Telling Stories

Argues that any story, whether a Bette Davis film or a Jane Austen novel, must be related to larger cultural networks. Calls for a critical practice that revises our conception of narrative through the fracturing of texts. Telling Stories overturns traditional definitions of narrative by arguing that any story, whether a Bette Davis film, a jeans ad, a Jane Austen novel of a 'Cathy' comic, must be related to larger cultural networks. The authors show how meanings and subjectivity do not exist in isolation, but are manufactured by the narratives our culture reads and watches every day. They call for a critical practice that, through the fracturing of texts, can alter the grounds of knowledge and interpretation. This timely study will interest critics of narrative and culture, as well as students wanting to extend post-Saussurean theories to popular and canonical cultures, and to the dynamics of story-telling itself.