{"product_id":"retelling-rereading-the-fate-of-storytelling-in-modern-times-9780813517650","title":"Retelling \/ Rereading: The Fate of Storytelling in Modern Times","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"In this passionate  erudite  and far-ranging book  Kroeber renews for our multi-cultural age a fundamental argument: the stories we tell  hear  read  and see make a difference to the lives we read.\"--Jonathan Arac  University of Pittsburgh In this highly readable and thoroughly original book  Karl Kroeber questions the assumptions about storytelling we have inherited from the exponents of modernism and postmodernism. These assumptions have led to overly formalistic and universalizing conceptions of narrative that mystify the social functions of storytelling. Even \"politically correct\" critics have Eurocentrically defined story as too \"primitive\" to be taken seriously as art. Kroeber reminds us that the fundamental value of storytelling lies in retelling  this paradoxical remaking anew that constitutes storys role as one of the essential modes of discourse. His work develops some recent anthropological and feminist criticism to delineate the participative function of audience in narrative performances.  In depicting how audiences contribute to storytelling transactions  Kroeber carries us into a surprising array of examples  ranging from a Mesopotamian sculpture to Derek Walcotts Omeros; startling juxtapositions  such as Cervantes to Vermeer; and innovative readings of familiar novels and paintings. Tom Wolfes comparison of his Bonfire of the Vanities to Vanity Fair is critically analyzed  as are the differences between Thackerays novel and Joyces Ulysses and Flauberts Madame Bovary. Other discussions focus on traditional Native American stories  Henry Jamess The Ambassadors  Calvinos If on a winters night a traveler  and narrative paintings of Giotto  Holman Hunt  and Roy Lichtenstein. Kroeber deploys the ideas of Ricoeur and Bakhtin to reassess dramatically the field of narrative theory  demonstrating why contemporary narratologists overrate plot and undervalue storys capacity to give meaning to the contingencies of real experience. Retelling\/Rereading provides solid theoretical grounding for a new understanding of storytellings strange role in twentieth-century art and of our need to develop a truly multicultural narrative criticism.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45279742099509,"sku":"ByrdShop_0813517656","price":329.89,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780813517650.jpg?v=1780608560","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/retelling-rereading-the-fate-of-storytelling-in-modern-times-9780813517650","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}