Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction (Romance Linguistics) - Hardcover

Fleischman, Suzanne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415049210 ISBN 13: 9780415049214

Publisher: Routledge, 1990

Synopsis

An investigation into the linguistic foundation of narrative discourse, this book aims to arrive at an understanding of linguistic strategies used by story-tellers to structure experience, real or invented.

About this title

Review

"...Fleischman's book takes the study of medieval literature to new hermeneutic horizons.... Furthermore, through the use of sociolinguistics she connects the modern and medieval worlds in a way that will make the medieval world less alien to us, and thus her perspective gives us another means by which we can make medieval literature more relevant to our students." * Studies in the Age of Chaucer *

From the Back Cover

Tense and Narrativity is an investigation into the linguistic foundation of narrative discourse, the goal of which is to arrive at an understanding of certain linguistic strategies used by story-tellers to structure experience, real or invented. The focus is on the functions of the grammatical categories of tense and aspect, and on the strategic ways in which these categories operate in narrative.

A further goal is a re-assessment of a long-standing problem of Romance philology: the seemingly idiosyncratic use of tenses found in much of the narrative literature of the Middle Ages: the problem of why medieval writers 'couldn't get their tenses straight'.

The progress towards these two goals provides a springboard for exploring a number of broader theoretical questions: about the differences between spoken and written language, the relationship of pragmatics to grammar, narrative typology, and the status of narrative as a special category of linguistic performance.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415049210
• ISBN 13: 9780415049214
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464