A Poetics of Plot for the Twenty-First Century

Story, in the largest sense of the term, is arguably the single most important aspect of narrative. But with the proliferation of antimimetic writing, traditional narrative theory has been inadequate for conceptualizing and theorizing a vast body of innovative narratives. In A Poetics of Plot for the Twenty-First Century: Theorizing Unruly Narratives, Brian Richardson proposes a new model for evaluating literature-returning to the basis of narrative theory to illuminate how authors play with and help clarify the boundaries of narrative theory. While he focuses on late modernist, postmodern, and contemporary narratives, the study also includes many earlier works, spanning from Aristophanes and Shakespeare through James Joyce and Virginia Woolf to Salman Rushdie and Angela Carter.

By exploring fundamental questions about narrative, Richardson provides a detailed, nuanced, and comprehensive theory that includes neglected categories of storytelling and significantly enhances our treatment of traditional areas of analysis. Ultimately, this book promises to transform and expand the study of story and plot.

“"Brian Richardson's ever-expanding knowledge of world historical literature--ancient and contemporary, arcane and canonical--allows him, seemingly without effort, to put things in a fresh light--a rare pleasure in academic prose." --H. Porter Abbott”

"[Richardson] extends the narratological toolbox by introducing new analytical categories that help us to come to terms with innovative and experimental forms of narrative ordering and narrative emplotment [and] offers ... an impressive overview of innovative textual experiments in the history of world literature. ... The volume will certainly appeal to a wide readership, including narratologists, literary scholars working on (post)modernist and contemporary fiction, informed readers of world literature, and students of literary history. In short: a must-read for anyone interested in experimental fiction." --Carolin Gebauer, Diegesis

Brian Richardson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland, College Park, and author of Unnatural Narrative: Theory, History, and Practice (OSU Press, 2015).

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