Narrative progression in the short story : a corpus stylistic approach / / Michael Toolan

• Autore: Toolan Michael J
• Pubblicazione: Amsterdam ; ; Philadelphia, : John Benjamins Pub., c2009
• Edizione: 1st ed.
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (225 p.)
• Disciplina: 808.3/1
• Soggetto topico: Fiction - Authorship; Narration (Rhetoric); Short story - Technique
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. [201]-208) and indexes.
• Nota di contenuto: Narrative Progression in the Short Story -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. The crucial question: how does text 'guide' the reader? -- 2. A brief sketch of the research context and methods -- 3. On genre, relevance, scripts, and background -- 4. Guided expectation -- 5. Text integrity -- 6. Predictive reading -- 7. Conclusion -- Collocation and corpus stylistics -- 1. Studies in discourse prospection and expectation -- 2. Collocational stylistics -- 3. Choosing an appropriate comparator corpus -- 4. A note on the stories selected for analysis. -- 5. Conclusion -- Lexical patternings in short stories -- 1 Word frequencies in "Two Gallants" -- 1.1 "Gallantry" in Dubliners -- 1.2 High and low frequency lexis in "Two Gallants" -- 2. Textual richness measured by lexical diversity -- 2.1 The type-token measure -- 2.2 Lexical innovation and text structure -- 3. Foregrounding via repetitive phrasing or by novelty of phrasing and collocation -- 3.1 Clusters -- 3.2 Achieving the stern task of living: a tissue of not-so-vague associations -- 4. Keyword analysis of "Two Gallants" -- 4.1 Using keywords on "Two Gallants": section by section -- Top keyword sentences as story waymarking -- 1. A top keyword abridgement of "Two Gallants" -- 2. Applying the top keyword procedure in story abridgements -- 2.1 Updike's "A & -- P" -- 2.2 Carver's "Boxes". -- 2.3 Carver's "Cathedral". -- 3. Further procedural questions about the top keyword method -- 3.1 Distinguishing the top keyword from other frequent keywords. -- 3.2 On the importance, in the top keyword, of proper name status. -- 4. Some interim conclusions -- Keywords and the Language of Guidance in "The Love of a Good Woman" -- 1. Story opening as initial guidance -- 2. Top lexical keywords as narrativity indices. ; 3. Textual segmentation and keywords' collocates. -- 4. Local (within-section) interrelation and collocation of keywords -- Repetition and para-repetition in story structure -- 1. A more delicate keywords and plotlinks analysis of "The Love of a Good Woman" -- 2. Keyword personal pronouns and idiolect-signalling -- 3. The non-repetitive echo: long-distance patterning via associated lexis and analogy -- 3.1 Rubbing and scratching surfaces -- 3.2 Dark above, light below -- 3.3 Sorrowful plummeting -- 3.4 Bashing, banging and braining -- 4. Para-repetitive narrative bonding between story opening and remainder -- Prospection and expectation -- 1. Sentences featuring named main characters -- 1.1 High frequency and keyword character referencing -- 1.2 Modelling cohesive chains in long texts by sampling -- 2. Narrative-tense finite verbs in character-depicting action clauses -- 2.1 Narrative-tense verbs with inquits excluded -- 2.2 VVD density -- 2.3 Is independent capture of narrative-tense action verbs needed? -- 3. The cueing power of first sentences of narrative paragraphs -- 4. Narrativity carried by "fully lexical" frequent keywords and clusters. -- 4.1 Frequent keywords -- 4.2 Clusters -- Prospection and expectation -- 1. The heightened narrativity of characters' represented thought -- 1.1 Automating identification of FIT: rule 1, narrative modal verbs with pronouns. -- 1.2 Exclude modals following if, whether, that… -- 1.3 Automating identification of FIT: Rule 2, include all questions and exclamations in the narrative -- 1.4 Automating identification of FIT: Rule 3, include all flanking sentences containing subjective modals -- 1.5 Modifying the three FIT-finding procedures -- 2. Prospective direct speech -- 3. Negation-carrying clauses -- 4. Narrative verbs of modality and mental processing -- 5. Implementing the model with "Two Gallants". ; 6. Compiling the abridgement -- The textual tracking of suspense and surprise -- 1. Narrative suspense -- 2. Narrative surprise -- 3. Textualising suspense in "Two Gallants" -- 4. Textualising surprise in "Bliss" and "A small, good thing" -- Next steps -- 1. Corpus-based study of narrativity: a work in progress. -- 2. Expanding and refining the model: modality and evaluation -- 3. The reader's experience of the text -- 4. Directions for future research -- References -- Name index -- Topic index -- The series Linguistic Approaches to Literature.
• Sommario/riassunto: One of our most valuable capacities is our ability partly to predict what will come next in a text. But linguistic understanding of this remains very limited, especially in genres such as the short story where there is a staging of the clash between predictability and unpredictability. This book proposes that a matrix of narrativity-furthering textual features is crucial to the reader's forming of expectations about how a literary story will continue to its close. Toolan uses corpus linguistic software and methods, and stylistic and narratological theory, in the course of delineating the matrix of eight parameters that he sees as crucial to creating narrative progression and expectation. The book will be of interest to stylisticians, narratologists, corpus linguists, and short story scholars.
• Titolo autorizzato: Narrative progression in the short story
• ISBN: 1-282-10480-2; 9786612104800; 90-272-9061-X
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Record Nr.: 9910812443703321
• Lo trovi qui: Univ. Federico II
• Serie: Linguistic approaches to literature ; ; v. 6.