From Aristotle to Henry James, Tzvetan Todorov and Mikhail Bakhtin: this substantial and dense, but stimulating, book attests that the study of narratives has long engaged and even obsessed critics. A new volume in Blackwell's Companion series, it presents 35 essays by prominent living academics, including luminaries like Wayne C. Booth and J. Hillis Miller who have been active theorists for several or more decades. The editors are, respectively, an English professor at Ohio State, and Chair of Comparative Literature at Hamilton College, New York, and most of the other contributors also hail from the USA. However, there are representatives from universities in Canada, Europe, Israel and even Beijing, so there is a strong sense of engagement and debate at international level throughout.
As Phelan and Rabinowitz explain in a comprehensive introduction, the volume is divided into six sections: introductory histories of the field; recurrent problems in interpretation; suggestions for innovation; explorations of narrative form and its relationship to history, politics and ethics; extra‐literary narrative; and, lastly, speculation about the future of theory. The approaches that are employed encompass the full gamut of rhetorical, poststructuralist, feminist and historicist schools. Media covered includes cinema, painting, music and the internet as well as literature. Thus, there are essays on film soundtracks and Jackson Pollock, as well as a range of texts from the Bible to Ian McEwan's novel, Atonement, a close reading of which is the subject of Phelan's own contribution. Subject matter encompasses medical and legal discourses, the latter being the subject of a particularly innovative essay by Peter Brooks. There is even a piece (by Catherine Gunther Kodat) on the figure of “Spartacus” as cross‐cultural construct in history, legend, ballet and film.
Research and browsing aids are quite impressive. Each essay is completed with a bibliographical list of references and further reading and, usually, endnotes. The latter vary hugely in length: many, such as David H. Richter's for his chapter on Biblical narratology, constitute virtual mini‐essays in themselves. Some, but not all, of the chapters have sub‐headings to aid navigation through what are sometimes very complex arguments. A glossary of critical terms follows the essays. This is an extremely useful supplement, and one would say essential for students and readers new to the subject. The book is rounded off with a single 20‐page index, which combines authors and topics. I would have preferred to see two separate indexes, of persons and themes respectively, for clarity. However, it is concise, has good cross‐referencing and critical and artistic works are clearly distinguished in italic type.
The essays themselves vary in style. Some chapters, such as those by Booth (here addressing narrative in poetry) and Brian McHale, read like a fairly informal first‐person lecture. However, the norm is for an intense self‐reflexivity, often engaging critically with other contributors. This intensity is perhaps most vividly demonstrated in Peggy Phelan's essay on performance art, which actually closes with an experiment in performance writing. Whilst this serves to attest that narrative itself is a contested term and site, and that this is a forum for ongoing debate, few concessions are made to the reader who is not at least a student of critical theory. An introductory chronology of critical developments – rather than, as here, three to some extent competing accounts – would have helped. The Companion serves as a fine cross‐section of advanced thinking in this area of intellectual enquiry. However, a certain lack of accessibility, plus its hefty price, suggests a strictly postgraduate audience – for whom it will be an invaluable compendium and research aid – rather than an undergraduate or general readership.
