What the Kafalenos paradigm does not accomplish (and what it is not designed to do) is analyze the structure and purpose of information in the end- section that follows the new equilibrium. Yet it was typical for writers of the short biblical narratives in Genesis to add information after the new equilibrium. Usually that is accomplished in a verse or two, as at the end of the Garden of Eden narrative discussed above; sometimes more verses are added, as in the Abraham narrative (Gen 23).
Forms at the ends of narratives were examined in 1925 by the Russian formalist Boris M. Eichenbaum. He noticed there would often be a shift in time- scale or orientation, and also there would be an element of nachgeschichte, or after-history, for the major characters. 41 He saw these qualities at the ends of
41 Boris M. Eichenbaum [Ejxenbaum], “O.Henry and the Theory of the Short Story.” This was translated
into English in 1971 for Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views, 232.
long and complex narratives, but rarely in short ones and called it an “epilogue.”42 The term epilogue as used in narratology suggests that it is integral to a narrative and not an appendix. Gerald Prince explains that the real purpose of an epilogue is “to help…fully realize the design of the work.”43 Deborah Roberts, writing about classical studies, sees in the epilogue a writer’s “response” to a reader’s “need… to know what happens, the ‘aftermath.’”44
Some Genesis narratives have epilogues. These have more expansive end- sections than most of the others, and the epilogues generally include new events within their verses, as does Gen 23 which mentions Sarah’s actual burial (Gen
In describing epilogues in novels, Wallace Martin, Recent Theories of Narrative, 84, suggests two purposes
that these types of endings provide. First, they add closural elements, and second, when the time shifts forward towards the reader, “they graft the novel, which when read is apart from life, back onto the real time of history, joining it and the reader to our world.”
Epilogues in the short biblical narratives often include specific forms or sub-genres, like etiologies, rituals, or proverbs; these will be discussed, and it will be shown how each type contributes to closure in Chapter 5, “Etiologies and Proverbs in the End-sections,” and Chapter 6, “Rituals in the End-sections.”
42 Boris M. Eichenbaum, in “O.Henry and the Theory of the Short Story,” 232, analyzes a likely reason for
this disparity. “An enormous role is played in the novel by the techniques of retardation and of linking and welding together disparate materials, by skill in deploying and binding together episodes, in creating diverse centers, in conducting parallel intrigues, and so on. With that sort of structuring, the ending of the novel is a point of letup and not intensification. The culmination of the main line of action must come somewhere before the ending. Typical of the novel are “epilogues” – false endings, summations setting the
perspective or informing the reader of the Nachgeschichte of the main characters… The short story, on the
contrary, gravitates expressly toward the maximal unexpectedness of a finale concentrating around itself all that has preceded it. In the novel there must be a descent of some kind after the culmination point, whereas it is most natural for a story to come to a peak and stay there.”
43 Gerald Prince,
A Dictionary of Narratology, 27. Epilogues in novels are discussed by Wallace Martin, Recent Theories of Narrative,84; in spoken narrative by William Labov, Language in the Inner City,365-
366; in short stories by John Gerlach, Toward the End, Closure and Structure in the American Short Story;
in poems by B. H. Smith, Poetic Closure, 189-192.
44 Deborah Roberts, “Afterword: Ending and Aftermath,” 252, notes that epilogues “suggest not only the
familiar desire of readers for endings but also a kind of contractual disagreement over what really
constitutes an ending.” She differentiates between the final ending and the prior one, which completed the plot. She suggests that the first ending “in some ways falls short of satisfactory closure.” The reader, that is, the implied reader as understood by the author, wants more information. In Euripides this is
23:19). Other narratives with epilogues in their end-sections include the P-source Flood story (Gen 6-9), the story of the separation of Abraham and Lot (Gen 13), and the story of Dinah (Gen 34).45
The epilogue in Gen 23 “helps…fully realize the design of the work,” that is, it affirms the legitimacy of Abraham’s purchase of the burial site. The
geographical location of the burial site is reconfirmed as Ephron’s in Machpelah near Mamre, and, it explains that the contemporary name for Mamre in Canaan is Hebron. Topographical markers of the site are noted: the field has a cave and trees. A second set of witnesses is noted, “all who entered the gate of his town.” And, when it states that Abraham buried his wife Sarah there it confirms that the land is being used as Abraham had promised. In all these ways the epilogue is integral to the purpose of the story.
A term that is sometimes used in place of epilogue is “coda” or “disjunctive coda.” In his analysis of vernacular narratives, William Labov observed that as people recounted stories, they ended with “free clauses at the ends of narratives,” which signaled that the narrative was finished and “none of the events that followed were important to the narrative” (italics added).46 The “good coda,” according to Labov, “leaves the listener with a feeling of
satisfaction and completeness that matters have been rounded off and accounted
45 The closural devices in these epilogues is discussed in Chapter 4, “Linguistic Devices that are Closural.”
The anti-closural effect of the epilogue to Gen 34 is discussed in Chapter 7, “Closure and Anti-closure.”
46 William Labov,
for.”47 Although Labov extended the function of codas to include all the characteristics associated with the word epilogue, the term tends to be used for brief markers of the end, such as “Goodbye” or “See you later” in conversation. In Japanese haiku poetry, B. H. Smith reports, a single word such as kana or yo,
which has no independent meaning, functions somewhat as a punctuation mark.48
These terminal forms are called ‘cutting’ words, keriji, and if they mean anything at all it is simply, “this poem ends here.” In the Hebrew Bible, primarily in the Book of Psalms, the word “selah” may indicate a completion of a portion of the poem.49
2. C. Alternate approaches for delimiting a narrative