Produktdetaljer
Om bidragsyterne
Geir Farner is Professor of Dutch Language and Literature in the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages (ILOS) at the University of Oslo, Norway.With examples taken from a variety of national literatures, <i>Literary Fiction </i>patiently revisits all the basic notions in narrative theory. Farner's observations are astute, and his solutions provocative. Chapters on suspense and the evaluative component in interpretation provide the icing on the cake.
- Luc Herman, Professor of American Literature and Narrative Theory, University of Antwerp, Belgium,
An engaging read, Farner's <i>Literary Fiction</i> is an exhaustive retelling of the development of the various schools of literary criticism, from post-WW II domination of New Criticism through the wave of semioticians, political ideologues, and then finally the post-postmodernists, who see literary criticism as a rainbow palette from which one may blend critical approaches. The volume presents a rewarding continental perspective of modern "lit crit." The book will prove useful as a backgrounder or as a brief refresher. <b>Summing Up</b>: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.
- D. L. Hadaller, Bronx Community College, CHOICE
What can a linguist do for Americanist literary critics? Plenty. As a rhetorician and cognitivist, Geir Farner brings more sources to bear on literary study than does the usual linguist. He offers not only revisions of old theories, but also shows how literary fiction communicates and what it communicates. As such, these new arguments bridge gaps between narratology in general, and cognitive theory in particular. … Clear and original, Farner’s study comprises an important argument in narratology and cognitive theory. … [T]his study will be helpful for a wide range of readers–from advanced students through senior scholars. In particular, Americanist literary critics and rhetoricians who are interested in narratology’s application to historicist and feminist matters will benefit from this study. And so will cultural and intellectual historians studying historiography, for this work is probably the most relevant exploration of literary form’s influence on narrative since Hayden White’s <i>Metahistory</i> (1973), <i>The Content of the Form</i> (1987), and <i>Figural Realism</i> (1999). As such, this work deserves a high place on the Parnassus of American Studies.
U.S. Studies Online
Insofar as literary theory has addressed the issue of literature as a means of communication and the function of literary fiction, opinions have been sharply divided, indicating that the elementary foundations of literary theory and criticism still need clarifying. Many of the "classical" problems that literary theory has been grappling with from Aristotle to our time are still waiting for a satisfactory solution.
Based on a new cognitive model of literature as communication, Farner systematically explains how literary fiction works, providing new solutions to a wide range of literary issues, like intention, function, evaluation, delimitation of the literary work as such, fictionality, suspense, and the roles of author and narrator, along with such narratological problems as voice, point of view and duration.
Covering a wide range of literary issues central to literary theory, offering new theories while also summarising the field as it stands, Literary Fiction will be a valuable guide and resource for students and scholars of the theory of literature.
1. Introduction
2. What is literary fiction?
Attempts to define literary fiction
Intratextual criteria
Extratextual criteria
The embedding of real elements in fiction
A reader-oriented definition of literary fiction
Fiction with reservations
How to distinguish between fact and fiction?
Should the author of documentary fiction cite his sources?
The embedding of extratextual facts: conclusion
The embedding of fictitious elements in non-fiction
Narrative and fiction
3. The fictional communication process
The question of genre
The levels of the communication process
Early theories of levels
Narratological theories of levels
The material text
The mental model of the action
The relationship between the mental model and the action
The cognitive content
Identification
Popular literature
The cognitive content: terminological alternatives
The truth of the message
The incompleteness of the mental model
The transparency of the mental model
The two aspects of the mental model
Why the term mental model?
One drawback of the terms signifier, signified and referent
Drama
Literary fiction as a speech mode
Possible worlds
What comes first, text or action?
4. The cognitive and the aesthetic dimension
Definition of the aesthetic
The aesthetic dimension in art
Does fiction have an aesthetic dimension?
Does the text have an aesthetic function?
Does the action have an aesthetic function?
Does the mental model have an aesthetic function?
Does the cognitive content have an aesthetic function?
Does the interplay between the levels have an aesthetic function?
Must fiction have an aesthetic dimension in order to be art?
The cognitive function and consciousness
Evidence of the cognitive function
5. The delimitation of the literary work
The text and the mental model of the action
The message
Drama and lyric poetry
Ambiguous texts
Reading in another order and repeated readings
The simultaneity of the levels
Other theories
6. Intention and message
The message as perceived by the receiver
Different forms of communication
The many faces of the author
The message as perceived by the sender
Does the work always reflect the author’s own views?
The relationship between the latent and the received message
To what extent is information about the author’s intention available?
The expectations of the reader
The author’s responsibility for the received message
Conclusion
Interpretive strategies
7. Problems related to the sender
The narrator and the narrative act
Käte Hamburger’s theory
The nature of the narrator
The role of the receiver
Attachment
8. The structure of the action
The mental model and the action
What is the action?
The action as part of a larger fictional world
Problems with the definition of story
The author’s influence on the action
The complexity of the action
The relationship between events and characters
Action-orientation and character-orientation as forms of selection
Attempts at simplification
The smallest meaningful elements of the action
How are these basic elements related to Propp’s and Greimas’s models?
The characters’ mode of existence
Flat and round characters
The action as vehicle for the message
Setting
9 Selection
Theories about duration
Selection
Time and its content
Quantitative selection
Scene, summary, ellipsis, pause and stretch
The problem pause
10. Voice
Temporal relations
Identity and level
Terminological problems
The significance of the author’s choice of grammatical person
The report of speech and thoughts
Interference of the narrator
Comments of the narrator
Humour as a manifestation of voice
Irony
Other kinds of indirect communication
11 Viewpoint, focalization
Viewpoint or focalization?
Viewpoint in non-fiction, film and drama
Viewpoint in the novel and the short story
Omniscience and perception
Position: internal and external viewpoint
Depth
Breadth
Stability
Rewriting in the first person
The point of view in the first-person novel
The narrator’s viewpoint: double focalization?
Is there always a viewpoint (or focalization)?
Ambiguous viewpoint
Viewpoint and voice
Zero focalization?
Internal viewpoint and subjectivity
Viewpoint and identification
Conclusion
12 Frequency
13 Order
14. Suspense
What is suspense?
Various forms of suspense
Suspense in Effi Briest
Artificial suspense
15. The functions of literary fiction
Didactic literature and simplification
Result- and process-orientation
Non-cognitive functions
16. Evaluation
To what extent is evaluation inevitable?
How subjective is evaluation?
Which aspects of the work are subject to evaluation?
Evaluation criteria for the cognitive content
Truth
Importance
Relevance
Novelty and difference
Entertainment
Evaluation criteria for form alone and form and content as a whole
Wholeness
Complexity and simplicity
Openness
Criteria related to phatic function
Professional competence
Criteria linked to time
Criteria linked to language
Extratextual factors
Who is entitled to evaluate?
Conclusion
17. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index