glossary and topical index - assetsglossary and topical index 229 antagonist: the opponent of the...

Glossary and topical index

What follow are definitions of useful terms for discussing narrative. Terms in boldface are the terms that are essential and that have been emphasized in this book.Other terms (in italics) have been included because they have either proven their useor been used so often that they are now unavoidable in the discussion of narrative.This glossary also serves as a topical index for the book.

Act: An event caused by a character (as opposed to ahappening).

Action: The sequence of events in a story. The action and theentities are the two basic components of story. Someprefer the term “events,” since “action” is also usedsynonymously with act. 7, 13, 19, 121, 130, 132, 133,163, 173, 184

Adaptation: The transmutation of a narrative, usually from onemedium to another. See adaptive reading. 112

Adaptive reading: One of three fundamental modes of interpretation (seealso intentional and symptomatic readings). Adap-tive readings range from interpretations freed fromconcerns for overreading or underreading to freshadaptations of the story either in the same mediumor in a different one, as, for example, the film versionsof Flaubert’s Madame Bovary or Shakespeare’s HenryV. 80, 106, 109, 209

Agency: The capacity of an entity to cause events (that is, toengage in acts). Characters by and large are entitieswith agency. Agency is often linked to the capacity toact with intent. 131

Agon or conflict: Most narratives are driven by a conflict. In Greektragedy, the word for the conflict, or contest, is the“agon.” From that word come the terms protagonistand antagonist. 55, 56, 171, 173, 175, 181, 193, 197

Analepsis: Flashback. The introduction into the narrative ofmaterial that happens earlier in the story. The oppositeof prolepsis. 165, 194

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Glossary and topical index 229

Antagonist: The opponent of the protagonist. He or she is com-monly the enemy of the hero. 55, 177

Author: A real person who creates a text. The author isnot to be confused with either the narrator or theimplied author of a narrative. 40, 68, 69, 84, 86, 102,103, 104, 106, 147, 148, 149

Authorial intention: The author’s intended meanings or effects. The con-cept of authorial intention took a beating in the twenti-eth century on a variety of grounds. It has been arguedthat authorial intention is indeterminable; that authorsare as fallible as the rest of us in reading their own workand therefore unreliable guides to reading; that the ideaof an author essentializes and presumes to fix an iden-tity that is indeterminate and fluid; and finally thatseeking authorial intention encourages the idea of asingle privileged meaning for a narrative even thoughnarratives are necessarily plural in their meanings.But don’t count this concept out. We seem stronglyinclined, in spite of all arguments, to read for autho-rial intention. Witness, for example, how authors con-tinue to be praised or blamed for the meanings andeffects readers attribute to them. An important related,but distinct, concept is that of the implied author. Seeintentional reading. 84

Autobiography: A narrative about the author, purporting implic-itly or explicitly to be true in the sense of non-fictional. Autobiographies come in many forms, evenin third-person narration, as in The Education of HenryAdams. Autobiography is another one of those porousconcepts, and the field abounds in narratives that seemto fall in a generic no-man’s land between autobiog-raphy and fiction, as in James Joyce’s A Portrait of theArtist as a Young Man or Maxine Hong Kingston’s TheWoman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts.53, 68, 81, 138–142, 158

Beginning and end: Though the meanings of these concepts would seem tobe obvious, their functions can be both complex andcrucial. Sometimes the end can relate to a narrativethe way a clinching point does to an argument. Bearin mind, too, that neither the beginning nor the endof the narrative discourse necessarily corresponds tothe beginning or end of the story. Epic narratives, forexample, traditionally begin in the middle of the story(in medias res). See closure. 28, 30, 56, 57

Central intelligence: See focalization.






230 Glossary and topical index

Character: Human or humanlike entity. Sometimes the broaderterms “agent” or “actor/actant” are used for character.Characters are any entities involved in the action thathave agency. These would include, in addition to per-sons, any quasi-volitional entities like animals, robots,extraterrestrials, and animated things. E. M. Forsterdistinguished between “flat” and “round” characters.The former can be “summed up in a single phrase” andusually have no existence outside of a single dominat-ing quality. Round characters cannot be summed upin the same way and are not predictable. In this sense,they have depth. 19, 51, 116, 117, 121, 130, 132, 137,183, 187

Chronotope: Bakhtin’s multidimensional term for the complex waysin which narrative time “thickens” as it moves along.161, 165, 167

Closure: When a narrative ends in such a way as to satisfythe expectations and answer the questions that it hasraised, it is said to close, or to have closure. Noticethat there is a distinction here between “expectations”and “questions.” By expectations are meant kinds ofaction or event that the narrative leads us to expect(the gun introduced in Chapter One that has to go offin Chapter Three). King Lear, for example, satisfies theexpectations that are aroused early on when we per-ceive that its narrative pattern is tragedy. We expectamong other things that Lear will die, and he does.But major questions are raised over the course of theplay that for many viewers are not answered by theconclusion. So for many, King Lear has tragic closure(giving satisfaction at the “level of expectations”) butnot closure of understanding (giving satisfaction at the“level of questions”). See end. 56, 59, 67, 68, 87, 88, 89,90, 97, 157, 194, 205, 212

Constituent andsupplementary events:

Also referred to as “bound’ and “free motifs” (Toma-shevsky), kernels and satellites (Chatman) and nucleiand catalyzers (Barthes), these concepts distinguishtwo fundamental kinds of events in narrative. Con-stituent events are essential to the forward move-ment of the story (Barthes also called them “cardi-nal functions”); they are not all necessarily “turn-ing points,” but at the least they are essential to thechain of events that make up the story. Supplemen-tary events are not necessary to the story; they seemto be extra. The distinction between constituent and







supplementary events is often helpful because itreminds us to ask the question: Why has this supple-mentary event been included in this narrative? Sinceit is not necessary to advance the story, why did theimplied author see fit to include it? Like many of ourdistinctions, however, this one is not always obvi-ous – one reader’s constituent event may be another’ssupplementary event. 22, 24, 35, 36, 51, 60, 95, 97, 115,140, 178, 182, 190

Crux: A critical point, often a gap, in a fictional narrativewhere there is an insufficiency of cues, or where cuesare sufficiently ambiguous, to create a major disagree-ment in the intentional interpretation of the narrative.Whether or not Heathcliff killed Hindley Earnshaw inWuthering Heights is such a crux because how we mightfill the gap determines whether or not we see Heathcliffas capable of murder. 92, 95, 98

Diegesis (1): Strictly speaking, this is the telling of a story. Itgoes back to Plato’s distinction between two ways ofpresenting a story: as mimesis (acted) or as diegesis(told). (2): Frequently “the diegesis” is used to referto the storyworld, the world created by the narra-tion. Narratologists also speak of levels of diegesis. The“diegetic level” consists of all those characters, things,and events that are in the storyworld of the primarynarrative. A narrator who belongs to that world, likeJake Barnes in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, is ahomodiegetic narrator. But there can be other eventsand characters in the text that are not in the primarynarrative at all but in a storyworld located outsideit. Such framing narratives exist on a heterodiegeticlevel. Chaucer’s pilgrims are heterodiegetic narratorswhen they tell their tales. If the narrator is situatedoutside any of the diegetic levels of a narrative, he orshe is considered extradiegetic, as, say, the voice thatnarrates Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. 75, 165

Direct style: The direct expression of a character’s speech orthought, either “untagged” or “tagged” (set off fromthe narration by quotation marks and other indica-tors like “he said,” “she thought”): “It was a hot day.Elspeth wondered to herself: ‘What on earth am Idoing lugging stones on a day like this?’” Also calleddirect discourse. See indirect style, free indirect style,and interior monologue. 51, 69, 70, 77, 78

Discordant narrator: See unreliable narrator. 77, 84







Distance: Used in two main senses: 1) the narrator’s emotionaldistance from the characters and the action (the degreeof his or her involvement in the story); and 2) the dis-tance between the narrator’s moral, emotional or intel-lectual sensibilities and those of the implied author. Anarrator’s distance (in both senses) affects the extent towhich we trust the information we get from the nar-rator and assess its moral and emotional coloring. 74,75, 80, 97

Electronic narrative: Now used primarily to refer to narrative forms thattake advantage of computer and on-line technology toachieve effects unique to these media. These include,notably, effects enabled by the hypertext function. The“role-playing game,” a hybrid with fascinating impli-cations for narrative theory, migrated to the computerin the 1980s and to the internet in the 1990s. Seehypertext narrative. 32, 37

Embedded narrative: Commonly, a “story within a story,” or a narra-tive nested in a framing narrative. Ryan and Palmerhave encouraged expanding the meaning of narra-tive embedding to include all those micro-narrativesthat characters imagine in the ordinary course of theirthinking or conversation. 28, 30, 38, 50, 167, 169

Emplotment: See plot. 155End: See beginning and end. 56, 57, 207, 209Entity: Also referred to as “existents” or “actors and actants,”

entities comprise one of the two basic components of astory, the other being the events or action. Humanlikeentities capable of agency are referred to as characters.But we can also tell stories of insentient objects inca-pable of action on their own – of a planet, for example,and how it was struck out of its course by an immenseasteroid. It would be an error to refer to such entitiesas characters, particularly if scientific objectivity is ata premium. 19

Event: The fundamental unit of the action. Also called an“incident,” an event can be an act (a kick or a kiss), ora happening when no character is causally involved (abolt of lightning). 4, 8, 13, 22, 36, 164, 173, 184

Existent: See entity.Extradiegetic narration: See diegesis, metalepsis. 80, 81, 169Fabula and sjuzet: See story. 18Fiction: Made-up, as opposed to factual. As a noun it refers

to the whole range of made-up narratives that standopposed to “nonfictional” genres of narrative like







history, biography, autobiography, reportage, etc. 145,147

First-person narration: Conventionally, narration by a character who plays arole in the story narrated. Note that there are manyexamples of narrators who are not characters in thestory but who talk in the “first person” – sometimesat length (the narrative persona of Henry Fielding,for example, in Tom Jones). These are not usuallyconsidered “first-person” narrators because they tellthe story in the third person. For this reason, GerardGenette found greater utility in the distinction betweenhomodiegetic and heterodiegetic narration. 70, 71, 72,75

Flat and round characters: See character. 133, 134Focalization: The position or quality of consciousness through

which we “see” events in the narrative. In British andNorth American criticism, the phrase point of viewhas been used for this concept, or something quiteclose to it, but point of view is more general and oftenincludes the concept of voice. “Focalization” may bemore polysyllabic, but it is more exact. Usually the nar-rator is our focalizer, but it is important to keep in mindthat focalizing is not necessarily achieved through asingle consistent narrative consciousness. Focalizationcan change, sometimes frequently, during the course ofa narrative, and sometimes from sentence to sentence,as it can, for example, in free indirect style. Sometimesa novelist will rely on a single character as a focalizer.Henry James called such a figure a reflector or cen-tral intelligence. In James’s The Ambassadors, LambertStrether serves this function. In this study, I presentfocalization and voice as companion concepts. Bothfrequently convey a sensibility, the one through whatwe “see,” the other through what we “hear.” 73, 74,123, 125, 155

Forking-path narrative: Narrative in which two or more incompatible worldscohabit in the same diegetic level. See metalepsis. 167,169, 173, 174

Frame andframing narrative:

The term “frame” is used in so many ways in discus-sions of narrative that it is important to define howyou are using it. It can refer to the way a shot is framedin a film or, more broadly, the way a scene is framed ina play or novel. It can refer to the templates, or frames,in our mind that we bring to a narrative and that areelicited and perhaps manipulated by the text or that







impose their own constructions on a text. Another useof the term refers to any preliminary and/or concludingmaterial in a narrative not essential to the story. Morespecifically such a frame can be a framing narrative,that is, a narrative that frames an embedded narrative.28, 29, 38, 51, 79, 169, 171, 180

Free indirect style: Third-personnarration in whicha character’s thoughtsor expressions are presented in the character’s voicewithout being set off by quotation marks or the usualaddition of phrases like “he thought” or “she said”and without shifting into grammatical first-persondiscourse: “It was a hot day. What on earth was shedoing lugging stones on a day like this?” Here, the sec-ond sentence is marked by Elspeth’s intonations, but itis cast in the third person and in the past tense, neitherof which she would use, were she speaking or think-ing this question. Also called free indirect discourse. Seedirect style, indirect style, interior monologue. 70, 77,78, 80, 149

Gaps: The inevitable voids, large or small, in anynarrative that the reader is called upon to fillfrom his or her experience or imagination. In theintentional interpretation of fictional narrative, thisprocess is limited to what is consistent with the textand its cues. In historical and other forms of nonfic-tion narrative, it is possible to fill critical gaps throughfurther research. See crux. 90, 95, 97, 98, 101, 121, 123,132, 133, 134, 156, 157, 183, 184, 195, 209, 212

Genre: A recurrent literary form. There are narrative and non-narrative genres. The novel, the epic, the short story,the ballad are all examples of narrative genres. Gen-res can be highly specialized. The Bildungsroman, forexample, tells the story of its hero’s coming of age. Itis a genre that fits within the larger genre of the novel.Sometimes, genres can be so discrete and specializedthat scholars use the term “sub-genre” to describethem. 2, 14, 49, 58, 61, 102, 151, 154, 155

Gutter: The space between frames in a cartoon comicsequence. The gutter is a form of narrative gap thatis built into the medium of the comic strip. It is thespace in which the reader imagines events unfoldingin time. 112

Happening: One of the two kinds of event in a narrative. Unlikeactions, happenings occur without the specific agencyof a character.







Heterodiegetic narration: See diegesis. 75, 80, 169Homodiegetic narration: See diegesis. 75, 80, 167, 169Hypertext narrative: Narrative conveyed in electronic media (on CD or on-

line) that capitalizes on hypertext capability to permit(or require) the reader to switch attention instantlyto other lexia – texts or graphics, which may (but notnecessarily) be different segments of the narrative dis-course. See electronic narrative. 32, 34

Implied author: Neither the real author nor the narrator, the impliedauthor is the idea of the author constructed by thereader as she or he reads the narrative. In an intentionalreading, the implied author is that sensibility andmoral intelligence that the reader gradually constructsto infer the intended meanings and effects of the nar-rative. The implied author might as easily (and withgreater justice) be called the “inferred author.” 65, 76,77, 84, 86, 87, 90, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 100, 102, 109, 135,152

Implied reader(implied audience):

As the implied author should be kept distinct from theactual author, so the implied reader should be keptdistinct from the actual reader. The implied reader isnot necessarily you or I but the reader we infer to be anintended recipient of the narrative. Some argue that theimplied reader is the reader the implied author writesfor. See also narratee. 76, 94

Indirect style: Speech or thinking of a character rendered in the nar-rator’s own words: “It was a hot day. Elspeth askedherself why she should be lugging stones on a day suchas that.” If it is not as common as directly quotedspeech, in most novels this is the commonest way ofrendering a character’s thoughts. Another term forindirect thought is “thought report.” See direct style,free indirect style, interior monologue. 69, 70, 77, 78,149

Intentional reading: An interpretation that seeks to understand a text interms of the intended meanings of its implied author.See symptomatic reading, adaptive reading. 86, 89, 90,102, 108, 109, 135, 137, 208

Interior monologue: Any of a number of radical experimental modes ofdirect style used to convey the thinking and feelingof a character without the usual grammatical tags(e.g., quotation marks or the phrases “he thought”or “she thought”). “Interior monologue” is some-times used interchangeably with the phrase “stream







of consciousness.” My preference is to use the latterto describe how thinking and feeling occur and theformer for the actual conveyance of that stream ofthinking/feeling. See indirect style, free indirect style.70, 78, 149

Interpretation: The act of expressing in one’s own way the mean-ings – including ideas, values, and feelings – com-municated by a text. Interpretation can take a num-ber of forms. Commonly it is found in critical writ-ing. But the production of a play is often referred toas an “interpretation” of the play, and even a nar-rative can be seen as an interpretation of a storythat has been told before. In this book, I distinguishthree kinds of interpretation: intentional readings,symptomatic readings, and adaptive readings. 24, 28,40, 67, 68, 83, 84, 100, 101, 155

Intertextuality: The condition of all texts, including narratives, ascomposed of preexisting texts. Intertextuality can bedistinguished from “allusion” and “imitation” as aninevitable, rather than a necessarily selective, condi-tion of texts. It is based on the assumption that we canonly express ourselves through words and forms thatare already available to us. In this view, the work ofeven the most original artists draws throughout fromthe work of predecessors. The power of such work mustlie in the way it recontextualizes the multitude of bitsthat have been cannibalized in this way. 101, 102, 113

Kernels and satellites: See constituent and supplementary events.Lexia: Roland Barthes in S/Z called lexia the “units of mean-

ing” in a text, “blocks of signification” which amountto anything from a few words to several sentences. Theterm has since been adapted in discourse on electronicnarrative to refer to passages of varying length trig-gered by hypertext linking. See hypertext narrative. 33

Masterplots: Recurrent skeletal stories, belonging to cultures andindividuals that play a powerful role in questions ofidentity, values, and the understanding of life. Master-plots can also exert an influence on the way we take innew information, causing us to overread or underreadnarratives in an often unconscious effort to bring theminto conformity with a masterplot. As masterplots, bytheir nature, recur in many different narrative versions,it is at least a technical mistake to employ the commonterm “master narrative” for this concept. See plot. 19,46, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 58, 61, 94, 97, 127, 138, 139, 140,155, 185, 189, 195, 197







Medium: The vehicle conveying a narrative – written language,film, oil paint, fabric, lithe bodies moving silently on astage. Some of these media would be considered unfitfor narrative by the first set of scholars referred to inthe definition of narrative below. 79, 80, 112–127

Melodrama: Sensational narratives deploying flat characters whoare either very good or very bad and who often speakin overwrought language. Originally used to describeplays, the term is frequently used in a derogatory wayto describe narratives in other media. 55, 133, 207

Metalepsis: A violation of narrative levels, usually in which thediegesis, or storyworld, is invaded by an entity or enti-ties from another narrative level or even from out-side the narrative altogether, as for example when anextradiegetic narrator enters the action, or a “specta-tor” leaps on stage and becomes a part of the action, orthe “author” appears and starts quarrelling with oneof the characters. See forking-path narrative. 169, 173,174

Mimesis: The imitation of an action by performance. Accordingto Plato, mimesis is one of the two major ways to conveya narrative, the other being diegesis or the representa-tion of an action by telling. By this distinction, playsare mimetic, epic poems are diegetic. Aristotle (Plato’sstudent) used the term “mimesis” as simply the imi-tation of an action and included in it both modes ofnarrative representation. 121

Montage: Literally, in French, “assembly.” The art of editing filmby connecting disparate shots one after another. 18,121, 123, 124

Motif: A discrete thing, image, or phrase that is repeated ina narrative. Theme, by contrast, is a more generalizedor abstract concept that is suggested by, among otherthings, motifs. A coin can be a motif, greed is a theme.99

Narratee: Prince’s coinage for the narrator’s intended audience.The professionals on the deck of the Nellie are Mar-lowe’s narratees in Heart of Darkness. The narratee isnot to be confused with the reader, real or implied, nordo all narrators have narratees. 14

Narration: The telling of a story or part of a story. Often usedindistinguishably from narrative, narration as it is usedhere is a subset of verbal narrative, referring to theactivity of a narrator. 68, 75, 169, 171

Narrative: The representation of a story (an event or series ofevents). Some scholars have argued that there cannot







be a narrative without someone to tell it (a narrator),but this view would exclude most drama and film,which, though they present stories, usually do sowithout a narrator. Narratives consist of two maincomponents: the story and the narrative discourse.

Narrative discourse: The story as narrated – that is, the story as rendered in aparticular narrative. Some narratologists use the termplot for this concept, but this can be confusing becausein English we commonly use “plot” and “story” inter-changeably. Note that the distinction between “story”and “story as narrated” can be taken to imply that sto-ries exist independently of narrative presentation – inother words, the same story can be narrated in morethan one way. 15, 16, 24, 33, 34, 47, 115, 116, 146, 154,155, 193

Narrativity: A disputed term, used here to mean the degree to whicha text generates the impression that it is a narrative.Prince coined the term “narrativehood” to refer to thebare minimum required for a narrative to be recog-nized as a narrative. There are no degrees of narrative-hood. 24, 25, 26, 30, 31, 42, 44, 45, 148

Narratology: Coined by Tzvetan Todorov in 1969, narratology isthe descriptive field devoted to the systematic study ofnarrative. Though it was originally conceived as a sub-field of the structuralist study of literature, narratologyhas grown and continues to grow well beyond its ori-gins in both scope and diversity of method. For thisreason, scholars increasingly prefer the more inclu-sive term “narrative theory.” Many of the terms in thisglossary come from the work of narratologists. 201

Narrator: One who tells a story. The narrator of fictionalnarrative is not to be confused with the author orthe implied author, though in some cases it is hardto distinguish their views from those of the impliedauthor. The narrator is best seen as a tool, devised bythe implied author, to narrate the story. Thus, there aremany unreliable narrators who can’t possibly be con-fused with the author. Some hard-line narratologistswould argue that the distinction between the narratorand the author should hold for all forms of narra-tive, including nonfiction forms like history and evenautobiography. At the least, this position raises inter-esting philosophical questions involving the relation ofvoice, character, and identity (whose voice is this youare reading now? Is it my voice or is it the voice of acharacter-like entity I created to present these ideas – a







mask that I wear in print, my persona?). See narration.14, 15, 51, 68, 77, 84, 93, 94, 97, 98, 148, 149, 164, 166,167, 169, 170

Naturalizing: Culler’s term for the operation by which readers orviewers impose familiarity on a narrative, usually byoverreading or underreading. Fludernik has adaptedthe term to mean the process by which new narrativeforms that are at first strange (e.g. interior monologue)acquire an aura of naturalness through repeated use.See normalizing. 51, 168, 169, 172, 174

Normalizing: The power of narrative form, and particularly ofmasterplots, to convey a sense of reality or truth. Seenaturalizing. 44, 46, 49, 53, 156

Omniscient narration: Narration by a narrator assumed to know everythingconnected with the story narrated. Though it is widelyused, this is a troublesome term that is finally moreconfusing than helpful. There are, it is true, narra-tors who seem to know everything, but no narra-tion was ever omniscient (literally “all-knowing”).All narration is riddled with blind spots – gaps –which we must fill from our limited knowledge. Seethird-person narration. 73

Overreading andunderreading:

The activities of importing into a text material thatis not signified within it (overreading) or of neglect-ing material that is signified within it (underreading).Both would appear to be inevitable to some degree.Reducing them to a minimum could be said to be theobject of an intentional reading. 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 94,97, 101, 107, 134, 140, 208

Paratext: Genette’s term for material outside the narrative that isin some way connected to it. Paratexts can be physicallyattached to the narrative vehicle (“peritexts”): prefaces,tables of contents, titles, blurbs on the jacket, illus-trations. They can also be separated from the vehiclebut nonetheless connected by association (“epitexts”):comments by the author, reviews, other works by theauthor. Paratexts have the capacity to inflect the way weinterpret a narrative, sometimes powerfully. Genettedid not include plays and movies in his discussion, buthere, too, we can see paratextual material in the formof playbills, previews, marquees, public disclaimers,production scandals, notoriety of the actors. 30, 31,38, 106, 108, 110, 114, 148, 181, 209

Performative: A term widely and diversely used in a variety offields (linguistics, philosophy, dramatic art, feminist







theory). In this book, the term refers not to what anarrative is or is about, but to what it does – how itfunctions in the world, intentionally or unintention-ally. 141, 142

Persona: Literally “mask,” persona is used most commonly torefer to the personality constructed by an author tonarrate a story or even to speak in his or her name. Seefirst-person narration. 73

Plot: A vexed term. Commonly in English plot is used tomean story. Another (generally European) traditionequates plot with the order in which the story-eventsare arranged in the narrative. Plot has also been usedto mean the chain of causally connected events in astory. But if it is used in this way, then the commonphrase “episodic plot” would be a contradiction interms, since in this context “episodic” usually means“causally disconnected” events. Close to this usage isthe idea of emplotment, which Ricoeur describes as“the operation that draws a configuration out of a sim-ple succession” (I, 65). Finally, plot is often used in thesense of story-type (revenge plot, marriage plot). Myterm masterplot draws on this last usage. 18, 19, 47,200

Point of view: Prince distinguishes point of view from focalization asbeing the perceptual or conceptual position as opposedto the perspective “in terms of which the narrated situ-ations and events are presented.” But in practice, per-ceptual/conceptual position and perspective are oftendifficult to discriminate. I recommend using the termfocalization for that complex of perspective, position,feeling, and sensibility (or the lack of these) that char-acterize specifically our visual purchase on the narra-tive, even if it may fluctuate from moment to moment.And I recommend the use of the term voice for thesame complex as it is achieved through the narrativevoice that we hear. 73, 80

Prolepsis: Flashforward. The introduction into the narrative ofmaterial that comes later in the story. The opposite ofanalepsis.

Protagonist: In an agon, the hero (though not necessarily a “goodguy”). Opposed by an antagonist (who is not neces-sarily a “bad guy”). 55, 59, 61, 177

Recit: Sometimes used in French narratology fornarrative discourse and opposed to “histoire”(story). See narrative discourse and story.







Reflector: See focalization.Reflexivity/reflexivenarrative:

A reflexive or self-reflexive (or self-conscious)narrative is one that, either by formal or thematicmeans, calls attention to its condition as constructedart. Reflexivity is a condition that can be found in non-narrative as well as narrative texts. 173, 181, 183

Repetition: The recurrence in narrative of images, ideas, situations,kinds of characters. Repetition is one of the surest signsof the meaningful. If you are stuck trying to interpreta text, one good question to ask yourself is: What isrepeated in this narrative? Theme and motif are termscommonly used for kinds of repetition in narrative.95, 97, 99, 106

Retardation: The slowing down of the narrative discourse. Often,but not always, a way of increasing suspense. 116

Second-person narration: Narration in the second person (“You did this. Yousaid that”). A comparatively rare grammatical choicefor narration, it has been used increasingly in fictionand even autobiography. Its effects are a source of con-siderable critical dispute. 70, 71, 80, 81

Setting: All those elements serving as background in anarrative’s storyworld. 20, 51, 52, 60

Sjuzet: See story. 18, 19Stereotype: See type. 49, 59, 186, 189Story: With narrative discourse, one of the two defining com-

ponents of narrative. Conveyed through the narra-tive discourse, story is a chronological sequence ofevents involving entities. Slightly adapting Chatman,we can identify two kinds of events in a story, actsand happenings. Entities are also of two basic kinds:characters, who can engage in acts, and non-sentiententities, who cannot. Story should not be confusedwith narrative discourse, which is the telling or pre-senting of a story. A story is bound by the laws of time; itgoes in one direction, starting at the beginning, movingthrough the middle, and arriving at the end (thoughwhether a story must have a clear beginning and endis disputable). Narrative discourse does not have tofollow this order. The distinction between story andnarrative discourse was first anticipated early in thiscentury by Russian structuralists. The terms they usedfor this distinction – fabula (for story) and sjuzet (forthe order of events in the narrative) – are still widelyemployed in the discourse on narrative. 15, 24, 25, 33,34, 36, 37, 115, 116, 146, 155, 165, 182, 183, 193







Storyworld: The diegesis or world in which the story takes place.Normally, as a narrative progresses our sense of thestoryworld grows richer and more complex. 20, 75,160, 162

Stream of consciousness: See interior monologue. 78Supplementary events: See constituent and supplementary events. 51, 52, 60,

95, 178, 182, 190Suspense: Uncertainty (together with the desire to diminish it)

about how the story will develop. Suspense can varyfrom mild to acute, but it is possible to argue that sus-pense is always present to some degree in those nar-ratives that keep us from closing the book or walkingout of the theater. Much of the art of narrative lies inresolving suspense with some degree of surprise. 57,62, 116, 155, 160, 163, 192

Symptomatic reading: Decoding a text as symptomatic of the author’s uncon-scious or unacknowledged state of mind, or of unac-knowledged cultural conditions. Generally opposed tointentional reading. 104, 108, 109, 111, 137, 167, 208

Temporal structure: How the time of the narrative discourse relates tothe time of the story. There are three major ways inwhich the time of the narrative discourse can departfrom that of the story: 1) by rearranging the orderin which events are revealed to us (see prolepsis andanalepsis); 2) by expanding or contracting the timedevoted to individual events (see retardation); 3) byrevisiting, sometimes repeatedly, moments or episodesin the story.

Text: Used broadly in much, though not all, narrative the-ory to mean the physical embodiment of the narrative,as book, short story, performed play, film, and so on.Texts, of course, are thought of in common discourseas things composed of words. The broader meaning ofthe term invoked here rests on the idea that, regardlessof the vehicle, narratives are always “read” in the sensethat we grasp them through a process of decipherment.Without some understanding of the symbolic codein which the narrative is told, we cannot know whathappened.

Theme: A subject (issue, question) that recurs in a narra-tive through implicit or explicit reference. With motif,theme is one of the two commonest forms of narrativerepetition. Where motifs tend to be concrete, themesare abstract. 51, 95, 97, 106







Third-person narration: Conventionally, narrative in which the narrator isnot a character in the story, and the charactersare referred to in the third person (“He did this”;“She says that”). Often, and misleadingly, referred toas omniscient narration. Like first-person narration,the term is not a satisfactory generic classifica-tion since third-person narrators can refer to them-selves in the first person, and first-person narrativesalmost invariably abound in stretches of third-personnarration. Genette features the cleaner distinctionbetween homo-, hetero- and extradiegetic narration.See diegesis. 70, 71, 73, 75, 77

Type: A kind of character that recurs across a range ofnarrative texts. Oedipus, Othello, and Willy Lomanall fit within types of the tragic hero. But charactersin narratives are almost invariably compounds of var-ious types. Othello is a compound of the types of thetragic hero, the jealous husband, the outsider, the mil-itary hero, the man of eloquence, and the Moor. WillyLoman is a compound of the types of the tragic hero,the optimist, the dreamer, and the salesman. When acharacter is composed without invention, adhering tooclosely to type, it is considered a stereotype. Stereotypecan also be used more broadly to refer to any literarycliche. 49, 51, 116, 126, 136, 140–141, 185, 189

Underreading: See overreading. 86, 88, 89, 90, 97, 134, 140, 208Unreliable narrator: A narrator whose perceptions and moral sensibilities

differ from those of the implied author. There can bedegrees of reliability and unreliability among narra-tors. It is useful to follow Dorrit Cohn in distinguish-ing between those narrators who are unreliable in theirrendering of the facts and those who are reliable in ren-dering the facts but unreliable in their views. The lattershe designates as discordant narrators, and theirs is thecommonest form of unreliability. 68, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81,84, 98, 117, 180

Voice: The sensibility through which we hear the narrative,even when we are reading silently. Voice is very closelyassociated with focalization, the sensibility throughwhich we see the characters and events in the story,and sometimes hard to distinguish from it. 70, 93, 155






Index of authors and narratives

Aarseth, Espen J. 37, 38Abbott, H. Porter 38Adams, Henry 229Aeschylus, Agamemnon 132AI (Stanley Kubrick and Steven

Spielberg) 103Alger, Horatio 47–8, 53, 54Allen, Graham 110Amis, Martin, Time’s Arrow 17, 26Amsterdam, Anthony G., and Jerome

Bruner 191Andrew, Dudley 113, 127Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford

Coppola) 123, 124, 129, 173Aristotle 15, 18, 57, 130–1, 132, 153–4,

160, 199–200, 237Armstrong, Paul 110Asheron’s Call 35, 36Atkins, G. Douglas 110Atwood, Margaret, Alias Grace 159Augustine, St. 100–1, 103

Confessions 139, 141, 143Austen, Jane 65

Emma 65, 112–29Film adaptation (Amy

Heckerling’s Clueless) 127,129

Film adaptation (DiarmidLawrence) 129

Auster, Paul 3, 102

Bacon, Francis, Three Studies forFigures at the Base of aCrucifixion 10–11

Bakhtin, M. M. 161, 165, 167, 221n.5,230

Bal, Mieke 13, 19, 80, 124Balazs, Bela 112–24Ballard, J. M., The Atrocity Exhibition 26Balzac, Honore de 171

Old Goriot 71Barbellion, W. N. P. [Bruce

Cummings], The Journal of aDisappointed Man 31, 136–7,138, 141–2, 143, 145

Barth, JohnEnd of the Road, The 213Floating Opera, The 213

Barthes, Roland 1–2, 13, 22–3, 26, 33,40, 43, 52, 57–8, 60, 65, 68, 69,154–5, 209, 230, 236

Bazin, Andre 113Beauvoir, Simone de, The Blood of

Others 213Beckett, Samuel

Eleutheria 171“Fizzle 1” 162Molloy 53, 65, 98Not I 174“Ping” 136–7, 141–2That Time 174Unnamable, The 14, 26Waiting for Godot 31, 109, 113–14,

126Behn, Aphra, Oroonoko, or the Royal

Slave 132Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze)

174

244






Index of authors and narratives 245

Bellow, SaulThe Adventures of Augie March 14Herzog 213

Beowulf 99Bergman, Ingmar 112Bergson, Henri 133Bernanos, Georges, Diary of a Country

Priest 213Film adaptation (Robert Bresson)

113Bible

Cain (story of) 186Christ (prophecy in Isaiah) 185Genesis 41Judas (story of) 186Wisdom of Solomon (story of in

Kings) 194–5, 212Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks 140, 144Blair Witch Project, The (Eduardo

Sanchez and Daniel Myrick)38, 124

Blake, William 110Bloom, Harold 108, 110Bluestone, George 112, 127Boccaccio, Giovanni, Decameron 28,

29Booth, Alison 65Booth, Wayne 52, 75–6, 80, 85, 97Bordwell, David 13, 79, 81, 85, 97, 173

and Kristin Thompson 174Borges, Jorge Luis, “The Garden of

Forking Paths” 173Branigan, Edward 81, 125, 215n.2Braudy, Leo 117Brazil (Terry Gilliam) 127Brecht, Bertolt 171Bremond, Claude 21Bridgeman, Teresa 173Bronte, Charlotte 92

Jane Eyre 25Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights 65,

74, 75, 76, 78, 81, 88, 92–3, 95,98, 114, 231

Film adaptation (William Wyler)79, 115–17, 127

Brooke-Rose, Christine 110Thru 38

Brooks, Peter 3, 18, 53, 188and Paul Gewirtz 191

Brown, Arnold R., Lizzie Borden: TheLegend, the Truth, the FinalChapter 191

Brown, Dan, The Da Vinci Code 150–1Bruner, Jerome 52, 138–9, 143, 199,

212Bruss, Elizabeth 138, 143Bulwer Lytton, Edward 66Bunyan, John, Grace Abounding 13Burgess, Anthony, A Clockwork Orange

Film adaptation (Stanley Kubrick)79, 114, 129

Burroughs, William, Naked Lunch 26Burton, Virginia Lee, Mike Mulligan

and his Steam Shovel 54Butor, Michel, La modification 70

Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene)127

Calvino, Italo, If on a Winter’s Night aTraveler 70, 71, 98

Campbell, Joseph 53Capote, Truman, In Cold Blood 159

Film version (Richard Brooks) 159Capote (Bennett Miller) 159Carpentier, Alejo, “Journey to the

Source” 26Carr, John Dickson, The Black Minute

161Carroll, Lewis

Alice in Wonderland 168“Jabberwocky” 157

Cartmell, Deborah, and ImeldaWhelehan 127

Cassavetes, John 18Chandler, Raymond, Farewell My

Lovely 81Film adaptation (Edward Dmytryk’s

Murder My Sweet) 79, 81Chatman, Seymour 16, 17, 22–3, 26,

42, 230, 241






246 Index of authors and narratives

Chaucer 24, 137, 142, 231Canterbury Tales, The 28, 137, 142Troilus and Criseyde 113

Chekhov, Anton 60, 206Christie, Agatha 218n.3

Witness for the Prosecution 191Film adaptation (Billy Wilder)

191Churchill, Caryl, Cloud Nine 174Cinderella (the story) 21–2, 46, 49, 58,

89Clarke, Arthur C.

“Sentinal, The” 128Film adaptation (Stanley

Kubrick’s 2001: A SpaceOdyssey) 128

2001 1282010: Odyssey Two 128

Film adaptation (Peter Hyams’s2010: The Year We MakeContact) 128

2061: Odyssey Three 128Clueless (Amy Hackerling) 127,

129Coetzee, J. M. 6, 84

In the Heart of the Country 174Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee, The

168–9Cohn, Dorrit 69, 80, 84, 146, 148–9,

150, 171, 243Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 197Collins, Wilkie 65

The Moonstone 65Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness 38,

65, 81, 129, 169, 237Contact (Robert Zemeckis) 124Coover, Robert, “The Babysitter” 174Corneille, Pierre 13Corrigan, Timothy 127Cortazar, Julio

Cronopios and Famos 38Hopscotch 33, 98

Coverly, C. D., Califia 39Culler, Jonathan 20, 26, 36, 44, 52,

110, 239

Davis, Lennard J. 158Defoe, Daniel 205

Journal of the Plague Year 159DeLillo, Don, Underworld 98de Man, Paul 110De Palma, Brian 6Derrida, Jacques 105, 110, 210Dickens, Charles 65, 86, 113, 133

David Copperfield 65, 95Great Expectations 66, 74, 75, 114Nicholas Nickleby

Stage adaptation (RoyalShakespeare Company) 114

Doherty, Thomas 137, 142Dolezel, Lubomır 19, 97, 98, 152, 155,

157, 159, 165Dos Passos, John, USA 81Dostoevsky, Fyodor 212

Brothers Karamazov, The 61, 62,67–8, 98

Notes from Underground 65Douglas, Frederick, Narrative of the

Life of Frederick Douglas139–40, 143

Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones) 171,174

Duffy, Bruce, The World as I Found It159

Dujardin, Edouard, Les lauriers sontcoupes 78

Dungeons and Dragons 35DuPlessis, Rachel Blau 65Dworkin, Ronald, M. 191

Eakin, Paul John 138, 143Eco, Umberto 85, 110Edmunds, Lowell 212

and Alan Dundes 212Eisenstein, Sergei 113, 121Eliot, George 137, 142, 171

Middlemarch 137, 142Eliot, T. S., The Waste Land 14Ellison, Ralph, Invisible Man 48, 54,

134Euripides, Medea 132







Fahey, William A. 53Faulkner, William 78, 135

Absalom! Absalom! 32, 34Faustbuch 24Fielding, Henry, Tom Jones 72, 73, 114,

233Fish, Stanley 191, 212Fitzgerald, F. Scott 90

The Great Gatsby 54, 81Flaubert, Gustave, Madame Bovary

73–4, 77–8, 87, 89–90, 104–6,134, 135, 147, 228

Floating Admiral, The 103Fludernik, Monica 25, 80, 239Foley, Barbara 158Forster, E. M. 42, 97, 98, 133, 135, 137,

142, 230A Passage to India 99

Four Hundred Blows, The (FrancoisTruffaut) 117

Fowles, John, The French Lieutenant’sWoman 170

Frayn, Michael, Copenhagen 152Freud, Sigmund 200–201, 202, 204Frey, James, A Million Little Pieces

145–6, 147, 148, 153, 158Friedlander, Saul 159Frost, Robert 102Frye, Northrup 53

Gaimon, Neil 123Garcıa Marquez, Gabriel, “A Very Old

Man with Enormous Wings”87–8

Garnier, Michel, La douce resistance8

Genette, Gerard 13, 30, 38, 75, 80, 128,233, 239, 243

Gerrig, Richard J. 65Gide, Andre, The Counterfeiters 65Gittes, Katherine S. 38Godard, Jean-Luc 18Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

Faust 24, 212Sorrows of Young Werther, The 81

Goffman, Erving 29Goodman, Nelson 34Gorman, David 159Gosse, Edmund, Father and Son 140,

144Gould, Stephen Jay 47Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir) 23Greed (Eric von Stroheim) 114Greimas, A. J. 220n.4Griffith, D. W. 113Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis) 168Guare, John, Six Degrees of Separation

65, 82, 121Film adaptation (Fred Schepisi)

82Guyer, Carolyn, Quibbling 39

Hartman, Geoffrey 110Harvey, W. J. 137, 142Hayman, David 85Hemingway, Ernest 106, 110

“Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,The” 74–5

Farewell to Arms, A 106For Whom the Bell Tolls 106, 114“Now I Lay Me” 90–1, 93–7,

100–101, 106–8, 112“Short Happy Life of Francis

Macomber, The” 106Sun Also Rises, The 106, 231

Herman, David 80, 165, 173, 193,211–12, 219n.6, 220n.4

Herman, Luc, and Bart Vervaeck 26Hernadi, Paul 72Highsmith, Patricia, The Talented Mr.

Ripley 112, 123Film adaptation (Anthony

Minghella) 112Hildesheimer, Wolfgang, Marbot 159Hitler Diaries, The 159Hochman, Baruch 137, 142Hogan, Patrick Colm 53, 110Hogg, James, The Private Memoirs and

Confessions of a Justified Sinner76, 77, 84







Homer 99Iliad 137–8, 142Odyssey 98, 131

Howard, Elizabeth, The Long View20–6

Howells, William Dean 68

Imbert, Enrique Anderson, “Taboo” 56Infamous (Douglas McGrath) 159Iser, Wolfgang 91, 92, 97, 98, 101, 110Ishiguro, Kazuo, The Remains of the

Day 81, 84Ivan the Terrible (Sergei Eisenstein)

159

Jackson, Shelley, Patchwork Girl 39Jahn, Manfred 215n.2James, Henry 114, 131–2

Ambassadors, The 125, 233Beast in the Jungle, The 149Turn of the Screw, The 28–9, 38, 65,

81, 98, 105–6, 118–19James, William 78Jameson, Fredric 1Jazz Singer, The (Alan Crosland) 206–9jennicam.org 140–1, 143Johnson, B. S., The Unfortunates 38Jonson, Ben, “Song to Celia” 2–3, 34Joyce, James 78, 86

Finnegans Wake 26Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,

A 99, 229Ulysses 78, 99

Joyce, Michaelafternoon, a story 34, 39, 65, 98Reach 34

Jules et Jim (Francois Truffaut) 81Jung, Carl 47, 52

Kafalenos, Emma 65, 217n.7Kafka, Franz 63

“Burrow, The” 174“Common Confusion, A” 62–3,

104–5“Metamorphosis, The” 53

Karr, Mary, Cherry 81Kawin, Bruce 97, 98Kazantzakis, Nikos, The Fratricides 213Keen, Suzanne 25, 26Kendall, Robert, A Life Set for Two 34Kenner, Hugh 80Kermode, Frank 45, 46, 47, 65, 86, 87,

97, 100King, Stephen The Colorado Kid 56–66Kingston, Maxine Hong, The Woman

Warrior 139, 143, 229Koestler, Arthur, Darkness at Noon 213Kohler, Sheila, The Perfect Place 81Kristeva, Julia 101Kindt, Tom, and Hans-Harald Muller

97

LaBute, Neil, Wrecks 212Laffay, Albert 85Landow, George 33, 34, 38Lanser, Susan Snaider 139, 143La ronde (Max Ophuls) 81Last Year in Marienbad (Alain Resnais)

38Lawrence, D. H. 206, 208Lawrence, Jerome, and Robert E. Lee,

Inherit the Wind 192Film adaptation (Stanley Kramer)

192Lazarillo de Tormes 14Lee, Harper, To Kill a Mockingbird 191

Film adaptation (Robert Mulligan)191

Le Guin, Ursula, The Lathe of Heaven168

Film adaptation (Philip Haas) 174Lejeune, Phillipe 158Lem, Stanislaw, The Cyberiad 81Lermontov, Mikhail, A Hero of Our

Time 38Levinson, Sanford, and Steven

Mailloux 191Levi-Strauss, Claude 202–5Lewis, C. S., The Lion, the Witch, and

the Wardrobe 168







“Little Loca” 147Lizzie Borden (the story) 175–87, 191London Consequences 103“LonelyGirl 15” 147Long, Elizabeth 53Lorde, Audre 107, 109

Cancer Journals, The 139, 143Lyotard, Jean-Francois 1

Madsen, Aage, Days with Diam or Lifeat Night 39

Mailer, Norman, The Armies of theNight 152

Malcolm X, The Autobiography ofMalcolm X 53

Malraux, Andre, Man’s Fate 213Mamet, David, Glengarry Glen Ross

128Mann, Thomas

Doctor Faustus 24Magic Mountain, The 98, 212

Margolin, Uri 137–8, 142Marlowe, Christopher, Doctor Faustus

24, 132Mauriac, Francois 205McCarthy, Mary, Memories of a

Catholic Girlhood 138–9, 143McCloud, Scott 123, 128McGrady, Mike 218n.3McGrath, Ben 219n.5McHale, Brian 71, 80, 174McHarg, Tom, The Late-Nite

Maneuvers of the Ultramundane14

McInerney, Jay, Bright Lights, Big City71

Memento (Christopher Nolan) 27Mighty Aphrodite (Woody Allen) 55Miller, Arthur, Death of a Salesman 243Miller, D. A. 65Miller, Frank 123Miller, J. Hillis 98, 110, 210Milton, John, Paradise Lost 41, 91–2,

110, 161Minghella, Anthony 112–13

Minow, Martha 189Mitchell, Margaret, Gone with the

Wind 114Mitchell, W. J. T. 159Momaday, N. Scott, The Way to Rainy

Mountain 41Monster (Patty Jenkins) 159Moore, Lorrie 81Morris, Edmond, Dutch: a Memoir of

Ronald Reagan 152–3Moulthrop, Stuart, Victory Garden 39Munro, Alice, “Miles City, Montana”

160–1, 162–4, 165–8Murasaki, Tale of Genji 98, 132Musil, Robert, The Man Without

Qualities 44–5, 88, 136

Nabokov, VladimirAda or Ardor 98Lolita 81Pale Fire 65, 174

Naked Came the Stranger 103Nelles, William 38Nelson, Katherine 214n.4Nietzsche, Friedrich 44, 154Newman, John Henry, Apologia pro

Vita sua 53Norris, Frank, McTeague 114North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock)

172–3

Oates, Joyce Carol, Blonde 152O’Brien, Edna, In the Forest 159O’Brien, Flann, At Swim-Two-Birds

174O’Connor, Flannery 111

“Good Man is Hard to Find, A” 111“Lame Shall Enter First, The” 111“View of the Woods, A” 111

Oedipus (the story) 195–8, 212, 243Olney, James 138–42Ondaatje, Michael, The English Patient

128Film adaptation (Anthony

Minghella) 128







O’Neill, Eugene, Long Day’s Journeyinto Night 128

Ophuls, Max 86O’Sullivan, John 220n.12Outrage, The (Martin Ritt) 192

Palmer, Alan 19, 20, 30, 80, 163, 173,232

Pavel, Thomas 158Pearson, Edmund, The Trial of Lizzie

Borden 191Penniston, Penny, now once againPerry, Menakhem 217n.7Phantom Menace, The (George Lucas)

79Phelan, James 18, 38, 53, 75, 80, 97,

137, 142Piercy, Marge, He, She, and It 81Pinter, Harold, Betrayal 27Piper, Watty, The Little Engine that

Could 54Pirandello, Luigi

Each in his Own Way 174Six Characters in Search of an Author

174Tonight We Improvise 174

Plato 75, 154, 231, 237Posner, Richard A. 191Pound, Ezra 126Prince, Gerald 14–15, 26, 95, 237, 238,

240Propp, Vladimir 201–2Proust, Marcel, In Search of Lost Time

99Pynchon, Thomas

Crying of Lot 49,The 26, 38Gravity’s Rainbow 65

Queneau, Raymond, Fight of Icarus174

Rabinowitz, Peter J. 38Rabkin, Eric 65Racine, Jean 18, 171Ran (Akira Kurosawa) 128

Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa) 76–7,177–8, 192

Rembrandt, Belshazzar’s Feast 7Return of the Jedi (George Lucas) 25Richards, I. A. 63, 206Richardson, Brian 13, 18, 25, 26, 52,

80, 174Richardson, Dorothy 78Richardson, Samuel, Pamela 111Richter, David H. 65Ricoeur, Paul 4, 18, 110, 212, 240Riffatere, Michael 158Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith 13, 80Robinson, Sally 139, 143Robbe-Grillet, Alain

In the Labyrinth 26, 65, 169Jealousy 81

Rorty, Richard 110Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Confessions

111, 136, 139–40, 141, 143,144

Routledge Encyclopedia of NarrativeTheory 26

Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and theGoblet of Fire 47

Run, Lola, Run (Tom Tykwer) 168Ryan, Marie-Laure 13, 25, 26, 29,

30, 32, 38, 151–2, 173, 219n.6,220n.6, 232

Sacks, Oliver 214n.6Saporta, Marc, Composition no.1 33Sartre, Jean-Paul 22, 36, 135–6, 158,

212Nausea 22, 135, 136, 141, 158Words, The 139, 143, 159

Saving Private Ryan (StephenSpielberg) 38, 138, 142–4

Sayers, Dorothy 218n.3Schank, Roger 47Schickel, Richard 217n.9Scholes, Robert and Robert Kellogg 80Scott, Walter, Waverley 159Searle John R. 148–9Seinfeld 27







Shakespeare, William 24, 63, 112, 137,142

Antony and Cleopatra 119–20Hamlet 55, 212Henry V

Film adaptations (LaurenceOlivier; Kenneth Branagh)128, 228

King Lear 13, 24, 58–9, 63, 230Film adaptations (Akira

Kurosawa; Peter Brooks;Jean-Luc Goddard) 128

Macbeth 24, 107, 108, 132, 156, 186Film adaptations (Akira

Kurosawa; Orson Wells) 128Midsummer Night’s Dream, A 25Much Ado about Nothing 113Othello 243Richard III 137, 142, 147, 151Romeo and Juliet 113, 120–1Troilus and Cressida 113Twelfth Night 30, 113

Shaw, George Bernard 212Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein 23, 29, 30,

38Film adaptation (James Whale) 23

Shields, Rev. Robert 140Simon, Claude, The Flanders Road 38Sliding Doors (Peter Howitt) 174Smith, Barbara Herrnstein 13Sondheim, Stephen, Into the Woods 174Sophocles 202

Oedipus at Colonus 197, 198, 202,212

Oedipus the King 18, 132, 197, 200,201, 202, 212

Stanzel, Franz 80Star Wars (George Lucas) 79Stendhal, The Red and the Black 98Stephen, Leslie 131–2Sternberg, Meir 97, 98, 217n.7Sterne, Laurence, Life and Opinions of

Tristram Shandy 26, 115, 140,144, 170

Story of Mulian 132

Strachey, Lytton, Eminent Victorians149–56

Stranger than Fiction (Marc Forster)174

Sturgess, Philip J. M. 19, 20, 25, 26Sukenick, Ronald 199Sutherland, John 98Synge, J. M., Playboy of the Western

World 212

Teresa of Avila, St., The Life of SaintTeresa of Avila by Herself 140,143

Thomas, D. M., Eating Pavlova 152Thousand and One Nights, A 28, 29Throne of Blood (Akira Kurasowa) 128Titanic (James Cameron) 38Todorov, Tzvetan 193, 211–12, 238Tolstoy, Leo 19, 20, 26, 135, 137, 142

Anna Karenina 20–6, 135, 137,142, 231

War and Peace 47, 152, 159Tomashevsky, Boris 230Torgovnick, Mariana 65Traver, Robert, Anatomy of a Murder

191Film adaptation (Otto Preminger)

191Triumph of the Will, The (Leni

Riefenstahl) 193Trollope, Anthony 65, 205

The Eustace Diamonds 65Truffaut, Francois 86Twain, Mark 68Twelve Angry Men (Sidney Lumet) 1912001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley

Kubrick) 1282010: The Year We Make Contact (Peter

Hyams) 128

Ultima Online 35

Vanishing, The (George Sluizer) 59, 61Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock) 59, 61Virgil, Aeneid 41







War of the Gods 41Warhol, Andy 18Warhol, Robyn 139, 143Waugh, Evelyn, The Loved One 126,

127, 129Film adaptation (Tony Richardson)

127, 129Webster, John, The Duchess of Malfi

132Weeks, Robert P., Commonwealth vs.

Sacco and Vanzetti 191Welty, Eudora, “Why I Live at the P.O.”

53Wharton, Edith

Ethan Frome 38House of Mirth, The 212

White, Hayden 10, 44, 52, 155–7, 159Whitmore, Jeffrey, “Bedtime Story”

56Wilde, Oscar, The Picture of Dorian

Gray 31

Wilder, Thornton, Our Town 79Williams, Nigel 81Williams, Tennessee, A Streetcar

Named Desire 128Williams, William Carlos, “This is Just

to Say” 83Wittig, Rob 110Woolf, Virginia 78, 109, 146

Jacob’s Room 26Mrs. Dalloway 78To the Lighthouse 78, 99

World of Warcraft 35Wright, Richard

Black Boy 40–1Native Son 54

Wyeth, Andrew, Dr. Syn 9–10

Young, Kay and Jeffrey Shaver214n.6

Zunshine, Lisa 80, 173






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