Author’s Full Name:

Eva Mokry Pohler

Title of Dissertation:

Narrative Strategies

Names of Committee Members:

Dr. Leon Higdon (Chairperson), Dr. Bryce Conrad, Dr. John Samson

Major:

English (Twentieth-Century British and American Literature)

Date of Graduation:

May 10, 1997

My project critically examines and develops narratological theories related to point of view, voice, character, plot/function analysis, and progression and illustrates them in applications to ten specific British and American novels primarily from the twentieth century. Two parts organize the dissertation: "The Narrative Subject," developed in two chapters, and "The Narrative Object," developed in three. Chapter I introduces the goals of the dissertation. Chapter II challenges Seymour Chatman’s space and time metaphors to distinguish between narrative levels and asserts an improved version of Gerard Genette’s concept of focalization. This provides the approach to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night and Margaret Drabble’s The Gates of Ivory. Chapter III exposes problems in Wayne Booth’s person distinction and provides new ways for classifying narrators, such as those who are reliable but dissonant to the implied author, and those who are artificial. The chapter ends with applications to Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor and John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Chapter IV questions James Phelan’s critique of over-thematizing characters by asserting the argument–based on schema theory–that textual meaning depends upon our thematizing. Differences in diachronic and synchronic character traits are explored in discussions of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and Margaret Drabble’s The Realms of Gold. Chapter V asserts that function analysis and other models based on Emma Kafalenos and Tsvetan Todorov’s theories of narrative structures can better lead to thematic conclusions than traditional concepts of plot. This assertion is illustrated in analyses of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. The final chapter demonstrates how Genette and Mieke Bal’s concepts of order (anachrony) are less useful than Todorov’s and how pace can suggest thematic meanings in narratives. Applications to Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and John Fowles’s The Collector provide examples.

Doctoral Reading List

Texas Tech University Graduate School Dissertation Abstract for Eva Mokry Pohler, Ph.D

Author’s Full Name:

Title of Dissertation:

Names of Committee Members:

Major:

Date of Graduation:

Texas Tech University Graduate School
Dissertation Abstract for
Eva Mokry Pohler, Ph.D