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The focus of this paper is the variation within the narrative type of text. Specific attention is on the variation between two rather extreme forms of narrative: simple stories written for children that may be described as stereotypical in structure, and an artistic story, "The Steppe," by A. Cexov. The view is taken that stories are comparable with each other even when they originate in different cultural settings. Narrative might well be characterized as a "primary" or "basic" type of text with more reliance on iconicity and, hence, less variation from one culture to another than, for instance, exposition or argumentation. The purpose of investigating different stories is to understand the different text strategies that may be assumed to lie behind the final products and that are reflected in the text. The temporal, locative, and agentive text strategies all bring cohesion and coherence into a text. The investigation indicates that even the concrete linguistic signals of the temporal and participant-oriented strategies manifest the degree of prototypicality of a narrative text. (Contains 41 references.) (JL)

1Boy Crusoe

By Allan Eric

Also published as" A Yankee Crusoe" . A 15 year old hard working and studious farm boy finds the lure of adventure on the seas as a merchant seaman more than he can resist. This is his story. " I was born in a little town in the State of Maine, near the close of the Civil War. My boyhood life did not differ materially from that of the average farmer's son in the remote country districts of New England--except, perhaps, that I read more and thought more. Hard work on the rugged soil, two terms each year in the little yellow country schoolhouse, a day's fishing now and then filled the early years of my life full to over-flowing. " What he gets is enough excitement and adventure to overflow his wildest dreams. How he experiences disaster and uses his wits and knowledge to overcome every problem makes for a great read. - Summary by Phil Chenevert