The Cambridge Companion to Narrative

by David Herman

The Cambridge Companion to Narrative provides a unique and valuable overview of current approaches to narrative study. An international team of experts explores ideas of storytelling and methods of narrative analysis as they have emerged across diverse traditions of inquiry and in connection with a variety of media, from film and television, to storytelling in the 'real-life' contexts of face-to-face interaction, to literary fiction. Each chapter presents a survey of scholarly approaches to topics such as character, dialogue, genre or language, shows how those approaches can be brought to bear on a relatively well-known illustrative example, and indicates directions for further research. Featuring a chapter reviewing definitions of narrative, a glossary of key terms and a comprehensive index, this is an essential resource for both students and scholars in many fields, including language and literature, composition and rhetoric, creative writing, jurisprudence, communication and media studies, and the social sciences.

Genres: Theory, Nonfiction, Writing, Narrative, Literature, Reference, Literary Criticism

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

David Herman is Professor of the Engaged Humanities, Department of English Studies, Durham University (United Kingdom).

Reviews

[Allie Francies]

again, my thesis leads me to another collection of essays. I am now fairly convinced that there is a book/ profession/ web conglomorate devoted to studying EVERYTHING. But I guess that is not a review of the book. It's a lot of scholarly people talking about how hard it is to define narrative, then doing their best to contrdict every definition they've described. Fun!

[Amyra · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Interesting....I think thatthis book is a must-read. For those who are just starting dealing with the issues of narrative theory and narratology this is a good start. Even for those who have an idea about the field of narratology this book does in fact expand their knowledge. It brings into light and discusses some issues (like characters, the plot, storytelling and its relation to reallife, drama, telivisio, ...) in a waythatis capable of changing how one sees narratives."

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really fascinating exploration of different facets of narrative. Most of it is very readable and strikes a good balance as many Cambridge Companions do. However, the final section felt out of place in some ways. It wasn't as cohesive with the rest of the volume and didn't really do a good job of laying out their points, in my opinion. I think those topics were too much to try to cover in such a short space and the literary analysis examples too brief or too disconnected to really help show the more complex concepts.

I will be returning to the earlier chapters, though, as I continue to explore narrative ideas in my personal research.

[Virginia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful introduction to narratology. While it focuses primarily on literary narratology, it also contains chapters on conversational, film, television, and video game narratology. In the future, if I'm looking for an introductory text on any topic, I'll check to see if there's a Cambridge Companion. The only issue I had with it is with the book, not the text - the pages are large and white and full of little letters. Oh well.

I recommend this to anybody interested in narratology, and anybody looking for a place for formalism and structuralism in the twenty-first century.

[Katie Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great introduction to narrative theory, though dated in some respects (not surprising since it was pubbed 20 years ago).