Description
Book SynopsisBasic Elements of Narrative outlines a way of thinking about what narrative is and how to identify its basic elements across various media, introducing key concepts developed by previous theorists and contributing original ideas to the growing body of scholarship on stories.
Trade Review"This book has some very valuable pieces of narrative wisdom that would be useful to scholars in narrative theory, literary analysis and sociolinguistics...It is, however, a complete and solid companion for those concerned with the important task of further developing the field of narrative inquiry." (
Discourse Studies, December 2010)
"In
Basic Elements of Narrative the eminent narratologist David Herman offers new ideas about what narrative is . . .The interdisciplinary nature of this chicken-and-egg question-whether narratives represent what it's like to live in our world or we learn from narratives what it's like to live in our world-serves as an excellent indication of the breadth of the audience for which Herman's book will be thought-provoking." (
Papers on Language and Literature, 2010)
Table of ContentsPreface ix
Acknowledgments xiv
The Elements xvi
1 Getting Started: A Thumbnail Sketch of the Approach 1
Toward a Working Definition of Narrative 1
Profiles of Narrative 7
Narrative: Basic Elements 9
2 Framing the Approach: Some Background and Context 23
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Narrative and Narrative Theory 23
Major Trends in Recent Scholarship on Narrative 26
3 Back to the Elements: Narrative Occasions 37
Situating Stories 37
Sociolinguistic Approaches 40
Positioning Theory 55
The Narrative Communication Model 63
Conclusion 74
4 Temporality, Particularity, and Narrative: An Excursion into the Theory of Text Types 75
From Contexts of Narration to Narrative as a Type of Text 75
Text Types and Categorization Processes 79
Narrative as a Text-Type Category: Descriptions versus Stories versus Explanations 89
Coda: Text Types, Communicative Competence, and the Role of Stories in Science 100
5 The Third Element; or, How to Build a Storyworld 105
Narratives as Blueprints for Worldmaking 105
Narrative Ways of Worldmaking 108
Narrative Worlds: A Survey of Approaches 118
Configuring Narrative Worlds: The WHAT, WHERE, and WHEN Dimensions of Storyworlds 128
Worlds Disrupted: Narrativity and Noncanonical Events 133
6 The Nexus of Narrative and Mind 137
The Consciousness Factor 137
Consciousness across Narrative Genres 139
Experiencing Minds: What It’s Like, Qualia, Raw Feels 143
Storied Minds: Narrative Foundations of Consciousness? 153
Appendix 161
Literary Narrative: Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” (1927) 161
Narrative Told during Face-to-Face Communication: UFO or the Devil (2002) 166
Excerpted Panels from Ghost World (1997), a Graphic Novel by Daniel Clowes 173
Screenshots from Terry Zwigoff’s Film Version of Ghost World (2001) 178
Glossary 180
Notes 195
References 215
Index 235
