Unlikely Stories: Causality and the Nature of Modern Narrative

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University of Delaware Press, 1997 - 219 Seiten
Unlikely Stories is the first book-length study of the full range of causal issues in narrative, and explores the neglected question of just what brings about events in a fictional text. This book focuses on causality as a foundational element of all narratives, and as a distinguishing feature of many of the most compelling works of distinctively modern fiction and drama. Richardson draws on a wide range of literary texts: seminal ancient and early modern works, the classics of high modernism, and numerous avant-garde and postmodern pieces, as well as narratives by recent postcolonial and U.S. ethnic authors.

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Inhalt

Acknowledgments
9
Philosophical Systems Fictional Worlds
35
Systems of Causation
61
Temporal Sequence Causal Connection
89
Necessity
111
NonWestern Beliefs
139
Tom Stoppard
157
Language Interpretation
182
Works Cited
200
Index
215
Urheberrecht

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Beliebte Passagen

Seite 59 - Why, so can I ; or so can any man : But will they come, when you do call for them ? Glend.
Seite 13 - What connexion can there be, between the place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him when he swept the churchyardstep? What connexion can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together!
Seite 66 - This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, — often the surfeit of our own behaviour, — we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars...
Seite 55 - Now, if some bold novelist, tearing aside the cleverly woven curtain of our conventional ego, shows us under this appearance of logic a fundamental absurdity, under this juxtaposition of simple states an infinite permeation of a thousand different impressions which have already ceased to exist the instant they are named, we commend him for having known us better than we knew ourselves.
Seite 35 - Others apart sat on a Hill retir'd, In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate, Fixt Fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost.
Seite 65 - That palter with us in a double sense ; That keep the word of promise to our ear, And break it to our hope.
Seite 136 - Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names.
Seite 27 - ... it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates.
Seite 123 - he believed with calm paradox that he was the volitionless servant of the fatality in which he believed that he did not believe.
Seite 72 - Chaos umpire sits, And by decision more embroils the fray By which he reigns. Next him, high arbiter Chance governs all.

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