The discussion that I have develope

The discussion that I have developed in this chapter follows what I have described as the normal science of narratology. That is, it obeys the general assumptions of narratology S treatment of character, following its emphasis on semantic contrasts and accepting its treatment of characters as distinct objects to be given meaning within a text. And in doing so, I hope, this discussion has raised a number of issues that can improve these traditional theories. Although narratologists have frequently treated claims about the impact of social and cultural assumptions on the semantics of the text with suspicion, my discussion makes clear, I hope, that the basic ways in which textual objects emerge depends on a whole host of cultural as well as aesthetic concerns. We cannot talk about a textual object without talking about how objects are defined according to the cultural and aesthetic logic of particular texts.