Download or read book Cycles of Influence written by Stephen Benson and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wide-ranging and insightful analysis, the author proposes a poetics of narrative for postmodernism by placing new emphasis on the folktale. He beings by examining the key features of folktales: their emphasis on a chain of events rather than description or consciousness, their emphasis on a self-contained fictional environment rather than realism, the presence of a storyteller as a self-confessed fabricator, their oral and communal status, and their ever-changing state, which defies authoritative versions.