Showing papers on "Narratology published in 1990"

What's Wrong with Postmodernism : Critical Theory and the Ends of Philosophy

Abstract: In What's Wrong with Postmodernism Norris critiques the "postmodern-pragmatist malaise" of Baudrillard, Fish, Rorty, and Lyotard. In contrast he finds a continuing critical impulse-an "enlightened or emancipatory interest"-in thinkers like Derrida, de Man, Bhaskar, and Habermas. Offering a provocative reassessment of Derrida's influence on modern thinking, Norris attempts to sever the tie between deconstruction and American literary critics who, he argues, favor endless, playful, polysemic interpretation at the expense of systematic argument. As he explores leftist attempts to arrive at an accommodation with postmodernism, Norris addresses the politics of deconstruction, the issue of men in feminism, Habermas' quarrel with Derrida, narrative theory as a hermeneutic paradigm, musical aesthetics in relation to literary theory, and various aspects of postmodern debate. A chapter on Stanley Fish brings several of these topics together and offers a generalized statement on the function of current criticism.

Fictional Narrative, Factual Narrative

Abstract: If words have meaning (or even multiple meanings), then "narratology"-whether in its formal aspect, as the study of narrative discourse, or its thematic aspect, as the analysis of the sequences of events and actions related by this discourse-ought by rights to concern itself with stories of all kinds, fictional and otherwise. It is evident, however, that the two branches of narratology have until now devoted their attention almost exclusively to the behavior and objects of fictional narrative alone.' And this has not been a simple empirical choice, implying no prejudice toward whatever might, for the time being, have been explicitly excluded from consideration; rather it has involved the implicit privileging of fictional narrative, which has been hypostatized as narrative par excellence, or as the model for all narratives whatsoever. The few researchers-Paul Ricoeur, Hayden White, or Paul Veyne, for instance-who have shown any interest in the figures or intrigues of historical narrative, have done so from the perspective of some other discipline: philosophy of temporality, rhetoric, episte-

Deviant focalisation in Virgil's Aeneid

Abstract: My subject is point of view in the Aeneid . I want to make some theoretical points about that concept, and to discuss some examples. In writing this paper, however, I have come to realise that underneath there lies an attempt to come to terms with the work on Virgil of two of my elders, betters, and friends, Oliver Lyne and Gian Biagio Conte, to whom this piece is offered with affection. But I shall not try to conceal the Oedipal nature of these encounters. As will be seen, there is also an element of prolepsis : I want to forestall a particular line of interpretation about the Aeneid which I sense is about to make its appearance. In my title I use the term ‘focalisation’ rather than ‘point of view’. The term is Genette's, later taken up especially by Mieke Bal. I use it for three reasons. First, I believe the reason that led Genette to coin it was a valid one, and perhaps the single most important proposition in his narratology. Genette criticised traditional accounts of point of view for confusing two distinct questions: ‘who speaks?’, and ‘who sees?’. In relation to any textual feature, the answers to these questions may be different. For the first phenomenon, we have the term ‘voice’, and it is helpful to have a separate term for the second; that is, focalisation.

Physician--Patient Communication as Interpersonal Rhetoric: A Narrative Approach

Abstract: The medical interview is identified as a rhetorical situation in terms of its qualities of intentionality, strategy, relationship, and transaction. This article explores the ways in which patients and physicians shape their discourse in attempts to persuade, that is, gain cooperation from, one another. The accumulating literature on narrative theory, including that of Fisher, Donnelly, Cassell, Brody, and Kleinman, is reviewed as a promising rhetorical approach. Based on this body of theory, a narrative analysis of a doctor-patient encounter is used to demonstrate the utility of this perspective in interpreting and assessing the dynamics of the medical encounter as rhetoric. The methodology used is discussed in terms of generalizing its application to other medical interviews.

Telling in Time (I): Chronology and Narrative Theory

Abstract: My main title has two bearings on narrative, one necessary, the other optional, one directed to the medium and the other to the object of narration. On the one hand, telling in time is telling in a temporal medium, where all items and structures and effects must unfold in an ordered sequence. Whether viewed from the transmitting or the receiving end, communication there proceeds along a continuum. This is evidently a sine qua non for verbal storytelling, as for all literature and discourse in language, but not for them alone. It applies no less necessarily to a variety of syncretic, multimedia forms of discoursedance, theatre, opera, cinema-whose extension in space yet combines with an irreversible progression in time. Whatever the grouping of their signs at any given moment, it cannot so much as freeze, let alone develop or regroup, except from moment to moment along the communicative process. Nor is this because they signify a narrative-which they usually do-but rather because, like narrative, their signifiers follow a line even in their least narrative moments, as when describing a place or a state of affairs. Temporality in the sense of discourse sequentiality (linearity, directionality) thus controls an assortment of media, art forms, representations. And the straining against the "tyranny of time" throughout the ages, in modernism, for example, only reaffirms and redefines the tyrant's power with each abortive rebellion. On the other hand, in a sense limited and optional to narrative (factual, fictional, epic, dramatic, operatic, cinematic) as the represen-

Biblical Narrative in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: A Study in Hermeneutics and Theology

Abstract: Although Paul Ricoeur's writings are widely and appreciatively read by theologians, this book offers a full, sympathetic yet critical account of Ricoeur's theory of narrative interpretation and its contribution to theology. Unlike many previous studies of Ricoeur, Part I argues that Ricoeur's hermeneutics must be viewed in the light of his overall philosophical agenda, as a fusion and continuation of the unfinished projects of Kant and Heidegger. Particularly helpful is the focus on Ricoeur's recent narrative theory as the context in which Ricoeur deals with problems of time and the creative imagination; and it becomes clear that narrative stands at the crossroads of Ricoeur's search for the meaning of human being as well as his search for the meaning of texts. Part II examines the potential of Ricoeur's narrative theory for resolving certain theological problems, such as the dichotomy betweens the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.

The Victorian Novel

Abstract: Acknowledgements Textual Note Introduction 1 Early Criticism of the Victorian Novel from James Oliphant to David Cecil The State of the Novel in 1900 University Study of Victorian Literature Principles of Literary History The Approach of George Saintsbury Extract from Saintsburya s The English Novel (1913) EM Forster and Critiquing Literary History The Modernist Construction of Victorian Fiction David Cecila s View of Victorian Novels and Culture Extract from Cecila s Early Victorian Novelists (1934) Further Reading 2 FR Leavis and The Great Tradition Outline of the Chapter Leavisa s Influence The Principles of Leavisa Criticism The Idea of Tradition 1980sa Reactions to the Politics of Leavisa Criticism The Principles of Leavisa The Great Tradition (1948) Its Treatment of Dickens and Leavisa Later Views on Him Extract from The Great Tradition Further Reading 3 Feminism and the Victorian Novel in the 1970s The Influence of 1970sa Feminism Outline of the Chapter Ellen Moersa Literary Women (1976) Elaine Showalter and the Female Tradition Discussion of Showaltera s A Literature of Their Own (1977) 1980sa Response to Showalter Extract from A Literature of Their Own Significance of Gilbert and Gubara s The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) The Madwoman Discussed Gilbertand Gubara s Appraisal of The Madwoman Extract from The Madwoman Further Reading 4 Realism Preliminary Questions Outline of the Chapter Histories of Realism Ian Watta s The Rise of the Novel (1957) Discussed The Cartesian Certainties of Realism Watt Critiqued Alternative Histories of Realism Epistemology of Realism Ioan Williams and Realisma s Certainties George Levinea s View of Realism and Self--Consciousness Extract from Levinea s The Realist Imagination (1981) Psychological Coherence in Realism: Bersani A Future for Astyanax (1976) Politics of Classic Realism and Coherence Criticized in 1980s Extract from Belseya s Critical Practice (1980) Belsey Critiqued DA Millera s The Novel and the Police (1988) Discussed The Turn Against Realism in the 1980s Interest in Gothic Interest in the not--Said of Realism The Feminist Recuperation of Realism in 1980s Extract from Boumehlaa s a Realism and the Ends of Feminisma (1988) New Historicism and Historicizing the Real Rothfielda s Vital Signs (1992) Nancy Armstrong and Kate Flint Conclusion Further Reading 5 Social--Problem Fiction Historicism and Feminism What is Social--Problem Fiction? Outline of the First Part of Chapter Cazamiana s Reading in 1903 The Significance of Raymond Williams Williamsa s a Structures of Feelinga Williamsa s Criticisms of Social--Problem Fiction The Knowable Community in Williamsa s The English Novel (1970) Extract from The English Novel Williamsa s Generalizations Sheila Smitha s Particularization of Williams More Problems Found in Social--Problem Fiction Brantlingera s Historicization: a Context for Social--Problem Fiction 1 New Historicism: Further Contexts Context 2 Gallagher and the Discourse over Industrialism Context 3 Mary Poovey and the Social Body Extract from Mary Pooveya s Making a Social Body (1995) Criticisms of New Historicism Guy and Individualism in the Victorian Mind Extract from Guya s The Victorian Social--Problem Novel (1996) Feminism and the Social--Problem Novel Outline of Second Part of Chapter Recent Work on Elizabeth Gaskell Bergmanna s Views on Strong Female Characters Kestnera s Canon Revision Nord, Female Novelists, and Transgression Harman, Female Novelists, and Transformation The Future of Social--Problem Fiction Criticism Further Reading 6 Language and Form Outline of the Chapter Language and The Victorian Novel General Linguistic Studies of the Novel Language of Individual Victorian Novelists Chapmana s Forms of Speech (1994) Relation of Arguments to Thinking about Realism Other Documentary Work on Victorian Language Bakhtin and Language Studies Inghama s Views on Gender and Class Extract from Ingham The Language of Gender and Class (1996) Bakhtin and Literature Studies Form and The Victorian Novel Henry James on Monster Novels Van Ghenta s Reaction and Emphasis on Unity Extract from Van Ghent The English Novel Form and Function (1953) Barbara Hardya s Reaction: the Advantages of Fluidity in Form Hillis Miller and Form without God Deconstruction and Incoherence Garretta s Deconstructionist Views of Multiplot Fiction Extract from Garretta s The Victorian Multiplot Novel (1980) Keen and Narrative Annexes Approaches to Form in 1980s and 90s Summarized Further Reading (Including Narratology) 7 Science and the Victorian Novel Outline of the Chapter Early Approaches to Field Stevensona s Darwin Among the Poets (1932) Discussed Henkina s Darwinism in the English Novel (1940) Discussed Cossletta s Work on Overlaps of Science and Literature Beer on Darwin and Fiction Extract from Beera s Darwina s Plots (1983) Science and Literature Read Alongside Each Other Levinea s Study of Novelists Who Did Not Read Science Levinea s Influential Concept of the One Culture Extract from Levinea s Darwin and the Novelists (1988) Dickens and Science 1990sa Interest in Pathology and Mind Sciences Helen Small and Lovea s Madness Smalla s Critique of the One Culture Model Sally Shuttleworth on Psychology Logan on Hysteria, Wood on Neurology Eugenics and the Novel Further Reading 8 The History of the Book Diversity of History of the Book Studies Outline of the Chapter Bibliographical Work of Relevance to Victorian Fiction Butt and Tillotson and the Material Conditions of Authorship Altick and the Reader The Three--Volume Novel and Its Problems Extract from Sutherlanda s Victorian Novelists and Publishers (1976) Feltes and Marxist Readings of Production and Authorship Feminist Revision of Sutherland Publishing History Working--Class Fiction Recovered 1990a s Emphasis on the Reader Flint and the Woman Reader Gender and the Marketplace Catherine Judda s a Male Pseudonyms and Femalea Authority in Victorian Englanda (1995) Further Reading 9 Postcolonial Readings Range and Diversity of Postcolonialism Central Interests of Postcolonialism Outline of the Chapter Early Views of Victorian Fiction and Empire Saida s Orientalism (1978) and Its Consequences for Fiction Spivaka s Critique of Feminism The Embeddedness of Fiction in Colonial Ideology Extract from Spivak a Three Womena s Texts and Critique of Imperialisma Brantlingera s Rule of Darkness (1988) and Explicit Engagements with Empire Bivona and the Hidden Presence of Empire Perera and Colonial Anxieties Sharpe and Fictiona s Collusion with Ideology Richards and the Imperial Archive Azim and the Imperial Form of Fiction Extract from Azima s The Colonial Rise of the Novel (1993) Deirdre David, Women, and the Empire Meyer and Fictiona s Double Relationship with Colonial Ideology Extract from Imperialism at Home (1996) Further Reading Index

The point of narratology

Abstract: By the accidents of life, I started out in the literary profession as a narratologist, having French as my foreign language and structuralism as my training. By another accident, I started in Israel. As one of the young, unknown invitees of the Synopsis 2 Conference where an unusual number of established stars were mixed with a good number of beginners like myself, with the most fortunate result, I optimistically brought a formalist, quite technical paper written in French to a conference where most people tended to speak English and some to suspect formalism. My feeling awkwardly out of place was to be combatted by actively participating in the debates, and that this was possible, that within half a day I felt excited and encouraged while having completely revised my views of narratology, was due to the exceptional intellectual and humane qualities of this conference. I have been to a large number of conferences since, but just as childhood bliss is irretrievably lost in later life, so did I never feel the same deep satisfaction again. What was so special about this conference that it deserves memorialization? First of all, it was intellectually open and yet focused enough: a wide variety of topics and attitudes toward narratology and its assumptions made for lively and serious debates. In retrospect, the conference really gave an overview of narratology as a field, neither taking it for granted nor rejecting it a priori. It also marked a turning-point in the discipline. Looking at what the field is today, it seems hard to tell if the conference was at the vanguard or the core of the development; if it announced what was going to happen or demonstrated what was

Property as Storytelling: Perspectives from Game Theory, Narrative Theory, Feminist Theory

Abstract: Many of our modern views about property, and indeed about political and economic matters generally, come from the works of seventeenth and eighteenth century theorists who hoped to find a firmly scientific basis for the study of \"political economy.\"' Their systematic approach suggests that these theorists' accounts of property might be purely analytic-\"synchronic\" as the linguists call it.' An account of this sort would treat the subject as if all its parts occur at once, in an interlocking whole whose various aspects can be inferred logically and verified empirically, without reference to origins or to transformative changes over time.8 On such an account, one might indeed perceive that things change as time passes, but if one has a proper grip on the overall analytic framework, any changes would occur according to set patterns, so that future states are predictable from past states. This would be, more or less, a scientific

What Can We Learn from Contextualist Narratology

Abstract: In recent years, scholars have proposed an approach to narrative which diverges sharply from structuralist narratology. The name that seems to suit this alternative approach best is "Contextualist." Though they do not speak of themselves as a group, Mary Louise Pratt (1977), Barbara Herrnstein Smith (1981), Thomas Leitch (1986), and, to a lesser degree, Susan Sniader Lanser (1981) have argued the Contextualist position.' Since I am more concerned with the broad lines of the position than with the differences among its proponents, I shall refer, generically, to the "Contextualist position," leaving to footnotes the documentation of who actually said what. The Contextualists' chief objection to narratology is that it fails to take into account the actual setting in which literature is situated: "Far from being autonomous, self-contained, self-motivating, context-free objects which exist independently from the 'pragmatic' concerns of 'everyday' discourse, literary works take place in a context, and like any other utterance they cannot be described apart from that context" (Pratt 1977: 115). There is certainly justice in that opinion. The more we learn about the nature of language in its social setting, the harder

The Appropriated Voice: Narrative Authority in Conrad, Forster, and Woolf

Abstract: Uses feminist theory, cultural criticism, cultural ethnography, and narrative theory in critiquing traditional and revisionist criticism

Paradigm Shift in Plot Models: An Outline of the History of Narratology

Abstract: The short history of narratology (i.e., narrative theory inspired by classical structuralism) has proven to be long enough for the discipline to undergo some substantial paradigmatic changes. Furthermore, although on the surface narratology manifests a relatively coherent and almost monolithic theoretical project, it includes in fact diverse methods and orientations. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of a paradigm change in narratological models of plot and to describe it in terms of shifts within the range of conceptualizations available in the formalist-structuralist tradition. More specifically, this paradigmatic change consists of a shift from structural descriptions of action-structures in classical structuralism to semantic descriptions of narrative modalities in recent developments in narratology. Yet this shift should not be described as a punctual transition but as a dialectical development, leading from the earlier ideology of classical structuralism to the gradual domination of semantics in narrative theory. To delineate this paradigm shift, a twofold argument will be put forward: (1) In theory, the concept of plot appears in classical structuralism as part of the attempt to describe the action-scheme in narrative texts. In practice, however, structuralist plot models address a more comprehensive object and much broader questions. The gap between "official" pronouncements of structuralist poetics, made in manifestolike pieces (Barthes 1966b; Genette 1982 [1964]), and implications

The Comedy of Entropy: Humour/Narrative/Reading

Abstract: Entropic comedy is the phrase coined by Patrick O'Neill in this study to identify a particular mode of twentieth-century narrative that is not generally recognized. He describes it as the narrative expression of forms of decentred humour, or what might more loosely be called 'black humour.' O'Neill begins his investigation by examining the rise of an essentially new form of humour over the last three hundred years or so in the context of a rapid decay of confidence in traditional authoritative value systems. O'Neill analyses the resulting reorganization of the spectrum of humour, and examines th implications of this for the ways in which we read texts and the world we live in. He then turns from intellectual history to narratology and considers the relationship, in theoretical terms, of homour, play, and narrative as systems of discourse and the role of the reader as a textualizing agent. Finally, he considers some dozen twentieth-century narratives in French, German, and English (with occasional reference to other literatures) in the context of those historical and theoretical concerns. Authors of the texts analysed include Celine, Camus, Satre, and Robbe-Grillet in French; Heller, Beckett, Pynchon, Nabokov, and Joyce in English; Grass, Kafka, and Handke in German. The analyses proceed along lines suggested by structuralist, semiotic, and post-structuraist narrative and literary theory. From his analyses of these works O'Neill concludes they illustrate in narrative terms a mode of modern writing definable as entropic comedy, and he develops a taxonomy of the mode.

Discours Historique et Structures Narratives Chez Hérodote

Abstract: Historical Discourse and Narratives Structures Aspects of History Writing in Herodotus. The article proposes to analyse the fictional aspects in history writing. Indeed, history doesn't borrow from fiction its compositional techniques only; the discursive strategy which consists in narrating a story is in fact part of historical knowledge as such. A study of Cambysis's biography in Herodotus (II,I-II,66) leads us to grant a very specific function to Book II dealing with Egypt -nearly always considered as some sort of useless overgrowth- and to the "secondary remarks" concerning the Greek world (III,38, 39-60). Setting the Egyptian civilization as a foil enables Herodotus to establish a parallel between expansionist ideas and folly and he includes the Greeks in a plot itself critical of helleno-centric ideology. Our methodological approach owes as much to Ricœur's hermeneutics, as to H.R. Jauss's esthetics of reception and to the various streaks of narratology (narrative syntax and "mise en abime"), with a view to showing that, once replaced its "Erwarthunghorizonte", the form of the historical narrative makes full sense.

Stories, theories and things: Whatever happened to narratology?

Abstract: It got swallowed into story seems the obvious answer; it slid off the slippery methods of a million structures and became the story of its own functioning-like mathematics, which has never claimed to speak of anything but itself, or even to speak at all. But was it a good story? Did narratology ever have that air of a neodivine activity in which to formulate is to function, and to function is to self-verify? Linguistics tried to be a new mathematical discourse but on language, and language, like the physical universe, only more so because human, is inexact: there are always differences and disturbances, escape-hatches which mean that, however minute the particles or units observed, the system has to adjust, to cheat ever so slightly, in order to present a good theory, to tell a coherent story. Reality is a scandal; it never quite fits. Discourse, texts of all kinds, purport to represent the real, but what does this mean? Is the representation in excess of the real (Aristotle), or less than the real (Plato), or does it merely reorganise the real? These are ancient questions, but we are still asking them, not just of representations (stories) in general, but also of the very discourses (stories) that purport to analyse stories, stories of people, stories of people reading stories of people, stories of people reading stories of the world. The initial excitements and fairly rapid disappointments of narratology must have had to do with the early high claims of universality. But the laws discovered, though often couched in learned words, rigorous analyses and diagrams, even mathematical or logical formulas, often turned out to be rather trivial. Above all, there was no constancy

A Low-Structuralist at Bay? Further Thoughts on A Theory of Narrative

Abstract: It was not meant as an unreserved compliment when Ann Jefferson, reviewing my Theory of Narrative (1984) in the Times Literary Supplement wrote: "In Stanzel's flexible world anything goes, since there is nothing normative about his categories, and adaptability and tolerance are the essence of his system." A few sentences earlier the reader was shown the other side of the coin: "But if this is good pedagogy, it does make for distinctly dull theory" (Jefferson 1984: 1508). As the years go by and ever more brilliant narratological theories are published whose usefulness for the reader expecting methodological assistance from narratology becomes more and more tenuous, I am inclined to read the critique above as a compliment-and not a backhanded one. In fact, several of my reviewers found fault with the theory which I develop in my book and at the same time praised the results of its application to individual texts. Can a theory of narrative be wrong as theory and yet help the reader to new insights into the significance of the story told? In this paper I shall not pursue this question any further; I wish instead to concentrate on a few points, raised by critics arguing within the framework of my assumptions, which have a bearing on the methodological usefulness of my book. By any standards the most thoughtful critique of A Theory of Narrative has come from Dorrit Cohn (1981), appearing in this journal. My indebtedness to this review-essay in revising my chapter on "Perspective" for the second edition of Theorie des Erzdhlens (1982 [1979]: 149-

A narrative theory approach to understanding news and journalistic form

Abstract: More than a hundred decontextualized, formalistic paradigms of the narrative process are in existence but little work has been done to apply the insights narrative theory yields to news and journal...

The Narrative of Perception and the Perception of Narrative

Abstract: The most serious challenge to narratology of the past ten years is the one posed by postmodernist aesthetics and its special attitude toward history. Narratology has been blamed for having constructed its concepts on the basis of the model of nineteenth-century realism, and for being fundamentally ahistorical, incapable of addressing the historical specificity of its objects. Postmodernism has challenged narrative as well as narrative theory in several ways. First of all, postmodernism displays a disbelief in what has traditionally been seen as one of the main functions of narrative. Narrative is no longer able to legitimize the meaning of life, of our place in the world. As Lyotard (1979) has argued, the masterplots of Western culture ("metarecits de legitimation") have lost their explanatory and legitimizing function. They cannot any longer provide us with ontological certainties.1 Yet this loss has caused a revival rather than a decline in the production of narratives. Narrative genres like the historical novel are "back," and they display their narrativity more abundantly than ever. The legitimizing function of narrative seems to have been confining rather than liberating.

Genesis, Sexual Antagonism, and the Defective Couple of the Twelfth-Century Jeu d'Adam

Abstract: W H E N T H E A U T H O R O F the twelfth-century religious play known as theJeu d'Adam rewrote the Eden narrative of Genesis for dramatic performance, he presented the Fall of Man as both cause and effect of what he conceived to be the natural antagonism of male and female. Acting out the origins of that antagonism, the Old French Adam play thus offers the earliest known mimetic etiology of what in more modern terms has been called the "flagrant incompatibility and permanent warfare of the sexes."' But how could our adapter have imagined an "original" Fall from perfection as both introducing, and resulting from, male-female agonism? As it happens, this contradiction is expectable, even inevitable. Not only because the reciprocal substitution of cause and effect (metalepsis) is a common trope in the metaphorics of the unconscious, but also because the substitution in question here is no more than the local enactment of a more basic, habitual dialectic in Western thought and representation. To name it in literary terms, that dialectic could be called the conflict of "narrative" and "drama" if we take these terms not in the narrow sense of diegesis versus mimesis (by which poetics distinguishes literary genres and conventions), but rather as the playing out, in literary art, of the competition (or continuum) in psychoanalytic theory between primaryand secondary-process signification. In primary-process representation (as in the Adam play), the ordinary space-time, linear-causal logic of consciousness (and of narrativity as traditionally conceived) is bypassed and undone by the skips and lapses that more regularly mark the (sporadically logomimetic) signifying processes of dream and drama-"drama," that is, as the name of those affects that characterize playinglike, acting (or acting out) the impossible narratives of the Other. For the discussion at hand it is not necessary to explore in detail this particular area of conceptual overlap between psychoanalytic and narrative theory; the point in that overlap I do wish to explore concerns the metaleptic moment mentioned above. Thus intersecting rhetoric and psychology, my hypothesis is that the dramatization of the Fall in theJeu d'Adam was able to achieve its much admired "dramatic

Theory of Action in Psychology: A Narrative Perspective

Abstract: This chapter proposes a narrative theory of action. From a narrative perspective, actions are viewed as meaningful expressions which are integrated into a larger whole: the story of life. Explanation of action takes the form of interpretation or hermeneutic understanding. The phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty provides an example of a narrative approach to human action. The notions of dialogue and style in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy are especially relevant. A narrative theory of action may actually play a role in contemporary human sciences. Such a role is demonstrated through a discussion of a possibile narrative approach to the psychology of addiction.

Fictional questions: illocutionary force in literary communication

Abstract: The illocutionary force of an utterance, an interrogative form for example, is affected by the type of discourse in which it occurs. In written, fictional narrative, the communication is by definition deferred, and this means that a question asked in such a text does not normally carry the full illocutionary force of a request for information. This paper discusses the implications of speech act theory for narrative theory and the analysis of rhetorical force-the argumentative, persuasive energy of the text.