Narrative fiction
Subtitle: contemporary poetics
By: Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan.
Series: New accents (Routledge (Firm))
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1989
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 173
Subjects: Narration (Rhetoric)
Description: "Newspaper reports, history books, novels, films, comic strips, pantomime, dance, gossip and psychoanalytic sessions are only some of the narratives which permeate our lives. One type of narrative comprises the subject of this book - 'narrative fiction' whether in the form of novel, short story or narrative poem. What is a narrative? What is narrative fiction? How does it differ from other kinds of narrative? What features turn a discourse into a narrative text? By turning her attention to these and other questions Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan provides a synthesis of contemporary approaches to narrative fiction, considering in particular Anglo-American New Criticism, Russian Formalism, French Structuralism, the Tel-Aviv School of Poetics and the Phenomenology of Reading. In contrast to other studies, Narrative Fiction is organized around the issues involved - for example, events, time, focalization, characterization, narration, the text and its reading - rather than the individual theorists or approaches. By following such a course Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan is able to offer some personal views on modifications to the theories and, while presenting an analysis and a description of the system governing all fictional narratives, she also suggests how individual narratives can be studied against the background of this general system. To illustrate the many aspects of her study, numerous examples are drawn from texts of different periods and national literatures."--Back cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [133]-159) and index.