Somebody Telling Somebody Else A Rhetorical Poetics Of Narrative

INTRODUCTION

Principles of Rhetorical Poetics

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IN SEARCH OF A NEW PARADIGM

I

N 1999 David Herman proposed the term postclassical narratology to

describe the then-current state of narrative theory, a term designed to cap-

ture the field’s many revisions of structuralist narratology. Since 1999, the

postclassical movement has continued its robust activity, adding important

developments in feminist, cognitive, and postcolonial narratology (to name

a few) and developing new approaches, such as unnatural narratology and

enactivist narratology. Nevertheless, the story/discourse distinction, arguably

the foundational concept of structuralist narratology, remains an important

staple for most narrative theorists. It is one of the first nutrients we take in,

and it remains a source of nourishment that help shapes our maturation in the

field. The distinction significantly influences our acquisition of narratological

language, as we learn to say that story is the what of narrative and discourse

the how, that story consists of events and existents, and that discourse consists

of techniques for presenting those phenomena.

The distinction also shapes our narratological eyesight as we become dis-

posed to identify other binary distinctions for analyzing narrative: mimesis

and diegesis; kernel events and satellite events; filter and slant; order, dura-

tion, and frequency in the story versus order, duration, and frequency in the

discourse; and so on. Consequently, even as current narrative theorists travel