Optional-Narrator Theory: Principles, Perspectives, Proposals (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781496223371)

Twentieth-century narratology fostered the assumption, which distinguishes narratology from previous narrative theories, that all narratives have a narrator. Since the first formulations of this assumption, however, voices have come forward to denounce oversimplifications and dangerous confusions of issues. Optional-Narrator Theory is the first collection of essays to focus exclusively on the narrator from the perspective of optional-narrator theories.

Sylvie Patron is a prominent advocate of optional-narrator theories, and her collection boasts essays by many prominent scholars--including Jonathan Culler and John Brenkman--and covers a breadth of genres, from biblical narrative to poetry to comics. This volume bolsters the dialogue among optional-narrator and pan-narrator theorists across multiple fields of research. These essays make a strong intervention in narratology, pushing back against the widespread belief among narrative theorists in general and theorists of the novel in particular that the presence of a fictional narrator is a defining feature of fictional narratives. This topic is an important one for narrative theory and thus also for literary practice.

Optional-Narrator Theory advances a range of arguments for dispensing with the narrator, except when it can be said that the author actually "created" a fictional narrator.


Author: Sylvie Patron
ISBN-10: 1496223373
ISBN-13: 9781496223371
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Language: English
Published: 02/01/2021
Pages: 318
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.40lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.88d