Story and Situation: Narrative Seduction and the Power of Fiction

by Ross Chambers

Overview

Ross Chambers shifs the emphasis to precisely the play of authority and mastery by focusing on the narrative situation or the “point” of telling a story in given context. He studies the relation between teller and listener in a set of French, English, and American short stories from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and detects in that relationship the key to the power of fiction. In each of these stories, the author identifies the narrative situation by recourse to the metaphor of seduction, a phenomenon Chambers finds characteristic of literary production in the modern period.

“Story and Situation is a powerful work of criticism, the best work in short narrative I know, and will redirect critics’ attention to a form which has always engaged readers but has recently been neglected by literary theorists. . . . It is clear, assured, and intelligently paced.”-Jonathan Culler, Cornell University

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816612987
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	03/30/1984
Series:	Theory and History of Literature , #12
Edition description:	First edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Ross Chambers is professor of French and comparative literature at the University of Michigan.

Wlad Godzich teaches comparative literature at the University of Minnesota.