And yet a quick glance through any

And yet a quick glance through any of the classic introductions to narratology (Bal, Chatman, Martin) or through the best-known attempts at overall synthesis (Scholes and Kellogg, Stanzel, Coste) reveals an almost complete lack of interest in the body as a narratological category. The body appears in such studies usually as one of many “things” that a narrative might describe—in the same category as chairs, desks, and rocks. A telling instance of this dismissal of the human body’s importance in narrative is Seymour Chatman’s offhand comment in Story and Discourse, “[a]n existent . . . is either a character or an element of setting, a distinction based on whether or not it performs a plot-significant action” . Chatman’s assumption that everything material (inactive) about a character merely serves to define a setting for events seriously undervalues the role of the body in providing significance for characters, and defining the position of the narrator within the story.