One of the essential branches of philology is the editing of texts. I don’t write about this topic much, partly because it can get somewhat technical, and partly because I’m not a textual critic myself. But every philologist, especially those who work on ancient texts, has to know something about the editing of texts. We … Continue reading A Note on Editing
You Can Say That Again!
Part I: I just happened to reread Michael Ende’s fantasy tale, The Neverending Story (Die Unendliche Geschichte). I own a lovely hardcover of the German text, with illustrations by Roswitha Quadflieg. I also own an English paperback, well translated by Ralph Manheim. The hero is a young boy named Bastian Balthazar Bux, “a fat little … Continue reading You Can Say That Again!
Synthetic, Mimetic, and Thematic in “White Noise”
In the past few years I’ve been exploring a three-part framework for analyzing narratives. This framework asks three questions about a story: How is it composed? What does it represent? And what does it mean? To designate these three perspectives I have borrowed terms from James Phelan: the Synthetic Aspect, the Mimetic Aspect, and the … Continue reading Synthetic, Mimetic, and Thematic in “White Noise”
Versions of Reality
My recent posts have been a sort of rough draft of my project on narrative world building. The basis of this project is a three-part framework I’ve derived from ideas first developed by James Phelan. Phelan doesn’t agree with the way I use his ideas—if you’re interested, see our collaborative book “Debating Rhetorical Narratology” (Ohio … Continue reading Versions of Reality
Four Features Beginnings
A while ago I wrote a post (“It’s Time to Wake Up!”) about what I called Alarm Clock Beginnings, when a novel starts first thing in the morning. In this post I look at another way to begin a novel, when a novel begins by specifying, in the first sentence or so, Time, Place, one … Continue reading Four Features Beginnings
One Last Kick at the Can: Three More Rings
There’s lots more to say about ring composition; I may return to the topic if I come across a ring that deserves comment, but this post will be the last in this series of posts. I. A story may be constructed so that the first link in the temporal sequence matches the last link. Thus … Continue reading One Last Kick at the Can: Three More Rings
More on Rings: Closure, Frames, and Dreams
In this post I continue my discussion of whole-plot ring composition with discussions of closure, frames, and dream narratives. I. Closure: The repetition at the end of a novel (or a story or a poem) of material from the beginning can create a feeling of closure, as we can see in Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”: ’Twas … Continue reading More on Rings: Closure, Frames, and Dreams
On the Road with Lena and Étienne
In my previous post I looked at an instance of Ring Composition in E. R. Eddison’s fantasy novel, The Worm Ouroboros. Rings come in various sizes and shapes. In a simple ring the beginning of a passage is repeated at the end: ABA. Some rings are more complicated: ABCBA or even more. (See, for instance, … Continue reading On the Road with Lena and Étienne
Ring Composition and The Worm Ouroboros
In this post I want to talk about an interesting example of ring composition in E. R. Eddison’s fantasy novel The Worm Ouroboros. Ring composition is a figure of speech, though it isn’t listed in any of the handbooks of figures of speech that I’ve looked at, nor is it discussed in any of the … Continue reading Ring Composition and The Worm Ouroboros
It’s Time to Wake Up!
In my previous post I discussed a figure of speech which, so far as I know, had never up till then been described or named. In this figure the last word of a clause (or nearly the last word) is repeated and then expanded upon to provide some explanation or expansion or specification. I have … Continue reading It’s Time to Wake Up!
The Art of Reading Slowly 