"Our Fathers Have Told Us": Introduction to the Analysis of Hebrew Narratives
Overview
“Narratology” is a recent method of literary criticism adopted by exegetes for the analysis of Old Testament narratives. The aim of this introduction is to help the student find a way through the forest of new terms used by specialists and to give numerous examples of texts analyzed according to this new methodology. The work also contains, as far as possible, references to the origin of the terminology, to basic works in the field, to interesting discussions, and to different schools in literary criticism. Moreover, this manual tries to open a forum for a constructive dialogue between exegetes using more classical methods and those who favor this new way of exploring the well-known landscape of Scripture. The principal notions explained and illustrated are story, time, plot, narrator and reader; character, and point of view.
Top Highlights
“The ‘exposition’ is the presentation of indispensable pieces of information about the state of affairs that precedes the beginning of the action itself.” (Page 21)
“In other words, the ‘discourse’ is the concrete narrative, in its actual shape, that the reader has before his eyes, and the ‘story’ is an abstract reconstruction in which the reader (re)places the elements of the ‘discourse’ according to a logical and chronological order and supplies what is missing.” (Pages 5–6)
“In a ‘plot of resolution’ the main question is ‘What will happen?’” (Page 18)
“Gaps are relevant to the narration, blanks are not.” (Page 8)
“alternation of two narrative threads interwoven in a single plot and ‘running’ contemporaneously” (Page 11)
Product Details
- Title: "Our Fathers Have Told Us”: Introduction to the Analysis of Hebrew Narratives
- Author: Jean Louis Ska, S. J.
- Publisher: Pontifical
- Publication Date: 2000
- Pages: 129