Narrative Fiction Contemporary Poetics

Now widely acknowledged as one of the most significant volumes in its field, Narrative Fiction turns its attention to questions such as 'What is a narrative? What is narrative fiction? How does it differ from other kinds of narrative? What features turn a discourse into a narrative text? This edition is brought fully up-to-date with a brilliant new concluding chapter, which includes references to significant recent works in the field. Narrative Fiction is organized around issues such as events, time, focalization, characterization, narration, the text and its reading, rather than individual theorists or approaches. Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan examines key approaches to narrative fiction, including New Criticism, formalism, structuralism and phenomenology, also offering views on and modifications to these theories. She presents an analysis of the system governing all fictional narratives, whether in the form of novel, short story or narrative poem, also suggesting how individual narratives can be studied against the background of this general system. Throughout, she illustrates aspects of her study with numerous examples drawn from texts of different periods and national literatures.Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith is the author of 'Narrative Fiction Contemporary Poetics', published 2002 under ISBN 9780415280228 and ISBN 0415280222.