Narrative Units Research Articles

The Life of Peter and Fevroniia: Transformations and Interpretations in Modern Russian Literature and Music

In literature, music, fine arts and folklore there are innumerable cases of narrative units crossing the borders between different works, genres and media of artistic expression. In recent years scholarly interest in such transpositions has been on the rise.1 There also has been a considerable change in the methods of analysis. In the past researchers either sought the time and place of origin and the routes of migration of a given narrative unit (the so-called influences and borrowings) or looked for sets of features common to works that might not be directly related (typological parallels). Nowadays, especially in literary studies, attention focuses primarily upon the intertextual dialogue between the works. The theories of intertextuality and readerresponse criticism have provided a particularly effective methodology. The purpose of this article is to expand the options for interpreting three twentieth-century transpositions of The Life of Peter and Fevroniia by using the new methodology.2 It also will demonstrate that an implied author who identifies himself

Speech, gesture, and discourse

In this article we argue that on‐line linguistic choices are made in a matrix of continuous discourse connections. We investigate the hypothesis that communicative dynamism (CD) is this representation of the whole in the parts. We view CD as a graded variable that can be measured only with respect to large stretches of discourse. Based on our analysis of extended narrative and conversational data, we find that CD directly correlates with the quantity of linguistic material devoted to a reference. We identify two strategies with which this is accomplished: one “constructive,” the other “anticipatory.” We find that gestures of the kind co‐occurring with speech also reflect the communicative status of the utterance. Initial positions of explicitly delineated narrative units are accompanied by more gestures (both pointing and “beats”). A similar phenomenon appears in a highly unstructured conversation, with pointing gestures accompanying initial references to topics. We interpret these correlations of the quantity of gesture and the quantity of linguistic referring material as reflecting an underlying unity of speech and gesture. Thought itself, Vygotsky (1962) argued, is the formation of psychological predicates—elements of discontinuity from the existing context. A speaker highlights these discontinuities by adding to the quantity and multiplying the avenues of departure from the context in both speech and gesture.

Flavio Josefo. Técnicas de adaptación del texto bíblico (1 Re 3, 16-28)

Las técnicas que emplea Flavio Josefo para adaptar el texto de la Biblia están reflejadas en esta unidad narrativa del juicio de Salomón. Es un buen ejemplo de cómo utiliza sus fuentes incorporando los datos históricos y apartándose del léxico y estilo del relato bíblico.

Narrating and Listening in Kindergarten

Abstract In this article, some major results of a longitudinal study on preschool children's narrative development are presented. Narrative development is seen as the acqui-sition of narrative competence, that is, the knowing how narrator activities and listener activities are reciprocally interrelated. Both narrator and listener have to carry out characteristic joint tasks in the phases of narrative units. In the initiation phase, they have to deal with embedding the narrative unit in the ongoing conversation; in the realization phase, they have to create and maintain prerequisites for the listener's understanding, to present and reconstruct the event sequence, to mark and reconstruct the narrator's perspective, and so on; in the closing phase, they have to compare the narrator's and the listener's perspectives on the events presented. The data base for the study consists of narrative units taken from everyday conversations in one kindergarten group recorded over a 3-year period beginning when the children were 3 and ending when they were 6 years old. The narrative units are analyzed and interpreted in order to find out how the children ap-proached and solved the tasks typical for narrating and listening at the ages of 3, 4½, and 6 years. (Linguistics)

Mt 16, 17-19 et le récit de la Passion

Mt 16,17-19 and the Passion story The many echoes of Mt 16, 17-19 found in Mt 26, 57-75 are to be explained by the common origin in tradition of the diptych Peter's confession — Transfiguration and the Passion story. Emanating both from the early Jerusalem church, these two narrative units, formed respectively in the light of autumn and Easter festivals, were to balance each other. Consciousness of this fact helps to bring out their common Christological and ecclesiological richness.

The Metaphorical Imperative: From Trope to Narrative in "The Rainbow"

The plot of D. H. Lawrence's The Rainbow has never been an object of much fascination since commentators have generally assumed that Lawrence's dispensing with plots was a major mark of his modernity. In so far as realist plots traded on vulgarities of a plausible concatenation-Samuel Beckett's phrase-then such an assumption is entirely justified. Marking the contrast with Middlemarch, where, as he puts it, the mechanics of the Raffles affair soak so much authentic, thematic interest, Frank Kermode rightly concludes that abandoned plot.' He rejected the types of plot which the Barthesian proairetic and hermeneutic codes activate-those based on cause and effect, action and consequence (proairetic), and those which identify enigmas, build up suspense through exploitation of false leads or trails, which delay the denouement (hermeneutic). He refused to invent stories which in Kermode's phrase explain how one thing leads to another.2 Drawing on what he terms a classic distinction, Barthes identifies these explanatory plots in which the narrative units are distributed along a horizontal axis with the figure of metonymy. Such plots organize details, clear up mysteries, and further the action in obedience to the logic of sequence in precisely the manner that Lawrence refused to accept. Barthes distinguishes these metonymic type plots from those which synthesize narrative units along a vertical axis: these he identifies with the figure of metaphor.3 Based on the paradigm of resemblance, such plots locate recurrences, integrate motifs and actions, identify similarities between elements which appear to be different, and intensify mysteries instead of clearing them up. It is with plots of this kind that we shall be preoccupied here. David Lodge once noted that Lawrence is essentially a novelist, whose writings, in Lodge's fine phrase, feed metaphorically upon his own metonymies. Each successive phrase, though apparently forwarded by contiguity, unfolds deeper significance of the same facts, and in so doing, accretes a vague metaphorical meaning.4 In effect, what one critic identifies as Lawrence's three representative techniques-patterns of recurrence, exposition by scenes, and repetitive style5-all carry strong metaphorical implications. In the first, patterns of

Dante’s Comedy: Introductory Readings of Selected Cantos by Uberto Limentani

REVIEWS find. The type is clear and readable, the text remarkably free of error. Chaucerians, then, can be grateful to the compilers and the press for this bibliography. They may well require it in their graduateclasses and will no doubt find it useful for their own work. I am sure that my own copy will soon be well worn, and I look forward to a new edition. JAMES I. WIMSATT University of Texas at Austin UBERTO LIMENTANI. Dante's Comedy: Introductory Readings ofSelected Cantos. Cambridge, London, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Pp. viii, 164. $29.95, £19.50. Cambridge is the one place in Britain-indeed in the English-speaking world-where Dante studies have been flourishing with particularintensity in the past twenty years, as the workofKenelmFoster, Patrick Boyde, Robin Kirkpatrick, and Peter Dronke testifies. Although not a Dantist strictly speaking, Uberto Limentani has in many ways been the active source of inspiration behind the scholarly enterprises of his colleagues. Heit was who organizedaseriesof lectures tocelebratethe seventhcentenary ofthe poet's birth in 1965 (which he subsequently edited for the Cambridge University Press as The Mind ofDante), and it is to him that Cambridge owes the lecturae Dantis which, following the model inaugurated by Boccaccio in 1373-74, are held there regularly. It is therefore fitting that Limentani's own contributions to the lecturae should now be collected in a volume published by the same press that has brought out no less than seven books on Dante in the past fifteen years. In offering us Dante's Comedy, Limentani has, as he himself states, a twofold aim: to provide students with a first commentary on single cantos of the poem and to show the wider public that Dante can be read even by those who have little or no Italian. I have no doubt that the volume fully achievesitsdoublepurposeand that it will become a very useful tool for all who read it. The book in many ways resembles those early commentaries on the Comedy which sought to explain the poem's difficulties and elucidate its meaning by reading it line by line, and which can (rather, must) be read with profit even six centuries later. Here ten cantos are chosen (Inferno 1, 6, 235 SWDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER 8, 17; Purgatorio 1, 5, 8; Paradiso 1, 6, 17), and within each, every main narrative unit is quoted (with translation) and expounded. At the begin­ ning of every "reading," a few paragraphs recount the most important events or episodes intervening between those analyzed in the previous lectura and those which constitutethe focus of attention in the canto under examination. Thus a reader will have a fairlycoherent view of the Comedy as a whole,although thecommentaryproper isrestrictedtoselectedcantos. The reading of Purgatorio 5 (pp. 81-96), for example, begins with a summary exposition of Purgatory's moral structure, points to the contrast between cantos 4 and 5, and then examines the single units- the surprise of the souls at the sight of a living being, Virgil's reproach to Dante, the procession of the second group of the negligent and their questions, the extraordinary interviews with Iacopo del Cassero, Buonconte da Mon­ tefeltro (the dramatic and theological contrast with his father's story in Inferno 27 is not forgotten), and Pia de' Tolomei. The readings are meant to be introductory. None of them presents us with onesinglethesisoronespecific approach to acantoof thepoem. All of them take into account the variety and complexity of themes, doctrinal problems,historicalbackground,andstylistic features which wouldstrike a reader following Dante through the one hundred cantos of the Comedy. Plain, sensible, and sensitive as this introduction is, it does not try to avoid large problematic issues (for instance, why Cato, a pagan and a suicide, should appear in Purgatorio 1) or historical difficulties (who, indeed, is Ciacco, and what does the name itself mean?). Although patterns are not easy to identify in books such as this, the impression one has in reading Dante'.r Comedy is that the author focuses withgreater pleasure andattention on someaspectspresentthroughout the poem- the "sense of an opening" in the three cantos 1; the theme of politics (Inferno 6 and Paradiso 6); the...

Peintures tibétaines de la vie de sTon-pa-gçen-rab

Among its collections of Tibetan art, the Musée Guimet in Paris possesses a series of ten thankas (MA 121-130) illustrating the life of the Buddha of the Bon religion, sTon-pa-gçen-rab. The series, which must originally have consisted of twelve paintings (nos. 7 and 8 are missing), was acquired by General H. d'Ollone during his mission to China and Tibet in 1906 to 1909, probably in April 1 908 when he stayed for some weeks in Song-pan-t'ing, a small town in the wertern part of China, situated approximately 33' N and 103' 30" E, to the north of Chengdu. Judging from their style, the thankas would seem to date from the 18th or 19th century. They faithfully illustrate, down to the smallest detail, the life of sTon-pa-gçen-rab as narrated in the 14th century, twelve- volume version of his biography, the gZi-brjid. However, as the thankas have no inscriptions, a careful reading of the entire twelve-volume text has been necessary in order to identify each scene and the numerous figures which give extraordinary life and movement to the paintings. Each thanka has been analysed by dividing it into sections (numbered 1,2,3, etc.), each section forming a separate scene or narrative unit. Within each section, individual figures, buildings or other details of interest have been provided with letters (A, B, C, etc.). Thus the commentary is at the same time a brief summary of the gZi-brjid, to which the Table of Concordance provides the necessary references. Recently, two other series of thankas illustrating the same theme have come to light. One is in a private collection in West Germany, the other has been preserved in Tibet itself. Both series have inscriptions. It is also to be hoped that copies of a series of sixty printed thankas, likewise illustrating the life of sTon-pa-gçen-rab, of which the wood-blocks were previously available in the principality of Khro-bcu in rGya-rong, may have survived. The Bon religion poses numerous problems to the historian of religions, and its art remains practically unexplored. Hence these thankas provide a rare glimpse of a universe in which unfolds one of the least-known religious epics of Asia.

On Importance Hierarchy and Evaluation Devices in Narrative Texts

which can be organized into narrative units like actions, events, moves, etc. These units relate to one another in various ways: structural relations, coherence relations, causal relations, relations of hierarchical importance, and so on. The last mentioned the relations of hierarchical importance,1 has received relatively little attention within literary and text theory, despite the fact that they are so crucial. Their centrality is conspicuously revealed in recall and summary experiments, which reflect the various levels of the comprehension and processing of the narrative (and non-narrative text). The results of such experiments show clearly that the organization of narrative units into hierarchical relations is a dominant factor in the process of comprehension and storage of information. Generally, the information is stored in memory, and it is this information which is retrieved by subjects in recall and summary tasks. The other information which is considered less important is likely to be forgotten or deleted in these tasks.

Narrators and Narrative in Defoe

The structural analysis of draws on two axioms, which may often be unannounced. The first, expressed by Wayne C. Booth and.the Chicago theorists, is that may be treated as an exercise in rhetoric, may be analyzed in terms of its address to its reader. The second, formulated by Vladimir Propp the Russian Formalists, is that any given is an organization of motifs devices, which could have been organized otherwise. The combination of these two axioms can generate a poetics of which will serve to articulate the practice of any individual author. In this paper, I intend to look at the specific rhetorical device of Defoe's fiction, the first-person narrator, to see how it functions within the organized narratives as wholes. It is tempting to think of first-person narration as a rather monolithic device, to overlook its flexibility. The eventual aim of this argument is to show that Defoe gradually developed the role of his narrators, by making more problematic the relation between them as narrators of adventure as agents of adventure. Though Defoe's fiction may be most memorable for its direct vivid presentation of episodes, these are functioning units in larger organizations of narrative. The process of combination of units into complete narratives is a difficult one to articulate, depending on what is taken to be a narrative unit. 1 However, it is fair to suggest that in general episodes are combined into by stressing either their temporal succession or their causal connection. In most early popular fiction, the temporal relation is the more important, the is read as story, rather than as plot.2 Popular derives its hold on the reader's attention by the and then . principle, rather than by the and so . principle. From this point of view, Defoe's first extended fiction looks like a clear case of temporally connected narrative. Its title, in full, offers the recounting of a sequence of exciting events, without suggesting the presence of any underlying causal connection between them:

Opposition ved Svend Bjergs disputats

The book’s line of reasoning is here identified as being that a story, from the longest novel down to the shortest narrative unit, understood as metaphor is the basis of realization. Nothing more of less than a story. Belief, conviction and understanding are expressed in a story in an irresistibly creative manner. This is pointed out as being the book’s decisively new and fertile contribution to theology. But with this in mind, the discussion concerning criteria external to the story (p. 120) or that traditions or stories can be foreign to us (pp. 268ff.) appears to be inconsistent.

Repetition, Repression, and Return: Great Expectations and the Study of Plot

HAT FOLLOWS is intended primarily as a discourse on // a concept which has mostly gone unhonored in modern criticism, no doubt because it appears to belong to the popular, even the commercial side of literature. Reading for the plot, we were taught, is a low form of activity. Long caught in valuations set by a criticism conceived for the lyric, the study of narrative has more recently found its way back to a quasi-Aristotelian view of the logical priority of plot in narrative forms. In the wake of Russian Formalism, French narratology has made us sensitive to the functional logic of actions, to the workings of sequence and transformation in the constitution of recognizable narrative units, to the presence of codes of narration that demand decoding in consecutive, irreversible order.' Plot as I understand it, however, suggests a focus somewhat more specific than the questions of structure, discourse, and narrativity addressed by most narratology. We may want to conceive of plot less as a structure than as a structuring operation, used, or made necessary, by those meanings that develop only through sequence and succession: an interpretative operation specific to narrative signification. The word any dictionary tells us, covers a range of meanings, from the bounded piece of land, through the ground plan of a building, the chart or map, the outline of a literary work, to the sense (separately derived from the French complot) of the scheme or secret machination, to the accomplishment of some purpose, usually illegal. All these meanings, I think, usefully cohere in our common sense of plot: it is not only the outline of a narrative, demarcating its boundaries, it also suggests its intention of meaning, the direction of its scheme or machination for accomplishing a purpose. Plots have not only design, but intentionality as well. Some narratives clearly give us a sense of in higher degree than others. Our identification of this sense of plottedness may provide a more concrete and analyzable way into the question of plots than an abstract definition of the subject, and a way that necessarily finds its focus in the readership of in the reader's recogni-

The liberation of the samsas

Lukacs contends that Kafka pointed the way toward modernist abstraction and formalistic experimentation. As such, he sees Kafka as expressing a metaphysicalangst beyond redemption. Via an analysis of Kafka's use of formal means in Die Verwandlung I counterargued that Kafka, precisely by his use of these means, viz. the use of one narrative unit as “fiction” providing a solution to the reality of a larger narrative unit, does provide a solution to thisangst. Moreover, whereas Lukacs states that the first duty of the bourgeois intellectual has become “the rejection of an all-pervading fatalisticangst, implying a rescue operation for humanity rather than any breakthrough to socialism,” 11clearly implying that Kafka, while not doing the former, a fortiori fails to do the latter, I believe the present paper shows that Kafka does both. He does so by proposing to a narrative problem a solution which clearly has social implications as well: the elimination of mediation.

Second Thoughts on "Narrative Situations in the Novel": Towards a "Grammar of Fiction"

The nineteen-fifties mark the end of the Linnaean age of the theory and criticism of the novel, with its emphasis on the definition of different species, kinds and types of the narrative genre. The one feature common to the otherwise widely divergent fictional theories of Percy Lubbock, Jean Pouillon, Edwin Muir, Wolfgang Kayser, and Kate Hamburger, to name but a few, is their aim to distinguish between types of the novel or modes of narration. My own first attempt at fictional theory in 1955, Die typischen Erzahlsituationen im Roman,l was also undertaken under the influence of this approach. Modem theoreticians and critics of the novel who are inclined to judge these earlier theoretical studies of fiction as being much too rigid for a description of the plurality of the forms of fiction, without considering the historical function of this approach in its time,2 should be reminded of what Claude Levi-Strauss observed concerning Linnaeus' relation to Darwin: Darwin would not have been possible if he had not been preceded by Linnaeus, that is to say, if one had not already laid the theoretical and methodological bases permitting to describe and define the species which are subject to change.3 In fact the foundations were then laid for modem theories of narrative literature in which the main accent is no longer on the classification of the basic forms but on the variations and modulations of these forms, on their combinations and fusions as they appear in a particular novel or short story. In the meantime the linguistic approach to narrative texts has left its imprint on the critical scene, producing a new interest in the structure of the smaller narrative units, the sentence, the paragraph, etc. and demanding a more precise and systematic description of linguistic and literary phenomena than seemed necessary in older studies of the novel. In this article I shall try to modify my original theory of the novel and in so doing take into account the new situation. I should like to consider this modified

Kabbalah and Criticism

Prologue: That, too, I must have known Kabbalah Kabbalah and Criticism The Necessity of Misreading Epilogue: The Name Spoken Over the Water. Introduction 1. Does the Testament of Abraham Belong to a Genre? 2. Humour in the Testament of Abraham 3. Characterization of Abraham 4. Characterization of Michael 5. Death in the Testament of Abraham 6. The Plot of the Testament of Abraham 7. Comparison of the Greek Manuscripts 8. Conclusion Appendix 1: The 54 Narrative Units of the Testament of Abraham Appendix 2: Citations of the Three Manuscript Families Bibliography.