Basic Elements of Narrative

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiv

The Elements xvi

1 Getting Started: A Thumbnail Sketch of the Approach 1

Toward a Working Definition of Narrative 1

Profiles of Narrative 7

Narrative: Basic Elements 9

2 Framing the Approach: Some Background and Context 23

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Narrative and Narrative Theory 23

Major Trends in Recent Scholarship on Narrative 26

3 Back to the Elements: Narrative Occasions 37

Situating Stories 37

Sociolinguistic Approaches 40

Positioning Theory 55

The Narrative Communication Model 63

Conclusion 74

4 Temporality, Particularity, and Narrative: An Excursion into the Theory of Text Types 75

From Contexts of Narration to Narrative as a Type of Text 75

Text Types and Categorization Processes 79

Narrative as a Text-Type Category: Descriptions versus Stories versus Explanations 89

Coda: Text Types, Communicative Competence, and the Role of Stories in Science 100

5 The Third Element; or, How to Build a Storyworld 105

Narratives as Blueprints for Worldmaking 105

Narrative Ways of Worldmaking 108

Narrative Worlds: A Survey of Approaches 118

Configuring Narrative Worlds: The WHAT, WHERE, and WHEN Dimensions of Storyworlds 128

Worlds Disrupted: Narrativity and Noncanonical Events 133

6 The Nexus of Narrative and Mind 137

The Consciousness Factor 137

Consciousness across Narrative Genres 139

Experiencing Minds: What It’s Like, Qualia, Raw Feels 143

Storied Minds: Narrative Foundations of Consciousness? 153

Appendix 161

Literary Narrative: Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” (1927) 161

Narrative Told during Face-to-Face Communication: UFO or the Devil (2002) 166

Excerpted Panels from Ghost World (1997), a Graphic Novel by Daniel Clowes 173

Screenshots from Terry Zwigoff’s Film Version of Ghost World (2001) 178

Glossary 180

Notes 195

References 215

Index 235