In Somebody Telling Somebody Else, James Phelan proposes a paradigm shift for narrative theory, a turn from viewing narrative as a structure to viewing it as a rhetorical action in which a teller selectively deploys the resources of storytelling in order to accomplish particular purposes in relation to particular audiences. Phelan explores the consequences of this shift for an understanding of various elements of narrative, including reliable and unreliable narration, character-character dialogue, and occasions of narration.

In doing so, he offers new readings of a wide range of...

For half a century, J. Hillis Miller has been a premier figure in English and comparative literature, influencing and leading the direction of literary studies. What is less well-known is that he has been equally influential in Conrad studies with his work on nihilism, language, and narrative in Joseph Conrad's fiction. Returning to Conrad at different stages of his long career--reading and rereading him in light of new critical trends--Miller continually discovered new aspects of the influential author's fiction. This volume, edited by John G. Peters and Jakob Lothe, charts Miller's shifting...

Narrative, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States, edited by James J. Donahue, Jennifer Ho, and Shaun Morgan, is the first book-length volume of essays devoted to studying the intersection of race/ethnicity and narrative theories. Each chapter offers a sustained engagement with narrative theory and critical race theory as applied to ethnic American literature, exploring the interpretive possibilities of this critical intersection. Taken as a whole, these chapters demonstrate some of the many ways that the formal study of narrative can help us better understand the racial/ethnic...

In The Writer in the Well: On Misreading and Rewriting Literature, Gary Weissman argues that the analysis of literature is fundamentally a writing-based practice, a practice in which the process of writing functions as a way of discovering one's interpretation (or "rewriting") of a text. Weissman takes readers inside Ira Sher's short story, "The Man in the Well," and uses his students' wide variety of interpretive responses to ask foundational questions about composition and interpretation: How is writing, rather than reading alone, central to literary interpretation? How does a...