Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction [Paperback]

... this is one of the few books on narrative worth reading and rereading, a study that will makeor should makea difference in the way we read narrative. Nineteenth Century Fiction

This is a remarkable book: original, clear-sighted, and luminously focused on a subject that has never been explored nearly so systematically or intensively. Dorrit Cohn, Harvard University

This book, long out of print, is now available in a paperback edition, providing another window into one of the most exciting minds working in the areas of literary and biblical literary criticism.

Chapter One
What is Exposition? An Essay in Temporal Delimitation

Chapter Two
Exposition and Order of Presentation: Some Preliminary Notes

Chapter Three
Delayed and Distributed Exposition in the Odyssey: The Dynamics of Narrative Interest

Chapter Four
Order of Presentation, Delayed and Distributed Exposition, and Strategies of Rhetorical Control

Chapter Five
The Rhetoric of Anticipatory Caution: First Impressions in First Impressions and the Poetics of Jane Austen

Chapter Six
Retardatory Structure, Expositional Suspension, and the Detective Story

Chapter Seven
A Plea for Preliminary and Concentrated Exposition: The Cases of Trollope and Balzac

Chapter Eight
Expositional Motivation, Temporal Structure, and Point of View (1): Varieties of Omniscient Narration

Chapter Nine
Expositional Motivation, Temporal Structure, and Point of View (2): Restricted and Self-Restricted Narration

Notes

Index

MEIR STERNBERG is Professor of Poetics and Comparative Literature at Tel Aviv University and author of The Poetics of Biblical Narrative.