ETS 153 Study Guide - Final Guide: Psychoanalysis, Longman, Gothic Fiction
7 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
ETS 153 Final Study Guide
Defining Narrative (Abbott)
Narrative: an account of a series of events, facts, etc., given in order and with the establishing
of connections between them
- Another definition: the recounting of one or more events communicated by one or
several narrators to one or several narrates
- This definition can be debated
- Abbott feels that this definition is too restrictive because it takes out/eliminates:
TV/movies, plays, paintings
o He believes that we should think of it as narratives that use a variety of
instruments (narrators, actors, cameras)
- The capacity to construct narratives is a fundamental human capacity this and
language sets humans and other mammals apart
Abbott believes in the following definition: the representation of an event or a series of events
in a temporal sequence (not necessarily chronological)
Story: an event or sequence of events; events must always involve entities (may not necessarily
always be an actual human character)
Narratie disourse: ho the stor is oeed; ho the eets are represeted; iludes:
oie, stle of ritig, aera agles, ators’ interpretations you can only get to a story
through narrative discourse
Constituent events: the critical story
Satellite events: the additional stuff
- These represet ajor ad ior eets…if ou take out either of these ad the ature
of the narrative changes
Narrativity: the quality or condition of presenting a narrative; some texts have more of this than
others; adds to the readers human experience
Fiction (Williams)
Fitio: origis i iagiatie literature ut also arious fors of pure ietio
- The idea of fictional vs. fictitious
- The definition of a novelist has changed over time
Novel (M. H. Abrams)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
The Musgrave Rituals (Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Three mysteries: the disappearance of the maid, the disappearance of the butler, the
details of the Musgrave Ritual
- Homes is putting together an interconnected thread creating the plot himself, we do
not have to put the multiple plots together
- The detective uncovers the crime by following the footsteps of the butler and puts
things together to solve the case
- The reader puts things together to figure out what a narrative is about
- Entities include: Holmes, Watson, butler and maid, Musgrave—the owner of the house
o In this case they are characters, but they do not always have to be
- Events: disappearance of the butler and the maid Holmes relating the story to Watson
Holmes solving the mystery and retracing footsteps
- E&E states the facts but does not create the entire narrative discourse
- Proves Brooks point about plot: something active that the reader also partakes in the
reader and the text put the plot together
- Constituent events: the main events, without them the narrative is not the same;
anything revolving around the mystery of the disappearance
- Supplementary events: not necessarily needed, but also brings out different
qualities/perspectives on the different entities
Reading for the Plot (Brooks)
Protagonist: the primary character that we, as readers, tend to focus on
Antagonist: the protagonist is usually in conflict with, can be evil, but not always
Foil: a minor character, their presence draws out certain attributes (whether positive or
negative); the foil may eventually also become a protagonist
Single, plot, double plot, etc. eventually they all connect
Marriage plot: two characters have some type of emotional connection
Plot: a whole when all actions or events come together
Exposition: beginning, introduces: conflict, character, setting
Rising action: events before the climax, attempt to solve the problem but fails
Brooks Argument: makes the case of plot being a separate term; plot comes before all else;
the thread of desig that akes arratie possile, the er orgaizig lie
- plot as a for of desire the desire to know fuels us to keep reading
- Readig for the plot is a for of desire that arries us forward, onward, through the
tet
Brooks definition: the principle of interconnectiveness and intention which we cannot do
without in moving through the discreet elements: incidents, episodes, actions of a narrative
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Desire in Narrative
Narratives: tell of desire (ex: for education, for another person, for a type of lifestyle)
Desire in the Reader
- narratives: arouse and make use of desire as a dynamic of signification
Literature and Psychoanalysis (also a part of Brooks argument)
- a relationship between textual and human psychic functions
- combine a study of how narrative works on us with an analysis of the text itself as a
system of internal energies, tensions, compulsions, resistances and desire
- the reader seeks the ipulse to tell or hear a stor
- During the 1900s, we begin to tell stories to find meaning in the human experience
Abbott and Brooks are mainly focused on humanity to narrative
Formalism (Criticism Paper)
Formalism: aesthetic, approach, emphasizes form – style, structure, tone, metaphor—over
content; each literary text is a self-contained whole; texts should be evaluated on its literary
elements; focused on artistic, technique, genre and other tools that make a text, literary; you
do not need to understand the history/background behind the text
New criticism: originates in 1920s, flourishes in the 1950s/60s; incorporates formalism; wanted
to move away from impressionistic judgements of a text by developing an objective standard of
analysis; isolate an individual work from any other considerations,sought to develop a science
of literary analysis, wanted to justify the study of literature in collegiate settings, to unpack
relationship between a texts content and form, only one meaning of a text/no reason to think
about genre
Deconstruction (Culler)
- Close textual analysis
- The readers task is to simply read what is written rather than think about what it may
have meant
- Made analysis prominent in 1970 and 1980
- Wants to call into question the idea of an established or settled meaning to any text
- Rejects the notion of a unity or coherence of meaning within a text
- No one meaning to a text
Paratexts: Threshold of Interpretation (Genette)
Genette as a whole
- Focuse is on the text as a material object
- Paratexts: extra-textual apparatuses that he calls paratexts
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
