Table of Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiv
The Elements xvi
1 Getting Started: A Thumbnail Sketch of the Approach 1
Toward a Working Definition of Narrative 1
Profiles of Narrative 7
Narrative: Basic Elements 9
2 Framing the Approach: Some Background and Context 23
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Narrative and Narrative Theory 23
Major Trends in Recent Scholarship on Narrative 26
3 Back to the Elements: Narrative Occasions 37
Situating Stories 37
Sociolinguistic Approaches 40
Positioning Theory 55
The Narrative Communication Model 63
Conclusion 74
4 Temporality, Particularity, and Narrative: An Excursion into the Theory of Text Types 75
From Contexts of Narration to Narrative as a Type of Text 75
Text Types and Categorization Processes 79
Narrative as a Text-Type Category: Descriptions versus Stories versus Explanations 89
Coda: Text Types, Communicative Competence, and the Role of Stories in Science 100
5 The Third Element; or, How to Build a Storyworld 105
Narratives as Blueprints for Worldmaking 105
Narrative Ways of Worldmaking 108
Narrative Worlds: A Survey of Approaches 118
Configuring Narrative Worlds: The WHAT, WHERE, and WHEN Dimensions of Storyworlds 128
Worlds Disrupted: Narrativity and Noncanonical Events 133
6 The Nexus of Narrative and Mind 137
The Consciousness Factor 137
Consciousness across Narrative Genres 139
Experiencing Minds: What It’s Like, Qualia, Raw Feels 143
Storied Minds: Narrative Foundations of Consciousness? 153
Appendix 161
Literary Narrative: Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” (1927) 161
Narrative Told during Face-to-Face Communication: UFO or the Devil (2002) 166
Excerpted Panels from Ghost World (1997), a Graphic Novel by Daniel Clowes 173
Screenshots from Terry Zwigoff’s Film Version of Ghost World (2001) 178
Glossary 180
Notes 195
References 215
Index 235
