Narrative Theory and Culture – serie

Contemporary Native Fiction: Toward a Narrative Poetics of Survivance analyzes paradigmatic works of contemporary Native American/First Nations literary fiction using the tools of narrative theory. Each chapter is read through the lens of a narrative theory – structuralist narratology, feminist narratology, rhetorical narratology, and unnatural narratology – in order to demonstrate how the formal structure of these narratives engage the political issues raised in the text. Additionally, each chapter shows how the inclusion of Native American/First Nations-authored narratives productively advance the theoretical work project of those narrative theories. This book offers a broad survey of possible means by which narrative theory and critical race theories can productively work together and is key reading for students and researchers working in this area.

Contemporary African American and Black British Women Writers: Narrative, Race, Ethics brings together British and American scholars to explore how, in texts by contemporary black women writers in the U. S. and Britain, formal narrative techniques express new understandings of race or stimulate ethical thinking about race in a reader. Taken together, the essays also demonstrate that black women writers from both sides of the Atlantic borrow formal structures and literary techniques from one another to describe the workings of structural racism in the daily lives of black subjects and to provoke readers to think anew about race. Narratology has only recently begun to use race as a category of narrative theory. This collection seeks both to show the ethical effects of narrative form on individual readers and to foster reconceptualizations of narrative theory that account for the workings of race within literature and culture.

Narrative Machine: The Naturalist, Modernist, and Postmodernist Novel advances a new history of the novel, identifying a crucial link between narrative innovation and the historical process of mechanization. In the late nineteenth century, the novel grapples with a new and increasingly acute problem: In its attempt to represent the colossal power of modern machinery—the steam-driven machines of the Industrial Revolution, the electrical machines of the modern city, and the atomic and digital machines developed after the Second World War—it encounters the limitations of traditional representative strategies. Beginning in the naturalist novel, the machine is typically portrayed as a mythic monster, and though that monster represents a potentially horrific reality—the superhuman power of mechanization—it also disrupts the documentary objectives of narrative realism (the dominant mode of nineteenth-century fiction). The mechanical monster, realistic and yet at odds with traditional realist strategies, tears the form of the novel apart. In doing so, it unleashes a series of innovations that disclose, critique, and contest the force of mechanization: the innovations associated with literary naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism.

This book examines how Asian American authors since 1945 have deployed the stereotype of Asian American inscrutability in order to re-examine and debunk the stereotype in various ways. By paying special attention to what narrative theorists have regarded as one of the most extraordinary aspects of fiction—its ability to give (or else deny) readers a remarkably detailed knowledge of the inner lives of their characters—this book explores deeply and systematically the specific ways Asian American narratives attribute inscrutable minds to Asian American characters, situating them at various points along a spectrum stretching between alterity and empathy. Ultimately, the book reveals the link between narrative form and larger cultural issues associated with the representation of Asian American minds, and how a nuanced investigation of narrative form can yield insights into the sociocultural embeddedness of Asian American literature under the case studies—insights that would not be available if such formal questions were by passed.

In recent years, cognitive and affective science have become increasingly important for interpretation and explanation in the social sciences and humanities. However, little of this work has addressed American literature, and virtually none has treated national identity formation in influential works since the Civil War. In this book, Hogan develops his earlier cognitive and affective analyses of national identity, further exploring the ways in which such identity is integrated with cross-culturally recurring patterns in story structure. Hogan examines how authors imagined American identity—understood as universal, democratic egalitarianism—in the face of the nation’s clear and often brutal inequalities of race, sex, and sexuality, exploring the complex and often ambivalent treatment of American identity in works by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Eugene O’Neill, Lillian Hellman, Djuna Barnes, Amiri Baraka, Margaret Atwood, N. Scott Momaday, Spike Lee, Leslie Marmon Silko, Tony Kushner, and Heidi Schreck.

Contemporary Native Fiction: Toward a Narrative Poetics of Survivance analyzes paradigmatic works of contemporary Native American/First Nations literary fiction using the tools of narrative theory. Each chapter is read through the lens of a narrative theory – structuralist narratology, feminist narratology, rhetorical narratology, and unnatural narratology – in order to demonstrate how the formal structure of these narratives engage the political issues raised in the text. Additionally, each chapter shows how the inclusion of Native American/First Nations-authored narratives productively advance the theoretical work project of those narrative theories. This book offers a broad survey of possible means by which narrative theory and critical race theories can productively work together and is key reading for students and researchers working in this area.

In recent years, cognitive and affective science have become increasingly important for interpretation and explanation in the social sciences and humanities. However, little of this work has addressed American literature, and virtually none has treated national identity formation in influential works since the Civil War. In this book, Hogan develops his earlier cognitive and affective analyses of national identity, further exploring the ways in which such identity is integrated with cross-culturally recurring patterns in story structure. Hogan examines how authors imagined American identity—understood as universal, democratic egalitarianism—in the face of the nation’s clear and often brutal inequalities of race, sex, and sexuality, exploring the complex and often ambivalent treatment of American identity in works by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Eugene O’Neill, Lillian Hellman, Djuna Barnes, Amiri Baraka, Margaret Atwood, N. Scott Momaday, Spike Lee, Leslie Marmon Silko, Tony Kushner, and Heidi Schreck.

This book examines how Asian American authors since 1945 have deployed the stereotype of Asian American inscrutability in order to re-examine and debunk the stereotype in various ways. By paying special attention to what narrative theorists have regarded as one of the most extraordinary aspects of fiction—its ability to give (or else deny) readers a remarkably detailed knowledge of the inner lives of their characters—this book explores deeply and systematically the specific ways Asian American narratives attribute inscrutable minds to Asian American characters, situating them at various points along a spectrum stretching between alterity and empathy. Ultimately, the book reveals the link between narrative form and larger cultural issues associated with the representation of Asian American minds, and how a nuanced investigation of narrative form can yield insights into the sociocultural embeddedness of Asian American literature under the case studies—insights that would not be available if such formal questions were by passed.

Ethnic American Literatures and Critical Race Narratology explores the relationship between narrative, race, and ethnicity in the United States. Situated at the intersection of post-classical narratology and context-oriented approaches in race, ethnic, and cultural studies, the contributions to this edited volume interrogate the complex and varied ways in which ethnic American authors use narrative form to engage readers in issues related to race and ethnicity, along with other important identity markers such as class, religion, gender, and sexuality. Importantly, the book also explores how paying attention to the formal features of ethnic American literatures changes our under-standing of narrative theory and how narrative theories can help us to think about author functions and race. The international and diverse group of contributors includes top scholars in narrative theory and in race and ethnic studies, and the texts they analyze concern a wide variety of topics, from the representation of time and space to the narration of trauma and other deeply emotional memories to the importance of literary paratexts, genre structures, and author functions.

This book presents a study of the figure of the stranger in US Latinx literary and cultural forms, ranging from contemporary novels through essays to film and transborder art activism. The focus on this abject figure is twofold: first, to explore its potential to expose the processes of othering to which Latinxs are subjected; and, second, to foreground its epistemic response to neocolonial structures and beliefs. Thus, this book draws on relevant sociological literature on the stranger to unveil the political and social processes behind the recognition of Latinxs as ‘out of place.’ On the other hand, and most importantly, this volume follows the path of neo-cosmopolitan approaches to bring to the fore processes of interrelatedness, interaction, and conviviality that run counter to criminalizing discourses around Latinxs. Through an engagement with these theoretical tenets, the goal of this book is to showcase the role of the Latinx stranger as a cosmopolitan mediator that transforms walls into bridges.

Contemporary African American and Black British Women Writers: Narrative, Race, Ethics brings together British and American scholars to explore how, in texts by contemporary black women writers in the U. S. and Britain, formal narrative techniques express new understandings of race or stimulate ethical thinking about race in a reader. Taken together, the essays also demonstrate that black women writers from both sides of the Atlantic borrow formal structures and literary techniques from one another to describe the workings of structural racism in the daily lives of black subjects and to provoke readers to think anew about race. Narratology has only recently begun to use race as a category of narrative theory. This collection seeks both to show the ethical effects of narrative form on individual readers and to foster reconceptualizations of narrative theory that account for the workings of race within literature and culture.

Ethnic American Literatures and Critical Race Narratology explores the relationship between narrative, race, and ethnicity in the United States. Situated at the intersection of post-classical narratology and context-oriented approaches in race, ethnic, and cultural studies, the contributions to this edited volume interrogate the complex and varied ways in which ethnic American authors use narrative form to engage readers in issues related to race and ethnicity, along with other important identity markers such as class, religion, gender, and sexuality. Importantly, the book also explores how paying attention to the formal features of ethnic American literatures changes our under-standing of narrative theory and how narrative theories can help us to think about author functions and race. The international and diverse group of contributors includes top scholars in narrative theory and in race and ethnic studies, and the texts they analyze concern a wide variety of topics, from the representation of time and space to the narration of trauma and other deeply emotional memories to the importance of literary paratexts, genre structures, and author functions.

This book presents a study of the figure of the stranger in US Latinx literary and cultural forms, ranging from contemporary novels through essays to film and transborder art activism. The focus on this abject figure is twofold: first, to explore its potential to expose the processes of othering to which Latinxs are subjected; and, second, to foreground its epistemic response to neocolonial structures and beliefs. Thus, this book draws on relevant sociological literature on the stranger to unveil the political and social processes behind the recognition of Latinxs as ‘out of place.’ On the other hand, and most importantly, this volume follows the path of neo-cosmopolitan approaches to bring to the fore processes of interrelatedness, interaction, and conviviality that run counter to criminalizing discourses around Latinxs. Through an engagement with these theoretical tenets, the goal of this book is to showcase the role of the Latinx stranger as a cosmopolitan mediator that transforms walls into bridges.