Perceiving and Telling: A Study of Iterative Discourse

Daniele Chatelain

ISBN 10: 1879691523 / ISBN 13: 9781879691520

Published by U.S.A.: San Diego State University Press, 1998

About this Item

Trade paperback in fine condition.

Seller Inventory # 169363

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Perceiving and Telling: A Study of Iterative Discourse
• Publisher: U.S.A.: San Diego State University Press
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1879691523
• ISBN 13: 9781879691520
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Language

About this title

Synopsis

BACK IN PRINT from the original publisher, San Diego State University Press.

Pointed, timely, and engaging, Daniele Chatelain's PERCEIVING AND TELLING: A STUDY OF ITERATIVE DISCOURSE is a comparatist study exploring verbal conventions that create the illusion of time. It also investigates how these conventions have operated in the works of various authors.

In terms of story versus narrative, the separation of space and time is, in a sense, built into the very terms in which that distinction is traditionally formulated. In Gerald Prince's A Dictionary of Narratology, "story" is the content of the narrative; it is a succession of events "with an emphasis on chronology" (91). On the other hand, "narrative"is the recounting of this chronology; it is a "structuration," that is, a mental spatialization of this presumed flow of events. Underlying modern theory of narrative, in fact, is both a separation of time and space (story = chronology; narrative = structuration), and a sense of rivalry between these two dimensions. The result, it seems, is a valorization of the latter over the former." In her study, Chatelain seeks to show how these dimensions exist on a "spacetime continuum." The book is provided with a glossary of terms.

Daničle Chatelain is Professor of French at the University of Redlands, California.