Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative

by Peter Brooks

Overview

A book which should appeal to both literary theorists and to readers of the novel, this study invites the reader to consider how the plot reflects the patterns of human destiny and seeks to impose a new meaning on life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674748927
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/01/1992
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Peter Brooks is Tripp Professor of Humanities at Yale University.

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Reading for the Plot

2. Narrative Desire

3. The Novel and the Guillotine, or Fathers and Sons in Le Rouge et le noir

4. Freud's Masterplot: A Model for Narrative

5. Repetition, Repression, and Return: The Plotting of Great Expectations

6. The Mark of the Beast: Prostitution, Serialization, and Narrative

7. Retrospective Lust, or Flaubert's Perversities

8. Narrative Transaction and Transference

9. An Unreadable Report: Conrad's Heart of Darkness

10. Fictions of the Wolf Man: Freud and Narrative Understanding

11. Incredulous Narration: Absalom, Absalom!

In Conclusion: Endgames and the Study of Plot

Notes

Editorial Reviews

What is…gratifying about Brooks’s approach is his insistence that plot elements must survive even the most radical postmodern consciousness… As he so eloquently confirms, so long as there is self-conscious life on earth, there will be narrative plotting in some form or another. To expect us to give it up would be like asking us to give up breathing.

New York Times - Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

A major book by a major critic. It will appeal both to literary theorists and to readers of the novel, and it is likely to be seen as an important point of reference for many years to come.

Times Literary Supplement - Terence Cave

Peter Brooks has delivered a major contribution to narrative theory and critical practice in a book remarkable for its lucidity and theoretical adventurousness.

Literature and History - Terry Eagleton Terry Eagleton

Peter Brooks has delivered a major contribution to narrative theory and critical practice in a book remarkable for its lucidity and theoretical adventurousness.

Literature and History - Terry Eagleton

What is...gratifying about Brooks's approach is his insistence that plot elements must survive even the most radical postmodern consciousness...As he so eloquently confirms, so long as there is self-conscious life on earth, there will be narrative plotting in some form or another. To expect us to give it up would be like asking us to give up breathing.
— Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

New York Times

Peter Brooks has delivered a major contribution to narrative theory and critical practice in a book remarkable for its lucidity and theoretical adventurousness.
— Terry Eagleton

Literature and History

A major book by a major critic. It will appeal both to literary theorists and to readers of the novel, and it is likely to be seen as an important point of reference for many years to come.
— Terence Cave

Times Literary Supplement