Constructing a Poetics of the Other Literary "Great Tradition": A Review of Unnatural Narrative: Theory, History, and Practice

Unnatural Narrative: Theory, History, and Practice by Professor Richardson elucidates lucidly the theory of unnatural narratives, traces the history of unnatural narratives from antiquity to the present, provides some analyses of unnatural texts, and addresses a number of pressing theoretical questions. This book is the first monograph on the theory of unnatural narrative filling in a major gap in contemporary narrative theory. Unnatural works break through the generic and spatio-temporal narrow limits of largely realistic fictions and includes texts of various types, periods, genres and cultures, etc., and this book argues that this constitutes the material for a poetics of another literary "Great Tradition" which Professor Richardson attempts to construct. His ultimate ambition is to establish a more comprehensive and encompassing narrative theory.