BEFORE TURNING TO THE SAMPLE READING provided on the linked page, try applying some of the concepts you've learned so far. Let's consider the simplest of sentences, "the road is clear." According to Narratology, any minimal linguistic unit should subscribe to the dynamics of narrative form, as explored by various structuralist narratologists. Let's put that general wisdom to the test. What could we possibly say about a narrative unit as minimal as the one suggested by "the road is clear"?

Some of the questions you might consider include the following:

• Is there a story here that is being manipulated by this minimal discursive presentation?
• Can we determine the embedded oppositions and antagonisms that are inherent, according to Algirdas Greimas, in even the simplest linguistic utterances?
• What might Mikhail Bakhtin have to say about such a statement? Is there a chronotope at work and might we be able to determine (or imagine) some dialogic context?
• Is it possible to apply Roland Barthes' five-fold system onto such a minimal narrative?
• What are the time and space parameters of the utterance? How can we understand such a simple sentence's diegesis?

Here are a few more questions that could be applied to any literary work. These have been modified from Eve Sedgwick's own web-based "Heuristics for Reading Nineteenth-Century Fiction" (remember that these were designed for the nineteenth-century novel but can easily be reworked for most any literary text):

• What is the narrative voice that forms the shell of the novel? Is it a person? A first person? What kind of persona is suggested? What range of tones obtains?
• What dynamics prevail between the narrative persona and the novel's [other] characters? What generalizations can you offer about the location(s) of formal point of view, as between narrator and characters?
• Does the text have or seem to have a plurality of narrative personae? If so, what are the relations among them? Does a single narrative persona seem to have a variety of different voices or tones? If so, what are their relations? If the narrative persona is itself dialogic or polylogic, how would you describe its constituents? Do there seem to be struggles over which may speak? Where, why, what about?
• What seems to constitute a character in this book: what combination of name, occupation, narrative psychological sketch, exterior description, interior description, speech production, tics, epithets, object attributes, unpredictability, predictability, etc.? There will probably be different levels, different groupings of "characters" for each novel. How different are the different levels at which "characters" are produced: are there a few who have "depth" silhouetted against a mass of extras, or a large number of approximately equal dimensionality, or does the novel display a blur at center stage but a sharp peripheral vision, or what? What gender/class/other accounts can you give of such effects?
• What is the novel's temporality like? What is the relation of narrated time to elapsed time? Is the novel imaginatively involved with temporal linearity; simultaneity; repetition; fragmentation; elasticity? With what implications? What happens, temporally, in the breaks between novelistic units (paragraphs, chapters)? What power and other relations are implied in that?
• What makes a characteristic sentence, or rhythm of sentences, in this novel? It's always fascinating to do as intensive a grammatical analysis as you can of some sentences that seem to you characteristic. What is the experience of reading such sentences like? What is a characteristic tone, or sequence of tones (at the micro level)? Is the play of tones steady or disorienting? What are the tenses most often used in the narration, and with what effects? From what range of levels and kinds of diction is the vocabulary drawn? The best stylistic heuristic: try writing a paragraph or two that parodies the novel's style, and analyze from that what patterns are salient in the experience of reading the novel's prose. Imagine the most possible different kinds of connection to make between these stylistic generalizations and the other things going on in the novel. Choose a few stylistic habits that seem to you especially notable, and free-associate about their possible connections with the other issues that interest you.

For questions that one might apply to the analysis of film, the best resource I know of is provided by Eric Rentschler and Sara Eigen in conjunction with their class on Mass Culture in Nazi Germany: The Power of Images and Illusions (at Harvard University). Check out their hand-outs on Reading an Opening Film Sequence and on Reading a Film Sequence.