The Poetics of Biblical Narrative
Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading
Published on 1. November 2018
597 pages
978-0-253-11404-4 (ISBN)
Description
Meir Sternberg's classic study is "an important book for those who seek to take the Bible seriously as a literary work." (Adele Berlin, Prooftexts) In "a book to read and then reread" ( Modern Language Review), Meir Sternberg "has accomplished an enormous task, enriching our understanding of the theoretical basis of Biblical narrative and giving us insight into a remarkable number of particular texts." ( Journal of the American Academy of Religion). The result is a "a brilliant work" ( Choice) distinguished "both for his comprehensiveness and for the clearly-avowed faith stance from which he understands and interprets the strategies of the biblical narratives." ( Theological Studies). The Poetics of Biblical Narrative shows, in Adele Berlin's words, "more clearly and emphatically than any book I know, that the Bible is a serious literary work-a text manifesting a highly sophisticated and successful narrative poetics."
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Book
08/1987
Indiana University Press
€56.50
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Person
Meir Sternberg
Content
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Literary Text, Literary Approach: Getting the Questions Straight
- Discourse and Source
- Fiction and History
- Form and Doctrine
- The Drama of Reading
- 2 Narrative Models
- 3 Ideology of Narration and Narration of Ideology
- Omniscience Charged and Monopolized: The Epistemological Revolution
- The Omnipotence Effect: Control Claimed and Disclaimed
- 4 Viewpoints and Interpretations
- Point of View and Its Biblical Configuration
- The Wooing of Rebekah
- Positions and Discrepancies Established
- The Movement from Divergence to Convergence of Perspectives
- New Tensions and Final Resolution
- 5 The Play of Perspectives
- Narrator vs. God
- Narrator and Reader vs. God and Characters Spheres of Communication
- Three Reading Positions
- From Plot to Perspective
- From Ignorance to Knowledge
- Privilege and Performance
- 6 Gaps, Ambiguity and the Reading Process
- The Literary Work as a System of Gaps
- The Story of David and Bathsheba: On the Narrator's Reticence and Omissions
- The Ironic Exposition
- What Is the King Doing in the City?
- Uriah the Hittite Recalled to Jerusalem
- Does Uriah Know about His Wife's Doings? The Twofold Hypothesis
- What Does David Think That Uriah Thinks? The Three-Way Hypothesis
- How Joab Fails to Carry Out David's Order
- How the Messenger Fails to Carry Out Joab's Order
- The Analogy to the Story of Abimelech and the Woman
- On Mutually Exclusive Systems of Gap-Filling: Turning the Screws of Henry James and Others
- 7 Between the Truth and the Whole Truth
- Foolproof Composition in Ambiguity
- The Relevance of Absence
- Temporary and Permanent Gapping
- The Echoing Interrogative
- Opposition in Juxtaposition
- Coherence Threatened and Fortified
- Norms and Their Violations
- From Gapping to Closure: The Functions of Ambiguity
- 8 Temporal Discontinuity, Narrative Interest, and the Emergence of Meaning
- Suspense and the Dynamics of Prospection
- The Pros and Cons of Suspense in the Bible
- Modes of Shaping the Narrative Future
- Darkness in Light, or: Zigzagging toward Sisera's End
- Curiosity and the Dynamics of Retrospection
- Joseph and His Brothers: Making Sense of the Past
- Surprise and the Dynamics of Recognition
- 9 Proleptic Portraits
- Character and Characterization: From Divine to Human
- Why the Truth about Character Does Not Suffice
- The Art of the Proleptic Epithet
- Epithets and the Rule of Forward-looking Exposition
- 10 Going from Surface to Depth
- Character as Action, Character in Action
- The Composition of Character and the Limits of Metonymic Inference
- Old Age in Genesis
- Good Looks in Samuel
- 11 The Structure of Repetition: Strategies of Informational Redundancy
- Similarity Patterns and the Structure of Repetition
- Formulaic Convention or Functional Principle?
- Constant and Variable Factors
- Verbatim Repetition
- Repetition with Variation: Forms and Functions of Deviance
- Repetition and Communication: Pharaoh's Dream
- Basic Axes and Natural Combinations
- From Natural to Functional Combinations
- Deliberate Variation: (Figural) Rhetoric within (Narratorial) Rhetoric
- Generic Transformation into Parable
- Permutations and Some Complications
- Repetition and Narrative Art: Some General Consequences
- 12 The Art of Persuasion
- Persuading in the Court of Conscience
- Delicate Balance in the Rape of Dinah
- The Rhetorical Repertoire
- 13 Ideology, Rhetoric, Poetics
- Justifying the Ways of God to Man: Saul's Rejection
- Dancing in Chains
- Dialogue as Pressure, Variations as Judgment
- Convergence with Belated Discovery: Rhetorical Overkill
- Notes
- Index
