Experiencing Fiction: Judgments, Progressions, and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative

by James Phelan

In Experiencing Fiction, James Phelan develops a provocative and engaging affirmative answer to the question, “Can we experience narrative fiction in similar ways?” Phelan grounds that answer in two elements of narrative located at the intersection between authorial design and reader judgments and progressions. Phelan contends that focusing on the three main kinds of judgment—interpretive, ethical, and aesthetic—and on the principles underlying a narrative’s movement from beginning to end reveals the experience of reading fiction to be potentially sharable. In Part One, Phelan skillfully analyzes progressions and judgments in narratives with a high degree of Jane Austen’s Persuasion , Toni Morrison’s Beloved , Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever,” and Ian McEwan’s Atonement . In Part Two, Phelan turns his attention to the different relationships between judgments and progressions in hybrid forms—in the lyric narratives of Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” Sandra Cisneros’s “Woman Hollering Creek,” and Robert Frost’s “Home Burial,” and in the portrait narratives of Alice Munro’s “Prue” and Ann Beattie’s “Janus.” More generally, Phelan moves back and forth between the exploration of theoretical principles and the detailed work of interpretation. As a result, Experiencing Fiction combines Phelan’s fresh and compelling readings of numerous innovative narratives with his fullest articulation of the rhetorical theory of narrative.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Theory, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published October 8, 2007

About the author

James Phelan is Distinguished University Professor and Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Ohio State University. He received his BA from Boston College (1972) and his MA and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1977). He began as an Assistant Professor at Ohio State in 1977, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1983, to Professor in 1989, to Humanities Distinguished Professor in 2004, and to Distinguished University Professor in 2008. In 2004 he received the University’s Distinguished Research Award and in 2007 the Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award. Phelan served as Department Chair from 1994-2002.

Rather than working in only one historical period, Phelan gravitates toward theoretical issues or problems, most often connected with the genre of narrative, and pursues them in texts from different periods. His recent work, however, has focused primarily on twentieth-century British and American narrative, and he now claims the twentieth-century as a specialty. Much of his research has been devoted to developing a comprehensive rhetorical theory of narrative. He has written about style in Worlds from Words, about character and narrative progression in Reading People, Reading Plots, about technique, ethics, and audiences in Narrative as Rhetoric, about character narration in Living to Tell about It, and about progression (again) and reader judgments in Experiencing Fiction. His forthcoming book, Reading the American Novel, 1920-2010, offers rhetorical readings of ten canonical novels written across this ninety year period.

Phelan has contributed a new chapter on “Narrative Theory, 1966-2006 for the 40th Anniversary edition of Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg’s landmark book, The Nature of Narrative. In addition, he collaborated with David Herman, Peter J. Rabinowitz, Brian Richardson, and Robyn Warhol on Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates (Phelan and Rabinowitz co-authored the sections of that book on rhetorical theory.) Phelan has published well over a hundred essays and the autobiographical journal Beyond the Tenure Track.

Phelan’s editorial work is also extensive. He has edited or co-edited seven volumes in narrative studies: Reading Narrative, the Blackwell Companion to Narrative (with Peter J. Rabinowitz), Joseph Conrad (with Jakob Lothe and Jeremy Hawthorn), Teaching Narrative Theory (with Brian McHale and David Herman), Fact, Fiction, and Form: Selected Essays of Ralph W. Rader (with David Richter), and After Testimony: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Holocaust Narrative for the Future (with Jakob Lothe and Susan Suleiman). In addition, with Gerald Graff, he has edited Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Case Study in Critical Controversy, which was awarded the 1997 Nancy Dasher Award by the College English Association of Ohio as the best book on pedagogy from an Ohio faculty member for 1994-96, and The Tempest: A Case Study in Critical Controversy.

Since 1992, Phelan has been the editor of Narrative, the journal of the International Society for the Study of Narrative and winner of the 1993 CELJ Award for Best New Journal. Since 1993, he has been co-editor, with Peter J. Rabinowitz, and since 2010, with Robyn Warhol, of the Ohio State University Press series on the Theory and Interpretation of Narrative. The series has now published over 35 books.

Reviews

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Again, a total game changer. By the same adored professor. He's brilliant and accessible and does what I plan to do (not exactly, and certainly not as well, but still) so clearly I have to read his stuff. I gross my best friend out by calling him "Daddy Phelan" and sometimes singing "Papa, can you heeeeaaaaaaar me?" when referring to his work. Because clearly I'm insane.

This book is going to feature prominently in my dissertation and future work, and also changed the way I talk about literature. It hasn't changed the way I read, per se, because what he manages to do (like much of the rhetorical critics I've been reading) is give words to ideas I already had. However, his chapter (and subsequent work) on Toni Morrison's Beloved makes me itch to get back to my 11th graders and reteach it. Any teacher friends want a sub? That said, any teacher friends interested in reading his chapter on Beloved, let me know and I'll scan it and email as a pdf. (His other chapters are great, too, natch, but don't deal with anything I taught prior.)

This book deals with larger issues than just character narration, so it is a) more technically dense, but also b) more useful across the literary board.