Story Logic

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Story Logic

Problems and Possibilities of Narrative

David Herman

Frontiers of Narrative Series

478 pages
Illus.

Paperback

June 2004

978-0-8032-7342-9

$29.95 Add to Cart
about author bio praise table of contents media awards

About the Book

Featuring a major synthesis and critique of interdisciplinary narrative theory, Story Logic marks a watershed moment in the study of narrative. David Herman argues that narrative is simultaneously a cognitive style, a discourse genre, and a resource for writing. Because stories are strategies that help humans make sense of their world, narratives not only have a logic but also are a logic in their own right, providing an irreplaceable resource for structuring and comprehending experience.

Story Logic brings together and pointedly examines key concepts of narrative in literary criticism, linguistics, and cognitive science, supplementing them with a battery of additional concepts that enable many different kinds of narratives to be analyzed and understood. By thoroughly tracing and synthesizing the development of different strands of narrative theory and provocatively critiquing what narratives are and how they work, Story Logic provides a powerful interpretive tool kit that broadens the applicability of narrative theory to more complex forms of stories, however and wherever they appear. Story Logic offers a fresh and incisive way to appreciate more fully the power and significance of narratives.

Author Bio

David Herman is a professor of English at North Carolina State University and an adjunct professor of linguistics at Duke University. He is the author of Universal Grammar and Narrative Form and the editor of Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis.

Praise

“One of the virtues of David Herman’s Story Logic lies in its attempt to bring together literary and linguistic approaches to the study of narrative. The attempt results in a synthesis that promotes a better understanding of discourse for literary scholars and a deeper grasp of basic narratology tools for discourse analysts. The title of the volume reflects one of the main points of the book: that ‘stories both have a logic and are logic in their own right’ because they constitute a powerful instrument for understanding the world. . . . . Herman has originally and successfully applied basic concepts and tools of linguistic analysis to the study of literary narrative. . . . I believe that many aspects of the narrative analyses proposed in the volume, such as Herman’s ideas about space, time, and action, can help linguists develop new insights about the ways in which different kinds of narratives construct meaning.”—Language in Society

Awards

2004 Barbara Perkins and George Perkins Award, sponsored by the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature, co-winner

Also of Interest

The Emergence of Mind

Edited by David Herman