Abstract

Comparative research enriches semiotics and deepens its exchanges with other sciences. The work can also highlight inductive methods and socio-historically specific forms and practices, thereby helping to develop a general semiotics and a semiotics of cultures. This article compares the morphology by Vladimir Propp that inspired the Greimassian narrative schema to a small sample of narrative forms, then to Aristotle's Poetics and to a model of Hollywood films. Certain motifs and subgenres represent elementary schemas with two or three actants and functions that rely on role reversal and emotions. A half dozen subgenres can be differentiated by the different affects that they aim to elicit. Greek tragedy is to evoke intense emotional states, and reveals a close interdependence between characteristics of the hero, modulations of the critical action, and the emotive effect produced. In the films, the variation of the affective intensity constitutes a key element of the narrative rhythm, and two main sequences supply opposing and complementary axiologies. A conclusion suggests the value of bringing together the semiotics of the passions, recent research on the history of the emotions, and comparative studies of how different cultures express feelings.