Reviews of The Triumph of Narrative: Storytelling in the Age of Mass Culture by Robert Fulford

"Fulford ranges far and freely, and his approaches to his subject are, without exception, fresh....The Triumph of Narrative is full of wit, perception, and a contagious enthusiasm for good books." -- Stephen Smith, Quill and Quire

"There's no one quite like Robert Fulford on the Canadian cultural scene....With The Triumph of Narrative, Mr. Fulford has written a large book: large in soul, large in insight, large in importance. Every reader, and every student of narrative in all its splendour and vast multi-media reach, ought to have a copy....he goes back to his childhood when his mother told him stories like The Merchant of Venice, and he told her stories of his day. About this gift-exchange, he concludes with one of the most beautiful sentences in the book: 'Our love flowed back and forth through conversation framed as narrative.'" -- J.S. Porter, Ottawa Citizen

"....he's at his intellectually acrobatic best ....It's a bravura performance....In his final lecture, Nostalgia, Knighthood and the Circle of Dreams, Fulford masterfully combines literary and film criticism to trace the line of romantic narrative that flows from Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe through the Confederate Army to Thomas L. Dixon's 1905 novel The Clansman and D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, into such films as Gone with the Wind, until this romancing of the reel world ends up in the 'smirking parodies' of the James Bond flicks and gutters out in 'that exceptional figure invented by the twentieth century, the star of movies and television.' .... his arabesques are worth re-reading and remembering." -- T. F. Rigelhof, The Globe and Mail

"Robert Fulford tackles the defining role of narrative in what makes us human....informative and greatly enjoyable." -- Philip Marchand, Toronto Star

This book can be ordered from Indigo, from Chapters, or from the book's publisher, Anansi.

Read more about The Triumph of Narrative

Return to Robert Fulford's Home Page
typewriter image