Contemporary Feminist Fiction and a Case for Expanding Rhetorical Narratology

In Contemporary Feminist Fiction and a Case for Expanding Rhetorical Narratology, Katherine J. Weese explores intersections among rhetorical, unnatural, and feminist narrative theories and post-postmodern theory to argue that an expanded rhetorical poetics offers the most comprehensive model for illuminating recent works that employ unnatural devices for feminist purposes. This pluralist narratological framework is a vital counterpoint to theorists' tendency to read twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels through a post-postmodernist or metamodernist lens that overlooks unnatural, feminist, and rhetorical narrative theories. Examining Ali Smith's The Accidental and Hotel World, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, Toni Morrison's Beloved, Kate Atkinson's A God in Ruins and Life after Life, and Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being, Weese demonstrates how various narratological theories inform rather than compete with one another. Through an expanded rhetorical poetics, including a refined version of James Phelan's MTS (mimetic, thematic, synthetic) model, she reframes post-postmodern theorists' concerns with communicative function through a narratological lens to make the case that exploring the rhetorical function of unnatural devices challenges and extends the claims of narrow metamodern readings.