Style And Rhetoric Of Short Narrative Fiction

In many fictional narratives, the progression of the plot exists in tension with a very different and powerful dynamic that runs, at a hidden and deeper level, throughout the text. In this volume, Dan Shen systematically investigates how stylistic analysis is indispensable for uncovering this covert progression through rhetorical narrative criticism. The book brings to light the covert progressions in works by the American writers Edgar Allan Poe, Stephan Crane and Kate Chopin and British writer Katherine Mansfield. Review: This important contribution to the stylistics of short fiction and poetics of narrative both enriches the theory of the short story and provides new interpretations of a range of major British and American stories. It is very relevant both for the teaching of short fiction and for the theory of narrative. --Jonathan Culler, Cornell University Dan Shen persuasively expands the scope of the rhetorical theory of narrative by showing that careful attention to easily overlooked patterns of meaning (what she calls 'covert progressions') in fiction naturally leads to matters that previous rhetorical theorists have not done justice to, especially the interrelationships among style, ethics, and biography. --James Phelan, Ohio State University It is not often that a major breakthrough occurs in a well-established discipline like rhetorical narrative studies. Style and Rhetoric of Short Narrative Fiction: Covert Progressions Behind Overt Plots is definitely such a book. I commend it enthusiastically to all readers interested in narrative fiction. --J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine A distinguished senior scholar makes a major contribution, combining in a rare way the perspectives of narrative theory, stylistics, and rhetoric to provide challenging new interpretations of major short fiction from nearly a century of English-language writing, ranging from Poe to Katherine Mansfield. --Jonathan Arac, University of Pittsburgh