ber 2. Rather than declaring what narratives invariably do or how they invari-
ably do it, I seek to understand and assess the variety of things narratives have
done and the variety of ways they have done it. In practical terms, this prin-
ciple means that I try to reason back from the effects created by narratives to
the causes of those effects in the authorial shaping of the narrative elements. I
then try to draw appropriate generalizations about narrative as rhetoric. Since
narrative communication is a complex, multilayered phenomenon, this rea-
soning process cannot be reduced to a formula, and its results yield hypoth-
eses rather than dogmatic conclusions.
A related dimension of this principle is that rhetorical theory does not
preselect for analysis certain matters of content, such as gender, race, class,
age, sexual orientation, or (dis)ability, though it recognizes both that such
methods have yielded valuable work on narrative and that some narratives do
foreground such matters. More generally, rhetorical narrative theory main-
tains its interest in how authors seek to achieve their multidimensional pur-
poses even as it strives to be sufficiently flexible to respond to the diversity of
narrative acts. At the same time, of course, rhetorical theory is not a neutral,
unmediated approach to narrative—as this present exposition of its principles
amply demonstrates.
(4) In interpreting a narrative, rhetorical narrative theory identifies
a feedback loop among authorial agency, textual phenomena (including
intertextual relations), and reader response. In other words, the approach
assumes that (a) texts are designed by authors to affect readers in particular
ways; (b) those authorial designs are conveyed through the words, images,
techniques, elements, structures, forms, and dialogic relations of texts as well
as the genres and conventions readers use to understand them; and (c) those
authorial designs are also deeply influenced by the nature of their audiences
and their activity in responding to the unfolding communication. In a sense,
my work in this book is a major elaboration of the consequences of this prin-
ciple, one that starts from the idea that “there’s a lot more here than initially
appears.” For now, I highlight a few of its practical consequences. The prin-
ciple means that an interpretive inquiry can start with any point in the loop
because questions about that point will inevitably lead to the consideration of
other points. If, for example, I respond to a character’s action with a negative
ethical judgment, I will look for the textual sources of that judgment and the
reasons why the author would have guided my judgment in that way, given
her other purposes. In the course of asking and answering these questions,
I may find that my negative judgment was too simplistic or otherwise inad-
equate, and I will therefore revise it.
6 • INTRODUCTION