Closure and the Shape of Fictions: The Example of “Women in Love”

M. Torgovnick

A chapter in The Study of Time IV, 1981, pp 147-158 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Readers have known that endings are important ever since men began to read or even to listen to stories. We pay tribute to the importance of endings in numerous ways. For example, even though knowing how a work ends makes it easier to analyze on a first reading, few of us really want to lose the suspense which accompanies a first reading. Therefore we commonly ask others not to “give away” the ending. When we’re baffled by a book, or consumed by curiosity and skip ahead to read the ending, we obey a contrary impulse, but one which also testifies to the importance of endings, to their ability to clarify just what a given fiction is “about.” When reviewers of films or novels almost ritualistically note and evaluate the ending of the work and its success or failure, they too acknowledge the first fact with which I begin: the importance of an ending to the form and meaning of a narrative work.

Keywords: Subsequent Reading; Narrative Fiction; Audience Reaction; Narrative Voice; Perfect Harmony (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1981
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-1-4612-5947-3_12

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9781461259473

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4612-5947-3_12

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().