What Keeps a Narrative Going? Teaching Narrative Interest

This article explores the potential of narrative interest for secondary literature education. Narrative is a purposeful construction which is organised with the intent of having effects on readers. For rhetorical narratologists, narrative is driven by the production of narrative gaps -- suspense, curiosity, and surprise -- which in turn drive reader interest in their potential fulfilment. Drawing from rhetorical-functionalist approaches to literature, I rethink contemporary perspectives on reader response to focus on the pedagogical implications of narrative interest, suggesting how English teachers might use narrative interest to explore narrative openings, the power of narrator perspective, and the ethics of storytelling. This reorientation of instruction balances specific reader responses with the textual production of narrative interest through genre forms, narrator voice, and narrative organisation.