1st Edition

The Reader's Construction of Narrative

By Horst Ruthrof Copyright 1981
    248 Pages
    by Routledge

    248 Pages
    by Routledge

    In this book, first published in 1981, the author argues that narrative is an interaction between "the presented world and the presentational process" and attempts to define narrative from the perspective of reading. The Reader’s Construction of Narrative includes chapters on narrative language, translating narrative and discusses what happens when we read a narrative text. This book will be of particular interest to students of literary theory.

    Preface;  1. What happens when we read a narrative text?  2. Presentational process and ‘narrative transgression’  3. Narrative language  4. Narrative stratification and the dialectic of reading  5. Ladders of fictionality  6. Bracketed world and reader construction in the modern short story  7. Narrative strands: presented and presentational  8. Acts of narrating: transformations of presentational control  9. Parodic narrative  10. Narrative and the form-content metaphor  11. Translating narrative  12. Fictional modality: a challenge to linguistics;  Notes;  Index

    Biography

    Horst Ruthrof