Narrative Theory

NARRATIVE THEORY EDITED BY JAMES PHELAN AND PETER J. RABINOWITZ A Companion to Narrative Theory Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture This series offers comprehensive, newly written surveys of key periods and movements and certain major authors, in English literary culture and history. Extensive volumes provide new perspectives and positions on contexts and on canonical and postcanoni- cal texts, orientating the beginning student in new fields of study and providing the experienced undergraduate and new graduate with current and new directions, as pioneered and developed by leading scholars in the field. 1 A Companion to Romanticism Edited by Duncan Wu 2 A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture Edited by Herbert F. Tucker 3 A Companion to Shakespeare Edited by David Scott Kastan 4 A Companion to the Gothic Edited by David Punter 5 A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare Edited by Dympna Callaghan 6 A Companion to Chaucer Edited by Peter Brown 7 A Companion to Literature from Milton to Blake Edited by David Womersley 8 A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture Edited by Michael Hattaway 9 A Companion to Milton Edited by Thomas N. Corns 10 A Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry Edited by Neil Roberts 11 A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture Edited by Phillip Pulsiano and Elaine Treharne 12 A Companion to Restoration Drama Edited by Susan J. Owen 13 A Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing Edited by Anita Pacheco 14 A Companion to Renaissance Drama Edited by Arthur F. Kinney 15 A Companion to Victorian Poetry Edited by Richard Cronin, Alison Chapman, and Antony H. Harrison 16 A Companion to the Victorian Novel Edited by Patrick Brantlinger and William B. Thesing 17–20 A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works: Volumes I–IV Edited by Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard 21 A Companion to the Regional Literatures of America Edited by Charles L. Crow 22 A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism Edited by Walter Jost and Wendy Olmsted 23 A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South Edited by Richard Gray and Owen Robinson 24 A Companion to American Fiction 1780–1865 Edited by Shirley Samuels 25 A Companion to American Fiction 1865–1914 Edited by Robert Paul Lamb and G. R. Thompson 26 A Companion to Digital Humanities Edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth 27 A Companion to Romance Edited by Corinne Saunders 28 A Companion to the British and Irish Novel 1945–2000 Edited by Brian W. Shaffer 29 A Companion to Twentieth-Century American Drama Edited by David Krasner 30 A Companion to the Eighteenth-Century Novel and Culture Edited by Paula R. Backscheider and Catherine Ingrassia 31 A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture Edited by Rory McTurk 32 A Companion to Tragedy Edited by Rebecca Bushnell 33 A Companion to Narrative Theory Edited by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz NARRATIVE THEORY EDITED BY JAMES PHELAN AND PETER J. RABINOWITZ ß 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd except for editorial material and organization ß 2005 by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz and chapter 33 ß 2005 Peggy Phelan BLACKWELL PUBLISHING 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz to be identified as the Authors of the Editorial Material in this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1 2005 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A companion to narrative theory/edited by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. p. cm.—(Blackwell companions to literature and culture; 33) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-1476-9 ISBN-10: 1-4051-1476-2 1. Narration (Rhetoric) I. Phelan, James, 1951– II. Rabinowitz, Peter J., 1944– III. Series. PN212.C64 2005 808—dc22 2004025184 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 11/13 pt Garamond 3 by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd, Kundli The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards. For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: www.blackwellpublishing.com To our students Contents Notes on Contributors x Acknowledgments xvii Introduction: Tradition and Innovation in Contemporary Narrative Theory 1 James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz Prologue 1 Histories of Narrative Theory (I): A Genealogy of Early Developments 19 David Herman 2 Histories of Narrative Theory (II): From Structuralism to the Present 36 Monika Fludernik 3 Ghosts and Monsters: On the (Im)Possibility of Narrating the History of Narrative Theory 60 Brian McHale PART I New Light on Stubborn Problems 73 4 Resurrection of the Implied Author: Why Bother? 75 Wayne C. Booth 5 Reconceptualizing Unreliable Narration: Synthesizing Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches 89 Ansgar F. Nu¨nning Contents vii 6 Authorial Rhetoric, Narratorial (Un)Reliability, Divergent Readings: Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata 108 Tamar Yacobi 7 Henry James and ‘‘Focalization,’’ or Why James Loves Gyp 124 J. Hillis Miller 8 What Narratology and Stylistics Can Do for Each Other 136 Dan Shen 9 The Pragmatics of Narrative Fictionality 150 Richard Walsh PART II Revisions and Innovations 165 10 Beyond the Poetics of Plot: Alternative Forms of Narrative Progression and the Multiple Trajectories of Ulysses 167 Brian Richardson 11 They Shoot Tigers, Don’t They?: Path and Counterpoint in The Long Goodbye 181 Peter J. Rabinowitz 12 Spatial Poetics and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things 192 Susan Stanford Friedman 13 The ‘‘I’’ of the Beholder: Equivocal Attachments and the Limits of Structuralist Narratology 206 Susan S. Lanser 14 Neonarrative; or, How to Render the Unnarratable in Realist Fiction and Contemporary Film 220 Robyn R. Warhol 15 Self-consciousness as a Narrative Feature and Force: Tellers vs. Informants in Generic Design 232 Meir Sternberg 16 Effects of Sequence, Embedding, and Ekphrasis in Poe’s ‘‘The Oval Portrait’’ 253 Emma Kafalenos viii Contents 17 Mrs. Dalloway’s Progeny: The Hours as Second-degree Narrative 269 Seymour Chatman PART III Narrative Form and its Relationship to History, Politics, and Ethics 283 18 Genre, Repetition, Temporal Order: Some Aspects of Biblical Narratology 285 David H. Richter 19 Why Won’t Our Terms Stay Put? The Narrative Communication Diagram Scrutinized and Historicized 299 Harry E. Shaw 20 Gender and History in Narrative Theory: The Problem of Retrospective Distance in David Copperfield and Bleak House 312 Alison Case 21 Narrative Judgments and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative: Ian McEwan’s Atonement 322 James Phelan 22 The Changing Faces of Mount Rushmore: Collective Portraiture and Participatory National Heritage 337 Alison Booth 23 The Trouble with Autobiography: Cautionary Notes for Narrative Theorists 356 Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson 24 On a Postcolonial Narratology 372 Gerald Prince 25 Modernist Soundscapes and the Intelligent Ear: An Approach to Narrative Through Auditory Perception 382 Melba Cuddy-Keane 26 In Two Voices, or: Whose Life/Death/Story Is It, Anyway? 399 Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan PART IV Beyond Literary Narrative 413 27 Narrative in and of the Law 415 Peter Brooks Contents ix 28 Second Nature, Cinematic Narrative, the Historical Subject, and Russian Ark 427 Alan Nadel 29 Narrativizing the End: Death and Opera 441 Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon 30 Music and/as Cine-Narrative or: Ceci n’est pas un leitmotif 451 Royal S. Brown 31 Classical Instrumental Music and Narrative 466 Fred Everett Maus 32 ‘‘I’m Spartacus!’’ 484 Catherine Gunther Kodat 33 Shards of a History of Performance Art: Pollock and Namuth Through a Glass, Darkly 499 Peggy Phelan Epilogue 34 Narrative and Digitality: Learning to Think With the Medium 515 Marie-Laure Ryan 35 The Future of All Narrative Futures 529 H. Porter Abbott Glossary 542 Index 552 Notes on Contributors H. Porter Abbott is Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He works primarily in the areas of narrative, modernism, autobiography, literature and evolutionary theory, and the art of Samuel Beckett. His most recent book is The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (2002). He is currently at work on a study of Darwin, modernism, and representations of the conversion experience. Alison Booth, Professor of English, has taught at the University of Virginia since 1986. Among her publications are Greatness Engendered: George Eliot and Virginia Woolf (1992), the edited collection Famous Last Words: Changes in Gender and Narrative Closure (1993), and articles in Narrative, Victorian Studies, American Literary History, Kenyon Review, and other journals and essay collections. Her interest in prosopography sparks her current project on ‘‘homes and haunts’’ and the location of national canons in authors’ houses. Wayne C. Booth sees himself now as having spent a lifetime trying to improve communication, both by teaching and by producing books and articles. That effort has often led him to the thesis of his chapter here. In most situations, and especially in reading literature, you cannot fully understand (and thus communicate well) unless you distinguish the author implied by the text from both the flesh-and-blood author and the diverse characters and narrators met in any text.

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