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Narrative, Fiction, Theory Autumn Term

Richard Walsh

Narrative theory has always been preoccupied with literary fiction, yet has also

asserted the much broader significance of narrative. How well has the example of

literary fiction served as a theoretical paradigm for narrative in general? And

conversely, how well has the general concept of narrative served the specific features

of fictionality? This module adopts a broadly historical perspective upon the

development of narrative theory, taking seminal theoretical works for its primary

texts. The readings below are either available in the university library’s e-journal

collection, or they are provided on the “module materials” page of the VLE site. A

useful introductory text on narrative theory is Porter Abbott, The Cambridge

Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge: CUP, 2002).

Richard Walsh

1. Precursors

Aristotle. The Poetics of Aristotle. Trans. Stephen Halliwell. London: Duckworth P,

1987. (extract on VLE).

James, Henry. “The Art of Fiction.” Partial Portraits. 1888. London: Macmillan,

1911. Literature Online link

James, Henry. The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces. Ed. Richard P. Blackmur. New

York: Scribner’s, 1962. (extracts on VLE).

Lubbock, Percy. The Craft of Fiction. London: Jonathan Cape, 1921. (extract on

VLE).

Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. 1927. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962. (extract on

VLE).

2. Russian Formalists

Shlovsky, Victor. “Sterne’s Tristram Shandy: Stylistic Commentary.” Russian

Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. Ed. Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis. Lincoln:

U of Nebraska P, 1965. (VLE).

Tomashevsky, Boris. “Thematics.” Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. Ed.

Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1965. (VLE).

Bakhtin, M. M., and P. N. Medvedev. The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A

Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics. 1928. Trans. Albert J. Wehrle.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978. (extract on VLE).

Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. 1928. Trans. Laurence Scott. Austin: U

of Texas P, 1968. (extract on VLE).

3. Structuralist Narratology

Barthes, Roland. “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative.” 1966.

Trans. Lionel Duisit. New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and

Interpretation 6, no. 2 (1975): 237-72.

Greimas, A. J. “Elements of a Narrative Grammar.” 1966. Trans. Catherine Porter.

Diacritics 7, no. 1 (1977): 23-40.

Bremond, Claude. “The Logic of Narrative Possibilities.” 1966. Trans. Elaine D.

Cancalon. New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation 11, no. 3

(1980): 387-411.

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Todorov, Tzvetan. “Structural Analysis of Narrative.” Trans. Arnold Weinstein.

Novel: A Forum on Fiction 3, no. 1 (1969): 70-76.

4. Discourse Theorists

Booth, Wayne C. “Distance and Point-of-View: An Essay in Classification.” Essays

in Criticism 11 (1961): 60-79.

Stanzel, Franz K. “Second Thoughts on Narrative Situations in the Novel: Towards a

‘Grammar of Fiction’.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 11, no. 3 (1978): 247-64.

Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell UP,

1980. (extract on VLE).

5. The Limits of Structuralism

This week, the extract from Barthes’s tour de force analysis of Balzac’s “Sarrasine”

marks an important post-structuralist conceptual transition from structure to

structuration, while Culler synthesizes structuralist thinking on the cusp of post-

structuralism. The exchange between Chatman and Herrnstein Smith enacts a nice set

piece confrontation between a structuralism and a certain kind of post-structuralist

pragmatism over the story-discourse distinction. See what you think.

Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. London: Jonathan Cape, 1975. (extract

on VLE).

Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of

Literature. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975. (extract on VLE).

Chatman, Seymour. “Towards a Theory of Narrative.” New Literary History: A

Journal of Theory and Interpretation 6, no. 2 (1975): 295-318.

Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. “Narrative Versions, Narrative Theories.” Critical Inquiry

7, no. 1 (1980): 213-36.

Chatman, Seymour. “Reply to Barbara Herrnstein Smith.” Critical Inquiry 7, no. 4

(1981): 802-09.

6. Narrative Semantics

This week’s texts focus upon linguistic and philosophical attempts to grapple with the

reference of fictions and so with formalizations of the idea of a fictional world. How

far should we take this concept? What about our understanding of fiction does it really

explain? Ryan’s “principle of minimal departure” has been particularly influential, but

can it really function in the way and to the ends she claims?

Dolezel, Lubomír. “Truth and Authenticity in Narrative.” Poetics Today 1, no. 3

(1980): 7-25.

Pavel, Thomas G. “Narrative Domains.” Poetics Today 1, no. 4 (1980): 105-14.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. “Fiction, Non-Factuals, and the Principle of Minimal Departure.”

Poetics: International Review for the Theory of Literature 9 (1980): 403-22.

Margolin, Uri. “Reference, Coreference, Referring, and the Dual Structure of Literary

Narrative.” Poetics Today 12, no. 3 (1991): 517-42.

7. The Narratological Diaspora

This week’s readings are an eclectic set meant to convey the multiplicity of post-

classical approaches to narrative. White applies a narratological perspective to

historiography, shedding useful reflected light on fiction; Brooks draws on

psychoanalysis to articulate the logic of narrative desire; and Branigan, a film theorist

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here offering a (problematic) analysis of a comic strip, stands for the increasing sense

of narrative as a transmedia mode of discourse. We also return to Bakhtin, alongside

Lanser, for an important turn towards contextualist narratology and the ideological

nature of narrative voice in particular.

White, Hayden. “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality.” Critical

Inquiry 7, no. 1 (1980): 5-27.

Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1984. (extract on VLE).

Branigan, Edward. Narrative Comprehension and Film. London: Routledge, 1992.

(extract on VLE).

Bakhtin, M. M. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. 1963. Trans. Caryl Emerson.

Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984. (extract on VLE).

Lanser, Susan S. Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice. Ithaca:

Cornell University Press, 1992. (extract on VLE).

8. Cognitive Narratology

Cognitive narratology, in various senses, has become very prominent over the last

fifteen years or so. In part it is a recognition of the fundamental role of narrative

sense-making in how our minds work, beyond the limits of texts, fictional or

otherwise; in part it is also a return of the old desire for a pilot science, a claim to a

kind of theoretical and methodological authority that humanities scholars often envy –

or at least a veneer of such authority. Ryan’s sceptical overview helps to evaluate the

possibilities.

Bruner, Jerome. “The Narrative Construction of Reality.” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 1

(1991): 1-21.

Dennett, Daniel. Consciousness Explained. New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1991.

Chapter 13. (extract on VLE).

Herman, David. “Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences.” Narrative Inquiry

11, no. 1 (2001): 1-34.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. “Narratology and Cognitive Science: A Problematic Relation.”

Style 44, no. 4 (2010): 469-95.