Basic Elements of Narrative

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

Preface ix

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

"This book has some very valuable pieces of narrative wisdom that would be useful to scholars in narrative theory, literary analysis and sociolinguistics...It is, however, a complete and solid companion for those con­cerned 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)

The Author

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).

BASIC ELEMENTS OF NARRATIVE

Basic Elements of Narrative outlines a way of thinking about what narrative is and how to identify its basic elements across the many communicative media in which stories are told and interpreted, exchanged and transformed. Providing a synopsis of key concepts developed by previous theorists, the book contributes original ideas to the growing body of scholarship on stories. Viewing narrative in three ways – as a cognitive structure, a type of text, and a resource for communicative interaction – this book characterizes stories as a basic human strategy for coming to terms with time, process, and change. Citing examples from literature, face-to-face interaction, graphic novels, and film, David Herman reveals what different stories have in common, and explores what remains constant when the same story is told in different media. Including a glossary of key terms, a full bibliography, and a comprehensive index, Basic Elements of Narrative is designed to be accessible to students as well as educated nonspecialists. The concise, up-to-date treatment of foundational concepts also makes this book an ideal reference for scholars in the field.