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 ContentsList of Illustrations. The Elements.
Preface.
The Scope and Aims of This Book.
Storytelling Media and Modes of Narration.
Acknowledgments.
1. Getting Started: A Thumbnail Sketch of the Approach Developed in This Book.
Toward a Working Definition of Narrative.
Profiles of Narrative.
Narrative: Basic Elements.
2. Background and Context: Framing the Approach.
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Narrative and Narrative Theory.
Major Trends in Recent Scholarship on Narrative.
3. Back to the Elements: Narrative Occasions.
Situating Stories.
Sociolinguistic Approaches.
Positioning Theory.
The Narrative Communication Model.
Conclusion.
4. Temporality, Particularity, and Narrative: An Excursion into the Theory of Text Types.
From Contexts of Narration to Narrative as a Type of Text.
Text Types and Categorization Processes.
Narrative as a Text-Type Category: Descriptions vs. Stories vs. Explanations.
Summing up: Text Types, Communicative Competence, and the Role of Stories in Science.
5. The Third Element: Or, How to Build a Storyworld.
Narratives as Blueprints for Worldmaking.
Narrative Ways of Worldmaking.
Narrative Worlds: A Survey of Approaches.
Configuring Narrative Worlds: The WHAT, WHERE, and WHEN Dimensions of Storyworlds.
Worlds Disrupted: Narrativity and Noncanonical Events.
6. The Nexus of Narrative and Mind.
The Consciousness Factor.
Consciousness Across Narrative Genres.
Experiencing Minds: What It's Like, Qualia, Raw Feels.
Storied Minds: Narrative Foundations of Consciousness?.
Appendix.
Reproduction of Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" (1927).
Transcript of a Story Told during Face-to-Face Interaction: UFO or the Devil.
Pages from Daniel's Clowes's Graphic Novel Ghost World (1997).
Screenshots from Terry Zwigoff's Film Version of Ghost World (2001).
Glossary.
References.
Index
