1. FICTION vs PROSE
Both can have imagery, symbols, motifs, setting, and even characters (ie a travel blog) BUT …
Fiction has plot  conflict and is imaginary (not fully real)
The problem of “realism”
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2. FICTION What is a short story? Novella: longer fiction: 50-100 pages
Very compressed, minimal characterization, setting, etc.. Sometimes has an intense moment/climax point.
Typically 500 – 10,000 words (more or less—depends who you talk to)
Focused usually on a single idea, topic, theme, etc..
Novella: longer fiction: pages
Novel: full-length narrative usually with multiple chapters, (and sometimes) focusing on characterization and the psychological interiority of characters
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3. ORIGINS of FICTION
Precursors … Thomas Nashe. The Unfortunate Traveller (1594). Some say it’s Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1615)
The first novels in English extended Shakespeare’s Humanism (individualism) from individual kings & royalty to individual commoners Daniel Defoe
Robinson Crusoe (1719) Moll Flanders (1722)
Horace Walpole
The Castle of Otranto (1764)
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4. SOME SUBGENRES of FICTION
Picaresque: episodic in structure; thin on characterization and plot; usually about the adventures of a rogue or commoner
Epistolary novel (written as letters; can show multiple points of view)
Detective novel (the triumph of science and reason—ie Sherlock Holmes)
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5. MORE SUBGENRES of FICTION
Gothic: must have elements of supernaturalism
Bildungsroman: a story of coming of age (James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
Penny Dreadfuls: during the 1830s and 1840 based on real criminals on death row
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6. (Some) ELEMENTS of FICTION
Theme (main ideas and argument)
Topic (general subject)
Narrative (narratology)
Imagery
Plot
Setting
Characterization
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7. KINDS OF NARRATORS 1ST 2ND 3RD person (singular plural)
Limited – Unlimited
Reliable – Unreliable
Dramatic – Omniscient
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8. KINDS OF NARRATIVES
Linear, iterative, circular, teleological, retrospective
Analepsis (flashback) and Prolepsis (flash forward)
Showing vs telling (implying through action rather than telling through words)
Framing or nested narratives (one inside the other)
Diegetic (heard/experienced by the characters)
Non-diegetic (not heard by characters but heard by us)
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9. KINDS OF NARRATIVE STRUCTURES
Freytag’s Pyramid exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, conclusion (in the Norton)
Erotetic Narration Noel Carroll. “… scenes, situations and events that appear earlier in the order of the exposition of a story are related to later scenes, situations, and events in the story as questions are related to answers.”
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10. KINDS OF NARRATIVE STRUCTURES
Jung and the Quest motif
Hero is part of a community (sometimes marginalized, but still a part of it)
the community is threatened and the hero steps up to champion the community
hero must journey into a wilderness (often alone but sometimes) with a companion
hero is tested without knowing it and more or less passes the test, thereby saving the community
hero returns home a changed person
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11. Jung and some archetypes:
The mother or nurturer
The trickster
The child
The Hero
The wise woman
The devil
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