Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames (review)

This new anthology collects twenty-seven essays on the subject of narrative dynamics, which editor Brian Richardson defines as “the movement of a narrative from its opening to its end” (1). Distinct from other narratological work in areas such as point of view, voice, or audience, Richardson’s concept of narrative dynamics incorporates theoretical work on time, plot, sequence and progression, beginnings and endings, and narrative frames. The collection features many of the most prominent works in narrative theory, including Vladimir Propp on fairy-tale transformations; M. M. Bahktin on the chronotope; Gérard Genette on order, duration, and frequency; Peter Brooks on narrative desire; Nancy K. Miller on women’s plots; James Phelan on narrative progression; Hayden White on history as narrative; Susan Stanford Friedman on spatialization; Jacques Derrida on textual boundaries; Edward Said on beginnings; and Rachel Blau DuPlessis on endings. The richness and variety of the readings make Narrative Dynamics a valuable, comprehensive reader for scholars of narrative theory.

The anthology’s organization is not always as clear as it could be, however, particularly when it comes to distinguishing between the sections on “Plot” and “Narrative Sequencing.” Richardson’s introductory comments imply that the “Narrative Sequencing” readings are concerned with nonlinear, nonmimetic, or nonunified ordering patterns (159), as opposed to the more rigid chronologies and master narratives discussed in the section on “Plot.” Yet the representative readings for these two sections do not entirely uphold this apparent distinction. Hayden White’s narrative typologies seem hardly less invested in linearity or teleology than Northrop Frye’s, and Susan Winnett and Nancy K. Miller are surely just as interested in breaking down gendered masterplots as they are in describing them.

If anything truly distinguishes the readings in “Narrative Sequencing,” it may be their common exploration of the distinction between fabula and syuzhet (or perhaps, in the cases of Susan Stanford Friedman and Robyn Warhol, their exploration of the conjunctions and disjunctions between intranarrative and extranarrative sequences). These are major subjects in narrative theory, clearly meriting their own section, and yet, again, the focus on fabula and syuzhet does not seem so different from the concept of plot employed by many of the other theorists in this anthology. As the selections by Tomashevsky, Ricardou, Phelan, and others amply demonstrate, sequence is clearly something more than just the difference between story and discourse, but also something quite distinct from plot. Richardson’s collection has raised an intriguing theoretical dilemma, one worthy of further examination.

That elusive distinction aside, the introductory notes provide lucid and thorough literary-historical contextualizations for each of the collection’s subject areas. Richardson argues convincingly for the persistence of ideological issues in narrative and narrative theory, but does so without resorting to reductive arguments that locate ideologies solely in open or closed form. The historical overviews achieve comprehensiveness without imposing a false telos on the diverse body of narrative theory; instead, Richardson usefully traces major schools, trends, and disputes in the field.

The selections, too, offer an impressive survey of the theories of narrative dynamics, ranging from foundational arguments to important expansions, critiques, and revisions. One of the collection’s greatest virtues is its dialogical nature: Richardson has selected pieces that already interact with one another, allowing readers to trace, for example, feminist responses to oedipal theories of emplotment or poststructural modifications of structuralist taxonomies. These exchanges are spirited but never antagonistic, and the book is slanted towards neither the older pieces nor the newer ones. The selections instead build on one another, offering a diverse and evolving portrait of narrative theory.

As with any anthology, each reader will necessarily find some pieces more beneficial than others. Marie-Laure Ryan’s essay, which attempts to import the language of computer programming into the discussion of embedded narratives, offers an interesting typology of “ontological” and “illocutionary” boundaries but does not otherwise support her claims that the metaphor of the stack answers a deficiency in narrative theory. Many of the challenges Ryan attempts...