Narratological Studies Research Articles

The Problem of a Beginning: Israel's Scriptures in Luke 1–2

Abstract A narratological study of Luke 1–2, focusing above all on an examination of the plethora of echoes of the Abrahamic story of Genesis, leads to the conclusion that the "beginning" of Luke-Acts can be located only in God's purpose as articulated in the Scriptures of Israel; at this point at least, the framework with which Luke is working is not "promise-fulfillment," but rather a self-conscious continuation of the redemptive story.

In the Dark Backward: Time in Pindaric Narrative

In the Dark Backward: Time in Pindaric Narrative

Gothic fiction/Gothic form

This work offers a new perspective on Gothic fiction and reassesses its place in literary history. After defining his concept of and summarizing the problematic assumptions behind recent critical approaches to the Gothic, George Haggerty introduces a startling theoretical discussion of the Gothic Tale, and he explains in what ways the tale, as a form with identifiable affective properties, is ideally suited to Gothic concerns. Having established a direct relation between this study and recent discussions of narratology and generic identity, Haggerty develops his argument as it applies to major Gothic works in both England and America, including works by Walpole, Radcliffe, Lewis, Maturin, Shelley, Bronte, Poe, Hawthorne, and James. He examines the Gothic Tale as a form that resolves the inconsistency and incoherence of many Gothic novels and offers even the best of them a center of focus and a way of achieving their fullest affective power. In this study, the Gothic Tale emerges as a means of heightening the emotional intelligibility of Gothic fiction and answering Walpole's confused desire to unite two kinds of romance in the Gothic. It is a form that can answer the ontological and epistemological, as well as the structural, challenge of the Gothic writers. From its first hints within the Gothic novel as an alternative literary mode offering the Gothicists various expressive advantages to its eerie success in a work such as James's The Jolly Corner, the Gothic Tale offers insight into generic distinction and literary expression. This is a major statement about an important literary form.

Signposts of Fictionality: A Narratological Perspective

have been drawn, withdrawn, retraced, and re-effaced on various grounds-logical, ontological, phenomenological, pragmatic, speechactional, deconstructive, semantic-without looking to the discipline that has dug most deeply into the ground of narrative itself. There is a certain poetologic justice to this snub: narratologists themselves have, to a quite astonishing degree, ignored the question of demarcation between fiction and nonfiction. One can hardly deplore this omission in studies that openly (by way of title, subtitle, and/or prefatory remarks) limit their area of investigation to fictional narratives (Chatman 1978; Rimmon-Kenan 1983). But most narratological studies, including such classics of the discipline as Barthes's Introduction to the Structural Analysis of (1977 [1966]) and Genette's Narrative Discourse (1980), don't explicitly restrict their field, and some even quite expressly announce that they intend to encompass nonfiction as well (Bal 1985; Prince 1982b). In the absence of counterindications of any sort, a narrative poetics of this overarching kind leads one to believe that the entire panoply of conventions, the figures, structural types, and discursive modes it identifies, applies equally within and without fiction, even when-as is nearly always the case-its textual exemplifications are drawn exclusively from the

New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism ed. by Donald M. Rose

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER account of the procedures he carried out, and, except for the implications of his commentary, the reader has no way of knowing whether the exam­ ples given are complete, representative in their numbers, the most striking instances, or a mere random selection. This absence of scholarly rigor will make it difficult for others to use the frequently interesting material that Roscow assembles. What we have in the book is a set of observations on a number of syntactical features, some of which contribute to Chaucer's style. We also have a series of critical comments on Margaret Schlauch's exemplary PMLA article published in 1952, "Chaucer's Colloquial Eng­ lish: Its Structural Traits." At one point (p. 47) Roscow quotes half of Schlauch's discussion of a syntactic feature as if it were the whole. At no point does he do justice to the balance, sensitivity, and scholarly control of her presentation. The book includes a general index and a useful "Index of Chaucer Quotations." The bibliography, confined to references in the book, shows somesurprisingimbalancesandomissions.Spearingappearsfivetimes;J.A. Burrow and]. A. W. Bennett, twice each. The Tatlock-Kennedy Concor­ dance and Muscatine do not appear. Medieval poetics and modern stylistics have each a single item. CHARLES A. OWEN,JR. University of Connecticut DONALD M. ROSE, ed., New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism. Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1982. Pp. x, 248. $21.95. This volume comprises a collection of revised papers, originally read at the conference of the New Chaucer Society in New Orleans in April, 1980, and here organized into three broad thematic sections. But first, George Kane, in an opening paper ("Langland and Chaucer: An Obligatory Compari­ son"), compares aspects of Chaucer and Langland and modern reactions to them, justly remarking on the extent to which critics of either poet, by ignoring the existence of the other, miss some illuminating comparisons. Kane points out some shared elements in the two poets' education: "rigorous inculcation of Christian doctrine," some experience of the "alle202 REVIEWS gorizing activities ofthe classicizing friars," and some knowledge ofthat "old system ofmoral categorizing,estates satire," together with the com­ mon basis of their education in Latin grammar. Kane speculates on Langland's knowledge of profane rhetoric or of courtly and Arthurian literature,as well as on Chaucer's knowledge ofFrench religious allegories or ofantifraternal literature.An interesting comparison follows on the two poets' conception ofthemselves as artists.Along with a self-consciousness about their art and a common tendency to invoke modesty topoi, there is also aself-confidence approaching arrogance discernible in both poets,and that this emerges in two poets in comparable degrees at this period "bespeaks a new condition of poetry in post-conquest England." Both poets also register in their poems their personal problems of art and morality, and Kane compares the implications of Chaucer's Retractions with Langland's allusions within his poetry to doubts about his own poetic activity ("The poet sees,ifonly momentarily,the act ofcomposition as self­ gratifying and therefore, to the extent that it fails in charity, sinful notwithstanding its ostensible pious objectives ofspiritual understanding and moral reform. Here is the real abjectness.... By contrast Chaucer's 'retracciouns' seem serene,almost confident."). Part 2 of the book consists of five essays on various aspects of literary theory,modern and medieval,as applied to Chaucer.In his essay "Con­ temporary Literary Theory and Chaucer," Morton W.Bloomfield discusses "what aspects of modern disciplines are...useful in interpreting and evaluating literature," and he reviews the claims ofsemantics,semiology, literature and philosophy, the concept of speech acts, psychology, and sociology.On the study ofsocial aspects ofliterature Bloomfield comments that "audience and reader are not to be limited to the 'real' author and reader, but may include the internal audience and reader who are both presupposed in and even brought into Chaucer's poetry." Little has yet been said on that internal audience to whom the so-much-discussed author-persona is presumably speaking.And in an interesting comparison of MLT and the tale of Alatiel in Decameron, Bloomfield himselfantici­ pates those advances in the study ofnarratology and literary structuralism he predicts in Chaucer criticism.His concluding...

From text to narrative: Spanning the gap

With modern linguistics making frequent incursions into the domain of literary and narrative studies, there has been an increasingly healthy interaction between linguistic analysis and more traditional methods of literary investigation. Among the offshoots of this incipient cooperation between what were traditionally felt to be mutually antagonistic disciplines are the fields of narrative semiotics and textual linguistics, taking as their domain of definition linguistic texts, discourse, or narrative. The investigator working in these areas cannot help but be pleased, if not at the explicit cooperation between members of the various disciplines, at least at the variety of approaches which are currently being employed in the study of narrative structures. The number of studies relating linguistic and semiotic theory to the study of narrative is increasing with amazing rapidity, and reviews can hardly maintain the pace of digesting such quantities of material as fast as it is produced. Among the numerous works involving the intersection of textual linguistics and narrative semiotics which have recently appeared, the present review will concentrate on several which, by nature of their content, offer a number of convergent points of interest. All but one of the essays of Hendricks (1973) have appeared elsewhere in published form, but are united for the first time under a common rubric; similarly, the individual studies comprising the volume edited by Chabrol (1973) are offered by investigators who have widely published elsewhere. On the contrary, Prince’s study (1973) represents a monographic contribution to the study of narratology. In view of the fact that several general reviews of narrative semiotics have already appeared, the most recent being those of Wing (1974) and Prince (1974), this review will deal with a few specific issues which, while not confined to the volumes under discussion, are readily exemplified there. Most reviewers of the current state of narrative semiotics, including many of the central participants themselves, have stressed the fundamental lack of a unified theory, or even set of directions, which would provide a universally acceptable metalanguage in which to evaluate results from a wide array of disciplines. One of the consequences of the convergence of investigations from anthropology and folk-

Author, Narrator, and Literary Character:A Study of Xenophon’s Anabasis

Author, Narrator, and Literary Character:A Study of Xenophon’s Anabasis
 The article discusses Xenophon’s Anabasis. Its main aim is to present some new research perspectives for Classical Studies. It analyzes such aspects of Xenophon’s opus as author, implied author, narrator, narratee and narrative, as well as literary character and the human context. The article is a sort of introduction to narratological studies, concerning classical narrative texts, which has not so far been thoroughly tested for its inner structure.