The Nature of Narrative

"Purposely wide in scope, this historical and analytical study provides a welcome balance to the critical practice of judging all narrative literature by standards appropriate only to the novel. The authors believe that such a narrow view obscures the real tradition of narrative literature in the Western world, and limits the modern reader's critical and aesthetic responses. Refusing to regard the realistic novel as the final step in a long process of "improvement from earlier forms of narrative," they consider elements common to all narrative forms-myth, folktale, epic, romance, allegory, confession, and satire. In the work of Joyce, Proust, Mann, Lawrence, Faulkner, and other writers of the twentieth century, they discern a break with the narrative tradition of the immediate past, and specifically with the attitudes and techniques of realism. "........attempts to put the novel in its place, to see it as only one of a number of narrative possibilities. The authors survey all kinds of narrative forms, written and unwritten from almost all literatures, with learning and insight. Also, the traditional subjects of the theory of the novel, character, type, realism, etc., are illuminated from the wider international perspective"-Rene Wellek, Sterling Professor of Comparative Literature, Yale University. "A pioneer venture into one of the richest areas in literature, this volume is worthy of comparison with the classic studies of Harry Levin and Renne Wellek"-Modern Language Journal. Robert Scholes is Professor of English at the University of Iowa, and author of the The Fabulators. Robert Kellogg is professor of English at the University of Viirgina."-Publisher