On paragraphs. Scale, themes, and narrative form
- Different scales, different features. It’s the main difference between the thesis we have presented here, and the one that has so far dominated the study of the paragraph. By defining it as "a sentence writ large", or, symmetrically, as "a short discourse", previous research was implicitly asserting the irrelevance of scale: sentence, paragraph, and discourse were all equally involved in the "development of one topic". We have found the exact opposite: 'scale is directly correlated to the differentiation of textual functions'. By this, we don't simply mean that the scale of sentences or paragraphs allows us to "see" style or themes more clearly. This is true, but secondary. Paragraphs allows us to "see" themes, because themes fully "exist" only at the scale of the paragraph. Ours is not just an epistemological claim, but an ontological one: if style and themes and episodes exist in the form they do, it's because writers work at different scales – and do different things according to the level at which they are operating.
Author: | Mark Algee-Hewitt, Ryan Heuser, Franco Moretti |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-469618 |
URL: | https://litlab.stanford.edu/LiteraryLabPamphlet10.pdf |
ISSN: | 2164-1757 |
Parent Title (English): | Stanford Literary Lab: Pamphlets ; 10 |
Series (Serial Number): | Pamphlets of the Stanford Literary Lab (10) |
Publisher: | Stanford Literary Lab |
Place of publication: | Stanford |
Document Type: | Working Paper |
Language: | English |
Year of Completion: | 2018 |
Date of first Publication: | 2015/10/01 |
Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
Creating Corporation: | Stanford Literary Lab |
Release Date: | 2018/07/13 |
GND Keyword: | Digital Humanities; Intertextualität; Roman; Literaturtheorie; Lyrik; Syntax; Absatz <Text> |
Page Number: | 24 |
HeBIS-PPN: | 434669229 |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 8 Literatur / 80 Literatur, Rhetorik, Literaturwissenschaft / 800 Literatur und Rhetorik |
Sammlungen: | CompaRe | Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft |
CompaRe | Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft / Stanford Literary Lab | |
Licence (German): | Deutsches Urheberrecht |