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The author begins with some brief historical remarks aimed at situating the notion of narration in context. Narration is first of all a concept not of linguistics but of literary criticism. An organizing reference is Aristotle's opposition in his Poetics between mimesis (mimetic painting, a matter of imitation) and diegesis (discursive narration, which brings about understanding by recon-struction).8 Danon-Boileau traces the concept as it was developed in literary criticism, first with the study of myths and popular stories by the Russian formalists (Propp, Bakhtine). Narration was studied in questions about literature raised by structuralist theoreticians (Barthes, Genette, Todorov). Narration then entered philosophical reflection with, for example, the writings of Ricoeur. Discussions of narration are concerned with the way in which an individual utters and constructs a history/his history/history.
More or less in parallel, the theme of narration emerged in the study of the development of linguistic behavior, especially that of the child by child psychologists. Here, moreover, in an ambiguous