Towards a Postmodern Theory of Narrative

by Andrew Gibson

This study re-examines narrative theory and outlines the consequences for narratology of deconstructive, poststructuralist and more recent theory. Andrew Gibson assesses the extent to which narrative theory might be rethought in their light, drawing on the work of Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard and Foucault. Consistently relating his theoretical investigations to critical practice, Gibson makes telling and perceptive analyses of a variety of twentieth-centry texts including work by Joyce, Fielding, Beckett, Lawrence, Woolf, R L Stevenson, Kundera, Tarkovsky and others. This is an important contribution to contemporary work on narrative.

Genres: Literary Criticism

300 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 1996

Reviews

[jamie · Rating 2 out of 5]

3/10

helpful stuff in that Gibson essentially vaguely gestures in the direction of pretty seminal poststructuralist ideas for 300 pages — but jesus fucking christ this is a dullfest. it is typical of postmodern theory, i think, because it's so obsessed with impressing everyone in a garish demonstration of mental acrobatics. (not that impressive, by the way, because most of what Gibson is saying is utter shite!) it reaches a point of diminishing returns after a while anyway: like we get it, you can do a backflip, why do you have to do it three hundred more times?

[Jayden King]

It's interesting but a very, very tough read. Quite a high level of knowledge of both narrative theory and postmodernism needed to even get started.