Description
Book SynopsisIn this study Professor Dorfman applies the methods of modern linguistics to literary analysis. Literature may be described as the structured use of language: the modern linguistic analyzes language in a search for the minimal units of sound and form, phoneme and morpheme, and determines the combinations by which they can communicate meaning. The author here searches for a minimal structural unit in the literary narrative analogous to the phoneme and the morpheme in language structure.
Based on a detailed analysis of the Roland and the Cid and twelve additional Romance narratives, Professor Dorfman's argument is that the structure of the medieval Romance epics may be analyzed into functional units which he calls "narremes." He divides a narrative into two types of structure: the superstructure and the substructure. A narrative, by definition, is a series of incidents. All the incidents in the narrative, taken as written, form the superstructure. Analysis, how
