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ESSENTIALS of the Theory of Fiction

Duke University Press

Contents

Preface to the Third Edition..............................................................................................................viiIntroduction..............................................................................................................................11 HENRY JAMES The Art of Fiction.........................................................................................................132 VIRGINIA WOOLF Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown..............................................................................................213 E. M. FORSTER Flat and Round Characters................................................................................................354 M. M. BAKHTIN Epic and Novel...........................................................................................................435 JOSEPH FRANK Spatial Form in Modern Literature.........................................................................................616 ROLAND BARTHES Writing and the Novel...................................................................................................757 WAYNE BOOTH Distance and Point of View: An Essay in Classification.....................................................................838 GEORG LUKCS Marxist Aesthetics and Literary Realism...................................................................................1019 WILLIAM H. GASS The Concept of Character in Fiction....................................................................................11310 GRARD GENETTE Time and Narrative in A la recherche du temps perdu....................................................................12111 SEYMOUR CHATMAN Discourse: Nonnarrated Stories........................................................................................13912 TZVETAN TODOROV Reading as Construction...............................................................................................15113 JOHN BARTH The Literature of Replenishment............................................................................................16514 HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR. The Blackness of Blackness: A Critique on the Sign and the Signifying Monkey....................................17715 PETER BROOKS Reading for the Plot.....................................................................................................20116 RACHEL BLAU DUPLESSIS Breaking the Sentence; Breaking the Sequence....................................................................22117 BARBARA FOLEY The Documentary Novel and the Problem of Borders........................................................................23918 JOANNE S. FRYE Politics, Literary Form, and a Feminist Poetics of the Novel...........................................................25519 LINDA HUTCHEON "The Pastime of Past Time": Fiction, History, Historiographical Metafiction............................................27520 HELEN LOCK "Building Up from Fragments": The Oral Memory Process in Some Recent African-American WrittenNarratives.....................29721 WENDY B. FARIS Scheherazade's Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction........................................................31122 JON THIEM The Textualization of the Reader in Magical Realist Fiction.................................................................33923 RUTH RONEN Are Fictional Worlds Possible?.............................................................................................35124 URSULA K. HEISE Chronoschisms.........................................................................................................36125 SUSAN S. LANSER Queering Narratology..................................................................................................38726 CATHERINE BURGASS A Brief Story of Postmodern Plot....................................................................................39927 JOHN BRENKMAN On Voice................................................................................................................41128 J. YELLOWLEES DOUGLAS What Interactive Narratives Do That Print Narratives Cannot.....................................................44329 JOSEPH TABBI A Media Migration: Toward a Potential Literature.........................................................................471Biographical Notes........................................................................................................................491Permissions...............................................................................................................................495Index.....................................................................................................................................499

Chapter One

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting. That general responsibility rests upon it, but it is the only one I can think of. The ways in which it is at liberty to accomplish this result (of interesting us) strike me as innumerable, and such as can only suffer from being marked out or fenced in by prescription. They are as various as the temperament of man, and they are successful in proportion as they reveal a particular mind, different from others. A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life: that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression. But there will be no intensity at all, and therefore no value, unless there is freedom to feel and say. The tracing of a line to be followed, of a tone to be taken, of a form to be filled out, is a limitation of that freedom and a suppression of the very thing that we are most curious about. The form, it seems to me, is to be appreciated after the fact: then the author's choice has been made, his standard has been indicated; then we can follow lines and directions and compare tones and resemblances. Then in a word we can enjoy one of the most charming of pleasures, we can estimate quality, we can apply the test of execution. The execution belongs to the author alone; it is what is most personal to him, and we measure him by that. The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment and responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what he may attempt as an executant-no limit to his possible experiments, efforts, discoveries, successes. Here it is especially that he works, step by step, like his brother of the brush, of whom we may always say that he has painted his picture in a manner best known to himself. His manner is his secret, not necessarily a jealous one. He cannot disclose it as a general thing if he would; he would be at a loss to teach it to others. I say this with a due recollection of having insisted on the community of method of the artist who paints a picture and the artist who writes a novel. The painter is able to teach the rudiments of his practice, and it is possible, from the study of good work (granted the aptitude), both to learn how to paint and to learn how to write. Yet it remains true, without injury to the rapprochement, that the literary artist would be obliged to say to his pupil much more than the other, "Ah, well, you must do it as you can!" It is a question of degree, a matter of delicacy. If there are exact sciences, there are also exact arts, and the grammar of painting is so much more definite that it makes the...