Prose Fiction: An Introduction to the Semiotics of Narrative

Author: Ignasi Ribó
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1783748125
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 119

Book Description
This concise and highly accessible textbook outlines the principles and techniques of storytelling. It is intended as a high-school and college-level introduction to the central concepts of narrative theory – concepts that will aid students in developing their competence not only in analysing and interpreting short stories and novels, but also in writing them. This textbook prioritises clarity over intricacy of theory, equipping its readers with the necessary tools to embark on further study of literature, literary theory and creative writing. Building on a ‘semiotic model of narrative,’ it is structured around the key elements of narratological theory, with chapters on plot, setting, characterisation, and narration, as well as on language and theme – elements which are underrepresented in existing textbooks on narrative theory. The chapter on language constitutes essential reading for those students unfamiliar with rhetoric, while the chapter on theme draws together significant perspectives from contemporary critical theory (including feminism and postcolonialism). This textbook is engaging and easily navigable, with key concepts highlighted and clearly explained, both in the text and in a full glossary located at the end of the book. Throughout the textbook the reader is aided by diagrams, images, quotes from prominent theorists, and instructive examples from classical and popular short stories and novels (such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Franz Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis,’ J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, or Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, amongst many others). Prose Fiction: An Introduction to the Semiotics of Narrative can either be incorporated as the main textbook into a wider syllabus on narrative theory and creative writing, or it can be used as a supplementary reference book for readers interested in narrative fiction. The textbook is a must-read for beginning students of narratology, especially those with no or limited prior experience in this area. It is of especial relevance to English and Humanities major students in Asia, for whom it was conceived and written.

Narrative Fiction

Author: Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134464975
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
What is a narrative? What is narrative fiction? How does it differ from other kinds of narrative? What featuers turn a discourse into a narrative text? Now widely acknowledged as one of the most significant volumes in its field, Narrative Fiction turns its attention to these and other questions. In contrast to many other studies, Narrative Fiction is organized arround issues - such as events, time, focalization, characterization, narration, the text and its reading - rather than individual theorists or approaches. Within this structure, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan addresses key approaches to narrative fiction, including New Criticism, formalism, structuralism and phenomenology, but also offers views of the modifications to these theroies. While presenting an analysis of the system governing all fictional narratives, whether in the form of novel, short story or narrative poem, she also suggests how individual narratives can be studied against the background of this general system. A broad range of literary examples illustrate key aspects of the study. This edition is brought fully up-to-date with an invaluable new chapter, reflecting on recent developments in narratology. Readers are also directed to key recent works in the field. These additions to a classic text ensure that Narrative Fiction will remain the ideal starting point for anyone new to narrative theory.

Method Writing

Author: Jack Grapes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780941017251
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Book Description
Method Writing is a powerful approach to finding your deep voice and activating the creative process. Based on a series of concepts and exercises Grapes has used in his writing workshops over the last 30-plus years, Method Writing does more than describe techniques: it takes you step-by-step through a process that will empower your writing and make it unique.

The Fiction of Narrative

Author: Hayden White
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801894808
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 419

Book Description
For students and scholars of historiography, the theory of history, and literary studies, Robert Doran (French and comparative literature, U. of Rochester) gathers together 23 previously uncollected essays written by theorist and historian Hayden White (comparative literature, Stanford U.) from 1957 to 2007, on his theories of historical writing and narrative. Essays are organized chronologically and reveal the evolution of White's thought and its relationship to theories of the time, as well as the impact on the way scholars think about historical representation, the discipline of history, and how historiography intersects with other areas, especially literary studies. They specifically address theory of tropes, theory of narrative, and figuralism.

Telling Stories

Author: Steven Cohan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136494243
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Book Description
First Published in 2002. We are living in a time of rapid and radical social change. Modes and categories inherited from the past no longer seem to fit the reality experienced by a new generation. New Accents is intended as a positive response to the initiative offered by such a situation. Each volume in the series will seek to encourage rather than resist the process of change; to stretch rather than reinforce the boundaries that currently define literature and its academic study. This book introduces a theoretical framework for studying narrative fiction. A narrative recounts a story, a series of events in a temporal sequence.

A Criminology Of Narrative Fiction

Author: Rafe McGregor
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1529208068
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 186

Book Description
Drawing on complex narratives across film, TV, novels and graphic novels, this authoritative critical analysis demonstrates the value of fictional narratives as a tool for understanding, explaining and reducing crime and social harm. McGregor establishes an original theory of the criminological value of fiction.

The Rogue Narrative and Irish Fiction, 1660-1790

Author: Joe Lines
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 0815655193
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Book Description
With characteristic lawlessness and connection to the common man, the figure of the rogue commanded the world of Irish fiction from 1660 to 1790. During this period of development for the Irish novel, this archetypal figure appears over and over again. Early Irish fiction combined the picaresque genre, focusing on a cunning, witty trickster or pícaro, with the escapades of real and notorious criminals. On the one hand, such rogue tales exemplified the English stereotypes of an unruly Ireland, but on the other, they also personified Irish patriotism. Existing between the dual publishing spheres of London and Dublin, the rogue narrative explored the complexities of Anglo-Irish relations. In this volume, Lines investigates why writers during the long eighteenth-century so often turned to the rogue narrative to discuss Ireland. Alongside recognized works of Irish fiction, such as those by William Chaigneau, Richard Head, and Charles Johnston, Lines presents lesser-known and even anonymous popular texts. With consideration for themes of conflict, migration, religion, and gender, Lines offers up a compelling connection between the rogues themselves, marked by persistence and adaptability, and the ever-popular rogue narrative in this early period of Irish writing.

The Pace of Fiction

Author: Brian Gingrich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191899143
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
The Pace of Fiction redefines the literary history of the novel by analyzing its most elaborate feature: its pace. It moves from the rise of the novel to realism and modernism. It starts by tracing the evolution of two narrative units: scenes ("shown" slowly) and summaries ("told" swiftly). These units emerge from the conflict of epic and drama, gain shape in the commentaries of Fielding and Goethe, and become dynamically opposed in nineteenth-century realism. In Middlemarch, they rotate in regular sequence: summaries move swiftly until scenes slow them down; scenes play out dramatically until summaries sweep them forward; their movement imitates the conflict of fate and free will. Over the course of the nineteenth century, however, scenic impulses overtake summary storytelling. The reader sees the tendency already in Austen's dialogues, Hawthorne's tableaux, or Balzac's battering drama, and finds it in Jane Eyre's placement of summaries in private scenes. When Flaubert extends scenic vividness to all of his summaries, and when Henry James subordinates his summaries to scenic consciousness, the extreme pressure of scene upon summary brings the opposition of realist pacing to collapse. But other oppositions arise in the modernisms that follow. In the alternation of stasis and kinesis, of drifting thoughts and everyday actions, of stories and acts of storytelling—in Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Mann, Hemingway—pace gathers and creates meaning in new ways.

A Brief History of Underpants

Author: Christine Van Zandt
Publisher: Becker & Mayer
ISBN: 0760370605
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 50

Book Description
A Brief History of Underpants explores the history of underwear with zany facts and illustrations. The cover features an interactive reveal wheel that turns to show underwear through the ages.

Reading Narrative Fiction

Author: Seymour Benjamin Chatman
Publisher: Longman Publishing Group
ISBN: 9780023221118
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 638

Book Description
This short fiction anthology offers a more precise and extensive treatment of narrative technique than other books of its kind. Targeting the needs and interests of today's readers, the author uses down-to-earth language and builds on readers' familiarity with narrative devices in film, television, and other popular media to teach this new approach to literary analysis. While offering more technical depth, Chatman never overwhelms. He provides unusually clear and exact definitions of such terms as "characterization" and "point-of- view", along with many illustrations of how these techniques actually operate in short stories. His explanations and examples enable readers to read narratives with a new awareness of how they are constructed.