Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Preface to the second edition
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Narrative and life
- Chapter 2 Defining narrative
- Chapter 3 The borders of narrative
- Chapter 4 The rhetoric of narrative
- Chapter 5 Closure
- Chapter 6 Narration
- Chapter 7 Interpreting narrative
- Chapter 8 Three ways to interpret narrative
- Chapter 9 Adaptation across media
- Chapter 10 Character and self in narrative
- Chapter 11 Narrative and truth
- Chapter 12 Narrative worlds
- Chapter 13 Narrative contestation
- Chapter 14 Narrative negotiation
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Glossary and topical index
- Index of authors and narratives
Chapter 13 - Narrative contestation
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Preface to the second edition
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Narrative and life
- Chapter 2 Defining narrative
- Chapter 3 The borders of narrative
- Chapter 4 The rhetoric of narrative
- Chapter 5 Closure
- Chapter 6 Narration
- Chapter 7 Interpreting narrative
- Chapter 8 Three ways to interpret narrative
- Chapter 9 Adaptation across media
- Chapter 10 Character and self in narrative
- Chapter 11 Narrative and truth
- Chapter 12 Narrative worlds
- Chapter 13 Narrative contestation
- Chapter 14 Narrative negotiation
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Glossary and topical index
- Index of authors and narratives
Summary
A contest of narratives
Here is a narrative. It is a hot day in the summer of 1892. Father and stepmother rise and have breakfast at 7:00. The elder daughter is away visiting; the younger arises just before 9:00 and has a light breakfast. Her father, an elderly man by now, almost seventy (the younger daughter is thirty-one), goes off downtown on business. A banker, he is an important and wealthy man in this sleepy Massachusetts town. The younger daughter talks briefly with her stepmother, who tells her she has received a note asking her to go visit someone who is sick that morning. After telling the maid to wash the windows, the stepmother then goes upstairs. Later that morning, the father comes back. He is tired from his walking, and his daughter helps him to lie down on the couch in the parlor. She then sets up her ironing board to begin ironing a few handkerchiefs, but soon stops to go out to the barn in search of a piece of lead to fix a screen. Coming back twenty or thirty minutes later, she hears something – a scraping sound, or maybe a groan. She goes into the parlor and there she sees her father, lying half on and half off the couch, his head bloody and smashed almost beyond recognition. Numb with shock, she goes out into the hall, calls the maid, and has her go for the doctor.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative , pp. 175 - 192Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008