The Nature of Narrative

by Robert Scholes, Robert H. Kellogg, James Phelan

For the past forty years The Nature of Narrative has been a seminal work for literary students, teachers, writers, and scholars. Countering the tendency to view the novel as the paradigm case of literary narrative, authors Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg in the original edition offered a compelling history of the genre narrative from antiquity to the twentieth-century, even as they carried out their main task of describing and analyzing the nature of narrative's main meaning, character, plot, and point of view. Their history emphasized the broad sweep of literary narrative from ancient times to the contemporary period, and it included a chapter on the oral heritage of written narrative and an appendix on the interior monologue in ancient texts.
The fortieth anniversary edition of this groundbreaking work has been revised and expanded to include a new preface and a lengthy chapter on developments in narrative theory since 1966 by James Phelan. This chapter describes the principles and practices of structuralist, cognitive, feminist, and rhetorical approaches to narrative, paying special attention to their work on plot, character, and narrative discourse.
A continued leader in the field of narrative studies, The Nature of Narrative offers unique and invaluable histories of both narrative and narrative theory.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Writing, Nonfiction, Literature, Film, Research, Lit Crit

416 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Robert E. Scholes was an American literary critic and theorist. He is known for his ideas on fabulation and metafiction.

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The authors refuse to look at the novel as the apotheosis of narratives, giving just as much (or more) weight to the early oral forms, epics, sagas, and romances. In fact they don't limit narrative to fiction. It includes history (Xenophon, Herodotus, Thucydides) and autobiography. Interesting read.

I see that Thomas J. Roberts recommended this to me. Probably in his book "When is Something Fiction?"

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A seminal text in the history and systematic understanding of narrative. The chapters by Scholes and Kellogg are wonderfully lucid, the concluding chapter by James Phelan intelligent and packed with information, but much more jargon-laden and less accessible to the intelligent layperson. Overall, indispensible if you're interested in how narratives work and why they matter.

[Gerardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un buon manuale. Uno dei pregi di questo testo è che risulta essere un'introduzione davvero chiara di ciò che è stata la narrativa occidentale. Inoltre - e questo forse lo considero il suo più grande punto di forza - tutti gli elementi che vengono presentati come 'caratteristiche' o semplicemente appartenenti al mondo della narrazione vengono analizzati sotto una prospettiva storica; la quale, però, non è 'progressiva' (non intendendo, quindi, una storia che vada da forme più primitive a forme più nobili),bensì 'cronologica' permettendoci di osservare gli sviluppi strutturali o i loro ritorni di un'arte che ha punti di grande interesse sia nelle forme di narrazione più antica, sia in quelle più recenti. In sostanza, i testi ultimi non sostituiscono né offuscano la grandezza di quelli del passato. Questo non è poco, vista la resistenza da parte del lettore contemporaneo, a volte anche colto, nei confronti dei 'classici'.

Un altro elemento molto importante, spesso trascurato o ignorato, è il fatto che i due autori riescono a mettere in collegamento la forma romanzo considerata recente con quella che è la tradizione classica occidentale, mostrandone la continuità con essa e i rimandi. Tutto questo è importante per far capire che soffermarsi sulla narrativa contemporanea, tralasciando quella antica, significa limitarsi a una prospettiva sul mondo narrativo piuttosto ristretta.

Il testo è, in quanto manuale, piuttosto schematico su alcuni punti per amore di chiarezza, ma rimanda molto spesso a 'Mimesis' di Auerbach e 'Anatomia della critica' di Frye, testi critici sicuramente di levatura maggiore. Quindi si può concludere che tale testo può essere un ottimo preludio verso testi critici ormai diventati classici, i quali però richiedono al lettore una certa preparazione e sicuramente molta attenzione.

[J.I.]

A solid and interesting look at narrative forms up to the period of modernism. The final essay in the back is pretty lacking, but that's sometimes what happens when an author change happens. I would still highly recommend this to people interested in the progression of thoughts on narrative.

[Cullen Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Many will inevitably find a lot of the material dated, and a lot of the writing repetitive, but the book shines in places (particularly the section on meaning in narrative) as well as James Phelan's valuable contribution towards the end of the work.

[Bigpapa44 · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most interesting in this book is that you can know more ancient stories through the pieces that authors wrote in the book. And I think it may be good for you to learn the way how these guys write a paper. I mean the methodologies of theirs.

[Teresa]

Meh, it's a good start to narrative theory.

[Ozlem Karadag · Rating 3 out of 5]

a nice book to study the art of narrative, Greek and Latin narrative techniques at its core refers to 18th, 19th and 20th cent. literature as well.