Essentials of the Theory of Fiction

521 Pages·2005·1.469 MB·English

by  Michael J. Hoffman, Patrick D. Murphy

ESSENTIALS
of the Theory of Fiction

ESSENTIALS
Theory of Fiction
of the
michael j. hoffman
edited by
patrick d. murphy
and
[ THIRD EDITION ]
Duke University Press
Durham and London
2005
∫ 2005 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of
America on acid-free paper $
Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan
Typeset in Janson by Keystone
Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear
on the last printed page of this book.
[CONTENTS]
Preface to the Third Edition vii
Introduction 1
1 henry james The Art of Fiction 13
2 virginia woolf Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown 21
3 e. m. forster Flat and Round Characters 35
4 m. m. bakhtin Epic and Novel 43
5 joseph frank Spatial Form in Modern Literature 61
6 roland barthes Writing and the Novel 75
7 wayne booth Distance and Point of View: An Essay in
Classification 83
8 georg lukács Marxist Aesthetics and Literary Realism 101
9 william h. gass The Concept of Character in Fiction 113
10 gérard genette Time and Narrative in A la recherche
du temps perdu 121
11 seymour chatman Discourse: Nonnarrated Stories 139
12 tzvetan todorov Reading as Construction 151
13 john barth The Literature of Replenishment 165
14 henry louis gates, jr. The Blackness of Blackness:
A Critique on the Sign and the Signifying Monkey 177
15 peter brooks Reading for the Plot 201
16 rachel blau duplessis Breaking the Sentence;
Breaking the Sequence 221
17 barbara foley The Documentary Novel and the Problem
of Borders 239
18 joanne s. frye Politics, Literary Form, and a Feminist
Poetics of the Novel 255
19 linda hutcheon ‘‘The Pastime of Past Time’’: Fiction,
History, Historiographical Metafiction 275
20 helen lock ‘‘Building Up from Fragments’’: The Oral
Memory Process in Some Recent African-American Written
Narratives 297
21 wendy b. faris Scheherazade’s Children: Magical Realism
and Postmodern Fiction 311
22 jon thiem The Textualization of the Reader in Magical
Realist Fiction 339
23 ruth ronen Are Fictional Worlds Possible? 351
24 ursula k. heise Chronoschisms 361
25 susan s. lanser Queering Narratology 387
26 catherine burgass A Brief Story of Postmodern Plot 399
27 john brenkman On Voice 411
28 j. yellowlees douglas What Interactive Narratives Do
That Print Narratives Cannot 443
29 joseph tabbi A Media Migration: Toward a Potential
Literature 471
Biographical Notes 491
Permissions 495
Index 499
[PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION ]
When in the mid-1980s we began to think about this book, we did some
research into our potential competition. We discovered at that time that no
collection of essays on the theory of fiction had been published for more
than ten years and that all the older editions were now out of print. There
were a number of anthologies of literary theory, which often included an
essay or two on the theory of fiction, but there were no collections that
served serious students of fiction who were interested in covering that field
or wanted a text that their own students could use in a course on the novel.
It seemed clear then, and it remains so now, that there is a serious need
for such a text, given the proliferation of courses on prose fiction at colleges
and universities and because the theory of fiction is a burgeoning subdivi-
sion in the study of literary theory. What we have tried to provide in Essen-
tials of the Theory of Fiction is a single text that contains the best and most
current essays written on the major topics in the theory of fiction so that
readers can experience that field at its highest level.
We conceive of our audience as consisting of educated general readers as
well as scholars. Our criteria of selection are (1) those texts traditionally con-
sidered ‘‘classics,’’ (2) those that reflect the concerns of the most important
scholars and critics, (3) those that are the best in their quality of thought and
exposition, and (4) those that are the most readable and well written. The
reader should know that we have excluded essays that we found needlessly
obscure or poorly written, no matter how much they might have repre-
sented the most ‘‘advanced’’ ideas.
Within these strictures, our focus in all three editions of Essentials has
been both historical and topical, so we present the essays in chronological
order of their publication. We have also tried to represent those topics that
have defined the field, and in an attempt to stay current with that discussion,
we have in each edition replaced almost a third of the essays that appeared in
the previous one.
Some readers may wish to read the book straight through in order to
follow the field’s historical development; others may wish to dip in here and
there, following their interests of the moment. Instructors may wish to use
the essays to introduce fictional topics in conjunction with the reading of
specific stories, novellas, or novels. Experience also shows that the book can
be used in an advanced undergraduate or graduate course that stresses the
historical development of fiction and its accompanying criticism.
In the introduction, we introduce readers to the field, state something
about its history, and describe some of the categories and terms under which
discussion of narrative theory has taken place. Unlike the introductions to
many anthologies, ours says comparatively little about each of the essays we
have chosen or about their authors, letting the essays speak for themselves.
Nonetheless, careful readers will note that in a discipline like this one, such
essays always exist in a kind of dialogue—occasionally explicit, perhaps
most often implicit—with one another.
Having worked together for almost twenty years on three editions of this
book, we have experienced both the joys and the synergy connected with
collaboration. This is certainly a better book than either of us could have
produced alone. In addition, however, there are others who deserve a word
of thanks. In particular, we are grateful to Reynolds Smith, our editor at
Duke University Press, for all three versions of Essentials. His enthusiastic
support and thoughtful editing have made our job a pleasure. Patrick Mur-
phy wishes to thank Danielle Impellitier, who, as his graduate research
assistant, helped locate potential new essays for the third edition. We both
would like to thank all the professors and students who have provided
comments about the first two editions that have helped us to improve and
update Essentials with this third edition.
viii ] preface to the third edition
[INTRODUCTION ]
Who was the first storyteller? A lonely hunter consoling his fellows on a
cold northern evening far from home? A mother calming a frightened child
with tales of gods and demigods? A lover telling his intended of fantastic
exploits, designed to foster his courtship? The reader can multiply the
number of possibilities, but we will never know the answer, for the impulse
to tell stories is as old as the development of speech, far older than the
invention of writing. It has deep psychological springs we do not fully
comprehend, but the need to make up characters, and to place them in
worlds that are parallel to our own or are perhaps wildly at variance with it,
is part of the history of all peoples, cultures, and countries; there is no
known human group that has not told tales.
Oral cultures are great sources for students of the theory of fiction.
Researchers have established that in those that still exist, the storyteller (or
bard) is highly revered for the ability to relate from memory a number of
verse narratives of enormous length, told within the regularities of meter
and conventional figures of language that aid the memory, containing the
stories of characters known to listeners who share in a common folklore and
myth. These stories, about familiar characters in recognizable situations, do
not engage their audience in the mysteries of an unresolved plot, for the
listeners know the story already, have heard it told before, and are often as
familiar with its events as they are with events in their own lives. Then why
do they listen? Beyond the story itself, the audience concerns itself with the
voice and manner of the teller of the tale; the texture and density of the
story’s material; the fit of the characters with the audience’s expectations
about how human beings, gods, demigods, and mythic heroes behave in
a world something like their own. For such people—as for ourselves—
fictions have an extraordinary explanatory power; they make clear why, for
instance, there are seasons, why there is an underworld for the spirits of
dead ancestors, why there is one royal line of descent and not another.
We begin this collection of essays on the theory of fiction with a discus-