Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007

Activity 20.1
Unit 20 Narrative
Section 5 Narrative

1 Choose a nineteenth-century novel. You will need to read* the novel for this exercise.

* This activity can be understood in part as asking you to read different parts of a novel in different ways - a useful skill. Approaches to reading sometimes distinguish (1) close reading: reading every word carefully; (2) skimming: reading quickly through a whole text in order to get a sense of the whole, skipping chunks that you judge to be less crucial to your needs; or (3) scanning: reading quickly while looking for particular things in the text. This exercise asks you to read closely the beginning and the end of the novel, while requiring you to skim the rest (so that you have a sense of the overall structure of the rest of the novel, while paying relatively little attention to detail).

2 Why does the novel have this particular title? In answering this, consider (a) whether the title is an aid in the interpretation of the novel, (b) whether it creates initial expectations that are important for the reading of the novel, and (c) whether it has this title for marketing reasons.

3 Outline the structure of the beginning of the novel, distinguishing the following components (if they exist), or any other components you think are relevant: title, prologue or abstract (introducing a text in an author’s voice, perhaps summarizing some of what is to come); epigraph (= a quotation); orientation, beginning of the narrative proper, etc.

3.1 Comment on any continuities or blurred boundaries between these components.

3.2 If any of these components are absent, and you think there is some interest in their absence, comment on it.

(You will need to make your own decision about how far into the novel the ’beginning’ extends.)

4 Does the ending of the novel relate in any ways to the beginning of the novel? Describe all the links you can find (e.g. you might expect a restoration at the end of lacks that were indicated at the beginning, and you might also find certain kinds of ’return’ to the situation described at the beginning).

Reading

Briggs, K. (1970) A Dictionary of British Folk Tales in the English Language, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Fabb, N. (1997) Linguistics and Literature, Oxford: Blackwell, Chapters 7-8.

Finnegan, R. (1992) Oral Traditions and the Verbal Arts: A Guide to Research Practices, London: Routledge.

Murray, J.H. (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Onega Jaen, S. and Garcia Landa, J.A. (eds) (1996) Narratology: An Introduction, London: Longman.

Propp, Vladimir (1968) Morphology of the Folktale, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Toolan, M. (2001) Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction, 2nd edn, London: Routledge.