governed by
intersubjective relations.'5 He developed a modal semiotics that de
fined the manipulating and sanctioning subject and opened the way
to a semiotic of passions that studied both how passions modified a
subject's cognitive and pragmatic performances, and how epistemic
categories, such as knowing and believing, modified the subject's com
petencies and performance.16
"On Meaning," "On Narrativity," "The Veridiction Contract," "De-
scription and Narrativity: 'The Piece of String,' " and "Figurative Se
miotics and the Semiotics of the Plastic Arts," spanning some twelv
years of work carried out by Greimas and his research group in
Paris,"7 are intended to provide readers with an overview of the de-
velopment of the theory and to show its ongoing, prospective, and
constructive nature. In "On Narrativity" Paul Ricoeur and A. J. Grei
mas discuss some of the fundamental issues raised both in "On
Meaning" and in the philosopher's clear and lucid chapter entit
"Greimas's Narrative Grammar." Ricoeur opens the discussion by d
fining semiotic rationality as a second order intelligibility, which ha
its object our preunderstanding of narratives, not the narrative str
tures themselves. For Ricoeur and Greimas, the explanatory capaci
of semiotics can increase one's ability to read and understand liter
texts, and their dialogue explo

ing: (a) the relationship betwe
level of narrativity (Is the fig
figurativity also found at the
positional nature of the mode
fication in the passage from d
and (c) the status of enunciati
tological concepts be integra
these crucial issues for the stu
need for the theory to open u
as can be seen from the recent
ers of the Paris School, this h
few years.'8
In "The Veridiction Contract" Greimas considers discourse as the
fragile locus where truth and falsehood, lie and secret are inscribed
and can be read. Texts are understood as complex signs about which
cultures adopt attitudes defined as their connotative metasemiot
interpretations, and as having their own veridiction markers that lim
their interpretations. Within our present-day cultural context of dis
cursive manipulation, the subject of enunciation no longer seeks to
produce a true discourse, but rather to produce "truth" meanin
effects, either by subjectivizing or objectivizing camouflage. The con
tract of veridiction, which supposes an implicit fiduciary agreemen
between two actants in the structure of communication, implies tw
autonomous components (the modalities of knowing and believin
and two superimposed levels (epistemic judgment-certitude an
alethic judgment-truth).
The only analysis of a literary text to appear in this volume, "De-
scription and Narrativity: 'The Piece of String,' " was initially to be
part of a much more ambitious project that was to include all o
Maupassant's short stories. Greimas's analysis begins by examinin
formal procedures (spatiotemporal and grammatical criteria) for seg
menting texts into sequences, before showing that in this type of tex
description (surface structure) is organized according to the rules o
narrativity (deep structure). The narrative is seen as the confrontatio
between two types of knowledge and practice (being and doing)
whereby individual and social knowledge and practice are oppose
Though the analysis focuses mainly on the peasants' arrival at th
market place and lunch at the innkeeper's, description appears as
micronarrative in which collective desire and the figurativized subjec
are instituted and social practice and social sanction are demon
strated. This text has other important theoretical implications of a
INTRODUCTION 529
general nature, since

collective actants.
The analysis of Maupassant's short story briefly explored the rela-
tionship between the figurative and cognitive dimensions of the tra-
ditional short story. "The Cognitive Dimension of Narrative
Discourse" offers a theoretical model that can account for figurative
discourses in general, defined as discourses whose content corre-
sponds to something on the expressive level of the natural semiotic
system. Here, the term "cognitive" refers to various forms of articu-
lation of knowing, for example, organization, production, manipula-
tion, and reception. Hierarchically superior to the pragmatic dimen-
sion that acts as its internal referent, the cognitive dimension unfolds
in conjunction with an increase in knowing of the subjects installed in
the discourse, whether they happen to be enunciator or enunciatee
and/or actants in the narration, such as narrator and/or narratee.
Within the framework of the communication schema, the transmis-
sion of the object of knowledge brings into play intersubjective rela-
tions of persuasion and interpretation. The subjects of cognitive per-
formance (persuasion and interpretation) require a corresponding
competence. This gives rise to a semiotics of manipulation and sanc-
tion of a polemico-contractual nature, in which subjects can inter-
changeably assume the roles of either sender or receiver. Their study
makes a fundamental contribution to literary semiotics by laying the
groundwork not only for a typology of cognitive subjects and a semi-
otics of manipulation, but also for a typology of cognitive discourses
that play on either the interpretive and/or the persuasive activities of
enunciators and enunciatees.
A widely held misconception regarding Greimas is that his semioti
deals only with abstract schemata and is not concerned with daily lif
and lived experience. This is certainly not the case: his semiotics
about individuals and natural and cultural worlds, and "Figurati
Semiotics and the Semiotics of the Plastic Arts" should go a long w
toward laying this misconception to rest. Greimas begins by stipulat
ing the existence of a reading grid, subject to cultural relativism, i
which the figurative forms of visual figures are identified as
"representing" objects of the world transformed into object-sig
through semiosis. In this figurative semiotics, semiotic objects are n
given but are the result of reading constructions. Greimas sets in pla
procedures that can help account for the articulation and manipula
tion of contents, that determine the multiple forms of meaning a
the modes of its existence, and that describe the pathways of t
transposition and transformation of contents.
In the first part of this intr

theory gave importance to th
immanent organizing principl
or not. The strength of the th
between two levels of represen
an immanent level of narrative that forms a common structural source
where narrativity is situated prior to its manifestation. Hence, the
signification of figurative and plastic phenomena, originating in this
fundamental model, is independent of their mode of manifestation.
In order to understand how and what plastic figures signify, one
needs to come to grips with the problem of defining figures found on
the surface and grouping them into signifying ensembles.
This volume also contains seven contributions by authors who, over
the years, have carried on a dialogue and debate with Greimas's work.
A number of these studies raise epistemological questions that are
related to either the coherence of the model or to its fundamental
presuppositions. Others, more concerned with its applicability, que
tion the empirical relevance of the theory, while proposing refine
ments and corrections to its epistemological postulates and philosoph
ical axioms.
Two papers focus on the basic postulates of Greimas's semantics
and the relationship between the thymic, praxic, and cognitive dimen-
sions of narrative grammar. In their incisive text entitled "Greimas-
sian Semantics and the Encyclopedia" Umberto Eco and Patrizia Ma-
gli examine the foundations of the theory from the perspective of
dictionary or encyclopedic representation. They argue that, even
though in Structural Semantics Greimas makes use of Hjelmslev's con-
cept of dictionary, because it takes into account a plurality of contexts,
such a dictionary functions much like an encyclopedia. Furthermore,
since the lexeme presented in early Greimassian theory undergoes
encyclopedic transformation, it is said to be the product of history or
usage, rather than structure, and that the problem of the organization
of content "depends on the perceptive and the phenomenological
signified of figures of the world." We stressed above that the source
of the figures of natural language is found in a semiotics of the nat-
ural world. The authors also insist on the same point and show how,
in fact, the progressive transformation of his theory into a theory of
discourse makes it possible to consider the lexeme as a virtual text.
They provide an articulated description of the morphology and syn-
tactic functioning of the encyclopedia within narrativity. Moreover,
they maintain that with the notion of discursive and motive configu-
ration, Greimas introduces notions very similar to those of scenario
and frame used in artificial intelligence research. The authors con-
INTRODUCTION 531
clude by noting that

does not present itse
the set of possible d
a collective memory,
mal relations that ar
in a communication situation."
Paul Ricoeur's paper, "Greimas's Narrative Grammar," written i

1980, had a strong impact on the orientation of the theory. Rico
criticizes the Greimassian model on several counts. First, how can
logico-deductive structures such as contradiction at the deep level be
converted into anthropomorphic polemic at the surface level? Sec-
ond, there exist syntagmatic supplements at the surface level that
cannot be obtained from the conversion of the fundamental grammar
to the surface grammar. Third, one has to recognize the dual con-
straints, both logical and practical, of the model and the necessity to
clarify the conditions of its application. Ricoeur's insightful paper was
instrumental in bringing about a reevaluation of Greimas's theory; it
led to important methodological changes that reformulated action
and syntactic operations anthropomorphically and substituted the
formal term, generic doing, for all verbs of action. He also introduced
the concept of process as a transcoded doing, an aspectualized and
converted doing.19
The papers by Cesare Segre and Wladimir Krysinski examine de
l'imperfection, the author's most recent theoretical-literary production.
The critics feel that this work opens up a new field of investigation for
which the method and theme seem undeducible from Greimas's prior
semiotics of narrativity and modality.
Cesare Segre's study begins by exploring the faintly discernible
traces by which Greimas's techniques of analysis weave through sug-
gestion a web in which semiotic terms coexist with visual and tactile
sensations. The aesthetic experience is seen as the fusion of the sub-
ject with a reality (object) that absorbs but, at the same time, dissolves
him. Compared with Maupassant, which remains more in line with
Greimas's earlier interests in which he brought his entire systematic
semiotic arsenal into play, de l'imperfection is seen as a text in which
there is a deployment of style that constitutes a radical break with the
previous enterprise.
In the second part of his article, Segre explores the coherence and
systematicity of the work in general. He then contends that a Grei-
massian vulgata came into being in which researchers associated with
him uncritically accepted the techniques proposed without investigat-
ing their bases. Perhaps this was the case until quite recently; never-
theless, even a cursory examination of volume II of the Dictionnaire
edited by Greimas and Courtes

by forty contributors, clearly
deed, the editors have explicitl
relationship to the theory pres
either: (C) complement, cont
prolongation, project; or (D)
sion. Nonetheless, Segre conc
recent evolution of Greimassian semiotics and the new face it offers us
in trying to come to grips with the subjective, the ecstatic, and the
sacred.
Wladimir Krysinski's paper focuses on the problem of aesthetic
perception explored by Greimas as the stages and forms of transfor-
mation which subject and object undergo. He points out that, since
the author presupposes the existence of being (perfection) existing
above or beyond seeming (imperfection), the "cognitive and quasi-
utopian stance of this discourse is to be found in the conviction that
although every seeming is imperfect, it hides being--if only, at times,
to unveil it and to open unto death or life." Since for Greimas the
aesthetic experience is understood as a fundamental experience that
leads toward a new understanding of life, his message is considered as
essentially ethical. Krysinski shows how for Greimas the aesthetic ex-
perience originates in the canonical actantial relationship between a
subject and an object of value, in which beauty appears in the narra-
tive process and is analyzed in terms of a narrative sequence. The
semiotic existence of the subject is guaranteed by a particular type of
conjunction with the object of value (virtualizing, actualizing, realiz-
ing), and beauty emerges in the synthetic conjunction with a partic-
ular situation: "the object's emergence as visible form and the sur-
passing of every day life by the subject." Krysinski gives an extremely
sensitive account of Greimas's analysis of five literary texts in which
the aesthetic experience is described as a complex and complete nar-
rative process, whereby the actantial subject is defined as a narrative,
pathemic, and cognitive actant. The second section of the paper con-
centrates on the last part of Greimas's book, entitled "Ways Out,"
which is "an extremely dense general reflection on and plea for aes-
thetic experience in life in today's society." Here Krysinski accentuates
the utopian aspect of the enterprise in which the aesthetic experience
is conceptualized and described in semiotic terms and an attempt is
made to draw semiotics into an engagement with life.
The two studies by Donald Maddox and Felix Thuirlemann analyze
different narrative objects and enrich and supplement the basic the-
ory. Thiirlemann's paper, "Fictionality in Mantegna's San Zeno
Altarpiece," can be considered as an application and development of
INTRODUCTION 533
Greimas's chapter on
tique of the represe
terms of its resemb
an examination of t
erential illusion from
tion. His paper also h
is basically achronic
sider that the mimetic dimension of a work of art, such as the San
Zeno Altarpiece, as well as its other levels of meaning, are historically
mediated. Three areas of concern are raised within the vast domain of
visual semiotics: (a) pictorial discourse is a mimetic discourse that can
be considered as a metadiscourse on its own process of construction;
(b) the mimetic image can be analyzed as the end term of a generative
process occurring on the planes of expression and content; and (c) the
type of semiosis that frequently occurs in the visual arts is semisym-
bolic in nature and made up of categorical webs. This innovative
study concludes with an investigation of the aesthetic limits, or how
the image "uses its own internal devices to define spatially the rela-
tionship between its fictional world and the world beyond it, that of
the viewer's reality," and an examination of the narrative devices by
which the "figurative picture makes behavioral demands on the
recipient."
In his paper "Veridiction, Verifiction, Verifactions: Reflections on
Methodology," Donald Maddox briefly reviews the salient features of
the theory from a historico-notional perspective and centers on an
area that has not been sufficiently explored until now. Noting that
Greimas's suggestion regarding the possibility of establishing a typol-
ogy of discourse, based on modes of veridiction, has not given results
in the realm of literary discourse, Maddox proposes a study of specific
cases of veridiction that can provide access to a vital dimension of the
literary text and contribute to rethinking the literary critical enter-
prise itself. By directly linking such a semiotic theory of veridiction to
reading and interpretation, he makes it a concern of literary criticism.
Maddox indicates the need to expand current methodology that only
considers the classification of cognitive transformations along the syn-
tagmatic unfolding of narrative and to envisage veridiction as a type
of coherence within discourse. In a semasiological move he analyzes
veri-dictory modalities that result in truth semantic effects (verum),
uttered (dicere) by different voices, or from different cognitive per-
spectives, in order to identify the constituents as well as the structu-
ration of veridictory discourse. His detailed analysis of a short story by
Guy de Maupassant to measure the working hypothesis taken from
Bakhtin, according to which "one might expect that as the reservoir of
knowledge expands with the p

own cognitive perspective, the
the density and complexity o
plary of the creative tension t
tice, by which the former is
frontation with the latter. Maddox concludes his text with a reflection
on the "domain of criticism and the attitudes of its practitioners to-
ward the objects of critical enquiry."
Eugene Vance proposes both a critique of the Greimassian project
and an alternative way of reading medieval texts, for "a new kind of
linguistically informed medievalism has evolved that is as much ori-
ented toward studying the discursive consciousness of medieval intel-
lectual life as it is toward the documentation of events." In his study
Vance raises questions not only about some of the epistemological
foundations of the model, but also about its applicability and its em-
pirical relevance for the discipline of medieval studies. It is legitimate,
though, to ask to what Greimassian model and to what account he is
referring. As can be seen from the texts ascribed to Greimas and those
written by other critics in this volume, the initial claims made for and
about postwar semiotics and the "Parisian school" do not exactly cor-
respond to the current state of affairs. Rather than eluding "the de-
terminations of national language, culture, and epoch," Greimassian
semiotics recognizes not only the fundamental determinations of na-
tional language, culture, and epoch, but also the interdependence of
the natural world and natural languages, which are p!- ces for the
elaboration and practice of multiple semiotic systems."2 These semi-
otic systems precede the individual, "who is inscribed from birth
within a signifying world made up of both 'nature' and 'culture,' and
is progressively integrated therein through experience." Far from
being a neutral referent, nature is "strongly culture bound ... and by
the very same token, nature is relativized (ethno-taxonomies provide dif-
ferent 'world views,' for example) (SL 374; emphasis added). Again,
Segre's and Krysinski's accounts of de l'imperfection clearly demon-
strate that, although Greimas does-as Vance says-"insist on the
constitutive role of the semiotic square in all semantic processes," he
certainly does not continue to insist "on the primacy of modals to the
syntax of stories, and on the adequacy of the Greimassian actantial
model to decode the syntactic operations of any message or
discourse," since his analysis bears especially on the discursive and
figurative dimension of the unfolding narrative. As for the semiotic
square, it can be compared with Blanche's hexagon and to Klein's and
Piaget's groups.21
To criticize Greimas for being "closed to the history of semiotics" is
INTRODUCTION 535
to ignore the scientif

and to disregard the
"scientificity."22 In a
1974, Greimas clearly
tionist by definition
approach supposes th
treatment of individuals inside classes. Scientific research is first of all
a research for invariants.... Linguists have never tried to fool any-
body, and philosophers are responsible for their own illusions."23"" To
put it another way, as Donald Maddox has so succinctly shown in the
final part of his study, this debate not only opposes two attitudes
concerning the issue of referential truth and veridiction, but also
concerning the ability of various semiotic models to show "how texts
were 'seen' in the Middle Ages or ... how they should be 'read' now,
for each has its own variant interpretation of the cultural context, its
own Middle Ages." Be that as it may, in the second part of his study
Vance gives an overview of a number of broadly held medieval se-
mantic theories that are of great interest to modern semioticians, since
they clearly demonstrate that texts must be understood in terms of the
multiple semiotic systems they syncretize. The final and main part of
the paper examines the Pardoner's "Prologue" in the Canterbury Tales
and, through textual analysis and social contextualization, attempts to
"reconstruct the social issues that are at work in the poet's web of
words," in order "to grasp the full materiality of his or her discourse."
In addition to reading this text as a "brilliant fiction of human
character," Vance concludes that "the axis of fiction embodies, as well,
a true plane of social consciousness expressed through language."
In the final paper of the volume, entitled "A Logic of Narrativity,"
Philip Sturgess proposes an alternate and more restricted solution to
the problem of narrativity than does Greimas. His theory deals only
with narrative texts written in natural languages and not with all
forms of discourse, and it does not encompass other semiotic systems
that are independent of natural languages. Sturgess defines narra-
tivity as a dynamic process that functions syntagmatically in every text,
whether ancient, modern, or postmodern. Contrary to Greimas, for
whom narrativity is the organizing and transformational principle of
the syntactic and semantic components, not only of the deep and
surface levels of the semio-narrative grammar but also of the discur-
sive structures, for Sturgess, narrativity essentially corresponds to the
logical syntagmatic unfolding of the discursive and figurative evene-
mential levels of text. In Greimas's theory narrativity can be seen as
the processes accounting for signification that transform the value
systems set in place, while for Sturgess narrativity is what guarantees
both the transformation of events and the coherence of texts. In his

transpositional model of meaning, Greimas defines the operators at
the deep and intermediate levels in terms of actants and narrative
programs, and, at the surface discursive level in terms of actors (ac-
torialization, spatialization, and temporalization), whereas in his syn-
tagmatic model of action and causality, Sturgess concentrates on char-
acters at the discursive and figurative levels of texts. In short, Greimas
adopts a semio-narrative perspective while Sturgess works within the
tradition of general narratological studies, and it is within this frame-
work that he provides us with a comprehensive theory of the logic of
narrativity that constitutes an original and important contribution to
modern text theory.
The aim of this volume has been not only to make available a
number of texts written by, on, and about Greimas, but also to con-
tribute to the debate on the foundations and the developments of this
theory (and semiotic theory in general), especially its significance for
the analysis of literary texts. The various problems raised, and the
different directions taken by the contributors, attest to the openness
of the theory and the dynamic quality of the research programs in
question. However, many key issues are yet to be resolved, and if this
volume fosters ongoing discussion, it will more than have fulfilled its
purpose.
VICTORIA COLLEGE,
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
NOTES
1 See, e.g., Fredric Jameson, The Prison-House of Language (Princeto

Jonathan Culler, Structural Poetics (London, 1975); Jean Calloud, Structural A
Narrative (Philadelphia, 1976); Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics
1977); Ronald Schleifer, A. J. Greimas and the Nature of Meaning (Lincoln, N
2 The following translations of articles written by Algirdas Julien Greimas
peared in English language journals: with Francois Rastier, "The Interaction
otic Constraints," Yale French Studies, 41 (1968), 86-105; "The Interpretation
Theory and Practice," tr. Kipnis Clougher, in Structural Analysis of Oral Tra
Pierre Maranda and Elli K. Maranda (Philadelphia, 1971), pp. 81-121; "
Grammar: Units and Levels," tr. Phillip Bodrock, Modern Language Notes,
793-807; "The Cognitive Dimension of Narrative Discourse," tr. Michael R
New Literary History, 7 (1976), 433-47. In addition, four volumes of Greima
have been recently translated: with Joseph Court6s, Semiotics and Language:
ical Dictionary, tr. Larry Crist et al. (Bloomington, Ind., 1982), hereafter ci
as SL; Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method, tr. Daniele McDowell, Ron
ifer, and Alan Velie (Lincoln, Nebr., 1983); On Meaning: Selected Writings in
Theory by A. J. Greimas, tr. Paul Perron and Frank Collins (Minneapolis, 19
passant: The Semiotics of Text: Practical Exercises, tr. Paul Perron (Amsterd
Moreover, three other volumes of Greimas's work will appear in 1989, The
INTRODUCTION 537
ences: A Semiotic View, tr.

Gods and Men, tr. Milda Ne
tion, tr. Teresa Keane (Ams
and "Pragmatics and Semiot
and Frank Collins (Amsterd
indicated, are my own.
3 Algirdas Julien Greimas
Almanach littiraire (1943); an
4 Algirdas Julien Greimas
national Journal of Slavic L
"Cendrillon va au bal ... Les
SystUme de signes-Textes rd
relations entre la linguistiqu
Sociales, 19 (1967), 8-17, rep
et la po6tique," pp. 271-83;
sociales (Paris, 1976), pp. 1
pp. 3-16; "Elements pour un
nications, 8 (1966), 28-59; Des
1986); Essais de simiotique p
of Bernanos" (1966), in Struc
ell, Ronald Schleifer, and
et narrativit6 dans 'La Ficelle
romane, 1 (1973) 13-24; Mau
Paul Perron (Amsterdam,
Grammars and Descriptions
85-105; Preface, La structure
Clement Legar6 (Quebec, 19
simiotique narrative et discu
dans le conte populaire mer
Court6s, Actes simiotiques-D
L'ivangile de l'enfance selon
lecteur," an introduction to
semiotiques-Documents, 51 (
5 See "Avatars of Semioti
Schleifer's excellent book
Perron, Foreword, A. J. Gr
press).
6 See SL, pp. 268-69.
7 Herman Parret, Introduction, Paris School Semiotics I: Theory, ed. Paul Perron and
Frank Collins (Amsterdam, 1989).
8 For a discussion of the impact of phenomenology, structuralism, and narratology
on Greimas's work see Parret, Introduction; and Herman Parret and Hans-George
Ruprecht, Introduction, Exigences et perspectives de la semiotique/Aims and Prospects of
Semiotics, ed. Herman Parret and Hans-George Ruprecht (Amsterdam, 1985).
9 See Fabbri and Perron.
10 See SL, p. 25. According to Hjelmslev, biplanar semiotic systems are thos
contain two levels which differ in their paradigmatic articulations and/or synt
divisions.
11 Jacques Geninasca, Pour une simiotique littiraire, Actes simiotiques-Documents, 9

(1987), 10; Geninasca's is the clearest and most concise account of recent developments
in literary semiotics inspired by Greimas's work.
12 See Geninasca.
13 See Fredric Jameson, Foreword,

who is perhaps the most difficult and
of French structuralism and whose w
tificity,
schemata, .... breaking symbols
nonverbal out at allof
poin
v
'humanist' to draw a boundary across
and promised lands of mathematics
14 Algirdas Julien Greimas, Du sens
15 See Algirdas Julien Greimas, Du
polemico-contractual confrontation
nizing structures of the narrative sc
heart of intersubjectivity where it see
groping, and, at the same time, cun
16 See Parret, Introduction.
17 Greimas has often stressed the collective nature of the research undertaken over
the last twenty years by the "Groupe de recherches s miolinguistiques" in Paris, which
has published ninety issues of Actes sbmiotiques-Documents and some forty issues of Actes
semiotique-Bulletin, under the editorship of Eric Landowski; see "On Meaning," this
issue, n. 3; Jean-Claude Coquet, Semiotique: L'icole de Paris (Paris, 1982); and Parret,
Introduction.
18 See, e.g., recent issues of Actes sbmiotiques-Bulletin and Actes sbmiotiques-Documents, as

well as Denis Bertrand, L'espace et le sens: "Germinal" d'Emile Zola (Amsterdam, 1985);
Jacques Fontanille, Le savoir partagi: Sbmiotique et theorie de la connaissance chez Marcel
Proust (Paris, 1987), and Claude Zilberberg, Raison etpodtique du sens (Paris, 1988), in all
of which discursive structures and the figurative dimension of texts are explored.
19 See Algirdas Julien Greimas, "Algirdas Julien Greimas: Mise A la question," in
Michel Arrive and Jean-Claude Coquet, Simiotique enJeu (Paris, 1987).
20 See my discussion above, pp. 525-27.
21 See Jean Petitot, Morphogenrse du sens (Paris, 1985), and his article "Structure," in
Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics (Berlin, 1986), pp. 991-1022.
22 This would, it seems to me, correspond to criticizing Noam Chomsky for being
closed to the history of linguistics.
23 Quoted in Parret, Introduction.

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Introduction: A. J.

NTIL RECENTLY, English readers have had access to Algirdas

novel ("A Sample Description:

temporal categories), and those

The concept of narra

texts, and their dialogue explo

general nature, since

In the first part of this intr

clude by noting that

Paul Ricoeur's paper, "Greimas's Narrative Grammar," written i

edited by Greimas and Courtes

knowledge expands with the p

to ignore the scientif

both the transformation of events and the coherence of texts. In his

1 See, e.g., Fredric Jameson, The Prison-House of Language (Princeto

ences: A Semiotic View, tr.

11 Jacques Geninasca, Pour une simiotique littiraire, Actes simiotiques-Documents, 9

13 See Fredric Jameson, Foreword,

18 See, e.g., recent issues of Actes sbmiotiques-Bulletin and Actes sbmiotiques-Documents, as

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