Finding the Plot
Storytelling in Popular Fictions
Published on 28. May 2013
Book
Hardback
345 pages
978-1-4438-4238-9 (ISBN)
Description
"Plot", writes Peter Brooks, "is so basic to our very experience of reading, and indeed to our articulation of experience in general, that criticism has often passed it over in silence..." (Reading for the Plot, xi). Finding the Plot both explores and helps to redress this critical neglect. The book brings together an international group of scholars to address the nature, effects and specific pleasures of consuming stories. If the central focus is on France and popular literary fiction, the book's scope - like contemporary fiction itself - observes no national frontiers, and extends across a variety of media. The book addresses both the empirical question of which genres and types of text have been and are most "popular", and the theoretical questions of how plots work, what pleasures they offer to readers, and why it matters that the plot should not be lost.
More details
Edition
Unabridged edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Newcastle upon Tyne
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
Unabridged edition
Product notice
With dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 212 mm
Width: 148 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-4438-4238-9 (9781443842389)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
08/2014
1st Edition
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
€132.59
Available for download
Persons
Diana Holmes is Professor of French at the University of Leeds. Her published work on women writers includes monographs on Colette, Rachilde, French Women Writers 1848-1994 and romance. She is also the co-author of a study of Truffaut's cinema, and co-edits the Manchester University Press series French Film Directors. Her current research is on the poetics and practice of middlebrow fiction.David Platten is Professor of Modern French Studies at the University of Leeds. He has published on a wide range of modern French writers, including Michel Tournier, Philippe Djian, Jorge Semprun and Jules Verne. His most recent book, published by Rodopi in 2011, is entitled The Pleasures of Crime: Reading Modern French Crime Fiction. A scholar and fan of detective and crime fiction, he has recently produced studies of the literary thriller and of the links between the media and politics in the contemporary crime novel.Loic Artiaga is Assistant Professor at the University of Limoges, and Associate Researcher of the Centre d'histoire culturelle des societes contemporaines (Universite de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines). He is a member of the executive committee of the LPCM (Association internationale des chercheurs en Litteratures Populaires et Cultures Mediatiques). His publications include "Des Torrents de papier" in Mediatextes, and "James Bond: modes d'emploi (1965 - annees 1990)", in James Bond (2)007: Anatomie d'un mythe populaire. His forthcoming book, Fantomas. Figure mythique, with Matthieu Letourneux, is due out in 2013.Jacques Migozzi is Professor of French Literature at the University of Limoges, and President of the Association internationale des chercheurs en Litteratures Populaires et Culture Mediatique. His more recent publications include "Boulevards du populaire" (Mediatextes, 2005); two co-edited special issues of journals; "Storytelling: opium du peuple et / ou plaisirs du texte?" in a special issue of French Cultural Studies; and "Cet obscur objet du desir universitaire: coup d'oeil dans le retroviseur sur 15 ans de recherches sur les fictions populaires" in Fictions populaires.