Ethos and Narrative Interpretation: The Negotiation of Values in Fiction

Ethos and Narrative Interpretation examines the fruitfulness of the concept of ethos for the theory and analysis of literary narrative. The notion of ethos refers to the broadly persuasive effects of the image one may have of a speaker’s psychology, world view, and emotional or ethical stance. How and why do readers attribute an ethos (of, for example, sincerity, reliability, authority, or irony) to literary characters, narrators, and even to authors? Are there particular conditions under which it is more appropriate for interpreters to attribute an ethos to authors, rather than to narrators? In the answer Liesbeth Korthals Altes proposes to such questions, ethos attributions are deeply implicated in the process of interpreting and evaluating narrative texts.

Demonstrating the extent to which ethos attributions, and hence, interpretive acts, play a tacit role in many methods of narratological analysis, Korthals Altes also questions the agenda and epistemological status of various narratologies, both classical and post-classical. Her approach, rooted in a broad understanding of the role and circulation of narrative art in culture, rehabilitates interpretation, both as a tool and as an object of investigation in narrative studies.
 

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Ethos and Narrative Interpretation: The Negotiation of Values in Fiction

Ethos and Narrative Interpretation examines the fruitfulness of the concept of ethos for the theory and analysis of literary narrative. The notion of ethos refers to the broadly persuasive effects of the image one may have of a speaker’s psychology, world view, and emotional or ethical stance. How and why do readers attribute an ethos (of, for example, sincerity, reliability, authority, or irony) to literary characters, narrators, and even to authors? Are there particular conditions under which it is more appropriate for interpreters to attribute an ethos to authors, rather than to narrators? In the answer Liesbeth Korthals Altes proposes to such questions, ethos attributions are deeply implicated in the process of interpreting and evaluating narrative texts.

Demonstrating the extent to which ethos attributions, and hence, interpretive acts, play a tacit role in many methods of narratological analysis, Korthals Altes also questions the agenda and epistemological status of various narratologies, both classical and post-classical. Her approach, rooted in a broad understanding of the role and circulation of narrative art in culture, rehabilitates interpretation, both as a tool and as an object of investigation in narrative studies.
 

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Ethos and Narrative Interpretation: The Negotiation of Values in Fiction

Ethos and Narrative Interpretation: The Negotiation of Values in Fiction

by Liesbeth Korthals Altes
Ethos and Narrative Interpretation: The Negotiation of Values in Fiction

Ethos and Narrative Interpretation: The Negotiation of Values in Fiction

by Liesbeth Korthals Altes

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Overview

Ethos and Narrative Interpretation examines the fruitfulness of the concept of ethos for the theory and analysis of literary narrative. The notion of ethos refers to the broadly persuasive effects of the image one may have of a speaker’s psychology, world view, and emotional or ethical stance. How and why do readers attribute an ethos (of, for example, sincerity, reliability, authority, or irony) to literary characters, narrators, and even to authors? Are there particular conditions under which it is more appropriate for interpreters to attribute an ethos to authors, rather than to narrators? In the answer Liesbeth Korthals Altes proposes to such questions, ethos attributions are deeply implicated in the process of interpreting and evaluating narrative texts.

Demonstrating the extent to which ethos attributions, and hence, interpretive acts, play a tacit role in many methods of narratological analysis, Korthals Altes also questions the agenda and epistemological status of various narratologies, both classical and post-classical. Her approach, rooted in a broad understanding of the role and circulation of narrative art in culture, rehabilitates interpretation, both as a tool and as an object of investigation in narrative studies.
 


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780803255609
Publisher: Nebraska
Publication date: 07/01/2014
Series: Frontiers of Narrative
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 344
File size: 734 KB

About the Author

Liesbeth Korthals Altes is a professor of general literature in the Department of Arts, Culture, and Media in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She is the author or coeditor of several books including Authorship Revisited: Conceptions of Authorship around 1900 and 2000 and The Autonomy of Literature at the Fins de Siècles (1900 and 2000): A Critical Assessment.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Why Ethos? 1

Part 1 Ethos, Narrative, and the Social Construction of Meanings and Values

1 Literary Interpretation, Ethos Attributions, and the Negotiation of Values in Culture 21

2 Ethos as a Social Construction: Authorial Posturing, Conceptions of Literature, and Value Regimes 51

Part 2 Ethos in Narratology: The Return of the Repressed

3 Narratology between Hermeneutics and Cognitive Science 91

4 Key Concepts Revised: Narrative and Communication, Embeddedness, Intentionality, Fictionality, and Reading Strategies 100

5 Whose Ethos? Characters, Narrators, Authors, and Unadopted Discourse 123

Part 3 Further Explorations: Contracts and Ethos Expectations

6 Generic Framing and Authorial Ethos 175

7 Sincerity and Other Ironies 205

On Narrative, Ethos, and Ethics 249

Notes 257

Works Cited 285

Index 313

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