Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics

Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan provides a very readable synthesis of approaches to narrative fiction, one of the most useful books on narratology I know. It is shorter than Toolan's "Narrative", less fragmented than "Narratology: An Introduction", but at the time of this writing, it is also less available than either of the other titles.The only other book I know that does such a good job in combining different approaches to narrative is Seymour Chatman's "Story and Discourse". Of course, unlike Chatman, Rimmon-Kenan focuses on written narratives (Chatman also deals with film narratives), but much of what is said can be applied to films as well.Sections include: events, characters, time, characterization, focalization, levels and voices, and speech representation.

Rimmon-Kenan's introduction to narratology possesses that rare quality of clarity and simplicity which lulls the reader into believing that he or she actually intuited it all beforehand. In a field as theoretical and complex as narratology, such an introduction is a gem. Beware of chapter 2, though. It delves too deeply into structuralism without clarifying sufficiently the terms that convey its concepts. In fact, Rimmon-Kenan herself did not entirely write this chapter. She relied "heavily on a draft prepared by" an early collaborator on the book, Moshe Ron, who then had to retire from the project. Rimmon-Kenan says that "the general conception, the substance, the order of the items, and the style have undergone serious changes, so that...Ron can no longer be held responsible for the weaknesses" (p. 134 n. 1). The sharp contrast in style with the rest of the book-for the worse-testifies to the overlaid character of this chapter and makes one wish she had rewritten it from scratch. Still, the book provides a fine introduction even without that chapter. The selectively annotated, refreshingly brief but substantive bibliography offers a rare treat.

Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan's work is a testament to the ever-increasing interest in the field of literary criticism. In it, she outlines the basic concepts required to define and to 'understand' literature and the study of literature as an academic discipline. Her arguments are well-supported by her many examples taken from narrative authors such as John Dos Passos, James Joyce and Honore' de Balzac. This book should be a standard text for any introductory course in Western literature