CSN Ian Watt Lecture with Jonathan D. Culler: "The Problem of the Narrator"

Please join the Center for the Study of the Novel (CSN) for our annual Ian Watt Lecture!

This year’s invited speaker is Jonathan D. Culler (Cornell).

The Problem of the Narrator

"The idea that every narrative has a narrator has been something of an article of faith in narrative theory since the 1970s, and though for some years I accepted this (in Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction [1977], I wrote “By convention every narrative is said to have a narrator…”), this presupposition now seems to me both theoretically and methodologically dubious. Starting with a brief history of the idea of the narrator, I outline what seems to me a more valid and defensible concept of the narrator, drawing upon the cases of non-fictional narrative and narratives in other media, such as film, to question my former narratological assumption.”

Monday, March 2

5:00pm

Terrace Room (426), Margaret Jacks Hall (Bldg. 460)

novel.stanford.edu