MONASH UNIVERSITY FACULTY HANDBOOKS

Arts Undergraduate Handbook 1996

Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996

CLS2050

Reading narrative texts

Chris Worth

Synopsis The subject will investigate contemporary approaches to the analysis and interpretation of narrative texts. What constitutes narrative? What are its basic features? How does story-telling communicate meaning? How do we construct effective narrative texts? The texts studied will be from a variety of genres and countries. They will include canonical literary works, some visual texts, and historical, psychological and autobiographical writing. The conclusion of the subject will be focused around metafictional, postmodernist narrative. There will be some opportunity for the creation of narrative texts as part of the work for the subject and for assessment.

Assessment Written (3000 words): 50% + Examination (2 hours): 25% + Tutorial exercises and participation: 25%

Preliminary reading

• Rabkin E (ed.)Fantastic worlds Oxford

Prescribed texts

• Calvino I If on a winter's night a traveller Faber
• Carter A The bloody chamber Penguin
• Cohan S and L Shires Telling stories Routledge
• Duras The lover Flamingo
• Homer (trs ) The Odyssey Harper
• Kafka F The trial Penguin
• Rabkin E (ed.)Fantastic worlds Oxford
• Rushdie S Midnight's children Picador

Recommended texts

• Barthes R Roland Barthes Macmillan, 1977
• Duras M The North China lover Flamingo, 1994
• Chambers R Story and situation U of Minnesota P, 1984
• Maclean M Narrative as performance Methuen, 1988
• Martin W Recent theories of narrative Cornell U P, 1986
• McHale B Postmodernist fiction Methuen, 1987
• Ong W Orality and literacy Methuen 1982
• Reid I Narrative exchanges Routledge, 1992
• Rimmon-Kenan S (ed.)Discourse in psychoanalysis and literature Methuen 1987
• Rimmon-Kenan S Narrative poetics Methuen, 1988
• Toolan M Narrative Routledge 1988
• White H The Content of the form Johns Hopkins U P, 1987