Narrative Crossings

Library Journal

Gelley, professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Ivine, has written an erudite assessment of fiction's representational devices. Description, character, dialogue, setting, and scene are each discussed in light of earlier theorists, from Rousseau through Walter Bejamin to Paul de Man. Gelley's thesisthat fiction is a representational practice that provides ``meaning that derives from and yet transcends phenomenal reality and sensory experience''is illustrated with passages taken from European and American novelists of the past three centuries. Recommended for scholars of comparative literature and academic libraries serving graduate students in the humanities. Francisca Goldsmith, Golden Gate Univ. Lib., San Francisco