14.1 Criticism, narratology and theory
- Aristotle. Poetics. c. 335 BCE. Available in Classical Literary Criticism, translated by Penelope Murray and T. S. Dorsch. London: Penguin, 2000.
- Asch, Solomon E. “Forming Impressions of Personality.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 41, no. 3 (1946): 258–290.
- Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. [First edition 1961.]
- Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980. [French original 1972.]
- Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. [French original 1987.]
- Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.
- Nuttall, A. D. Openings: Narrative Beginnings from the Epic to the Novel. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
- Perry, Menakhem. “Literary Dynamics: How the Order of a Text Creates Its Meanings.” Poetics Today 1, no. 1–2 (1979): 35–64, 311–361.
- Rabinowitz, Peter J. Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
- Said, Edward W. Beginnings: Intention and Method. New York: Basic Books, 1975.
- Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.
- Sternberg, Meir. Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.
- Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. London: Chatto & Windus, 1957.
On the medieval prefatory tradition, this chapter follows the standard account of the accessus ad auctores as a schoolroom apparatus organised around author, subject, intention and utility; the tradition is documented in the scholarly literature on medieval commentary and is summarised in most histories of medieval literary theory.
14.2 Cognitive and empirical studies of reading
- Emmott, Catherine. Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
- Gerrig, Richard J. Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
- Green, Melanie C., and Timothy C. Brock. “The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79, no. 5 (2000): 701–721.
- Kuijpers, Moniek M., Frank Hakemulder, Ed S. Tan, and Miruna M. Doicaru. “Exploring Absorbing Reading Experiences.” Scientific Study of Literature 4, no. 1 (2014): 89–122.
- Zwaan, Rolf A., and Gabriel A. Radvansky. “Situation Models in Language Comprehension and Memory.” Psychological Bulletin 123, no. 2 (1998): 162–185.
14.3 Craft literature (used critically, as documents of a practice)
- Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
- Lukeman, Noah. The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile. New York: Fireside, 2000.
- Swain, Dwight V. Techniques of the Selling Writer. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965.
14.4 Primary texts discussed
Passages are quoted briefly for the purposes of criticism and study. Where a work was not written in English, the translation consulted is named.
- Agee, James. A Death in the Family. 1957. [Prefatory piece: “Knoxville: Summer, 1915”.]
- Aristophanes. Frogs. 405 BCE.
- Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. 1985.
- Beowulf. c. 8th–11th century.
- Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. 1847.
- Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita. Written 1928–40; published 1966–67. English versions consulted: trans. Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor (1993); trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (1997).
- Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. 1605, 1615. Trans. Edith Grossman (2003).
- Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales, General Prologue. c. 1387.
- Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. 1719.
- Du Maurier, Daphne. Rebecca. 1938.
- Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. 1980. Trans. William Weaver (1983).
- Eliot, George. Middlemarch. 1871–72.
- Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. 1952.
- Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. 1857.
- Hartley, L. P. The Go-Between. 1953.
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. 1850.
- Herbert, Frank. Dune. 1965.
- Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. 1937.
- James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. 1898.
- Jonson, Ben. Bartholomew Fair. 1614.
- Kyd, Thomas. The Spanish Tragedy. c. 1587.
- Machado de Assis, Joaquim Maria. The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. 1881.
- Manzoni, Alessandro. I promessi sposi. 1827.
- Martin, George R. R. A Game of Thrones. 1996.
- Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. 1955.
- Richardson, Samuel. Pamela. 1740; Clarissa. 1747–48.
- Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones. 2002.
- Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. c. 1595; Henry V. 1599; The Taming of the Shrew. c. 1592.
- Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818; revised edition with new introduction, 1831.
- Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897.
- Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings. 1954–55. [Prologue: “Concerning Hobbits”.]
- Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. 1878; The Death of Ivan Ilyich. 1886.
- Thackeray, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair. 1847–48. [“Before the Curtain”.]
- Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto. 1764.
14.5 Added in the second edition
The Core chapter’s post-2000 and screen cases, each checked by a narrow lookup (recorded in the edition’s examples register):
- Brown, Dan. The Da Vinci Code. 2003. [Prologue: Saunière in the Louvre’s Grand Gallery.]
- Larsson, Stieg. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. 2005; trans. Reg Keeland, 2008. [Prologue: the pressed flower on an eighty-second birthday.]
- Martel, Yann. Life of Pi. 2001. [Author’s Note.]
- Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. 2005. [Prologue: “A Mountain Range of Rubble”.]
- Fleming, Ian. From Russia, with Love. 1957. [Ten chapters before Bond appears; type 3 in §6.3.]
- Gilligan, Vince (creator). Breaking Bad, “Pilot”. AMC, 2008. [Cold open in the desert; the episode returns to it.]
- Spielberg, Steven (director). Saving Private Ryan. 1998. [The cemetery frame.]
- Lukeman, Noah. The First Five Pages. 2000. [On submission reading, cited in §3.6 by way of Chapter 9.]