Nov. 21, 2005
Folklore C261. THEORIES OF NARRATIVE
Tuesdays 3:30 to 6:30, 14 Haviland Hall
University of California, Berkeley, Spring 2006
Katharine Young, Ph.D.
Suppose you inhabited a reality in which your fellow inhabitants conjured up other realities at
will, displaying them before you by acts of narration? “Theories of Narrative” proposes a range of
approaches to such conjuring acts in face-to-face, mouth-to-ear, skin-to-skin interaction. The course centers
on fast folklore, narrative genres that dissect out into the matrix of the ordinary, that cut to the quick –
preeminently, storytelling in conversation – as key to the more durable folk genres – the folktale, the
legend, the epic, the myth – genres that change slowly, that hold out against the rhythms of modernity and
constitute themselves enclaves of the traditional. Moving across a spectrum of genres, the course examines
the formal, structural, and contextual properties of narratives in relation to gestures, the body, and emotion;
imagination and fantasy; memory and the senses; space and time. These narratives turn on transmission as
well as tradition; they are narratives at work, on the move, in action.
Coursework
Collect an oral narrative. Due the 5th week of class. 20% of grade
Transcribe your narrative.
Due the 8th week of class. 20% of grade
Analyze your narrative. Due the 12th week of class. 20% of grade
Theorize narrative
Due the last week of class. 40% of grade
Required Texts
Marie-Laure Ryan. 1991. Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
ISBN 0-253-35004-2
Charlotte Lindt. 1993. Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ISBN 0-19-507373-8
Amy Shuman. 2005. Other People’s Stories: Entitlement Claims and the Critique of Empathy.
Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
ISBN 0-252-02963-1
Vladimir Propp. 1968. Morphology of the Folktale.
Baltimore, MD: Port City Press.
SBN 292-78376-0
Tzvetan Todorov. 1973. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre,
tr. Richard Howard.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell.
ISBN 0-8014-9146-0
Jean Genette. 1980. Narrative Discourse, tr. Jane Lewin.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 25-160.
ISBN 0-8014-9259-9
Reader
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Space
Begin with the aesthetic ecology of narrative, to take up Mary Hufford’s term: how narrative is
implicated in its spaces – the issue of multiple contexting; how it is set off from its spaces – the question of
frames, boundaries, and thresholds; how narrators carve out the realities that in turn constitute them.
Seminar 1, January 17: Multiple Realities
Recommended
William James. 1890/1918. Principles of Psychology Vol. II.
New York: Dover, Ch. 21, 283-324 (of 688).
ISBN 0-486-20382-4
Alfred Schutz. 1973. “Transcendences and Multiple Realities.”
On Phenomenology and Social Relations, 245-262 (of 327).
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 245-262.
Library of Congress 0-226-74153-2
Maurice Natanson. 1962. “Phenomenology and the Theory of Literature.”
Literature, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences, 86-100 (of 220).
The Hague: Mouton, 86-100. [No ISBN]
Katharine Young. 1987. Introduction.
Taleworlds and Storyrealms: The Phenomenology of Narrative, 1-18 (of 268)
Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.
ISBN 90-247-3415-0
Marie-Laure Ryan. 1991. “Fictional Recentering” and
“The Modal Structure of Narrative Universes.”
Possible Worlds, ibid, 13-30, 109-123 (of 291).
Seminar 2, January 24: Frames
Required
Erving Goffman. 1974. “The Frame Analysis of Talk.”
Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience.
New York: Harper Colophon, 496-559 (of 586).
ISBN 06-090372-4
Katharine Young. 2004. “Frame and Boundary in the Phenomenology of Narrative.”
Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling, ed. Marie-Laure Ryan.
Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 76-107 (of 422).
ISBN 0-8032-399944-0
Mary Hufford. 1992. “The Chaseworld Anchored in Stories.”
Chaseworld: Foxhunting and Storytelling in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 145-173 (of 219).
[No ISBN]
Seminar 3, January 31: Storyability and Eventfulness
Required
William Labov. 1972. “The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax.”
Language in the Inner City.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 354-396 (of 412).
ISBN 0-8122-1051-6
Harvey Sacks. 1992. Selections from Lectures on Conversation, Volumes I & II.
Oxford: Blackwell, Vol. I, 243-251, 259-266, 752-783;
Vol. II, 3-31, 56-66, 215-260, 458-469 (140 of 1398).
ISBN 1-155786-705-4
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Katharine Young. 1987. “Storyability and Eventfulness.”
Taleworlds and Storyrealms: The Phenomenology of Narrative.
Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff. 186-210.
ISBN 90-247-3456-8
Marie-Laure Ryan. 1991. “Virtuality and Tellability.”
Possible Worlds (ibid.), 148-174.
Katharine Young. 1999. “Narratives of Indeterminacy.”
Narratologies, ed. David Herman.
Columbus, OH: Ohio University Press, 197-217 (of 396).
ISBN 0-8142-5024-6
Recommended
William Labov and Joshua Waletzky. 1967. “Oral Versions of Personal Experience.”
Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts, ed. June Helm.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 12-44.
Michael Bamberg, ed. 1997. Journal of Narrative and Life History 7:1-4,
Special Issue on Labov and Waletzsky.
ISSN 1053-6981
Seminar 4, February 7: Contexts
Required
Young. 1987. “Multiple Contexting: The Story Context of Stories;”
“Joint Storytelling: The Interplay of Discourse and Interaction.”
Ibid, 69-99 and 157-185 (of 268).
Marjorie Goodwin. 1990. “Stories within Dispute Processes.”
He-Said-She-Said.
Bloomington, ID: Indiana University Press, 229-282.
ISBN 0-253-20618-9
Matthew Potteiger and Jamie Purinton. “The Nature of Landscape Narratives.”
Landscape Narratives: Design Practices for Telling Stories.
New York: John Wiley and Sons, 31-70 (of 340).
Recommended
Deborah Tannen. 1982. “Introduction,”
“The Oral/Literate Continuum in Discourse.”
Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy, ed. Deborah Tannen.
Norwood, NJ: Ablex, xv-xvii, 1-16.
Erving Goffman. 1981. “Footing.”
Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 124-159.
Self
Narrative offers a double footing for the presentation of a self: the presentation of self as a
character in a story and the presentation of self as the narrator of a story in which one may or may not
appear as a character. These options are variously exploited in the business of producing a self in everyday
life, from relatively transparent claims to the selves one presents through duplicitous self-presentations to
the manufacture of meanings of the deepest consequence, for both oneself and the other.
Seminar 5, February 14: Narrative Selves
Due
Audiotape, videotape, or other technological retrieval of a narrative.
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Required
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. 1989. “Authoring Lives.”
Journal of Folklore Research 26: 2, 123-149.
Paul Ricoeur. 1992. “Personal Identity and Narrative Identity;”
“The Self and Narrative Identity.”
Oneself as Another. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 113-168 (of 363) .
ISBN 0-226-71329-6
Katharine Young. 1997. “Disembodiment: Internal Medicine.”
Presence in the Flesh.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 7-45 (of 199).
ISBN 0-674-70181-X
Seminar 6, February 21: Life Stories
Required
Charlotte Lindt. 1993. Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ISBN 0-19-507373-8
Recommended
Livia Polanyi. 1989. Telling the American Story:
A Structural and Cultural Analysis of Conversational Storytelling.
Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press.
ISBN 0-262-66062-8
Elinor Ochs. 2002. Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
ISBN 0674010108
Seminar 7, February 28: Speaking for Others
Required
Amy Shuman. 2005. Other People’s Stories:
Entitlement Claims and the Critique of Empathy.
Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press,
Introduction, chapters 2, 3, 5, and 6, 1-28, 54-88, 120-162.
ISBN 0-252-02963-1
Architecture
A progressively elaborated architecture carves narrative away from its contexts. From the
definition of minimal narrative, inquiry moves through sequentiality, consequentiality, and the problem of
causality; evaluation and the relationship between storability and eventfulness; and the shift from restricted
to elaborated code speaking to arrive at the tenuous border between oral and literary genres.
Seminar 8, March 7. Form
Due
Transcription of the narrative collected.
Required
Vladimir Propp. 1968. Morphology of the Folktale.
Baltimore, MD: Port City Press.
Young – Narrative
SBN 292-78376-0
Stephen Benson. 2003. “Tales in Theory:
The Role of the Folktale in the Development of Narratology.”
Cycles (ibid.), 17-41.
Amy Shuman. 2005. “Small World Stories:
Coincidence and Fate in Narratives of Everyday Life.”
Other People’s Stories. Ibid., 89-119.
Seminar 9, March 14: Structure
Required
Claude Levi-Strauss. 1963. “The Structural Analysis of Myth.”
Structural Anthropology.
New York: Basic Books, 206-231. [No ISBN]
Peter Roe. Panó Huëtsa Nëtë:
The Armadillo as Scaly Discoverer of the Lower World in Shipibo and Comparative
Lowland South Amerindian Perspective.”
Latin American Literatures Journal, 20-72, 108-120.
Roland Barthes. 1988. “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives;”
“The Sequences of Actions.”
The Semiotic Challenge, tr. Richard Howard.
New York: Hill and Wang, 95-150.
Library of Congress Number 87-28858
Recommended
David Herman. 1999. “Toward a Socionarratology:
New Ways of Analyzing Natural-language Narratives.”
Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis, ed. David Herman.
Seminar 10, March 21: Genre
Required
Tzvetan Todorov. 1973. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre,
tr. Richard Howard.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1-57.
ISBN 0-8014-9146-0
Marie-Laure Ryan. 1991. Marie-Laure Ryan. 1991. “Stacks, Frames, and Boundaries,
or Narrative as Computer Language.”
Possible Worlds. Ibid. 175-200.
Stephen Benson. 2003. “Theory in Tales: Cycles, Levels, and Frames.”
Cycles of Influence: Fiction/Folktale/Theory.
Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 43-65.
ISBN 0-8143-2949-7
Katharine Young. 1987. ”Taleworlds and Real:
Ontological Puzzles about Narrative.”
Taleworlds and Storyrealms (ibid.), 211-248.
ISBN 90-247-4315-0
Recommended
Columbus, OH: Ohio University Press, 218-246.
ISBN 0-8142-5024-6
Marie-Laure Ryan. 2004. “Introduction;”
“Face-to-face Narration;”
“Will New Media Produce New Narratives?”
Narrative Across Media (ibid.), 1-46, 337-359.
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Liv Hausken. 2004. “Coda: Textual Theory and Blind Spots in Media Studies.”
Narrative Across Media (ibid.), 391-404.
The Body
Conversational narrative is implicated not only in its contexts of production and perception but
also in the body of its producer and perceiver. Examine the relationship between gestures and narrative, the
gesture space as a narrative space, embodied perspectives on narrative realities, and the implications of this
embodied hold on narrative realities for the senses, memory, and emotion.
Seminar 11, April 4: Performance
Required
Richard Schechner. 1988. “Magnitudes of Performance.”
Performance Theory.
New York: Routledge, 251-288.
ISBN 0-415-90093-X
Charles Goodwin. 1984. “Notes on Story Structure and the Organization of Participation.”
Structures of Social Action, ed. J. M. Atkinson and John Heritage, 225-246.
Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs. 1990. “Poetics and Performance as Critical
Perspectives on Language and Social life.”
Annual Review of Anthropology 79, 59-88.
Recommended
Dell Hymes. 1981. In Vain I Tried to Tell You: Ethnopoetics.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
ISBN 08122778062
Jean Genette. 1997. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree,
tr. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
ISBN 0-8122-1112-x
Seminar 12, April 11: Gesture
Due
Sociolinguistic, formal, structural, generic or performance theoretical analysis of narrative.
Required
Justine Cassell and David McNeill. 2004. “Gesture and the Poetics of Prose.”
Narrative Across Media (ibid.), 108-138.
Cornelia Müller. 2003. “On the Gestural Creation of Narrative Structure.”
Gestures: Meaning and Use.
Porto, Portugal: Universidade Fernando Pessoa, 259-276.
ISBN 972-8184-95-6
John Haviland. 2000. ”Pointing, Gesture Spaces and Mental Maps.”
Language and Gesture, ed. David McNeill.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 13-46.
ISBN 0- 521-77761-5
Katharine Young. 2002. “The Dream Body in Somatic Psychology:
The Kinaesthetics of Gesture.”
Gesture 2:1, 45-70.
ISSN 1568-1475
Recommended
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David McNeill. 1992. Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
ISBN 0-226-56132-1
Elena Levy and Carol Fowler. “The Role of Gestures and other Graded Language Forms in
the Grounding of Reference in Perception.”
Language and Gesture (ibid.), 215-234.
Seminar 13, April 18: Embodied Perception
Required
C. Nadia Seremetakis. 1994. "The Memory of the Senses:
Historical Perception, Commensal Exchange, and Modernity."
Visualizing Theory, ed. Lucien Taylor. New York: Routledge.
ISBN 0-415-90843-4
Katharine Young. 2000. “Gestures and the Phenomenology of Emotion in Narrative.”
Semiotica 131:1/2, 79-112.
ISSN 0037-1998/00/0131-0079
Recommended
Katharine Young. 2002. “The Memory of the Flesh.”
Body and Society 8:3, 25-48.
Time
Narratives enter not only into multiple realities but also into multiple temporalities. Examine
repetition and the problem of the copy; temporal folding; and multiple temporalities. Conclude with
mimesis as a disturbance of time.
Seminar 14, April 25: Ethnomimesis
Required
Jean Genette. 1980. “Introduction,” “Order,” “Duration,” “Frequency.”
Narrative Discourse, tr. Jane Lewin.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 25-160.
ISBN 0-8014-9259-9
Paul Ricoeur. 1980. “Narrative Time.”
On Narrative, ed. W. J. F. Mitchell.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 165-186 (of 270).
[No ISBN]
1984. “Time and Narrative: Threefold Mimesis.”
Time and Narrative, Vol. I, tr. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 52-90 (of 274).
ISBN 0-226-71331-8
Recommended
Robert Cantwell. 1993. “The Ogre in the Tale:
Enclosures, Gardens, and the Festival Market.”
Ethnomimesis: Folklife and the Representation of Culture.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 32-48.
ISBN 0-8078-2112-8
Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan. 1984. “Text: Time.”
Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics.
London: Methuen, 43-58.
ISBN
Young – Narrative
Seminar 15, May 2: Multiple Temporalities
Recommended
Paul Ricoeur. 1984. Time and Narrative, Vols. I and II,
tr. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
ISBN 0-226-71331-8
Seminar 16, May 9. Time and the Body
Due
Final paper on the interpretation of narrative, incorporating the transcription and its analysis, 20 to 25
pages. Present an abbreviated account of its theoretical interest.
Recommended
Jacques Derrida. 1973. “The Supplement of Origin.”
Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs,
tr. David B. Allison.
Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 88-104.
ISBN 0-8101-0590-X
Michele Foucault. 1977. “Theatrum Philosophicum.”
Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, tr. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 165-198.
ISBN 08014-9204-1
Antonin Artaud. 1958. The Theatre and its Double, tr. Mary Caroline Richards.
New York: Grove Press.
Library of Congress 58-9910
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