Fiction and Diction

One of the founders of structuralist literary theory, Gerard Genette here addresses the question of "literariness" -- of what it  is that makes a text an aesthetic object. Published in French in 1991, Fiction and Diction explores the conditions under which a written or spoken text is perceived as "literature". With reference to writers and theorists from Aristotle to Moliere to Iris Murdoch, Genette investigates the different facets -- particularly "regimes", "criteria" and "modes" -- of literariness.

Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method

This book should be required reading for anyone who wants to look seriously at narrative theory. Genette's analysis of the construction of time in narrative discourse is the still the model for theorists writing since then. Such categories as order, frequency, and duration in the narrative presentation of story-time show how narrative decisions on the part of authors can have dramatically different rhetorical effects. Genette views these narrative strategies as a form of rhetorical figuration and gives them terms drawn from classical rhetoric (e.g., "prolepsis" for a flashing forward, "analepsis" for a flashback).