Narrative

Narrative is the way in which a story is told in both fictional and non fictional media texts.
There are many theories when it comes to narrative including those by Propp, Todorov, Barthes and Levi-Strauss.

PROPP
Propp studied fairy-tales in the 1920's. His theory said that it was possible to put characters and their actions into clearly defined rules.
The character roles he found were:

1. The hero: Individual(s) who seek to restore the equalibrium 
2. The villian: Individual(s) oppose the hero and disrupt the equilibrium
3. The donor: Individual(s) who give the hero something, advice, an object, magic, etc. 
4. The helper: Individual(s) who help the hero.
5. The dispatcher: Individual(s) who sends the hero on the way for their quest via a message etc.
6. The false hero: Individual(s) who disrupt the hero's quest by pretending to help them. 
7. Prince/Princess: Individual(s) who need saving/helping by the hero and is the object of the villain's plotting
8. The Father: Who acts to reward the hero for his efforts.

TODOROV

Tzvetan Todorov is a Franco-Bulgarian philosopher. He lives in France with his wife and their two children. He is a visiting professor and spends his time writing books and essays about literary theory, thought history and culture theory.

He stated that there was a pattern in all narrative, it was as follows:

BARTHES
Roland Gérard Barthes was a french literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic and a semiotician.
He suggested that narrative works with five different codes which mean the audience can make sense of it, they are:

Action-a narrative device where a resolution is produced by an action, e.g. a fight.

Enigma-a narrative device that creates unsolved answers in the audiences mind by presenting a problem to be solved. This delays the stories ending.

Symbolic- otherwise known as connotation which is deeper meanings within something and meaning that is associated with something

Semic-otherwise known as denotation which is the literal meaning.

Cultural- a narrative device which the audience can recognize as being part of a culture.

LEVI-STRAUSS
Claude Levi Strauss was a french anthropologist in the 1900 who looked at narrative structure  in terms of Binary Opposite. Binary opposites reveal the structure of media texts and Strauss believed that our understanding of a word relies on our perception of the words opposite meaning as well as its face value. He identified the fact that each genre has themes in binary opposites, e.g in Horror and Thiller films there is good vs bad, insane vs sane, hero vs villain, normal vs strange etc.

Shrek
 These narrative theories can be applied to the film Shrek.
Todorov: 

Equllibruim- Shrek is living in his swamp happily
Disruption - The creatures have to move because of Lord Farquaad and chose Shreks swamp as their new home.
Recongintion: Shrek doesn't like the fact that they are trespassing on his land.
Repair: In order to fix the animals being on his land he has to agree to go with donkey to help save Princess Fiona.
New Equllibruim: He and princess Fiona escape and fall in love. She is also happy because she now feels she fits in as her curse form.

Propp: 
Some of Propps theories can also be applied to Shrek.
Villain=Lord Farquuad
Hero=Shrek
Helper= Donkey
Princess= Princess Fiona
The Dispatcher=all the creatures