The Dynamics of Narrative Form

Studies in Anglo-American Narratology

John Pier

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9783110183146
• eBook ISBN: 9783110922646
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

By redefining established topics of narratology, research has become highly diversified. The contributions to this volume neither synthesize developments nor work from shared postulates, but represent a fresh look at ongoing issues. Some scrutinize focalisation in a linguistic framework or in a poststructuralist vein; others take on reliable and unreliable narration in a pronominal perspective or the "unaddressed" reader who upsets the tidy schemes of narrative communication. Also outlined are a possible worlds approach to narrative time, a systematic treatment of metanarrative and a transgeneric application of narratology to poetry. The sequential ordering of narratives as a way of controlling reader response is examined in one article and in another is seen to elicit intertextual configurations. Both divergent and complementary, the contributions seek to integrate into narratological categories and methods the dynamic processes of narrative itself.

Table of contents

• On Metanarrative: Towards a Definition, a Typology and an Outline of the Functions of Metanarrative Commentary
• (Un-)Reliable Narration from a Pronominal Perspective
• A Plea for a Narrator-Centered Narratology
• Focalization between Classical and Postclassical Narratology
• Transgeneric Narratology: Applications to Lyric Poetry
• Ontological Plotting: Narrative as a Multiplicity of Temporal Dimensions
• Overhearing Narrative
• Graded Expectations: On the Textual and Structural. Shaping of Readers’ Narrative Experience
• Narrative Configurations
• NAME INDEX