The narratology of responding

Myszor, Francis Edwin (1993) The narratology of responding. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

This enquiry is primarily an attempt to extend the application of that branch of structuralism known as narratology to readers' responses to literary texts. The focus is on the interface between text and reader in short story reading. Theory is developed from educational and literary sources as well as from fieldwork carried out with selected adolescent readers.

The first part justifies the extension of narratology to a theory of reading. It goes on to develop narratology's account of the temporal relationship between discourse and story, applying the same principles to the `response text' and its underlying `story'. Some attention is also given to focalisation, the implied reader and generalisation, as aspects of discourse that can usefully be transferred to response statements.

Part two focuses on short stories from the point of view of literary theorists. Here the short story is seen as essentially a hybrid form indebted to multiple sources and deceptively problematic for readers. This section suggests some of the kinds of textual variety to be encountered in part three which comprises the field work. Here, the process of reading six short stories is described in detail using an adapted narratology to give form to the experiences of the four readers. The tape-recorded commentaries that provide the data for this section are reproduced in full in volume two, alongside the stories to which they refer.

The concluding chapter describes some of the patterns that emerged from these detailed accounts. It offers a dynamic and interactive model of reading based on the continua narrative impetus and distance.

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