Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative (Janua Linguarum. Series Maior, 108)

## Contents vii (1) Roses are red/ Violets are blue/ Sugar is sweet/ And so are you, (2) Roses are red (7) Mary drank a glass of orange juice then she drank a glass of milk and (8) A people on the Columbia had no eyes or mouth. They ate by smelling the sturgeon. Coyote gave them eyes and a mouth as well as Les Trois Mousquetaires, The Secret Agent, or The Peloponnesian War satisfy the definition and, in fact, would generally be considered narrative. On the other hand, (1), Although the term is relatively new, the discipline is not and, in the Western tradition, it goes back at least to Plato and Aristotle. During the twentieth century, narratology has been considerably developed. The last ten or fifteen years, in particular, have witnessed a remarkable growth of narratological activity. The discipline has attracted numerous literary analysts and many linguists, as well as philosophers, psychologists, psychoanalysts, biblicists, semioticians, folklorists, anthropologists, and communication theorists in many parts of the world: Denmark (the 'Copenhagen Group'), France (Barthes, Bremond, Genette, Greimas, Hamon, Kristeva, Todorov, etc.) Germany (Ihwe, Schmidt, etc.), Italy (Eco, Segre), the Netherlands (van Dijk), North America (Chatman, Colby, DoleZel, Dundes, Georges, Hendricks, Labov, Pavel, Scholes, etc.), the U.S.S.R. (Lotman, Toporov, Uspenski, etc.). Narratology examines what all narratives have in common -1. Signs of the Τ Some of these signs may function indirectly. Thus, any second person pronoun which does not (exclusively) refer to a character and is not uttered (or "thought") by him must refer to someone

After an extensive introduction that takes stock of the relevant research literature on Old Age in the Middle Ages and the early modern age, the contributors discuss the phenomenon of old age in many different fields of late antique, medieval, and early modern literature, history, and art history. Both Beowulf and the Hildebrandslied, both Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and Titurel, both the figure of Merlin and the trans-European tradition of Perceval/Peredur/Parzival, then the figure of the vetula in a variety of medieval French, English, and Spanish texts, and of the Old Man in The Stricker's Daniel, both the treatment of old age in Langland's Piers the Plowman and in Jean Gerson's sermons are dealt with. Other aspects involve late-antique epistolary literature, early modern French farce in light of Disability Studies, the social role of old, impotent men in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Netherlandish paintings, and the scientific discourse of old age and health since the 1500s. The discourse of Old Age proves to have been of central importance throughout the ages, so the critical examination of the issues involved sheds intriguing light on the cultural history from late antiquity to the seventeenth century.

Gerald Prince. Includes Indexes. Bibliography: P. [175]-179.