Basic Elements of Narrative outlines a way of thinking about what narrative is and how to identify its basic elements across various media, introducing key concepts developed by previous theorists and contributing original ideas to the growing body of scholarship on stories.

List of Illustrations.

The Elements.

Preface.

The Scope and Aims of This Book.

Storytelling Media and Modes of Narration.

Acknowledgments.

1. Getting Started: A Thumbnail Sketch of the Approach Developed in This Book.

Toward a Working Definition of Narrative.

Profiles of Narrative.

Narrative: Basic Elements.

2. Background and Context: Framing the Approach.

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Narrative and Narrative Theory.

Major Trends in Recent Scholarship on Narrative.

3. Back to the Elements: Narrative Occasions.

Situating Stories.

Sociolinguistic Approaches.

Positioning Theory.

The Narrative Communication Model.

Conclusion.

4. Temporality, Particularity, and Narrative: An Excursion into the Theory of Text Types.

From Contexts of Narration to Narrative as a Type of Text.

Text Types and Categorization Processes.

Narrative as a Text-Type Category: Descriptions vs. Stories vs. Explanations.

Summing up: Text Types, Communicative Competence, and the Role of Stories in Science.

5. The Third Element: Or, How to Build a Storyworld.

Narratives as Blueprints for Worldmaking.

Narrative Ways of Worldmaking.

Narrative Worlds: A Survey of Approaches.

Configuring Narrative Worlds: The WHAT, WHERE, and WHEN Dimensions of Storyworlds.

Worlds Disrupted: Narrativity and Noncanonical Events.

6. The Nexus of Narrative and Mind.

The Consciousness Factor.

Consciousness Across Narrative Genres.

Experiencing Minds: What It's Like, Qualia, Raw Feels.

Storied Minds: Narrative Foundations of Consciousness?.

Appendix.

Reproduction of Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" (1927).

Transcript of a Story Told during Face-to-Face Interaction: UFO or the Devil.

Pages from Daniel's Clowes's Graphic Novel Ghost World (1997).

Screenshots from Terry Zwigoff's Film Version of Ghost World (2001).

Glossary.

References.

Index

Basic Elements of Narrative outlines a way of thinking about what narrative is and how to identify its basic elements across the many communicative media in which stories are told and interpreted, exchanged and transformed. Providing a synopsis of key concepts developed by previous theorists, the book contributes original ideas to the growing body of scholarship on stories. Viewing narrative in three ways – as a cognitive structure, a type of text, and a resource for communicative interaction – this book characterizes stories as a basic human strategy for coming to terms with time, process, and change. Citing examples from literature, face-to-face interaction, graphic novels, and film, David Herman reveals what different stories have in common, and explores what remains constant when the same story is told in different media. Including a glossary of key terms, a full bibliography, and a comprehensive index, Basic Elements of Narrative is designed to be accessible to students as well as educated non-specialists. The concise, up-to-date treatment of foundational concepts also makes this book an ideal reference for scholars in the field.