Literary Fiction

The Ways We Read Narrative Literature

Geir Farner

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781623560249
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781623560256
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Insofar as literary theory has addressed the issue of literature as a means of communication and the function of literary fiction, opinions have been sharply divided, indicating that the elementary foundations of literary theory and criticism still need clarifying. Many of the "classical" problems that literary theory has been grappling with from Aristotle to our time are still waiting for a satisfactory solution.

Based on a new cognitive model of literature as communication, Farner systematically explains how literary fiction works, providing new solutions to a wide range of literary issues, like intention, function, evaluation, delimitation of the literary work as such, fictionality, suspense, and the roles of author and narrator, along with such narratological problems as voice, point of view and duration.

Covering a wide range of literary issues central to literary theory, offering new theories while also summarising the field as it stands, Literary Fiction will be a valuable guide and resource for students and scholars of the theory of literature.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 What is Literary Fiction?
• Chapter 3 The Fictional Communication Process
• Chapter 4 The Cognitive and the Aesthetic Dimension
• Chapter 5 The Delimitation of the Literary Work
• Chapter 6 Intention and Message
• Chapter 7 Problems Related to the Sender
• Chapter 8 The Structure of the Action
• Chapter 9 Selection
• Chapter 10 Voice
• Chapter 11 Viewpoint, Focalization
• Chapter 12 Frequency
• Chapter 13 Order
• Chapter 14 Suspense
• Chapter 15 The Functions of Literary Fiction
• Chapter 16 Evaluation
• Chapter 17 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Subject Index