Living to Tell about It : A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration

James Phelan

ISBN 10: 0801442974 / ISBN 13: 9780801442971

Editore: Cornell University Press Aug 2004, 2004

Riguardo questo articolo

Neuware.

Codice articolo 9780801442971

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Living to Tell about It : A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration
• Editore: Cornell University Press Aug 2004
• Data di pubblicazione: 2004
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0801442974
• ISBN 13: 9780801442971
• Rilegatura: Buch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 229 L x 152 A x 24 P (millimetri) 229 millimetri di larghezza per 152 millimetri di altezza per 24 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 454 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

In Living to Tell about It, James Phelan takes up the challenges offered by diverse narratives including Kathryn Harrison's The Kiss, Ernest Hemingway's "Now I Lay Me," Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day, Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, and John Edgar Wideman's "Doc's Story." Phelan's compelling readings cover important theoretical ground by introducing a valuable distinction between disclosure functions (communications from the implied author to the authorial audience) and narrator functions (communications from the character narrator to the narratee). Phelan also identifies significant types of character narration (also known as first-person narration), including restricted, suppressed, and mask narrations. In addition, Phelan proposes new understandings of such ingrained concepts of narrative theory as unreliable narration, the implied author, focalization, and lyric narrative.

Utilizing what Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz have called "theory practice," a critical method that aims to combine theory and interpretation in mutually illuminating ways, Living to Tell about It also makes a major contribution to ethical theory and criticism. Phelan develops the concept of "ethical position" and explores the interactions among the ethical positions of characters, narrators, authors, and audiences. This approach emphasizes not only the close connections between narrative technique and ethics but also the important interactions between the ethical positions of the authorial audience and the flesh-and-blood reader.

In Living to Tell about It, James Phelan takes up the challenges offered by diverse narratives including Kathryn Harrison's The Kiss, Ernest Hemingway's "Now I Lay Me," Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day, Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, and John Edgar Wideman's "Doc's Story." Phelan's compelling readings cover important theoretical ground by introducing a valuable distinction between disclosure functions (communications from the implied author to the authorial audience) and narrator functions (communications from the character narrator to the narratee). Phelan also identifies significant types of character narration (also known as first-person narration), including restricted, suppressed, and mask narrations. In addition, Phelan proposes new understandings of such ingrained concepts of narrative theory as unreliable narration, the implied author, focalization, and lyric narrative.

Utilizing what Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz have called "theory practice," a critical method that aims to combine theory and interpretation in mutually illuminating ways, Living to Tell about It also makes a major contribution to ethical theory and criticism. Phelan develops the concept of "ethical position" and explores the interactions among the ethical positions of characters, narrators, authors, and audiences. This approach emphasizes not only the close connections between narrative technique and ethics but also the important interactions between the ethical positions of the authorial audience and the flesh-and-blood reader.

Informazioni sull?autore

James Phelan is Humanities Distinguished Professor of English at The Ohio State University and Editor of Narrative. His books include Narrative as Rhetoric: Technique, Audiences, Ethics, and Ideology; Beyond the Tenure Track: Fifteen Months in the Life of an English Professor; and Reading People, Reading Plots: Character, Progression, and the Interpretation of Narrative. He is the coeditor of A Companion to Narrative Theory.