For Thursday: Culler, Chapter 6: "Narrative"

NOTE: I'm changing the reading for Culler, and instead of reading Chapter 5 we're going to Chapter 6, since I think it has more bearing on our next book, which is both a work of poetry and a novel. So this chapter concerns how we read books with stories, and what role narrative plays in the process of meaning, especially since language and story don't always go hand-in-hand. 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: If a narrative plot can be translated into a different form (a comic, a TV series, a movie, a play, etc.), how does each one change how we experience the plot? In other words, why does telling the same story from a different character's perspective, or in a different medium, change the story, even if the plot is exactly the same (same beginning, middle, and end)?

Q2: As Culler explains, "Feminist criticism has been especially interested in the way that European and American narratives frequently posit a male reader: the reader is implicitly addressed as one who shares a masculine view" (87). What does this mean? How can a book, or a film, which will be read by potentially millions of men and women be focused on a "male" reader? What makes it so? Can you think of an example of a text/film/show that does this?

Q3: Mikhail Bakhtin, a famous Russian theorist of the novel, claims that novels are "fundamentally polyphonic (multi-voiced) or dialogic rather than monological (single-voiced)"(87). Why do you think the novel is geared to expressing multiple voices/perspectives in a way that poetry is not? Related to this, why might novels have become the bona fide form of writing, considering that narrative takes other forms and a story doesn't have to be a novel? 

Q4: Traditionally, third-person omniscient storytelling was the norm, though since the 19th century first-person has become more and more popular, until today it is usually the most dominant perspective. Why do you think this is? Why do readers generally prefer a first-person approach, particularly in more popular forms of literature (YA, romance, horror, etc.)?