May 5, 2016

Narrative Closing Conventions

Leland Ryken in a recent volume on biblical narratives notes that there are six kinds of closing conventions in narratives.
  • A brief recapitulation of the main action
  • A summary of the immediate results of the action that has been narrated
  • A summary of the long-term effects of the action
  • An account of the fortunes that later befall one or more of the characters in the preceding story
  • Some echo or reminder of what happened earlier, or the issue that began the plot
  • Narrating the physical departure of one or more characters to a new place, thereby drawing a boundary around the preceding action
Leland Ryken, How Bible Stories Work: A Guided Study of Biblical Narrative (Wooster, OH: Weaver, 2015), 89-90.

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