A Poetics of Plot for the Twenty-First Century: Theorizing Unruly Narratives

Returns to fundamental questions of narrative to expose how authors play with and clarify the boundaries of narrative theory, thus transforming and expanding the study of story and plot.

Story, in the largest sense of the term, is arguably the single most important aspect of narrative. But with the proliferation of antimimetic writing, traditional narrative theory has been inadequate for conceptualizing and theorizing a vast body of innovative narratives. In A Poetics of Plot for the Twenty-First Century: Theorizing Unruly Narratives, Brian Richardson proposes a new model for evaluating literature―returning to the basis of narrative theory to illuminate how authors play with and help clarify the boundaries of narrative theory. While he focuses on late modernist, postmodern, and contemporary narratives, the study also includes many earlier works, spanning from Aristophanes and Shakespeare through James Joyce and Virginia Woolf to Salman Rushdie and Angela Carter.

By exploring fundamental questions about narrative, Richardson provides a detailed, nuanced, and comprehensive theory that includes neglected categories of storytelling and significantly enhances our treatment of traditional areas of analysis. Ultimately, this book promises to transform and expand the study of story and plot.

Brian Richardson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland, College Park. His major areas of research are international modernism, postmodernism, narrative theory, and the history of the novel. His books published by Ohio State University Press include A Poetics of Plot for the Twenty-First Century; Unnatural Narrative: Theory, History, and Practice; Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates (written with David Herman, James Phelan, Peter Rabinowitz, and Robyn Warhol); A Poetics of Unnatural Narratives (edited with Jan Alber and Henrik Skov Nielsen); and others.