Thus has political science dipped into the latest terminology of literary criticism to explain an election. In 1966, the essayist Roland Barthes declared, ''Numberless are the world's narratives,'' and his structural analysis of stories helped give birth to the discipline of narratology. In that year, Prof. Robert Scholes of Brown, now president of the Modern Language Association, co-wrote a book with Prof. Robert Kellogg titled ''The Nature of narrative,'' defining the word as ''all those literary works which are distinguished by two characteristics: the presence of a story and a story-teller.'' Reached at Brown, Scholes updates his brainchild: ''Right now there are competing narratives of actual events that go on. It's what we call 'spin' and 'spin doctoring.' After an event, there are people who want to control the perception of that event, and the way they do that is by intervening with a narrative.''
Safire's comments might be useful as folks are preparing for revisions of the narrative of citizenship paper.
