The theoretical basics of studying ancient historiographical biography F. Dovbyshchenko Paper received 27.09.19; Revised 12.10.19; Accepted for publication 16.10.19. https://doi.org/10.31174/SEND-Ph2019-210VII61-03 are fundamental for any type of narrative writings. Narra- tology is the theory of narrative texts. According to M. Zubrycka, it is “a theoretical discipline studying narrative genres, systematization of the narrative types and plot structure” [7, p. 799]. In other words, “it treats the nature, forms and functioning of the narrative” [7, p. 799]. More- over, narratology is not only to represent the theory of the narrative, but also to explain how it forms our comprehen- sion of the world: “Narratology studies the ways in which the narrative structures our comprehension of cultural arti- facts and the world which surrounds us”. The basics of the structuralism were laid out in F. de Saussure’s “Course in General Linguistics” (1916), but while the latter worked mainly in the realm of linguistics, C. Levi-Strauss was the first to apply his sign theory to eth- nology (“The elementary structures of kinship”, 1949). His contribution consists in the fact that he was the first to for- mulate a hypothesis that “the culture has a structure similar to that of the language” (“Structural anthropology”, 1958) [27, p. 79]. French structuralists have chosen literary works as the object of their study. They applied, like C. Levi-Strauss did it in ethnology, the sign model of F. de Saussure. Thus, the main idea of the structuralists was to reveal a constant sign model in the text – which they called “the structure”. They based the study on the previous attempts of the formalists, namely on V. Propp’s theory about a constant set of func- tions of folktale characters (“Morphology of the folktale”, 1928). They also paid attention to his comprehension of the tale as a temporal sequence made by 31 subsequent con- stant functions [3, p. 156–157]. As C. Bremond stresses it, “… the need emerges to ex- pand Propp’s method to all the types of tales and to the to- tality of narrative genres. In this respect, one must discuss the applicability of Propp’s model within the general nar- rative grammar” [1, p. 475]. C. Bremont, thus, uses the model proposed by F. de Saussure in studying narratives. He claims that “structural studies on the narratives can be divided into two groups referring to different aspects of the message narrated: the history told and the discourse which tells” [1, p. 475]. Thus, C. Bremont grounded the possibil- ity to analyze narratives in the field of structuralism, which previews treating the text as a system of signs, each of which is a relation between signifier and signified, that means, in the occurrence of the narrative text, discourse 14 Science and Education a New Dimension. Philology, VII(61), Issue: 210, 2019 Nov. www.seanewdim.com Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine Corresponding author. E-mail: fedir.dovbyshchenko@gmail.com Abstract. The present article is an attempt to summarize the theoretical achievements which allow to analyze narratives within the methods of narratology, reader-response criticism, Euclid’s theory of the golden ratio and Aristotle’s concept of the peripeteia. In particular, the analysis of the ancient histories, as this article argues, can be conducted not only to understand the level of their factual reliability, but also to describe their possible impact on contemporary readers or listeners. It is also stressed in the present article that the narrative structure of histories is a perspective object of study, for it may reflect that of the ancient tragedy. Keywords: QDUUDWLYH VWUDWHJLHV QDUUDWLYH QDUUDWRORJ\ UHDGHUUHVSRQVH FULWLFLVP SHULSHWHLD JROGHQ UDWLR DQFLHQW KLVWRULRJUDSKLFDO ELRJUDSK\ Introduction The specificity of studying ancient bio- graphical historiography is that traditional Quellen- forschung itself turns to be not enough for an adequate in- terpretation of the content of such texts. A characteristic treat of the ancient historiographical biography is a blurring of the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. A recip- ient’s comprehension of such texts necessitates, besides source studies, to engage the information about their narra- tive structure which makes a text reveal its real semantic charge. Not only must the analysis of historiographical writings evaluate them as historical sources, but also con- sider them as acts of narration. A review of publications on the subject The present article will treat the works which, from the author’s point of view, best fit its main goal, i.e. help to find out the best way to describe the narrative structure of the ancient histo- riographical biographies. In narratology, this will be mainly the works of Cl. Lévi-Strauss [27], Cl. Bremond [1], E. Benveniste [17], O. Tkachuk [13], W. Schmid [15], O. Kovalov [9, 10], G. Genette [20, 21], W. Booth [18], V. Vinogradov [2] and L. Dolezel [19]. In reader-response criticism, the ideas of W. Iser [8, 24] and R. Ingerden [23] will be summarized. There appears also a need to pay at- tention to the theory of the ancient tragedy (Aristotle’s “Po- etics” [28]) and of the golden ratio (Euclid’s “Elements” [22]). Goals The present article aims to present the scheme of studying ancient historiographical biographies. In particu- lar, the paper is an attempt to describe the specifics of the narrative structure of the ancient historiographical texts. All ancient historiographical narratives make use of rhetor- ical and narrative strategies [29], and the scope of this arti- cle will be to propose a possible way to study the narrative structure of the ancient historical biography. Materials and methods Considering the above under- standing of the ancient historiographical biographies, it seems helpful to involve into the present study narratolog- ical theory, works of the reader-response criticism, Aristo- telian “Poetics” and Euclidean “Elements” which make it possible to describe the narrative structure of such a spe- cific kind of texts as the ancient historiographical biog- raphy is. As for the methods of the study, they are struc- tural-systemic, observation, analysis and synthesis. The basics of narratology Ancient historiographical biographies obey the rules of constructing narratives which