Narrative theory: a critical introduction

"Kent Puckett's Narrative Theory provides an account of a methodology increasingly central to literary studies, film studies, history, psychology and beyond. In addition to introducing readers to some of the field's major figures and their ideas, Puckett situates critical and philosophical approaches towards narrative within a longer intellectual history. The book reveals one of narrative theory's founding claims - that narratives need to be understood in terms of a formal relation between story and discourse, between what they narrate and how they narrate it - both as a necessary methodological distinction and as a problem characteristic of modern thought. Puckett thus shows that narrative theory is not only a powerful descriptive system but also a complex and sometimes ironic form of critique. Narrative Theory offers readers an introduction to the field's key figures, methods, and ideas and also reveals that field as unexpectedly central to the history of ideas"--

Cover; Half-title ; Title page ; Copyright information ; Table of contents ; Acknowledgments ; Chapter 1 Introduction: Story/Discourse ; Chapter 2 Action, Event, Conflict: The Uses of Narrative in Aristotle and Hegel ; 2.1 Beginning, Middle, and End: Aristotle and Narrative Theory; 2.2 Tragedy, Comedy, and the Cunning of Reason: Hegel and Narrative Theory; Chapter 3 Lost Illusions: Narrative in Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud ; 3.1 Karl Marx: First as Tragedy ; 3.2 Beyond Story and Discourse: Friedrich Nietzsche and the Limits of Narrative; 3.3 Sigmund Freud: Narrative and Its Discontents; Chapter 4 Epic, Novel, Narrative Theory: Henry James, Georg Lukács, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Erich Auerbach ; 4.1 Relations Stop Nowhere: Henry James and the Forms of the Novel ; 4.2 Starry Maps: Georg Lukács and Narrative Genre; 4.3 To Kill Does Not Mean to Refute: Bakhtin's Narrative Theory 4.4 Story's Scar: Erich Auerbach and the History of Narrative Thinking ; Chapter 5 Form, Structure, Narrative: Propp, Shklovsky, Saussure, Lévi-Strauss ; 5.1 The Hero Leaves Home: Vladimir Propp and Narrative Morphology; 5.2 Knight's Move: Viktor Shklovsky and Russian Formalism 5.3 Differences without Positive Terms…