Basic Elements of Narrative
1. Edition January 2009
272 Pages, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Basic Elements of Narrative outlines a way of thinking about
what narrative is and how to identify its basic elements across
various media, introducing key concepts developed by previous
theorists and contributing original ideas to the growing body of
scholarship on stories.
* Includes an overview of recent developments in narrative
scholarship
* Provides an accessible introduction to key concepts in the
field
* Views narrative as a cognitive structure, type of text, and
resource for interpersonal communication
* Uses examples from literature, face to face interaction,
graphic novels, and film to explore the core features of
narrative
* Includes a glossary of key terms, full bibliography, and
comprehensive index
* Appropriate for multiple audiences, including students,
non-specialists, and experts in the field
Acknowledgments xiv
The Elements xvi
1 Getting Started: A Thumbnail Sketch of the Approach 1
Toward a Working Definition of Narrative 1
Profiles of Narrative 7
Narrative: Basic Elements 9
2 Framing the Approach: Some Background and Context 23
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Narrative and Narrative Theory 23
Major Trends in Recent Scholarship on Narrative 26
3 Back to the Elements: Narrative Occasions 37
Situating Stories 37
Sociolinguistic Approaches 40
Positioning Theory 55
The Narrative Communication Model 63
Conclusion 74
4 Temporality, Particularity, and Narrative: An Excursion into the Theory of Text Types 75
From Contexts of Narration to Narrative as a Type of Text 75
Text Types and Categorization Processes 79
Narrative as a Text-Type Category: Descriptions versus Stories versus Explanations 89
Coda: Text Types, Communicative Competence, and the Role of Stories in Science 100
5 The Third Element; or, How to Build a Storyworld 105
Narratives as Blueprints for Worldmaking 105
Narrative Ways of Worldmaking 108
Narrative Worlds: A Survey of Approaches 118
Configuring Narrative Worlds: The WHAT, WHERE, and WHEN Dimensions of Storyworlds 128
Worlds Disrupted: Narrativity and Noncanonical Events 133
6 The Nexus of Narrative and Mind 137
The Consciousness Factor 137
Consciousness across Narrative Genres 139
Experiencing Minds: What It's Like, Qualia, Raw Feels 143
Storied Minds: Narrative Foundations of Consciousness? 153
Appendix 161
Literary Narrative: Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" (1927) 161
Narrative Told during Face-to-Face Communication: UFO or the Devil (2002) 166
Excerpted Panels from Ghost World (1997), a Graphic Novel by Daniel Clowes 173
Screenshots from Terry Zwigoff's Film Version of Ghost World (2001) 178
Glossary 180
Notes 195
References 215
Index 235
would be useful to scholars in narrative theory, literary analysis
and sociolinguistics...It is, however, a complete and solid
companion for those con-cerned with the important task of
further developing the field of narrative inquiry." (Discourse
Studies, December 2010)
"In Basic Elements of Narrative the eminent narratologist
David Herman offers new ideas about what narrative is . . .The
interdisciplinary nature of this chicken-and-egg question-whether
narratives represent what it's like to live in our world or we
learn from narratives what it's like to live in our world-serves as
an excellent indication of the breadth of the audience for which
Herman's book will be thought-provoking." (Papers on Language
and Literature, 2010)
David Herman teaches in the Department of English at Ohio State University, where he co-founded Project Narrative, a new interdisciplinary initiative designed to promote stateof-the-art research and teaching in the area of narrative studies. He is editor of the Frontiers of Narrative book series and also the new journal Storyworlds, both published by the University of Nebraska Press. Having published many research articles on aspects of narrative, he is the author, editor, or coeditor of eight books in the field, including Universal Grammar and Narrative Form (1995), Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Theory (1999), Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative (2002), Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences (2003), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (coedited with Manfred Jahn and Marie-Laure Ryan, 2005), and The Cambridge Companion to Narrative (2007).
