Narrative Theory: Rhetoric and Ethics in Fiction and Nonfiction

FAIN: FS-50138-07

Ohio State University Research Foundation (Columbus, OH 43210-1435)
James P. Phelan (Project Director: March 2007 to June 2009)

A six-week seminar for fifteen college and university teachers to study rhetorical theories of fictional and non-fictional narrative to be held at Ohio State University.

This seminar investigates the power of narrative as a way of knowing, a power acknowledged by the "narrative turn" in the humanities--and, indeed, in disciplines such as law, medicine, and business--over the last decade. It will focus on a range of rich examples of fictional and nonfictional narrative--novels and short stories by such authors as Edgar Allan Poe, Edith Wharton, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ian McEwan; memoirs by Frank McCourt and Joan Didion--and on how a rhetorical theory of narrative helps illuminate their form and their ethical dimensions. It will also place rhetorical theory in the broader context of contemporary narrative theory by looking at other approaches to narrative theory in general and narrative ethics in particular. Among the theorists we will study are Wayne Booth, Martha Nussbaum, Peter J. Rabinowitz, Adam Zachary Newton, Susan Lanser, and David Herman.