Results by title

76 books match the query 'Narrative' and 4 start with o

cover of Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas, Volume Two

Omoo

A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas, Volume Two

Herman Melville

Northwestern University Press, 1999

Melville's second book, Omoo, begins where his first book, Typee, left off. As the author said, "It embraces adventures in the South Seas (of a totally different character from 'Typee') and includes an eventful cruise in an English Colonial Whaleman (a Sydney Ship) and a comical residence on the island of Tahiti." The popular success of his first novel encouraged Melville to write a sequel, hoping it would be "a fitting successor." Typee describes Polynesian life in its "primitive" state, while Omoo represents it as affected by non-native influences.

Whitman praised its "good-natured style." But many reviewers doubted Melville's veracity, and some objected to his "raciness" and "indecencies." Some also denounced his criticism of missionary endeavors, for his attacks on missionaries were more polemical than those undertaken in the earlier book. Omoo, however, influenced later visitors to Tahiti such as Pierre Loti, Henry Adams, John La Farge, and Jack London; it was the book that sent Robert Louis Stevenson to the South Seas.
[more]
cover of Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas, Volume Two, Scholarly Edition

Omoo

A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas, Volume Two, Scholarly Edition

Herman Melville

Northwestern University Press, 1968

Melville's second book, Omoo, begins where his first book, Typee, left off. As the author said, "It embraces adventures in the South Seas (of a totally different character from 'Typee') and includes an eventful cruise in an English Colonial Whaleman (a Sydney Ship) and a comical residence on the island of Tahiti." The popular success of his first novel encouraged Melville to write a sequel, hoping it would be "a fitting successor." Typee describes Polynesian life in its "primitive" state, while Omoo represents it as affected by non-native influences.

This scholarly edition aims to present a text as close to the author's intention as surviving evidence permits. Based on collations of all editions publishing during Melville's lifetime, it incorporates author corrections and many emendations made by the present editors. This edition of Omoo is an Approved Text of the Center for Editions of American Authors (Modern Language Association of America).
[more]
cover of On Narrative

On Narrative

W. J. T. Mitchell

University of Chicago Press, 1981

The fourteen distinguished contributors to this volume explore ways we tell, understand, and use stories. More important, through their exploration they collectively demonstrate that the study of narrative, like the study of other significant human creations, has taken a quantum leap in the modern era. No longer the province of literary specialists who borrow their terms from psychology or linguistics, the study of narrative has become and invaluable source of insight for all the branches of human and natural science. Multidisciplinary in scope, these essays dramatize and and clarify the most fundamental debates about the nature and value of narrative as a means by which human beings attempt to represent and make sense of the world. 
[more]
cover of Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative

Ordinary Enchantments

Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative

Wendy B. Faris

Vanderbilt University Press, 2004

Ordinary Enchantments investigates magical realism as the most important trend in contemporary international fiction, defines its characteristics and narrative techniques, and proposes a new theory to explain its significance. In the most comprehensive critical treatment of this literary mode to date, Wendy B. Faris discusses a rich array of examples from magical realist novels around the world, including the work not only of Latin American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but also of authors like Salman Rushdie, Gunter Grass, Toni Morrison, and Ben Okri.

Faris argues that by combining realistic representation with fantastic elements so that the marvelous seems to grow organically out of the ordinary, magical realism destabilizes the dominant form of realism based on empirical definitions of reality, gives it visionary power, and thus constitutes what might be called a "remystification" of narrative in the West. Noting the radical narrative heterogeneity of magical realism, the author compares its cultural role to that of traditional shamanic performance, which joins the worlds of daily life and that of the spirits. Because of that capacity to bridge different worlds, magical realism has served as an effective decolonizing agent, providing the ground for marginal voices, submerged traditions, and emergent literatures to develop and create masterpieces. At the same time, this process is not limited to postcolonial situations but constitutes a global trend that replenishes realism from within.


In addition to describing what many consider to be the progressive cultural work of magical realism, Faris also confronts the recent accusation that magical realism and its study as a global phenomenon can be seen as a form of commodification and an imposition of cultural homogeneity. And finally, drawing on the narrative innovations and cultural scenarios that magical realism enacts, she extends those principles toward issues of gender and the possibility of a female element within magical realism.

[more]