Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction

by Sternberg, Meir

• ISBN13: 9780253207913
• ISBN10: 0253207916
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-03-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

Ò . . . this is one of the few books on narrative worth reading and rereading, a study that will makeÑor should makeÑa difference in the way we read narrative.Ó ÑNineteenth Century Fiction ÒThis is a remarkable book: original, clear-sighted, and luminously focused on a subject that has never been explored nearly so systematically or intensively. . . . It will join the small canon of books written in English that must stand on the shelves of anyone working with problems of fictional theory and narrative technique.Ó ÑDorrit Cohn, Harvard University In the past decade Meir Sternberg has come to be recognized as one of the most exciting minds working in the areas of literary and biblical literary criticism. His Poetics of Biblical Narrative is one of the major books of the past decade. Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction, long out of print, is now available in a paperback edition, providing another window into the mind of this exciting scholar. In it, Sternberg brings his powerful intellect to bear on a variety of ancient and modern masterpiecesÑHomerÕs Odyssey, the Bible, Fielding, Trollope, Balzac, Jane Austen, Henry James, and Faulkner, among others. He is interested in such questions as the strategy the storyteller uses to exploit the temporal potentialities in art, and how the ordering of information relates to other aspects of fiction, such as point of view, spatial structure, verbal patterning, and generic tone.

Table of Contents

What Is Exposition? An Essay in Temporal Delimitation	p. 1
Exposition and Order of Presentation: Some Preliminary Notes	p. 35
Delayed and Distributed Exposition in the Odyssey: The Dynamics of Narrative Interest	p. 56
Order of Presentation, Delayed and Distributed Exposition, and Strategies of Rhetorical Control	p. 90
The Rhetoric of Anticipatory Caution: First Impressions in "First Impressions" and the Poetics of Jane Austen	p. 129
Retardatory Structure, Expositional Suspension, and the Detective Story	p. 159
A Plea for Preliminary and Concentrated Exposition: The Cases of Trollope and Balzac	p. 183
Expositional Motivation, Temporal Structure, and Point of View (1): Varieties of Omniscient Narration	p. 236
Expositional Motivation, Temporal Structure, and Point of View (2): Restricted and Self-Restricted Narration	p. 276
Notes	p. 307
Index	p. 325
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