... as Ulysses comes home to Ithaca or Marcel becomes a writer" (Genette 30). "A narrative is a long sentence," writes Roland Barthes (84). Narratology's project is the diagramming of that sentence, the discovery of its grammar and syntax. These critical assumptions have been influential in redirecting modern formal criticism of fiction, partly because-particularly in the work of Genette-they have generated a prolific and precise taxonomical vocabulary, an elaborate apparatus for ... in all its aspects, and as her career developed, so did the frequency of embedded, intertwined narratives wi...

• Word Count: 7335
• Approx Pages: 29
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... , his training as a chaplain's assistant in South Carolina, and his dazed trek behind enemy lines after the disastrous Battle of the Bulge. Billy falls in with three other American soldiers, two of whom are scouts and capable soldiers. The one who is not, the antitank gunner, Roland Weary, is a cruel, insecure character that saves Billy's life repeatedly in acts that he thinks will make him a hero. Billy ... revenge. One time Lazzaro fed a dog that had bitten him a steak filled with razor blades and watched it die in torment. Lazzaro reminds Billy of Roland Weary's final wish and advises...

• Word Count: 5323
• Approx Pages: 21
• Grade Level: High School

... of the war, and for much of that time the narrator has been trying to write about the bombing of Dresden. He was never able to write the book. When he thinks about Dresden's place in his memory, he always recalls two things: a dirty limerick about a man whose penis has let him down, and "My Name is Yon Yonson," a song which has no ending. Late some nights, the narrator ... gets drunk and begins to call up old friends on the telephone. A few years ago he tracked down Bernard O'Hare, an old war buddy of his, using Bell Atlantic phone operators. When he tracked his old friend down, he aske...

• Word Count: 7795
• Approx Pages: 31
• Grade Level: High School

... a new crusade), Columbus and others viewed the New World as an opportunity to expand Europe's influence through the seizing of gold and territory, and the conversion of the native populous to Christianity. Similar goals and aspirations in expanding the borders of Christendom were expressed in The Song of Roland, which tinkered with actual history in order to portray the massacre of Charlemagne's rear-guard in 778 as part of an ongoing effort to gain wealth ... and territory and to convert the Muslims to Christianity. This mindset of expansion was not ... ...

• Word Count: 2887
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... , an effacement which is inherent in the writer's "very existence" (102). The rise of the notion of writing as ecriture (and the coincident re-evaluation of the status of the author in relation to writing) offers the opportunity to analyze the characteristics which condition its production, rather than its idiosyncratic manifestations. Here Foucault is building on and adapting Roland Barthes's seminal work on the "death of the author" in Barthes's essay of the same name. Unfortunately this "death ... the "voluntary effacement" of self sacrifice, a subversion which provides narrative with...

• Word Count: 6215
• Approx Pages: 25
• Grade Level: High School