Seymour Chatman (August 30, 1928 – November 4, 2015) was an American

film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

and

literary critic Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...

and professor emeritus of rhetoric at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. He is one of the most significant figures of American

narratology Narratology is the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect human perception. It is an anglicisation of French ''narratologie'', coined by Tzvetan Todorov (''Grammaire du Décaméron'', 1969). Its theoretical li ...

(theory of narrative), regarded as a prominent representative of its Structuralist or "classic" branch.

Personal life

Seymour Chatman was married three times, to Evelyn (divorced in 1964), Sidsel (divorced circa 1970), and Barbara. He has three children, Emily Chatman Duffy, an artist,

Jennifer Chatman Jennifer A. Chatman is an American academic who is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the Paul J. Cortese Distinguished Professor of Management at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. Chatman is also the Co-Dir ...

, a professor, and Mariel Chatman Lassalle, a lawyer. He has four granddaughters, Ava, Sonya, Noemie, and Anais.

Published works

Chatman's work includes: * ''The Later Style of Henry James'' (1972) * ''Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in fiction and Film'' (1978) * ''Michelangelo Antonioni, or, the Surface of the World'' (1985) * ''Coming to Terms. The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film'' (1990) * ''Reading Narrative Fiction'' (1993) * ''Michelangelo Antonioni: The Complete Films (2004) with Paul Duncan''

References

External links

* 1928 births American film critics American literary critics University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty 2015 deaths {{US-nonfiction-writer-stub