Editor’s Column

This issue has two distinct groups of essays. The first group consists of three pieces on theory or on theory and interpretation that are unique in their specific arguments but conceptually similar to most of the essays we have previously published: two essays first delivered as plenary addresses at the Birmingham Conference in June 2009, Frank Ankersmit’s exploration of the relation between history and the novel and Frances Smith Foster’s meditations on African American narratives of marriage; and Yael Shapira’s analysis of Margaret Atwood’s “Hairball” in relation to the tradition of narratives about the female grotesque. The second group consists of five pieces offering significant commentary on the work of important theorists: essays by Gerald Prince and John Pier on Gérard Genette, and essays by Frances Ferguson, Steven Knapp, and David Richter and me on Ralph W. Rader. Publishing five essays of this kind in a single issue has prompted me to think about the relative scarcity of such articles in our previous issues (especially if one does not count the occasional “Dialogues” focused on single books). Even the May 2007 special issue on the work of Wayne C. Booth featured more essays using aspects of Booth’s work in the service of their authors’ individual projects than essays focused primarily on assessing Booth’s work.

We have these five essays in this issue because they were all commissioned as tributes to their subjects by the International Society for the Study of Narrative and because, in my judgment, their quality merited publication. The two pieces on Genette were first delivered at the Birmingham Conference to help mark his receiving the Wayne C. Booth Lifetime Achievement Award. The three pieces on Rader were first delivered at the San Francisco MLA in December 2008 in a memorial ISSN session organized by Dorothy Hale. But should it take either an awards ceremony or a funeral to generate essays such as these five? The obvious answer is “not necessarily,” but perhaps the reasons for that answer are less obvious. Notice that “not necessarily” is as much a partial affirmation as it is a negation, and, thus, it invites us to think about the case for answering “yes.”

That case goes something like this: it should take a special occasion to publish essays focused on the work of a single theorist because the main objects of study in our field are narratives and narrative theory rather than narrative theorists themselves. Consequently, as we ask and answer our questions about these objects of study, we are more likely to focus on the work of a single theorist as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Furthermore, Narrative has established itself as a venue for essays that combine theoretical and interpretive inquiries, an orientation that again leads contributors to treat the work of individual theorists as a means rather than an end.

Nevertheless, that case leaves out something that the five essays in this issue show in their different ways: the focus on the work of a theorist whose contributions to our field achieve a distinctive depth, breadth, and significance can produce valuable scholarship. By leading us to re-assess the theorist’s work, such essays offer new understandings of key concepts as well as new visions of the theorist’s larger projects and their relations to the developing field. In this way, such essays are not only summaries and assessments but genuine inquiries on a par with those we typically publish.

All things considered, then, I find that it is not at all surprising that the journal has published few pieces devoted to the work of a single theorist—and that it should remain open to publishing more such pieces, whether they are inspired by special occasions or the general spirit of narrative inquiry.