Porter Abbott, who teaches in the Department of English at the University of California Santa Barbara, will discuss his book, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge University Press, March, 2002). Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, copies of
The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative will be available for purchase and signing at this event.

The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative is designed to help readers understand what narrative is, how it is constructed, how it acts upon us, how we act upon it, how it is transmitted, and how it changes when the medium or the cultural context change. Porter Abbott emphasizes that narrative is found not just in the arts, but everywhere in the ordinary course of people's lives. Abbott grounds his treatment of narrative by introducing it as a human phenomenon that is not restricted to literature, film, and theatre, but is found in all activities involving the representation of events in time. At the same time, he honors the fact that out of this common capability have come rich and meaningful narratives that we come back to and reflect on repeatedly in our lives. An indispensable tool for students and teachers alike, this book will guide readers through the fundamental aspects of narrative.

Porter Abbott is Professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Beckett Writing Beckett: The Author in the Autograph,
Diary Fiction: Writing as Action, and The Fiction of Samuel Beckett: Form and Effect. He is also the editor of On the Origin of Fictions, a special issue of SubStance (March 2001). Currently he is at work on a book length project titled Darwinian Conversions: English Modernism and the Discourse on Human Change, 1880-1925.

This event is cosponsored by the UCSB Bookstore, Department of English, and Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.