The Nature of Narrative: Fortieth Anniversary Edition, Revised and Expanded

405 Pages·2006·18.78 MB·English

by  Robert Scholes

The Nature of Narrative
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THE NATURE
OF NARRATIVE
FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY EDITION,
REVISED AND EXPANDED
ROBERT SCHOLES
JAMES PHELAN
ROBERT KELLOGG
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
2006
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Copyright © 1966, 2006 by Oxford University Press
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Aaron's Rod by D. H. Lawrence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988)
© the Estate of Freida Lawrence Ravagli. Reproduced by permission of the
proprietor and Pollinger Limited.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scholes, Robert E.
The nature of narrative / Robert Scholes, James Phelan,
Robert Kellogg.—Fortieth anniversary ed., rev. and expanded.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-515175-6 (cloth)
ISBN-I3: 978-0-19-515176-3 (pbk.)
1. Fiction—History and criticism.
I. Phelan, James, 1951-
II. Kellogg, Robert.
III. Title.
PN345I.S3 2006 809.3-—dc22
2006009443
In Memory of
Robert L. Kellogg
(1928-2004)
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Contents
Preface to the Second Edition by Robert Scholes, ix
Preface to the Second Edition by James Phelan, xiii
1. The Narrative Tradition, 3
2. The Oral Heritage of Written Narrative, 17
3. The Classical Heritage of Modern Narrative, 57
4. Meaning in Narrative, 82
5. Character in Narrative, 160
6. Plot in Narrative, 207
7. Point of View in Narrative, 240
8. Narrative Theory, 1966-2006: A Narrative, 283
Appendix, 337
Notes, 355
Bibliography, 373
Index, 379
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Preface to the Second Edition
by Robert Scholes
Forty years is a long time for an academic book to remain in print—
especially one written by a couple of brash young scholars with no
academic standing to speak of. But that is the case of the present
volume. The book began in discussions between Bob Kellogg and
myself about a sophomore course we had invented at the University
of Virginia, in which we spent a year covering narrative literature
from Homer to Joyce. We taught the course more than once and used
to walk home together talking about it nearly every day. The book
emerged from those classes and those conversations—and from the
studying the course required on our parts, which was considerable.
In some ways, we were the ideal people to have done such a
course. Kellogg had gone to Harvard for graduate study, driven by
an interest in James Joyce. Since he was a thorough person, he started
his studies with the middle ages—and never emerged from them.
When we met he was working on Old Icelandic literature in par-
ticular, but his mastery of both medieval European literature and
literary modernism was impressive. I had gone to Cornell, partly
because their graduate program allowed for a concentration in the
novel as a genre, which was quite rare in the 19505. My MA thesis
and doctoral dissertation were in twentieth century American and
English fiction, but my training covered the novel as a whole, and at
Virginia I taught everything from eighteenth century British fiction