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I started Robert Alter's Art of Biblical Narrative. Here are some issues:
1. The book has some definitions, which I may want to review in the future.
On page 12, Alter defines "literary analysis": "the manifold varieties of minutely discriminating attention to the artful use of language, to the shifting play of ideas, conventions, tone, sound, imagery, syntax, narrative viewpoint, compositional units, and much else..."
On page 95, Alter defines "Leitwort" as follows: "Through abundant repetition, the semantic range of the word-root is explored, different forms of the root are deployed, branching off at times into phonetic relatives (that is, word-play), synonymity, and antonymity..."
Motif (page 95): "A concrete image, sensory quality, action, or object" that "recurs through a particular narrative." Examples that Alter cites include "fire in the Samson story; stones and the color white and red in the Jacob story; water in the Moses cycle; dreams, prisons and pits, silver in the Joseph story."
Theme (page 95): This too recurs in the narrative, but it is "An idea that is part of the value-system of the narrative---it may be moral, moral-psychological, legal, political, historiographical, theological..." Examples: "the reversal of primogeniture in Genesis; obedience versus rebellion in the Wilderness stories; knowledge in the Joseph story; exile and promised land; the rejection and election of the monarch in Samuel and Kings."
Sequence of actions (pages 95-96): "three consecutive repetitions, or three plus one, with some intensification..." Examples: "the three captains and their companies threatened with fiery destruction in 2 Kings 1; the three catastrophes that destroy Job's possessions, followed by a fourth in which his children are killed; Balaam's failure to direct the ass three times."
Type-scene (page 96): "This is an episode occurring at portentous moment in the career of the hero which is composed of a fixed sequence of motifs." Examples: "the annunciation of the birth of the hero, the betrothal by the well, the trial in the wilderness."
2. Alter contrasts the literary approach with rabbinic methods. One difference is that midrash is more atomistic---it looks at the details of the text, but it does not treat the story as a continuous, unfolding narrative. Rather, it tries to draw grand lessons from individual details. Another difference occurs in the Jacob and Esau story, which treats the two characters as moral opposites---Jacob is the good ancestor of the Israelites, and Esau is the evil ancestor of Edom---rather than as complex characters.
I agree with Alter in a big-picture sense, but not on details, so much. For example, Alter associates the death of Judah's sons in Genesis 38 with what occurs in Genesis 37---Judah participates in faking Joseph's death. I'm not sure if the rabbis go this route on Genesis 38, but I have seen them interpret certain misfortunes that befall a character as punishment for his sins, as the punishments fit the crimes. I have also seen the rabbis interpret actions of righteous biblical heroes as inappropriate---and, yes, this may be homiletical on their part rather than a literary character study, but it still acknowledges that even good people can mess up, which recognizes a degree of complexity in characters. Even Alter refers to a midrash that notes irony in the text (Balaam wants "a sword to kill an ass when he has set out to destroy a whole nation with his words alone"). So there is overlap between midrash and the literary approach, but also differences.
3. On page 12, Alter states: "The implicit theology of the Hebrew Bible dictates a complex moral and psychological realism in biblical narrative because God's purposes are always entrammeled in history, dependent on the acts of individual men and women for their continuing realization. To scrutinize biblical personages as fictional characters is to see them more sharply in the multifaceted, contradictory aspects of their human individuality, which is the biblical God's chosen medium for His experiment with Israel and history."
On page 20, he states that "most of us no longer accept" "far-reaching assumptions about the text as literal revelation..."
On page 33, Alter states: "What the Bible offers us is an uneven continuum and a constant interweaving of factual historical detail (especially, but by no means exclusively, for the later periods) with purely legendary 'history'; occasional enigmatic vestiges of mythological lore; etiological stories; etiological fictions of the founding fathers of the nation; folktales of heroes and wonder-working men of God, verisimilar inventions of wholly fictional personages attached to the progress of national history; and fictionalized versions of known historical figures."
My impression from all of this is that Alter views the Hebrew Bible as a religious account of Israel's history, which contains fiction (even though Alter says that all of the narratives, except for Job and Jonah, "are presented as history"). Since Alter sees the text as religious, does he view it as didactic? I don't know. Alter does act as if the text criticizes certain characters---such as Balaam, who is about to kill an entire nation with his words---and that would be a moral judgment on the narrator's part. But I haven't seen much of a didactic approach in Alter's approach---unless I'm missing something. Rather, he focuses on the text telling a good story---with complex characters and unfolding events. But what are we supposed to get from the text? Are we supposed to learn any lessons? Or is the lesson that God interacts with human beings, in all their messiness?
