Essentials of the Theory of Fiction

by Hoffman, Michael J.; Murphy, Patrick D.

• ISBN13: 9780822318231
• ISBN10: 0822318237
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-12-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

What accounts for the power of stories to both entertain us and interpret our world? This question has compelled the attention of storytellers and students of literature alike--particularly in recent decades--and their answers have opened an important window on larger questions about the nature of culture, as well as of interpretation and understanding. This second edition of Essentials of the Theory of Fiction provides a comprehensive view of the theory of fiction from the nineteenth century, through modernism and postmodernism, to the present.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Preface to the Second Edition	ix
Preface to the First Edition	xi
Introduction	1	(13)
The Art of Fiction	14	(8)
Henry James
Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown	22	(14)
Virginia Woolf
Flat and Round Characters	36	(7)
E. M. Forster
Epic and Novel	43	(20)
M. M. Bakhtin
Spatial Form in Modern Literature	63	(14)
Joseph Frank
Manners, Morals, and the Novel	77	(15)
Lionel Trilling
Writing and the Novel	92	(8)
Roland Barthes
What Makes a Short Story Short?	100	(16)
Norman Friedman
Distance and Point of View An Essay in Classification	116	(18)
Wayne Booth
Marxist Aesthetics and Literary Realism	134	(13)
Georg Lukacs
Plot in the Modern Novel	147	(11)
J. Arthur Honeywell
The Concept of Point of View	158	(14)
Mitchell A. Leaska
The Concept of Character in Fiction	172	(9)
William H. Gass
Time and Narrative in A la recherche du temps perdu	181	(19)
Gerard Genette
The Literary Motif A Definition and Evaluation	200	(13)
William Freedman
Introduction to the Study of the Narratee	213	(21)
Gerald Prince
Realism Reconsidered	234	(12)
George Levine
Discourse Nonnarrated Stories	246	(12)
Seymour Chatman
Reading as Construction	258	(15)
Tzvetan Todorov
The Literature of Replenishment	273	(14)
John Barth
Defining the Short Story Impressionism and Form	287	(14)
Suzanne C. Ferguson
The Blackness of Blackness A Critique on the Sign and the Signifying Monkey	301	(25)
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Reading for the Plot	326	(22)
Peter Brooks
Mimesis and Diegesis in Modern Fiction	348	(24)
David Lodge
Breaking the Sentence Breaking the Sequence	372	(20)
Rachel Blau DuPlessis
The Documentary Novel and the Problem of Borders	392	(17)
Barbara Foley
Reading Ourselves Toward a Feminist Theory of Reading	409	(23)
Patrocinio P. Schweickart
Politics, Literary Form, and a Feminist Poetics of the Novel	432	(21)
Joanne S. Fryye
Toward a Feminist Narratology	453	(20)
Susan S. Lanser
``The Pastime of Past Time'' Fiction, History, Historiographical Metafication	473	(24)
Linda Hutcheon
Index	497