Current Trends in Narratology 9783110255003, 9783110254990

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Current Trends in Narratology

Narratologia Contributions to Narrative Theory

Edited by Fotis Jannidis, Matı´as Martı´nez, John Pier Wolf Schmid (executive editor) Editorial Board Catherine Emmott, Monika Fludernik ´ Jose´ Angel Garcı´a Landa, Peter Hühn, Manfred Jahn Andreas Kablitz, Uri Margolin, Jan Christoph Meister Ansgar Nünning, Marie-Laure Ryan Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Michael Scheffel Sabine Schlickers, Jörg Schönert

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De Gruyter

Current Trends in Narratology Edited by Greta Olson

De Gruyter

ISBN 978-3-11-025499-0 e-ISBN 978-3-11-025500-3 ISSN 1612-8427 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Current trends in narratology / edited by Greta Olson. p. cm. ⫺ (Narratologia. contributions to narrative theory ; 27) ISBN 978-3-11-025499-0 (acid-free paper) 1. Discourse analysis, Narrative. 2. Narration (Rhetoric) 3. Storytelling. I. Olson, Greta. P302.7.C86 2011 808⫺dc22 2011001562

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. ” 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ⬁ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

For Tamar and Uri Margolin, admired thinkers, lovely friends

Contents MONIKA FLUDERNIK AND GRETA OLSON Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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PART I NARRATIVE AND THE MIND RICHARD GERRIG Conscious and Unconscious Processes in Readers’ Narrative Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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URI MARGOLIN (Mis)perceiving to Good Aesthetic and Cognitive Effect . . . . . . . . . .

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ALAN PALMER The Mind beyond the Skin in Little Dorrit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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MONIKA FLUDERNIK The Category of ‘Person’ in Fiction: You and We Narrative-Multiplicity and Indeterminacy of Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

PART II TRANSMEDIAL, TRANSGENERIC, AND INTERDISCIPLINARY NARRATIVE STUDY WERNER WOLF Narratology and Media(lity): The Transmedial Expansion of a Literary Discipline and Possible Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 BRIAN RICHARDSON Endings in Drama and Performance: A Theoretical Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

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ANSGAR NÜNNING AND ROY SOMMER The Performative Power of Narrative in Drama: On the Forms and Functions of Dramatic Storytelling in Shakespeare’s Plays . . . . . . . . . 200 EVA MÜLLER-ZETTELMANN Poetry, Narratology, Meta-Cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232 IRMA TAAVITSAINEN Narratives as Literary Commonplaces in Late Medieval and Early Modern Medical Writings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254

PART III LOCAL AND NATIONAL APPROACHES IN DIACHRONIC PERSPECTIVE: TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE NARRATOLOGY WILHELM SCHERNUS Narratology in the Mirror of Codifying Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 EYAL SEGAL The “Tel Aviv School”: A Rhetorical-Functional Approach to Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 SYLVIE PATRON Enunciative Narratology: A French Speciality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 JOHN PIER Is There a French Postclassical Narratology? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336

MONIKA FLUDERNIK AND GRETA OLSON (University of Freiburg and University of Giessen, Germany)

Introduction 1. Assessing Current Trends in Narratology The essays collected in this volume represent the revisions and developments of papers originally delivered at a conference in Freiburg in July 2007, entitled “Current Trends in Narratology.” 1 What unfortunately cannot be captured in these introductory remarks is the extraordinarily lively exchange that took place during discussion periods, coffee breaks, and in the wrap-up session of that conference. These conversations do, however, inform the final shape of this volume, for the narratologically well-versed audience members responded to the lectures in two separate and, for our subject, quite informative ways. On the one hand, they focused on the impact of mediality or theoretical approaches like enunciative linguistics on narrative study at large. These topics inevitably gave rise to questions about the need to modify already existing concepts and parameters of narratological study. They asked questions like: What happens to conceptions of the narrator if enunciative markers in a text are considered to be the proper indicators of narrativity? How is the implied author to be understood if one can ascribe narrator functions to characters in drama? On the other hand, the audience urged the speakers to move the discussion beyond the scope of their papers and to meditate on the larger implications of their theses. This led to questions such as: Can the presence of social minds in fiction be extended to theories about how groups behave and think outside of fiction? For instance, does the existence of an intermental mind suggest the existence of a new form of consciousness or purvey a different notion of identity? Are there limits to the degree to which we can effectively assess narrativity in media other than verbal texts? Does a mediaindependent form of narrativity render the idea of the narrator obsolete? –––––––––––– 1

Our sincere gratitude goes to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft / German Research Foundation and the Université franco-allemande / Deutsch-Französische Hochschule for their generous support of the conference.

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These two types of questions point to divergent tendencies in current narratological projects at large. One trajectory of scholarship works to refine existing, ‘classical’ narratological models by reexamining their foundational concepts and rethinking their original problems; the other seeks to move beyond them by applying narratological frameworks to nonliterary narratives, artifacts, and phenomena that are usually excluded from the purview of narratologists or, for instance, by exploring the connections between mental processing and narrative. In the closing discussion of the Freiburg conference, one participant described these two trajectories of scholarship using a spatial analogy. Whereas some speakers and their interlocutors wanted to shore up the roots of narratology by reformulating foundational precepts, others sought to take narratology outside of the disciplinary boundaries of linguistics and literary studies altogether into explorations of ethics, the mind, and the non- (or non-exclusively) verbal. In their Introduction to Postclassical Narratology (in print a), Jan Alber and Monika Fludernik describe a similar division between frame-abiding and frame-shattering work in the current postclassical era of narratology. Research of the former type fills the gaps within the structuralist, Genettian paradigm; the latter type of scholarship moves beyond this paradigm altogether. We would argue that both trajectories of scholarship are vital and productive and that both represent innovative directions in current narratological study. The former research direction might at first glance appear more ‘conservative’ in that it redefines and systematizes concepts and methods that were developed in German Erzähltheorie (narrative theory), Genettian structuralist narratology, and in other earlier schools of narrative analysis. Thus, the attempt to refine classical narratology may be said to be that Other that is implicit in David Herman’s seminal volume on postclassical “narratologies” (1999). However, this avenue of research can be as innovative as its more obviously postclassical narratological cousins such as cognitive, transmedial, and culturalist narratology; after all, it extends the viability of earlier models by reflecting on them critically. A glance at recent, significant handbooks such as A Companion to Narrative Theory (Phelan/Rabinowitz 2005) or the Handbook of Narratology (Hühn et al. 2009a) supports our argument that re-envisaging classical problems results in innovative shifts. In these volumes, one finds chapters that review developments in the treatment of traditional, once universally accepted concepts such as “author,” “narrator,” “focalization,” and “point of view” as well as “unreliable narrator” and “implied author.” Such concepts are shown to be anything but rigid, universal, or merely one pole of a binary opposition—a traditional complaint against classical narratology

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(Jahn 2004: 105). Rather, they are context-dependent and historically variable. A case in point—and a phenomenon which both of the current authors have worked on—is narrator unreliability. Re-conceptualizations of Wayne Booth’s definition of the unreliable narrator (1983 [1961]) have demonstrated that the perception of unreliability is dependent not only on textual signals but also on the reader’s cognitive gap-filling activity, on schemata of experience as well as on historical variables such as the degree to which a personalized narrator is perceived as authentic and ‘reliable’ or as hypocritical (Fludernik 1999; A. Nünning 1993, 1998, 1999, 2005; V. Nünning 1998; Olson 2003; Phelan/Martin 1999; Yacobi 1981, 2001, 2005; D’hoker/Martens 2008). The two types of questions asked by audience members at the conference on Current Trends in Narratology intersect directly with the three types of approaches highlighted in this volume. Presented in the form of papers at the conference, these three types of contemporary research have far-reaching implications for the future of narratology. They are cognitive narratology, transmedial/interdisciplinary approaches, and research that takes its point of departure from an engagement with specific local and national inflections of narrative theory. The former two have been described by Herman as postclassical, a label which we adopt in this volume. Such ‘post’ narratologies depart from the classical emphasis on prose literary texts and its disavowal of contextual and ideological issues that often characterized classical narratological theory. According to the leading critics in the field, cognitive and transmedial narratology represent, alongside culturalist work, the most dynamic and productive directions of research today (Herman 1999; Fludernik 2000, 2005; Nünning 2003, 2009; McHale 2005). The third type of thus far unlabeled research explores local histories of narratological development. As will be shown, such historical work may lead to a challenge of traditional categories just as profound as that being performed in already widely acknowledged postclassical trends. In cognitive approaches, the emphasis has moved from the categorization of aspects and functions of narratives in verbal and particularly literary prose texts to the tracing or uncovering of the mental processes by which narratives are evoked and detected. This leads to an extension of the type of questions narratology once asked. Rather than inquiring into written work and theorizing about the functions of its narrative elements, cognitive narratology directly questions the mind and its functions, using narrative as a mode of mental access. Thus, various theories of perception and cognition are tried out. In transmedial approaches, traditional narratological concepts and methods are applied to new objects of analysis as in the transgeneric, transmedial, and interdisciplinary case studies to be found in Nünning/

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Nünning (2002b), Ryan (2004), Klein/Martínez 2009, and Heinen/Sommer (2009). Currently, a trend can be detected to comprehend narrative theory independently of language, and we shall describe this transmodal narratology at the end of this introduction. In transmedial narratology, the extension of classical models takes place through their application to ‘non-classical’ texts, to narratives other than prose fiction. Thus, narratology becomes a larger and more inclusive enterprise. Yet troublesome issues such as determining the constant qualities of narration and narrativity persist. This volume seeks to introduce yet a third type of postclassical research which is thus far without institutional foundation or even a commonly agreed upon name. This new direction assesses the local and national contributions to narratology diachronically and offers these perspectives as a basis for innovations in what may be considered “mainstream” Anglophone narratology. One may find the beginnings of this new research trajectory in Herman’s (2005) and Fludernik’s (2005) companion pieces on the history of narrative theory; in Anja Cornils’s and Wilhelm Schernus’s study of the evolution in German scholarship from the theory of the novel to narratology (2003); in Fludernik’s and Uri Margolin’s special issues of Style, both of which were dedicated to German work in narratology (2004); in Wolf Schmid’s recent overviews of Russian and Czech approaches to narratology and proto-narratological theory (2009a, 2009b); and in Sophie Marnette’s study on speech and thought representation from the perspective of Francophone narratology (2005). The authors of this Introduction detect in particular a tendency for non-American scholars to reflect on inflections of and influences on ‘local’ narratological developments. As in the special issues of Style named above or in volumes published by the Hamburg School of Narratology’s Narratologia series, this may constitute an effort to make the research of generally non-Anglophone researchers available to a larger audience. We look forward to this research developing into a comparative narratology. Such comparative studies would make the very differences between local schools’ or linguistic communities’ approaches to narrative theory the basis for fruitful comparison and critical self-appraisal. The German, Tel Avivian, and French histories of narratology presented in this volume investigate how narratological institutions, schools of thought, and language communities have evolved and now reflect on their own developments critically. As such, they constitute self-reflexive histories which also bespeak narratology’s disciplinary coming-of-age. The present volume reflects on the distinction that we have drawn between three forms of expansion on classical models and methods being pursued in narratological research today. This selection by no means belies

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the import of other types of research such as recent culturalist work in feminist, queer, and postcolonial narratology. Part I of the present volume focuses on the cognitive approach to narratology and on the relationship of narratology to the human mind. Part II concerns itself with transmedial and transgeneric Narrative Study. Part III contains what we believe constitutes the basis for a future comparative narratology—the histories of developments in various schools and linguistic communities. In Part I, Narrative and the Mind, the reader will find work on the phenomenology of perception, the cognition of reading, the types and functions of you- and we-narratives, and discussions of the possibility of shared mental experience as illustrated in fiction. This move from text analysis to cognition involves a more fundamental reorientation of the question of what the provenance of narratology should be. Rather than on textual properties, the focus is now on how such properties are recognized and processed and what this implies about how the mind operates. Such a focus on the mind inevitably involves an interdisciplinary dialogue between narratology and cognitive studies and cognitive psychology. In cognitive narratology, one no longer pursues the naming and the elucidation of stable aspects of narrative and their functions. Rather than pursuing one single question, the researcher now sets about addressing a series of questions concerning how narratives reveal the phenomenology of perception, how they engage with the functions, possibilities, and limits of thought, and how they control the decision-making processes by which we intuit how stories are most likely to turn out. Potentially, then, any kind of narrative text can be the object of cognitive narratological analysis. The multiplicity of potential research questions as well as the not yet circumscribed field of phenomena for analysis lead to the inchoate nature of this evolving sub-discipline. As one of cognitive narratology’s leading lights, David Herman has described the state of the field that holds true even today: It should therefore not be surprising that, given the range of artifacts and media falling under its purview, its richly interdisciplinary heritage, and the multiplicity of projects relevant for if not directly associated with it, cognitive narratology at present constitutes more a set of loosely confederated heuristic schemas than a systematic framework for inquiry. (Herman 2009b: 31)

Given the current creative flux which marks this sub-discipline, we do not attempt to offer any hard and fast definitions of cognitive narratology in the section of the Introduction that follows here. Rather, we wish to show how the new types of questions that cognitive research asks fundamentally challenge precepts and truisms of classical approaches, just as cognitive narratology is affecting the general understanding of cognition.

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The second major postclassical approach, to which Part II of this volume is devoted, is one that substitutes the literary text as the object of analysis with other genres and media. This trajectory of research takes the study of narrative beyond the scope of verbal form and its functions in novels and short stories. It has been discussed under the label ‘transmedial and transgeneric narratology’ by Vera and Ansgar Nünning (Nünning/ Nünning 2002b; cf. also Nünning 2003: 250) and as “post-structuralist narratology” by Monika Fludernik (2000). One might argue that cognitive and transmedial narratologies are closely related, as they share an emphasis on reading response as well as on the process of constituting narrativity, what Fludernik has described as narrativization (Fludernik 1996). Cognitive narratology is, moreover, interested in how non-literary texts use narrative form “for the purpose of facilitating a better understanding of the represented phenomena” (Alber 2005: 386). The significance of narrativization lies particularly in the link it provides to transmedial narratives. Since many non-verbal narratives (e.g., paintings, music, etc.) lack obvious plotlines, the qualities inherent in them which allow their viewers or auditors to recognize them as telling stories, as well as the mental processes that contribute to this recognition are under inquiry. Narrativization is thus crucial to the processing of such products as narratives. At the same time, explicit narrativization by means of anecdotes or the sequencing of a development into successive stages is characteristic of non-literary, especially scientific, prose written to reach a wider, more popular audience. TV documentaries on wildlife, too, frequently fictionalize and narrativize their topic by presenting, say, the life of a bear family or a group of elephants in terms of human life experience, turning their instinct-driven actions and wanderings into story matter. Ultimately, then, research in transgeneric and transmedial narrative analysis and theory as well as in cognitive narratology is reception oriented. Rather than focusing on text-immanent narremes and other narrative elements that are manifestations of universal principles, these approaches posit a continuum of interaction between the text and the recipients by whom narratives are perceived and processed. David Herman has recently commented on the close relationship between cognitive and transmedial approaches as follows: […] cognitive narratology is transmedial in scope; it encompasses the nexus of narrative and mind not just in print texts but also in face-to-face interaction, cinema, radio news broadcasts, computer-mediated virtual environments, and other story-telling media. In turn, “mind relevance” can be studied vis-à-vis the multiple factors associated with the design and interpretation of narratives. (2009a: 85)

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While the perception and processing of narrativity is constitutive of both transmedial and cognitive narratology, the methods which they employ differ greatly. Transgeneric and transmedial narratologies more closely resemble classical narratology in that they apply principles of narrative analysis to other types of texts in order to uncover their narrative elements and functions. Werner Wolf’s seminal work on intermedial narratology, for instance, describes how causality and plot can be detected in William Hogarth’s print series or “progresses.” A narrative reading is achieved by the viewer’s identification of the central event in each print of the series, the positing of major and minor characters and their leading characteristics, as well as the tracing of other narrative elements (Wolf 2002, 2004). Cognitive narratology, by contrast, posits mental processes of perception and understanding and relies on models that are derived from how people deal with texts, foregrounding the conceptual schemata that operate in people’s minds. Part III of this volume focuses on analyses of narratological work conducted in different schools and language environments. The essays featured here contextualize and critique local working methods, schools of thought, and their leading theorists and concepts. They connect different approaches with one another, and provide the basis for comparative narratology. They also potentially critique the dominance of Anglophone work. Furthermore, Part III confirms that narratology as a discipline has now reached the stage of critical self-analysis. By elucidating its developments, alleged crises, and efforts to move beyond moments of disciplinary self-doubt, narratology is in the act of writing its own history and, in the process, solidifying its disciplinary claims. It has overcome—we want to suggest—its moment of disciplinary exhaustion and is now in an ongoing phase of expansion. On this point, see the essay by Wilhelm Schernus in this volume. By virtue of their critical analysis, the authors in Part III do more than simply offer histories of local institutions and national trends. Rather, in each of these essays, an effort is made to move beyond existing frameworks through critical reflection. Thus, in summary, the three trends in current narratology presented in this volume seek to expand on classical models and methods in various, yet interrelated ways: cognitive research expands on classical research by shifting the focus of narratological interest from narration in texts to the narrating mind; transmedial scholarship extends the purview of narrative analysis by (infinitely?) expanding the category of what is considered to be narrative and thereby presenting fresh objects for analysis. We have shown these two approaches to be closely interrelated. Finally, critical historical work, by contrast, picks up on the problems and issues that

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classical narratology brought into focus and examines them in new, creative, and—as will be seen—in potentially frame-shattering ways. 2. Narrative and the Mind In the last twenty years, cognition has become a key concern in narrative studies and is developing into the perhaps single most important issue in narratology. The mind as such, and perception in particular, have of course been stock features of all narrative enquiry since the days of Henry James. The Modernist backdrop to the Jamesian house of fiction consisted in focusing through a character’s mind; the technique of stream of consciousness soon became a staple of Modernist fiction and featured not merely a deep analysis of protagonists’ psyches, but also of multiperspectival arrangements whereby the minds of individual characters were juxtaposed to achieve ironic effects or to underline relativistic philosophical positions. Russian Formalism, by way of complementation of the extreme subjectivism of Modernist writing and theorizing, concentrated its lights on the figure of the narrator and on her or his subjective, unreliable and randomly wandering mind, whether in Gogol’s loquacious narrator in “The Overcoat” or in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. The mind was therefore interesting to narratologists avant la lettre on account of its subjectivity, emotional quality, and its perspectivism. Pointof-view models reached their culmination point in the theories of focalization proposed by classical narratology, especially by Gérard Genette and Mieke Bal (for a recent overview of point of view, perspective, and focalization, see the essays collected in Hühn 2009b). Such models could be argued to be a direct result of Modernism, which was in fact at that time being institutionalized academically as a respectable period in literary history. The 1950s and 60s also saw the establishment of Chomskyan linguistics, which related syntactic structures to a mental model of deep structures and, even more basically, a number of settings that are activated in the mind by exposure to a particular language. Although text grammars (e.g., van Dijk 1985) did not explicitly see narrative as cognitively grounded, they clearly anticipated later positions like those of David Carr (1986) and Jerome Bruner (1991a). Following up on structuralist models, narratologists were still concerned with the discourse level of narratives; this is true, for instance, of the work by Dorrit Cohn (1978) and Fludernik (1993) on free indirect discourse and psychonarration. Yet cognitivism began to emerge from out of unexpected corners of narratological analysis. Thus, in her work on plot, Marie-Laure Ryan—from the perspective of possible worlds

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theory—became interested in alternative plot lines as projected in characters’ minds (Ryan 1987).2 Increasingly, positions borrowed from cognitive studies began to be integrated into narratological thinking. Benjamin Harshav (Hrushovski 1976) and Moshe Ron (1979) as well as Meir Sternberg in his Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (1978) started to adopt insights such as those relating to primacy and recency effects and increasingly considered readers’ cognitive processing of the text. In linguistics, in the meantime, Chomskyan syntactic theory had been superseded by pragmatics. Simultaneously, universalist positions receded into the background as the consideration of typology, grammaticalization issues, and iconicity studies moved to the fore. What all these fields shared was an implicit presupposition that developments in language and users’ predisposition for some linguistic forms over others were based on cognitive preferences and processes. The prerequisite of cognition allowed linguists to delineate natural stages of development, for instance in the development of prepositions from spatial to temporal to logical meanings, a process now known as grammaticalization (Hopper and Traugott 1993). Cognitive studies provided constructivist positions that were adaptable to the study of literary language. Thus, it is no coincidence that the three best-known early cognitive narratologists, Manfred Jahn (1997, 1999, 2003), Monika Fludernik (1996, 2003) and David Herman (1997, 2003), are all deeply steeped in linguistic lore. These scholars have sought to straddle the boundary between narratology and stylistics (or Literature and Linguistics Studies, as they are called in the UK). Cognitive linguistics has been particularly concerned with metaphor theory, originally called conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff/Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1987; Kövecses 2005) but now reconceived as blending (Fauconnier and Turner 1999, 2002, 2008). Cognitive metaphor theory (CMT) has proven particularly influential for the narrative analysis of poetry (Freeman 1995, 2000, 2002). Yet with its assumption that cognitive metaphors are supra-linguistic and that certain basic spatial and somatic metaphors allow us to make sense of our experience via analogy, CMT potentially challenges the preeminence of linguistically-based forms of narrative analysis, as it can be applied to verbal as well as to visual and texts (Olson 2009). Taken to its furthest consequence, CMT could be said to even challenge Bruner’s thesis that reality is constructed through narrative (1991b). Rather than making sense of the world through stories, the individual may be said to order her experience by way of reference to foundational metaphors. On the other hand, much recent work in meta––––––––––––

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Incidentally, this approach has recently been extended masterfully in Hilary Dannenberg’s prize-winning study of coincidence and counterfactuality (Dannenberg 2008).

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phor studies highlights the narrative quality of metaphors (e.g., Nünning 2009b). Prototype theory (Rosch 1983), frame theory (Schank/Abelson 1977), and the notion of scripts have proven to be even more influential in cognitive narratology than CMT and blending. Prototype theory (fuzzy set theory) is important since it revises semantic categories and replaces componential feature analysis with sets that are open and have prototypical members; in the former case, an item used to be defined exclusively by its features, which either apply or not (e.g., bachelor as +human, -married, -female). Prototype theory suggests that items which could be classified as belonging to a specific category are usually more or less central to it: a common illustrative example of this is the blackbird, which is a more prototypical bird than the goose. Such prototypes correlate with frames and scripts, that is to say, static and dynamic recurring scenarios that are stored in the mind to facilitate easy retrieval. For instance, while the blackbird is the prototypical choice when the frame is gardens, in a dinner scenario, it is the goose which will be more prototypical. Hence, the word bird uttered in the dinner setting is likely to be interpreted quite differently than when it is associated with the garden frame. Prototype theory thus underpins constructivist positions, since the listener will associate possible referents with what he or she has just heard. Frames, and particularly scripts, i.e. culturally recurring sequences of actions or processes, are even more important to narratology, since they concern ingredients of plots. They have the additional advantage of allowing for empirical testing since, for instance, the use of definite pronouns for items expected after accessing the script indicates their cognitive activation in the interviewee’s mind (see Coulson 2001). Therefore, frame theory perhaps has had the biggest impact on cognitive literary studies, also called cognitive poetics (see Langacker 1987, 1993; Semino/Culpeper 2002; Stockwell 2002; Gavins/Steen 2003; Tsur 2008). Cognitive poetics is not a uniform field, for it largely intersects with both stylistics and narratology. (Compare Fludernik 2010b.) A number of very different narratological studies have been sparked by cognitive poetics and by the current cognitive models and newer cognitive research. One branch of narratology has been motivated to return to issues of the mind in narrative. Work in this area includes, for instance, Herman’s essay on hypothetical focalization in Story Logic (2002); flourishing work on empathy and sympathy (e.g., Hogan 2003a, 2003b; Keen 2007), which was inspired by Damasio (1999) and Dennett (1991); and work based on more empirical results such as Lisa Zunshine’s research on different levels of self-consciousness (2006) or Jonathan Kramnick’s recent work on empiricism and the eighteenth-century novel (2007).

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The essays collected in Part I are clearly inspired by these transfers from cognitive studies. In the first essay in this section, the psychologist Richard Gerrig offers an analysis of how readers process written stories both unconsciously and consciously. This analysis is based on Gerrig’s and Giovanna Egidi’s experiments on: 1) the length of time participants needed to process certain sentences; 2) ruptures between their conscious and unconscious judgments about actions in a written narrative; and, 3) ‘resonance’, or how memory primes textual processing. Gerrig offers a forceful argument that empirical cognitive analysis of written story processing has a central and still unacknowledged importance for narratological study. The analysis of how readers process textoids—minimal plots—can be expanded to the analysis of how individuals process more complex and elaborated narratives. By outlining differences between conscious and unconscious reading processes and by identifying the frames of reference that determine the makings of an ‘astute reader’, Gerrig attests, narratology will learn much from cognitive psychology. Conversely, cognitive psychology will benefit from narratological insight into how, for instance, individuals deal with complex narrative phenomena such as focalization. Uri Margolin’s analysis then reflects on the results of empirical work in cognitive science. Citing Gerrig and Philip Zimbardo’s previous work on perception (2002), Uri Margolin reverses usual ‘classical’, bottom-up narratological practice in his essay on literary representations of misperception. Rather than moving from analysis of a textual phenomenon to an innovative theoretical position on how best to elucidate said phenomenon, Margolin adopts cognitive psychology’s descriptions of visual perception and offers literary examples of failures at each stage of this process. His analysis rests overwhelmingly on examples from Modernism, a period in which faith in the infallibility and intelligibility of perception was starting to break down. Margolin’s conclusion richly suggests that verbal and visual alterations in the aesthetic modes by which humans recognize themselves and their activities can be most accurately categorized using the tools of cognitive psychology. Margolin’s essay also makes reference to Alan Palmer’s (2004) seminal work on how readers construct fictional minds in literary narratives. Rather than focusing on how fiction represents individual consciousness—a prerogative of much previous narrative work—Palmer characterizes the active process of identifying minds as central to the reading process. Moreover, he identifies a new narratological and cognitive category: that of the shared, ‘intermental’ or group mind. In his essay in this volume, Palmer extends his previous work and applies his theory of social cognition to Dickens’s Little Dorrit. Against pre-

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vious readings of this work, Palmer argues that an externalist perspective accounts for continuing consciousness, or characters’ situated identities as they find themselves in various intermental settings. Palmer’s work, in the first instance, extends the range of notions about how consciousness is represented in fiction. Yet the implications of his analyses go much further to challenge the Western philosophical tradition of locating identity and essence in isolated individual subjects. Monika Fludernik’s essay demonstrates her background in languageoriented approaches to narratology. Initially, it offers an overview of the functions of deictics from the point of view of pragmatics. This procedure shows, in particular, the indeterminacy of location, address, and reference involved in these types of narrative. Fludernik has already worked extensively on issues involved in you narratives, including their tendency to metaleptically involve their readers, as addressees, in the narratives (1993, 1994, 1996). In the essay in this volume, she reviews and extends that work to show that we narratives fulfill similar metaleptic functions, since they, too, break down distinctions between fictionality and factuality—a distinction difficult to maintain since the dawn of narratology. After offering an overview of the variety of possibilities of reference in these deictic forms, Fludernik highlights their transgressive potentials while making note of new work on collective identities by Alan Palmer, amongst others. The four essays in Part I reflect on various applications of cognitive research. Gerrig’s reports on the results of empirical study, and Margolin’s applies similar research to his text analyses. Palmer’s and Fludernik’s contributions are, by contrast, more traditionally narratological, as they deal with phenomena in written literary texts. Nonetheless, they engage with issues that extend classical narratology from a cognitivist, reader-oriented perspective. 3. Transmedial, Transgeneric, and Interdisciplinary Narrative Study In a recent history of narratology, Monika Fludernik argued that narrative theory in the wake of the “narrative turn” has become a “master discipline” (2005: 47). Narratological methods and narrative theory are now employed in analyses of law, medicine, and teaching in new and innovative ways. Narrative studies of law and medicine depart from the insight that humans make sense of their worlds via stories, a position associated with the work of the psychologist Jerome Bruner (1991). This has led, for instance, to investigations of the role of storytelling in the creation of identity and in psychic and physical healing processes (Good 1994; Kleinman 1988; Mattingly 1998; Mattingly/Garro 2001; Rud-

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nytsky/Charon 2008). In the field known as Law and Literature, narrative elements are used to read or decode legal texts and legal iconography (Brooks 1992; Brooks/Gerwitz 1996; Hyde 1997; Sternberg 2008; Olson 2010). Norbert Meuter (2009) extends the study of narrative in nontraditionally narrative disciplines to the visual arts, history, psychology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, ethics, sociology, theology, pedagogy, law, medicine, the philosophy of science, and the natural sciences. Given the applicability of narrative analysis to seemingly any area of human communication, the question inevitably arises of, What is narratology? 3 In a preliminary answer to this question, Ansgar Nünning has proposed a distinction between narrative studies similar to Law and Literature and what he calls “theories of narrative.” The latter, as he argues, bear a closer genealogical and theoretical resemblance to classical narratology in that they propose general theories of narrative (2003: 257–64). By this account, the distinctive feature of narratology is its theorization of narrative and supposition to be universal. By contrast, the application of narratology-external premises of various approaches (like psychoanalysis or postcolonial studies) does not qualify as specifically narratological analysis. If we adopt Nünning’s differentiation, the contributions in this volume are strictly-speaking narratological because they theorize issues like narrative processing, extend the objects of analysis beyond the scope of traditional narratology, or re-conceptualize classical narratological terms and concepts. If we take narrative and narrativity to be the phenomena with which we comprehend our worlds and our experience, then an analysis of narrative in non-traditional media and genres appears at first to be unlimited in its possibilities. Describing this critical move in his seminal Narratologies (1999), David Herman sees as his goal “to test the possibilities and limits of classical, structuralist narratological models, that is, to assess what sorts of narrative phenomena such models can and cannot illuminate” (3). Thus, central to the transmedial narratology enterprise is the pursuit of two interrelated questions. On the one hand, one can ask, What is narrative as it appears in transgeneric and transmedial forms? On the other hand, the question might be, What is narrativity, or the quality of being a narrative, in a transmedial context, in contrast to prose fiction? In answer to the first question, there is the work of Werner Wolf, an avant-gardist in the sub-discipline of transmedial narrative theory. He was among the first theorists to stake out the claim that narrativity has to be conceptualized in a transmedial framework (2002: 24). He was also among ––––––––––––

3

See volume 1 of the Narratologia series [2003], edited by Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Müller, who pose exactly this question in their title.

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the first to investigate the narrativity of monophase and polyphase pictures (2002, 2004). Wolf follows Gerald Prince (1982) in considering narrativity to be a matter of degree rather than a yes-no proposition. Yet such a claim necessitates both a reevaluation of what narrativity is and what its study can and should propose to do. Vera and Ansgar Nünning have suggested that narrativity has traditionally been defined on the basis of the following criteria: the representation of a temporal sequence of events (in the tradition of Genettian narratology: Rimmon-Kenan, Prince, Wolf); the presence of a mediating instance, or what would according to traditional terminology be called a narrator (Genette, Stanzel); the dynamics between story and discourse (Chatman). In addition, more recently, experientiality (a criterion introduced by Fludernik 1996) has become a major contender for the overall defining feature of narrativity, especially since it more easily allows an extension of the range of narratives into those art forms that have no perceivable narrator and/or no clear plot function (like painting and music). Thus, Nünning and Nünning (2002b: 6–9) incorporate experientiality in their revised definitions of intermedial narrativity. Yet the most flexible and least prescriptive definition of narrative comes from Marie-Laure Ryan. It incorporates all of the qualities of narrativity delineated above: Narrative must be about a world populated by individuated existents. This world must be situated in time and space and undergo significant transformations. The transformations must be caused by nonhabitual physical events. Some of the participants in the events must be intelligent agents who have a mental life and react emotionally to the states of the world. Some of the events must be purposeful actions by these agents, motivated by identifiable goals and plans. The sequence of events must form a unified causal chain and lead to closure. The occurrence of at least some of the events must be asserted as fact for the story world. The story must communicate something meaningful to the recipient. (Ryan 2006: 8; our emphasis)

Similar to her definition of narrative, which encompasses audience or reader response in “communicate something meaningful to the recipient,” Ryan’s models of narrativity (2004, 2005) have a cognitive grounding. In these models, Ryan attempts to furnish transmedial narratology with the theoretical foundation it requires in order to move forward as an interdisciplinary venture. She argues that Fludernik’s grounding of narrativization in experientiality—the evocation of embodiment, emotion, and reflection on events—is too broad in conception and wishes not to see the requirement of plot abandoned (Ryan 2005: 4). In this, she follows Werner Wolf, who has argued that experientiality could potentially be applied to any form of aesthetic illusionism (2003, 2004, and in this volume). Ryan also worries that the exclusive grounding of narrativity in experientiality allows

Introduction

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for potential attributions of narrativity to practically any text. 4 Thus, the debate about experientiality versus emplotment as a necessary criterion for narrativity is a central one in current transmedial narratological debates. The reader will find comments on the viability of experientiality for transmedial narratological analyses in this volume in the contributions by Werner Wolf, Eva Müller-Zettelmann, and Irma Taavitsainen. This suggests both that defining narrativity itself is central to the project of transgeneric and transmedial narratology and that central elements of narrativity remain contested. A seminal consideration introduced by Ryan concerns discriminating between a text that was originally composed as a narrative and a text that has qualities which allow its recipient to read it as a narrative. This entails differentiating between a text’s “being a narrative” and its “possessing narrativity” (Ryan 2004: 9; 2005). The former category denotes any textual or medial object’s having been written or produced with the intent of evoking a narrative script; the text or object was created to have story-like qualities. The latter group, by contrast, comprises medial or textual objects which have the capacity to evoke a narrative script in the minds of their users, readers, or viewers. This differentiation removes the concept of narrativity from the realm of the verbal. It thus liberates the concept of narrativity for use in any number of medial scenarios. Understanding narrativity as the result of a cognitive activity rather than as a quality of verbal texts allows researchers to examine narrative qualities independently of their individual generic and medial realizations. This does not in any sense deny the individual medium’s capacity to affect narrativity and aspects of narration. Nor does it ignore the specific materiality of individual medial forms. Rather, it places the realization of narrativity (story-like qualities) squarely within human cognition. Ryan’s theory of transmedial narratology, furthermore, represents an important modification of Werner Wolf’s scale of narrativity (2002). In his contribution, he described as genuinely narrative those media which are predominantly verbal such as prose and drama and distinguished them from media which induce a sense of narrative such as picture sequences and other predominantly visual media; he also classifies music as a quasinarrative form (Wolf 2002: 96). In one respect, Ryan follows Wolf by disentangling the presence of narrative from solely verbal media and genres. Yet, in another respect, she moves further away by stressing the ––––––––––––

4

It should be noted here, however, that Fludernik’s model only extends the scope of narrativity beyond plot. Most narratives, even in Fludernik’s model, have a plot, but some narratives (especially modernist and postmodernist ones) lack a plot, though they convey human experience in much more detail. Ryan’s distinction between “being a narrative” and “possessing narrativity” (Ryan 2004: 9; see below) could be a way of circumventing this deadlock.

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media specificity of narrative forms of transmission and their focusing on the interaction of media specificity with the perception of narrativity. In his contribution to the present volume, Wolf extends the theory of transmedial narratology, which has become a hallmark of his work, while making some important claims about its limitations. By offering an analysis of narrativity in sculpture, Wolf re-envisions narrativity to account for its prototypical, cognitive, and transmedial capacities. Moreover, Wolf develops a flexible concept of medium which accounts for its material effects. On the one hand, the medium predetermines the type of narrative which may be transmitted or represented. On the other hand, it also circumscribes how the narrative will be experienced. In his essay, Wolf thus mediates between the positions of media determinism and media relativism. He concludes by envisaging that a hierarchy in the narrativity of various media will emerge in the future. However, he also insists that verbal media will continue to represent privileged forms of narrative. Wolf further emphasizes the need to encourage respect for insights afforded by other ‘mother’ disciplines such as art history and for the methods and approaches these fields take to their objects of study. In this context, he helpfully warns of narratology’s arrogance by resorting to the metaphor of colonization: narratology should not seek to colonize adjoining disciplines that have their own theoretical frameworks and methodologies. We have spent a considerable amount of space on Werner Wolf’s opening essay, for it lays out so many important issues and questions regarding transmedial narratology. These issues also affect transgeneric approaches. In fact, Ryan’s category of texts that ‘possess narrativity’ in the sense of allowing themselves to be read as narratives is particularly germane to the examples treated in the subsequent essays by Brian Richardson, Ansgar Nünning and Roy Sommer, and Eva Müller-Zettelmann. All of these scholars investigate genres which were traditionally treated as non-narrative. Irma Taavitsainen’s paper adds a non-literary historical example to this list of cross-generic and cross-medial analyses. It thus stands at a crossroad between transgeneric, interdisciplinary narrative study and diachronic narratology. Brian Richardson has been amongst the narratological avant-garde in redefining narrative theory to encompass the genre of drama (1987, 1988, 1997, 2001). In his early essays on the narrative features of drama, he took issue with current generalizations about drama’s being non-diegetic. In the paper included in this volume, Richardson focuses on beginnings and endings in drama. He first demonstrates the great varieties of endings in plays performed during the last hundred years. As he points out, these endings or non-closures can be accounted for neither by theories of prose

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narrative nor by conventional drama analysis, since both had traditionally concentrated solely on the dyad of closed versus open endings. Richardson therefore advocates a theory of dramatic endings which, in addition to fabula and syuzhet, would take performance into account. Interestingly, formalist categories are maintained, modified and expanded upon in Richardson’s essay. This might suggest that ‘classical’ models and terms are not necessarily obsolete, but are in need of modification and contextualization. Ansgar Nünning and Roy Sommer have also been leading theorists in the analysis of narrative qualities of drama (2002, 2008; see also Fludernik 2008). Their work reminds us that Aristotle, arguably the first narratologist, based his Poetics on the analysis of tragedy. Whereas Nünning and Sommer have offered categorizations of narrative functions in drama and suggested a narrative overview of this genre in their previous work, they go farther in their argument in the essay printed in this volume. Here, they offer credible arguments for the importance of a narratological analysis of Shakespeare’s plays, which, they maintain, is vital for understanding the cultural issues impinging on them such as those offered in gender-oriented accounts. As Nünning and Sommer write: “The ways in which both [Shakespeare’s] male and female characters narrate simultaneously expresses their backgrounds, genders and generational affiliations as well as their individual perspectives, particular situations and social constellations.” Not only does Shakespeare, in a sense, anticipate feminist narratologies, but a narratologically well-versed analysis of the epic qualities of his works is, the authors argue, vital to an understanding of the complexities of their socio-historical context. Eva Müller-Zettelmann’s essay focuses on lyric poetry. It takes ironic issue with a truism that can be found in many an introduction to the study of lyric poetry: as the only non-narrative genre, lyric stands in sharp contrast to drama and prose. In her close reading of Christina Rossetti’s poem “An End,” Müller-Zettelmann demonstrates how to locate the poem’s histoire despite its brevity and the text’s reliance on metaphor. In contradistinction to the narratological analyses of lyric poetry by Peter Hühn (Hühn 2005; Hühn/Kiefer 2005), she stresses the acoustic materiality of the poem and foregrounds the hypothesized embodiment of the poem’s speaker that it suggests. Through this evocation of a body/physicality, the poem evinces the experientiality which Fludernik proposed as a prerequisite of narrativity. Thus, unlike her former teacher, Werner Wolf, Müller-Zettelmann advocates the use of this concept in her transgeneric analysis, in this case to describe the narrative quality of lyric poems. Finally, Irma Taavitsainen’s analysis of narrative elements in late medieval and early modern medical writings evinces a truly interdisciplinary

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use of narrative research. Narrative elements and their functions are traced in early modern medical texts. Taavitsainen’s essay on medical texts also reflects on the original scope of the conference, which was to document new developments in diachronic narratology. These include, for instance, Fludernik’s demonstration of the non-universality and historical dependency of specific narrative forms (1996, 2007). Works such as these helped to transform postclassical narratology into a more historically and context-sensitive form of analysis. (See also Fitzmaurice/Taavitsainen 2007 and Jucker 2009.) Diachronic narratological research also relies implicitly on innovations in linguistics including the new emphases on corpus linguistics and historical sociolinguistics. Taavitsainen analyzes changes in medical narratives from the fifteenth century onward. Working with newly assembled corpora of medieval and early modern medical texts, she documents a shift from scholastic to empirical argumentation styles in the late seventeenth century. She also traces the use of narratives and literary frames in these texts and their regular transgression of the borders which are drawn, more and more problematically, between the fictional and the non-fictional. Her work demonstrates the continuing viability of linguistic approaches to narrative (cf. Toolan 2007, 2009), new developments in historical pragmatics to uncover the functions of narrative forms (Jucker 1995, Fitzmaurice and Taavitsainen 2007, Jucker and Taavitsainen 2008), and the advantages of working with new databases of historical texts. 5 4. Local and National Approaches in Diachronic Perspective: Towards a Comparative Narratology Thinking of Aristotle’s Poetics, one might locate narratology’s roots in Ancient Greece. More recently and classically, narratology has flourished in Russian Formalism, German Erzähltheorie (narrative theory), and French structuralism. Since the structuralist phase, much work in narratology has been associated with Israeli poetics and with American rhetoricallyoriented, ethical approaches to narrative, which arose out of the Chicago School’s work. With the possible exception of the ethical-rhetorical approach, all of these schools, classical and non-classical, are represented in this volume. Thus, the emphasis on the narrative qualities of drama in Brian Richardson’s as well as Ansgar Nünning and Roy Sommer’s contributions recalls Aristotle’s work on tragedy. The importance of Russian –––––––––––– 5

On the benefits of working with new databases containing non-canonical historical texts, see also Fludernik (2009) and work by the Helsinki Corpus team (Meurman-Solin 1995, 2007; Taavitsainen 2006; Nevalainen/Tanskanen 2007).

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formalism in the development of narratology was represented at the actual conference by an excellent paper delivered by the Hamburg scholar Maja Nemere on “The Influence of Russian Formalism on International Narratology.” While this paper could not be published in this volume due to its having been the result of a collaborative effort by the Hamburg School of Narratology, some of its insights may be found in the recently published Slavische Erzähltheorie: Russische und Tschechische Ansätze (Slavic Narrative Theory: Russian and Czech Approaches 2009b), which has been edited by Wolf Schmid, founder of the Hamburg research center. The legacy of the formalist analysis of narrative is also represented in this volume by Wilhelm Schernus’s contribution. In his article “Narratology in the Mirror of Codifying Texts,” Schernus performs a formalist analysis of the texts through whose means narratology attempts to justify itself as a discipline. Attempting to answer the persistent and persistently troublesome question of, What is narratology?, Schernus offers a narrative analysis of functions and forms in introductions to, anthologies, handbooks, overviews of, and general reference works on narratology. This research has been developed in the context of a project on “How Narratology Has Been Adapted and Used to Mediate between Scholarly Cultures since the 1960s,” which was funded by the German Research Foundation. The essay also traces the history of how the approach to narrative labeled ‘narratology’ became an internationally recognized discipline and how it legitimated itself through specific codifications. These codifications, Schernus argues, are problematic, but they are also necessary. They present narratology’s fundamental aims and methods as universally valid rather than as subject to hefty scholarly debate. By opening his account with a description of the seminal 1979 conference “Narrative Theory and Poetics of Fiction” at the University of Tel Aviv, Schernus also anticipates Eyal Segal’s account of the Tel Aviv school’s rhetorical-functional approach to narrative. Segal makes a case for the distinctiveness of this approach. It goes beyond Genettian categorizations of types of narrative phenomena. Examining the functions of forms, it introduces the ‘Proteus Principle’ (Sternberg 1982), which characterizes the capacity of a single form to fulfill any variety of functions. Segal argues that Tel Aviv narratology differs from other receptionoriented theories by, on the one hand, noting how readers fill informational gaps in narratives via cognitive strategies and, on the other hand, by examining how texts are rhetorically fashioned to influence how their readers interpret them. Another innovative strand of Israeli narratology has been Tamar Yacobi’s work on narrative unreliability. Yacobi arguably was the first scholar to delineate the reader’s role in detecting unreliability

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(1981, 2001, 2005). Still another important contribution is Meir Sternberg’s theory of narrative interest (Sternberg 1978, 1990, 1992, 2001). Combining rhetorical and functional approaches, Sternberg’s multiple accounts of narrative interest anticipated later theories of naturalization and narrativization by describing specific master functions in narratives and readers’ responses to them. This account, in turn, informs Segal’s essay in its focus on narrative closure, in which he analyzes the point in the text at which the reader loses narrative interest, rather than concentrating on the ending of the text. Segal’s contribution thus complements Richardson’s essay on drama in problematizing existing theories of endings, which are based on the material endings of texts rather than on their narrative closures. In outlining a new theory of narrative closure, Sternberg and Segal suggest that the presence and perception of closure are phenomena that rely on the text and its performance as well as on the cognitive activities of perception which these texts elicit in viewers’ and readers’ minds. Sylvie Patron’s contribution introduces Anglophone readers to a form of text analysis with which they may be wholly unfamiliar, namely enunciative linguistics and enunciative narratology. 6 Her essay opens by disambiguating confusions about overlaps between Genettian narratology and French enunciative linguistics. French enunciative linguistics might be characterized as the analysis of situations in which utterance takes place. Innovations by the enunciative linguist Émile Benveniste were lost, she argues, when Genette subsumed narrative under the category of discourse in his Discours du récit (1972 [Narrative Discourse 1980]). She then goes on to demonstrate how the enunciative narratology practiced by Laurent Danon-Boileau on the sources of enunciation and by Alain Rabatel on focalization provides a much-needed corrective to Genettian narratology. She concludes by differentiating her own work from that of her predecessors. In her view, enunciative, like Genettian narratology, has to be severely faulted for its reliance on an ambiguous concept of the narrator. To repair this shortcoming, she recommends introducing the concept of the author as arch-enunciator. Patron’s passionately argued essay, like Taavitsainen’s, attests to the continued vitality of explicitly linguistic approaches to narrative by introducing innovative concepts outside the scope of neoGenettian and neo-Stanzelian methodologies. It is thus frame-shattering. Our volume closes with a masterful essay by John Pier which considers recent developments in French narratology within the context of international research. Thanks to its wide range and scope, this essay ap––––––––––––

6

To the authors’ knowledge, there are only three English-language texts on the subject (Rivara 2004, Marnette 2005 and Rabatel 2009).

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peared to us to be a perfect closing piece to the volume. Pier’s article provides not only a helpful history of postclassical narratology in general but also a powerful argument for why this term is applicable only in part to recent Francophone narratology. Pier charts two strands of development in French-language narrative theory since the mid-1980s. The first, inspired partly in reaction to structuralist narratology, includes Paul Ricœur’s phenomenological hermeneutics as developed in his Time and Narrative. The second strand breaks down into communicational, enunciative, and discourse analysis theories rather than compound or hyphenated postclassical narratologies. For Frenchspeaking analysts, narrative comes within a general theory of discourse wherein discourses are articulated in the interplay between textual determinations and socio-discursive ones. Eschewing the structuralist postulates of langue/parole, deep/surface structure and story/discourse, a number of researchers have adopted a prototypical perspective with cognitive overtones. By situating narrative among other forms of discourse, this type of narratology comes within the broader purview of a semiotics of cultural representation. Patron’s and Pier’s contributions, in particular, demonstrate that an examination of the history of one school or language community’s research can provide as much fuel for the expansion of narratology as transmedial and cognitive approaches. Their reviews of Francophone work also reveal the limitations of reviews of postclassical narratology which are based largely on Anglophone and/or German work. 5. Conclusions and Non-Closures In her essay on the history of narratology in the Blackwell Companion to Narrative, Fludernik argues that the discipline has developed by adopting new “linguistic paradigms one by one as they arose in the twentieth century” (2005: 48). These developments have concluded, she states, with the current cognitivist paradigm, a paradigm which combines cognitivist and transmedial tendencies. Fludernik concludes her history by looking forward optimistically to a revitalized cognitive narratology being employed in alliance with the empirical sciences. To reiterate this optimistic forecast (cp. also Alber and Fludernik in print a; Fludernik 2010a) might be a logical stopping point of this volume and its overview of current narratological trends. Alternatively, another strategy of closure might be to look at current developments in linguistics beyond the paradigmatic shift to cognition. If we accept narratology’s historical dependence on innovations in linguis-

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tics, as outlined by Fludernik, it might reasonably be assumed that narratology’s future can be sought in that other discipline’s developments. These new developments have been defined in a popular linguistics textbook as a move toward corpus- and statistics-based research and a renewed interest in historical linguistics as informed by insights from pragmatics and sociolinguistics (Kortmann 2005: 32–49). Arguably, Irma Taavitsainen’s corpus-based reading of medieval and early modern medical narratives with a perspective on the functions of these narratives instances both of these new developments. Yet a third viewpoint could be established on the basis of a critique of narratology’s linguistic moorings. One might argue that narratology has seriously limited itself through its dependence on linguistics and on verbal. Thus, narratology’s next disciplinary hurdle might be to emancipate itself from its reliance on linguistic models and methods altogether. Instead, it might embrace a theory of narrative which encompasses multimediality, including the material possibilities and limitations of any given medium, its modes and sites of transmission, as well as the sensory organs which contribute to its being evaluated as having narrativity. This is Ruth Page’s charge in her recent volume on narrative and multimodality: Both in classical narratology and sociolinguistic accounts of narrative practice, the source material has predominately focused on verbal resources, either realized in the form of literary texts or written transcriptions of spoken data. Similarly, linguistics has functioned as a dominant paradigm in the development of narrative theory. From the initial use of Saussurean principles to distinguish between deep and surface structures, through to grammatical metaphors used to explain plot structure (Longacre 1983) or actantial relations (Greimas 1983) and still current in contemporary applications of systemic functional linguistics (Herman 2002) and corpus linguistics (Toolan 2009), tools from linguistics have been used to build evidence for narrative patterns and in turn underpin narrative concepts themselves. Both typical source data and conceptual bias in narratology lead to a situation not just of media-blindness (the assumption that concepts derived from one format can be unproblematically transferred to another), but also modeblindness. (Page 2010: 3)

Page anticipates a multimodal narratology that would “reconceptualize all narrative communication as multimodal” (2010: 5). This notion of modality, which should not be confused with “mediality,” includes aspects such as textual resources, modes of presentation, physical environments, and the five senses (2010: 7). Although two leading figures in transmedial narratology attest to the primacy of language in the presence and perception of narrative (Wolf in this volume; Ryan 2009: 269–71), one could argue that narratology’s reliance on the verbal constitutes its surrender—to borrow Fredric Jameson’s phrase—to the prison-house of language. While perhaps not needing to abandon language altogether, Page envisions a

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narratology which is not deferential to linguistics and is more sensitive to modalities. Thus, the future of narratology might involve a movement from the transgeneric and the transmedial to transmodal forms of narrative analysis and narrative theory. In closing, we would invite the reader to imagine alternative narratological futures. For instance, the very probable emergence of new media may change the nature of our understanding of stories altogether and how they are conveyed and influenced by their material parameters. To imagine these possibilities, the essays assembled here require the input of narratologically literate readers, just as the papers delivered at the Freiburg conference immeasurably profited from the interaction with their audience. Current Trends in Narratology can be used by its readers to reexamine classical narratological concepts or to look forward to various narratological possible worlds. That future, dear reader, will depend on you. References Alber 2005 Alber, Jan: “Narrativization,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, edited by David Herman, Manfred Jahn and Marie-Laure Ryan, 386–87 (London: Routledge). Alber/Fludernik [in print a] Alber, Jan/Fludernik, Monika: “Introduction,” in Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses, edited by Jan Alber and Monika Fludernik (Columbus: Ohio State University Press). Alber/Fludernik [in print b] Alber, Jan/Fludernik, Monika (eds.): Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses (Columbus: Ohio State University Press). Booth 1983 [1961] Booth, Wayne: The Rhetoric of Fiction, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Brooks 1992 Brooks, Peter: Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Brooks 2000 Brooks, Peter: Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Brooks/Gerwitz 1996 Brooks, Peter/Gerwitz, Paul: Law’s Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in Law (New Haven: Yale University Press). Bruner 1991a Bruner, Jerome: Acts of Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).

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Bruner 1991b Bruner, Jerome: “The Narrative Construction of Reality,” in Critical Inquiry 18: 1–21. Carr 1986 Carr, David: Time, Narrative, and History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Cohn 1978 Cohn, Dorrit: Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Cornils/Schernus 2003 Cornils, Anja/Schernus, Wilhelm: “On the Relationship between the Theory of the Novel, Narrative Theory, and Narratology,” in: What is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory, edited by Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Müller, 137–73 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Coulson 2001 Coulson, Seana: Semantic Leaps: Frame-Shifting and Conceptual Blending in Meaning Construction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Damasio 1999 Damasio, Antonio: The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (San Diego: Harcourt). Dannenberg 2008 Dannenberg, Hilary: Coincidence and Counterfactuality: Plotting Time and Space in Narrative Fiction (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Dennett 1991 Dennett, Daniel Clement: Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little, Brown). D’hoker/Martens 2008 D’hoker, Elke/Martens, Gunther: Narrative Reliability in the Twentieth-Century First-Person Novel (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). van Dijk 1985 van Dijk, Teun (ed.): Discourse and Literature (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins). Fauconnier/Turner 1999 Fauconnier, Gilles/Turner, Mark: “A Mechanism of Creativity,” in Poetics Today 20.3: 297–418. Fauconnier/Turner 2002 Fauconnier, Gilles/Turner, Mark: The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities (New York: Basic Books). Fauconnier/Turner 2008 Fauconnier, Gilles/Turner, Mark: “Rethinking Metaphor,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, edited by Ray Gibbs, Jr., 53-66 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Fitzmaurice/Taavitsainen 2007 Fitzmaurice, Susan/Taavitsainen, Irma (eds.): Methods in Historical Pragmatics (Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter). Fludernik 1993 Fludernik, Monika: The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction: The Linguistic Representation of Speech and Consciousness (London: Routledge).

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Fludernik 1994 Fludernik, Monika (ed.): Style 28.3, Special Issue on ‘Second-Person Narrative.’ Fludernik 1996 Fludernik, Monika: Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology (London: Routledge). Fludernik 1999 Fludernik, Monika: “Defining (In)sanity: The Narrator of the Yellow Wallpaper and the Question of Unreliability,” in Grenzüberschreitungen: Narratologie im Kontext/ Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Context, edited by Walter Grünzweig and Andreas Solbach, 75–95 (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag). Fludernik 2000 Fludernik, Monika: “Beyond Structuralism in Narratology: Recent Developments and New Horizons in Narrative Theory,” in Anglistik 11.1: 83–96. Fludernik 2003 Fludernik, Monika: “Natural Narratology and Cognitive Parameters,” in Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences, edited by David Herman, 243–67 (Stanford: CSLI Publications). Fludernik 2005 Fludernik, Monika: “Histories of Narrative Theory (II): From Structuralism to the Present,” in A Companion to Narrative Theory, edited by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz, 36–59 (Malden: Blackwell). Fludernik 2007 Fludernik, Monika: “Letters as Narrative: Narrative Patterns and Episode Structure in Early Letters, 1400 to 1650,” in Methods in Historical Pragmatics, edited by Susan Fitzmaurice and Irma Taavitsainen, 241–66 (Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter). Fludernik 2008 Fludernik, Monika: “Narrative and Drama,” in Theorizing Narrativity, edited by John Pier and José Angel García Landa, 355–83 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Fludernik 2009 Fludernik, Monika: “The Cage Metaphor: Extending Narratology into Corpus Studies and Opening It to the Analysis of Imagery,” in Narratology in the Age of Cross-Disciplinary Narrative Research, edited by Sandra Heinen and Roy Sommer, 109–28 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Fludernik 2010a Fludernik, Monika: “Narratology in the 21st Century: The Cognitive Approach to Narrative,” in PMLA 125.4: 1–12. Fludernik 2010b Fludernik, Monika: “Naturalizing the Unnatural: A View from Blending Theory,” in Journal of Literary Semantics 39: 1–27. Fludernik/Margolin 2004 Fludernik, Monika/Margolin, Uri (eds.): Style: German Narratology I 38.2. Freeman 1995 Freeman, Margaret: “Metaphor Making Meaning: Dickinson’s Conceptual Universe,” in Journal of Pragmatics 24: 643–66.

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Freeman 2000 Freeman, Margaret: “Poetry and the Scope of Metaphor: Toward a Cognitive Theory of Literature,” in Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: A Cognitive Perspective, edited by Antonio Barcelona, 253–81 (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter). Freeman 2002 Freeman, Margaret: “Cognitive Mapping in Literary Analysis,” in Style 36.3: 466–83. Gavins/Steen 2003 Gavins, Joanna/Steen, Gerard (eds.): Cognitive Poetics in Practice (London/New York: Routledge). Genette 1980 [1972] Genette, Gérard: Discours du récit [Narrative Discourse] (Paris: Points). Gerwitz 1996 Gerwitz, Paul: “Narrative and Rhetoric in Law,” in Law’s Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in Law, edited by Peter Brooks and Paul Gerwitz, 2–13 (New Haven: Yale University Press). Gerrig/Zimbardo 2002 Gerrig, Richard/Zimbardo, Philip: “Perception,” in Foundations of Cognitive Psychology, edited by Daniel Levitin, 133–88 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Good 1994 Good, Byron J.: Medicine, Rationality and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Heinen/Sommer 2009 Heinen, Sandra/Sommer, Roy (eds.): Narratology in the Age of Cross-Disciplinary Research (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Herman 1997 Herman, David: “Scripts, Sequences, and Stories: Elements of a Postclassical Narratology,” in PMLA 112.5: 1046–59. Herman 1999 Herman, David (ed.): Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis (Columbus: Ohio State University Press). Herman 2002 Herman, David: Story Logic. Problems and Possibilities of Narrative (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Herman 2003 Herman, David (ed.): Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences (Stanford: CSLI Publications). Herman 2004 Herman, David: “Toward a Transmedial Narratology,” in Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling, edited by Marie-Laure Ryan, 47–75 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Herman 2005 Herman, David: “History of Narrative Theory (I): A Genealogy of Early Developments,” in A Companion to Narrative Theory, edited by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz, 19–35 (Malden: Blackwell).

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Herman 2009a Herman, David: “Narrative Ways of Worldmaking,” in Narratology in the Age of Cross-Disciplinary Narrative Research, edited by Sandra Heinen and Roy Sommer, 71–87 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Herman 2009b Herman, David: “Cognitive Narratology,” in Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn, John Pier, Wolf Schmid and Jörg Schönert, 31–43 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Hogan 2003a Hogan, Patrick Colm: Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts: A Guide for Humanists (New York/London: Routledge). Hogan 2003b Hogan, Patrick Colm: The Mind and its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hopper/Traugott 1993 Hopper, Paul J./Traugott, Elizabeth Closs: Grammaticalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hrushovski (Harshav) 1976 Hrushovski (Harshav), Benjamin: “Poetics, Criticism, Science: Remarks on the Fields and Responsibilities of the Study of Literature,” in PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 1: 3–35. Hühn 2005 Hühn, Peter: “Plotting the Lyric: Forms of Narration in Poetry,” in Theory into Poetry: New Approaches to the Lyric, edited by Eva Müller-Zettelmann and Margarete Rubik, 147–72 (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi). Hühn 2009a Hühn, Peter et al. (eds.): Handbook of Narratology (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Hühn 2009b Hühn, Peter et al. (eds.): Point of View, Perspective, and Focalization: Modeling Mediation in Narrative (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Hühn/Kiefer 2005 Hühn, Peter/Kiefer, Jens: The Narratological Analysis of Lyric Poetry (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Hyde 1997 Hyde, Alan: Bodies of Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Jahn 1997 Jahn, Manfred: “Frames, Preferences, and the Reading of Third-Person Narratives: Towards a Cognitive Narratology,” in Poetics Today 18.4: 441–68. Jahn 1999 Jahn, Manfred: “‘Speak friend, and enter’: Garden Paths, Artificial Intelligence, and Cognitive Narratology,” in Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis, edited by David Herman, 167–94 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press). Jahn 2003 Jahn, Manfred: “‘Awake! Open your eyes!’ Narratological Reflections on the Cognitive Logic of External and Internal Stories,” in Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences, edited by David Herman, 195–213 (Stanford: CSLI Publications).

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Jahn 2004 Jahn, Manfred: “Foundational Issues in Teaching Cognitive Narratology,” in European Journal of English Studies 8.1: 105–27. Jucker 1995 Jucker, Andreas (ed.): Historical Pragmatics: Pragmatic Developments in the History of English (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins). Jucker 2009 Jucker, Andreas (ed.): Early Modern English News Discourse: Newspapers, Pamphlets and Scientific News Discourse (Amsterdam: John Benjamins). Jucker/Taavitsainen 2008 Jucker, Andreas/Taavitsainen, Irma (eds.): Speech Acts in the History of English (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins). Keen 2007 Keen, Suzanne: Empathy and the Novel (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press). Kindt/Müller 2003 Kindt, Tom/Müller, Hans-Harald: What is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Klein/Martínez 2009 Klein, Christian/Martínez, Matías (eds.): Wirklichkeitserzählungen: Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens (Stuttgart: Metzler). Kleinman 1989 [1988] Kleinman, Arthur: The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition (New York: Basic Books). Kortmann 2005 Kortmann, Bernd: English Linguistics: Essentials (Berlin: Cornelsen). Kövecses 2005 Kövecses, Zoltán: Metaphor and Culture: Universality and Variation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kramnick 2007 Kramnick, Jonathan Brody: “Empiricism, Cognitive Science, and the Novel,” in The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 48.3: 263–85. Lakoff 1987 Lakoff, George: Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Lakoff/Johnson 1980 Lakoff, George/Johnson, Mark: Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Langacker 1987 Langacker, Ronald: Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume 1: Theoretical Prerequisites (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Langacker 1993 Langacker, Ronald: Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume 2: Descriptive Application (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Marnette 2005 Marnette, Sophie: Speech and Thought Representation in French: Concepts and Strategies (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins).

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Margolin 2004 Margolin, Uri (ed.): Style: German Narratology II 38.3. Mattingly 1998 Mattingly, Cheryl: Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Mattingly/Garro 2001 Mattingly, Cheryl/Garro, Linda C. (eds.): Narrative & the Cultural Construction of Illness & Healing (Berkeley: University of California Press). McHale 2005 McHale, Brian: “Ghosts and Monsters: On the (Im)Possibility of Narrating the History of Narratology,” in A Companion to Narrative Theory, edited by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz, 60–71 (Oxford: Blackwell). Meurman-Solin 1995 Meurman-Solin, Anneli: “Marking of Stance in Early Modern English Imaginative Narration,” in Narrative Strategies in Early English Fiction, edited by Wolfgang Görtschacher and Holger Klein, 25–52 (Lewiston, NY/Salzburg: Edwin Mellen). Meurman-Solin 2007 Meurman-Solin, Anneli: Corpus of Scottish Correspondence, 1500-1730. An online manuscript-based tagged corpus, with an introduction and manual, auxiliary databases and software for data retrieval and presentation (Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of English). Meuter 2009 Meuter, Norbert: “Narration in Various Disciplines,” in Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn et al., 242–62 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Nevalainen/Tanskanen 2007 Nevalainen, Terttu/Tanskanen, Sanna-Kaisa (eds.): Letter Writing (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins). Nünning 1993 Nünning, Ansgar: “Renaissance eines anthropomorphisierten Passepartouts oder Nachruf auf ein literaturkritisches Phantom? Überlegungen und Alternativen zum Konzept des ‘implied author,’” in Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 67: 1–25. Nünning 1998 Nünning, Ansgar: “Unreliable Narration zur Einführung: Grundzüge einer kognitiv-narratologischen Theorie und Analyse des unglaubwürdigen Erzählens,” in Unreliable Narration: Studien zur Theorie und Praxis unglaubwürdigen Erzählens in der englischsprachigen Erzählliteratur, edited by Ansgar Nünning, 3–40 (Trier: WVT). Nünning 1999 Nünning, Ansgar: “Reconceptualizing the Theory and Generic Scope of Unreliable Narration,” in Reconceptualizing Trends in Narratological Research, edited by John Pier, 63–84 (Tours: Tours University Press). Nünning 2003 Nünning, Ansgar: “Narratology or Narratologies? Taking Stock of Recent Developments, Critique and Modest Proposals for Future Uses of the Term,” in What is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory,

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edited by Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Müller, 239–75 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Nünning 2005 Nünning, Ansgar: “Reconceptualizing Unreliable Narration: Synthesizing Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches,” in A Companion to Narrative Theory, edited by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz, 89–107 (Malden: Blackwell). Nünning 2009a Nünning, Ansgar: “Surveying Contextualist and Cultural Narratologies: Towards an Outline of Approaches, Concepts and Potentials,” in Narratology in the Age of Cross-Disciplinary Narrative Research, edited by Sandra Heinen and Roy Sommer, 48–70 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Nünning 2009b Nünning, Ansgar: “Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises: On the Functions of Metaphors as Figurative Knowledge and Mininarrations,” in Metaphors: Shaping Culture and Theory. REAL: The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature, vol. 25, edited by Sibylle Baumbach, Herbert Grabes and Ansgar Nünning, 292–62 (Tübingen: Narr). Nünning 1998 Nünning, Vera: “Die Historische Variabilität von Werten und Normen: The Vicar of Wakefield als Testfall für eine kulturgeschichtliche Erzählforschung,” in Unreliable Narration: Studien zur Theorie und Praxis unglaubwürdigen Erzählens in der englischsprachigen Erzählliteratur, edited by Ansgar Nünning, 257–85 (Trier: WVT). Nünning/Nünning 2002a Nünning, Vera/Nünning, Ansgar (eds.): Neue Ansätze in der Erzähltheorie (Trier: WVT). Nünning/Nünning 2002b Nünning, Vera/Nünning, Ansgar (eds.): Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär (Trier: WVT). Nünning/Sommer 2002 Nünning, Ansgar/Sommer, Roy: “Drama und Narratologie: Die Entwicklung erzähltheoretischer Modelle und Kategorien für die Dramenanalyse,” in Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär, edited by Vera Nünning and Ansgar Nünning, 105–28 (Trier: WVT). Nünning/Sommer 2008 Nünning, Ansgar/Sommer, Roy: “Diegetic and Mimetic Narrativity: Some Further Steps towards a Narratology of Drama,” in Theorizing Narrativity, edited by John Pier and José Angel García Landa, 331–54 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Olson 2003 Olson, Greta: “Reconsidering Unreliability: Fallible and Untrustworthy Narrators,” in Narrative 11.1: 93–109. Olson 2009 Olson, Greta: “Metaphors and Cultural Transference: Mediating Cognitivist and Culturalist Approaches,” in Metaphors Shaping Culture and Theory. REAL: The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature, vol. 25, edited by Sibylle Baumbach, Herbert Grabes and Ansgar Nünning, 17–31 (Tübingen: Narr).

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Olson 2010 Olson, Greta: “De-Americanizing Law-and-Literature Narratives: Opening up the Story,” in Law and Literature 22.2: 338–64. Page 2010 Page, Ruth (ed.): “Introduction,” in New Perspectives on Narrative and Multimodality, 1–13 (London: Routledge). Palmer 2004 Palmer, Alan: Fictional Minds (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Phelan/Martin 1999 Phelan, James / Martin, Mary Patricia: “The Lessons of ‘Weymouth’: Homodiegesis, Unreliability, Ethics, and The Remains of the Day,” in Narratologies, edited by David Herman, 88–110 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press). Phelan/Rabinowitz 2005 Phelan, James / Rabinowitz, Peter J. (eds.): A Companion to Narrative Theory (Oxford: Blackwell). Prince 1982 Prince, Gerald: Narratology: The Form and Function of Narrative (Berlin: Mouton). Rabatel 2009 Rabatel, Alain: “A Brief Introduction to an Enunciative Approach to Point of View,” in Point of View, Perspective, and Focalization, edited by Peter Hühn, Wolf Schmid and Jörg Schönert, 79–98 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Richardson 1987 Richardson, Brian: “‘Time is Out of Joint’: Narrative Models and the Temporality of the Drama,” in Poetics Today 8: 299–309. Richardson 1988 Richardson, Brian: “Point of View in Drama: Diegetic Monologue, Unreliable Narrators, and the Author’s Voice on Stage,” in Comparative Drama 22: 193– 214. Richardson 1997 Richardson, Brian: “Beyond Poststructuralism: Theory of Character, the Personae of Modern Drama, and the Antinomies of Critical Theory,” in Modern Drama 40: 86–99. Richardson 2001 Richardson, Brian: “Voice and Narration in Postmodern Drama,” in New Literary History 32: 681–94. Rimmon-Kenan 1983 Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith: Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (London: Methuen). Rivara 2004 Rivara, René: “A Plea for a Narrator-Centered Narratology,” in The Dynamics of Narrative Form: Studies in Anglo-American Narratology, edited by John Pier, 83– 114 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Ron 1979 Ron, Moshe: “A Reading of ‘The Real Thing,’” in Yale French Studies 58: 190– 212. Rosch 1983 Rosch, Eleanor: “Prototype Classification and Logical Classification: The Two Systems,” in New Trends in Cognitive Representation: Challenges to Piaget’s Theory,

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edited by Ellin Kofsky Scholnick, 73–86 (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates). Rudnytsky/Charon 2008 Rudnytsky, Peter L./Charon, Rita: Psychoanalysis and Narrative Medicine (Albany: State University of New York Press). Ryan 1987 Ryan, Marie-Laure: “On the Window Structure of Narrative Discourse,” in Semiotica 64.1-2: 59–81. Ryan 2004 Ryan, Marie-Laure (ed.): Narrative Across Media: The Languages of Storytelling (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Ryan 2005 Ryan, Marie-Laure: “On the Theoretical Foundations of Transmedial Narratology,” in Narratology Beyond Literary Criticism: Mediality, Disciplinarity, edited by Jan Christoph Meister, 1–23 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Ryan 2006 Ryan, Marie-Laure: Avatars of Story (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Ryan 2009 Ryan, Marie-Laure: “Narration in Various Media,” in Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn et al., 263–81 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Schank/Abelson 1977 Schank, Roger C./Abelson, Robert P.: Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding: An Inquiry into Human Knowledge, The Artificial Intelligence Series (Hillsday, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc.). Schmid 2009a Schmid, Wolf (ed.): Russische Proto-Narratologie: Texte in kommentierten Übersetzungen (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Schmid 2009b Schmid, Wolf (ed.): Slavische Erzähltheorie: Russische und Tschechische Ansätze (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Semino/Culpeper 2002 Semino, Elena/Culpeper, Jonathan (eds.): Cognitve Stylistics (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins). Sternberg 1978 Sternberg, Meir: Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press). Sternberg 1982 Sternberg, Meir: “Proteus in Quotation-Land: Mimesis and the Forms of Reported Discourse,” in Poetics Today 3.2: 107–56. Sternberg 1990 Sternberg, Meir: “Telling in Time (I): Chronology and Narrative Theory,” in Poetics Today 11.4: 901–48. Sternberg 1992 Sternberg, Meir: “Telling in Time (II): Chronology, Teleology, Narrativity,” in Poetics Today 13.3: 463–541. Sternberg 2001 Sternberg, Meir: “How Narrativity Makes a Difference,” Narrative 9.2: 115–22.

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PART I NARRATIVE AND THE MIND

RICHARD J. GERRIG (Stony Brook University)

Conscious and Unconscious Processes in Readers’ Narrative Experiences 1 Abstract Most cognitive science research on the experience of narratives has focused on unconscious processes: Theories have centered on the automatic processes that provide the backbone of readers’ experiences of texts. This essay outlines a theoretical approach that recognizes the interplay between unconscious and conscious processes. In particular, I sketch a dualprocess account of literary reading. Dual-process accounts—which have become ubiquitous in contemporary psychology—assert that people have two classes of processes that guide their life experiences: System 1 yields judgments based on intuition; System 2 yields judgments based on reflection. I use this dual-process account to explore particular aspects of literary reading. 1. Introduction The purpose of this essay is to explore the cognitive processes that allow readers to have rich narrative experiences. The particular focus will be on the distinction between unconscious processes—those that operate without effort, outside readers’ awareness—and conscious processes—those that require readers’ effort and involve deliberate reflection. The importance of this distinction may be illustrated by readers’ responses to two brief paragraphs from Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story, Interpreter of Maladies (1999): “Look,” Bobby said as the car began to gather speed. He pointed with his finger to the tall trees that lined the road. “Look.” “Monkeys!” Ronny shrieked. “Wow!” (Lahiri 1999: 47)

To create a vivid mental representation of this scene, readers must go beyond the information the text provides. It is essential, for example, that they relate Bobby’s acts of verbal and literal pointing to Ronny’s detection of the monkeys. It is quite likely that readers’ unconscious processes pro–––––––––––– 1

This material is based on work supported by National Science Foundation Grant 0325188. I thank Matthew Jacovina and Greta Olson for their astute comments on this essay.

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vided that connection. Readers might also create a mental image of monkeys up in trees or reflect on exactly how excited a young boy (which is what Ronny is) would be to spot monkeys moving out in the open. To have these fuller experiences, it is quite likely that readers engaged conscious reflection. Much cognitive psychological research has been intended to delineate the unconscious processes that provide the backbone of narrative experiences (for a review, see Gerrig/Egidi 2003). My premise is that the insights generated by that body of research have the potential to inform current work in narratology. I hope, in particular, to provide an expanded notion of the scope of unconscious processes as a way to spur interdisciplinary discussion. I focus on three topics. First, I consider how readers’ general background knowledge wields a moment-by-moment impact on their narrative experiences. Second, I discuss the tacit judgments readers make with respect to which narrative events seem normal or abnormal. Finally, I describe the unconscious memory processes that disentangle the elements of texts. The perspective I take on narrative processing is known as memorybased processing (McKoon/Ratcliff 1992; Gerrig/O’Brien 2005). As we shall see, this approach emphasizes the role of ordinary memory processes in narrative processing. In each section of this essay, I describe experiments that follow out of this perspective and I wish to provide enough details on them that the research methodologies that lead to particular conclusions become clear. For each experiment, I provide a single sample story from the roughly 20 to 30 stories the experiments actually used. Researchers on text processing involve an appropriate number of participants in each experiment to demonstrate that a conclusion generalizes to a broad sample of readers. Similarly, we write an appropriate number of stories to support the claim that our experiments capture a feature of readers’ experiences that generalizes across texts. To motivate claims about conscious and unconscious processes, I will largely use excerpts from Interpreter of Maladies. Lahiri’s story describes a day trip the Das family takes to tourist sites in India with Mr. Kapasi as their guide. The story is elegantly written but otherwise perfectly ordinary from the perspective of a cognitive psychologist. That is, I selected the story before seeking the examples I would need to illustrate this essay’s topics. Because the phenomena I discuss are quite ubiquitous, Interpreter of Maladies provided a trove of relevant illustrations.

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2. Readers’ General Knowledge For readers to understand virtually all narratives, they must use their general knowledge—information stored in long-term memory—to supplement the surface content of the text. This uncontroversial claim is exemplified by the small excerpt from Interpreter of Maladies with which I opened the chapter. Consider even the sentence, “‘Look,’ Bobby said as the car began to gather speed.” To have a full understanding of this sentence, readers need to have prior experiences with the concepts of cars and what it means for them to gather speed. For virtually every element of Lahiri’s story, a similar case could be made that readers’ general knowledge underlies a rich experience of the narrative. Moreover, much of the impact of general knowledge occurs outside readers’ conscious awareness. When researchers conceptualize the effect of general knowledge on narrative experiences they most often invoke schemas—organized clusters of information in memory (for a review, see Gerrig 1993). The invocation of schemas goes back to Bartlett (1932), who demonstrated, for example, the manner in which the accuracy of readers’ recall of stories is affected by their prior cultural knowledge. Over time, researchers enumerated a variety of types of memory structures that readers could potentially bring to bear on their moment-by-moment experiences of texts (e.g., Schank/ Abelson 1977). The basic claim that motivated these earlier analyses remains sound: Readers’ general knowledge is critical to narrative processing. However, research in cognitive psychology motivates a shift away from the longstanding emphasis on the static, bounded memory representations typified by schemas. This shift has been most firmly established in research on categorization. Consider the question of how someone decides that a novel object in the environment is a table. Historically, theorists suggested that people have encoded a prototype in memory—a representation of the most central or average member of a category (Rosch 1978). On that view, an individual would compare perceptual information to stored prototypes to identify an object as a table. This invocation of a prototype parallels the claim for text processing that people would bring a schema for tables to bear on their narrative experiences. Suppose one reads this sentence from Interpreter of Maladies: As the Das family settled together under a magenta umbrella fringed with white and orange tassels, and placed their orders with one of the waiters who marched about in tricornered caps, Mr. Kapasi reluctantly headed toward a neighboring table. (Lahiri 1999: 54)

What table would readers encode into their representation of this scene? A classic answer would be that the prototype would serve as a starting point.

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However, contemporary research on categorization suggests that people rarely encode prototypes. Rather, people retain memories for exemplars—the diverse experiences they have with tokens of a particular category (Smits/Storms/Rosseel/De Boeck 2002; Nosofsky/Stanton 2005). On this view, when people see an object in the environment they compare it to exemplars stored in memory. An individual would recognize a novel object as a table because its features match the features of those exemplars. This exemplar view has obtained broad empirical support. What remains controversial are formal aspects of the process: What determines how exemplars emerge from memory? What similarity metric applies? These issues need not be settled to see how an exemplar approach would explain the aspects of narrative processing that have historically been attributed to schemas. Recall Mr. Kapasi “reluctantly [heading] toward a neighboring table.” An exemplar approach suggests that this sentence would prompt readers to access a diversity of memory traces that relate to table in this particular context in which it occurs. Given the broader context (e.g., “under a magenta umbrella fringed with white and orange tassels”), we might expect those memory traces to center on some sort of picnic table. (What came to my mind, at least upon conscious reflection, was the type of picnic table that has a hole through the middle for the umbrella’s pole. If I had a prototype table, I do not believe it would be a table of that sort.) On both the classic schema account and the exemplar account I am outlining here, readers’ narrative experiences would be enriched by knowledge stored in long-term memory. The most important difference between the accounts is that the exemplar view conceptualizes this process as much more fluid. Rather than invoking static, bounded schemas, the exemplar view suggests that the particular narrative contexts in which information appears helps to determine the memory traces that will flesh out readers’ representations (cf. Rizzella/O’Brien 2002). From this perspective, it is possible to give insight into how knowledge in long-term memory affects readers’ moment-by-moment experiences of narratives. Let’s consider, in particular, the inferences that people encode while they read a text. Any text gives rise to an unlimited number of possible inferences. For example, when Interpreter of Maladies first introduces Mr. and Mrs. Das they are bickering. Readers are likely to infer that they are bickering through the medium of spoken language which, in turn, permits the inferences that Mr. and Mrs. Das have mouths, tongues, vocal chords, and lungs. All these inferences are quite likely to be valid. However, it is difficult to imagine that readers encode inferences about tongues and so on without conscious reflection.

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Quite early in the study of text processing, researchers accepted this principled argument that readers do not encode all possible inferences (e.g., Rieger 1975). Given this point, the urgent question became, which inferences do they encode? Thus, theories in this domain have often concerned themselves with defining the exact range of inferences that are the product of unconscious processes (for reviews, see Guéraud/O’Brien 2005). Some theorists have attempted to define functional categories of inferences (e.g., predictive inferences, instrumental inferences) that readers inevitably do or do not encode (e.g., Graesser/Singer/Trabasso 1994). However, the memory-based processing view asserts that the range of unconscious inferences is not defined by discourse functions. We argue that “the only automatic processes readers bring to bear on text processing are ordinary memory processes” (Gerrig/O’Brien 2005: 228). An important implication of this claim is that readers’ unconscious inferences emerge only from information that is readily available from memory (McKoon/Ratcliff 1992). To make this claim more concrete, I offer an example from the realm of predictive inferences. Narrative texts provide readers with ample opportunities to encode inferences about what is likely to lie in characters’ futures. For example, in Interpreter of Maladies, Mr. Kapasi provides his address to Mrs. Das at her request. Mr. Kapasi subsequently imagines a future in which he and Mrs. Das become correspondents and she is dazzled by the anecdotes he shares. As Mr. Kapasi’s fantasy becomes more elaborate, one becomes increasingly sure—one makes the mental prediction—that that future will not come about. The empirical question is whether such a prediction emerges from conscious or unconscious processes. To address this question, McKoon and Ratcliff (1992) asked experimental participants to read single sentences that stripped the issue of predictive inferences down to its essence. Consider this very brief story: “The director and the cameraman were ready to shoot close-ups when suddenly the actress fell from the 14th story.” The question at hand is whether unconscious processes prompt readers to encode the inference that the actress would die. McKoon and Ratcliff used a mixture of experimental tasks to address this question. For example, in one experiment participants had to respond as quickly as possible to the question of whether the word “dead” had appeared in the sentence. If participants had encoded the inference that the actress would die, we would expect them to have more difficulty denying that the word “dead” had appeared than they would if the sentence did not prompt that inference. This proved to be the case. However, from their full range of tasks, McKoon and Ratcliff concluded that participants do not encode an inference as specific as “the actress will

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die.” Rather, readers appeared to encode the more general inference that “something bad will happen to the actress.” This outcome makes sense once we acknowledge the role of diverse memory traces in generating inferences. Most individuals are likely to have a mixture of information stored in long-term memory that relates to falls from various heights and their consequences. That collection of memory traces will almost certainly not provide an unequivocal answer to the question of whether the actress will die. Consider Alcides Moreno, who survived a fall of 47 stories by clinging to his window washer’s platform. The accident occurred in December of 2007. By January of 2008, the New York Times was heralding his miraculous recovery (Barron 2008). Given knowledge of that incident, the extremity of the actress’s fate seems even less certain. Still, the bulk of most readers’ memory traces—those that come readily to mind—likely support the inference that “something bad will happen.” Based on this analysis, we would expect unconscious processes to yield inferences exactly in those circumstances in which texts prompt access to sets of memory traces that are highly consistent about the relationships between the present moment and likely consequences. Consider this story: Carol was a single mother with two young children. She had to work two jobs to make ends meet. She worked full-time as a teacher and part-time as a waitress. She hated not having much free time. Carol was known for her short temper and her tendency to act without thinking. She never thought about the consequences of her actions, so she often suffered negative repercussions. She refused to let people walk all over her. In fact, she had just gotten a ticket for road rage. She decided she would never put up with anyone that was not nice to her. One particular night, Carol had an extremely rude customer. He complained about the spaghetti, and he yelled at Carol as if it were her fault. Carol lifted the spaghetti above his head.

Peracchi and O’Brien (2004) had experimental participants read stories of that sort. After each story, participants were asked to pronounce single words presented on a computer screen. In general, people are able to name words more quickly when the concepts are relatively more accessible in memory. For the story with Carol and her rude customer, participants found it relatively easy to speak the word “dump.” The story provides a model in which general knowledge—the memory traces that emerge from readers’ memory—strongly support that prediction. Now consider a second version of the story: Carol was a single mother with two young children. She had to work two jobs to make ends meet. She worked full-time as a teacher and part-time as a waitress. She hated not having much free time. Carol was known for her ability to peacefully settle any confrontation. She would never even think to solve her problems

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with physical violence. She taught her students and her own children how to solve problems through conversation. She believed this was an effective way to stop the increasing violence in the schools. Carol also helped other parents learn to deal with their anger. One particular night, Carol had an extremely rude customer. He complained about the spaghetti, and he yelled at Carol as if it were her fault. Carol lifted the spaghetti above his head.

In this latter case, the protagonist’s general pacifism alters the sample of information that emerges from memory. As such, readers are less likely to encode the inference “dump” (i.e., they are slower to pronounce that word). Note that the process remains the same: Each text evokes a certain range of traces from long-term memory. However, the identities of those memory traces determine the likelihood that readers will encode particular inferences. Because each reader has a unique store of general knowledge, we have a ready explanation for individual differences in moment-by-moment experiences of narratives. For example, a reader’s particular background knowledge will determine whether specific inferences require conscious attention. Consider an inference that readers of Interpreter of Maladies must encode. Early in the story, Mrs. Das arrives back at the car with a snack for herself: “She walked slowly, carrying some puffed rice tossed with peanuts and chili peppers in a large packet made from newspapers” (46). Somewhat later, she eats the snack while chatting with Mr. Kapasi: “What would you like to know, madame?” “I don’t know,” she shrugged, munching on some puffed rice and licking the mustard oil from the corners of her mouth. (51)

“Mustard oil” is not included in the original description of the puffed rice. For some readers, the inference that links mustard oil to the puffed rice will arise from their own experiences of eating similar instantiations of puffed rice. Therefore, the inference necessary to make sense of “mustard oil” could be the product of unconscious processing. For readers without appropriate puffed rice knowledge, the inference is more likely to require conscious problem solving. Interpreter of Maladies provides several instances in which differences in readers’ and characters’ background knowledge are implicitly or explicitly marked. For example, at the story’s outset the narration conveys what Mr. Kapasi’s “noticed” about the Das family. Included among those impressions is this census of their children: “In addition to Tina they had two boys, Ronny and Bobby, who appeared very close in age and had teeth covered in a network of flashing silver wires” (43). Many readers will possess the background knowledge to infer that the “network of flashing silver wires” represents the sort of braces that are commonplace for children in the United States. However, the description is framed in such a

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fashion that it seems clear that such an inference (about the function of the wires) is not readily available to Mr. Kapasi. Presumably, some readers would find themselves similarly unable to assimilate the network of wires to information in memory. As a final example, consider a question one of the sons, Bobby, poses to his father: “Daddy, why is the driver sitting on the wrong side in this car, too?” (48). Mr. Das explains the question to Mr. Kapasi, “In America, you know… it confuses them.” The story continues: “Oh yes, I am well aware,” Mr. Kapasi said. As delicately as he could, he shifted gears again, accelerating as they approached a hill in the road. “I see it on Dallas, the steering wheels are on the left-hand side.”

For this excerpt, it is possible to posit readers with many different samples of general knowledge. Some might have no prior knowledge that countries differ in the position of the driver (because all their driving experience has been, for example, in India or in the United States). Some might have the British example of drivers on the right, but not know that drivers in India follow that practice. Some will have full knowledge of the relevant driving practices. Each type of background knowledge will define the extent to which readers engage conscious processes to see themselves through this moment in the text. In this section, I have revisited the claim that readers’ general knowledge wields a pervasive unconscious impact on their narrative experiences. I have argued that this impact is better conceptualized as the product of sets of memory traces that texts recruit rather than as preexisting memory structures such as schemas. This reconceptualization of how general knowledge functions provides a straightforward explanation of individual differences in narrative experiences. Because theories of text processing most often disagree with respect to their claims about unconscious processes, those processes have been the predominant focus of this section. Readers, of course, always have the privilege of engaging conscious processes to bring additional knowledge to bear on their experiences of a narrative. 3. Readers’ Judgment Processes When people read narratives, they have abundant opportunities to make implicit or explicit judgments. When we read, “She [Mrs. Das] did not hold the little girl’s hand as they walked to the rest room” (43), we might think, “Mediocre mother.” When we read, “Both the man and the bullocks were emaciated” (49), we might think, “How sad.” When we read that “Mr. Das and the children” became “surrounded by a growing num-

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ber of monkeys” (62), we might think, “Take care!” All these judgments are plausible responses to the narrative moments. The goal for a theory of text processing would be to determine which types of judgments readers encode spontaneously in their moment-by-moment narrative experiences. Researchers have demonstrated a clear distinction between the conscious and unconscious processes that generate judgments and decisions. Empirical work in this area strongly supports the claim that people have two distinct classes of processes (Kahneman/Frederick 2002; Sloman 1996, 2002; Stanovich/West 2000). Although these two classes have been labeled in diverse ways, I adhere to the simple designations of System 1 and System 2. The judgments produced by System 1 are based on intuitions. System 1 processes are automatic, rapid, and effortless. The judgments produced by System 2 are based on reflection. System 2 processes are controlled, slow, and effortful. A diversity of human performance is determined by the interplay of these two systems of processes: Research supports dual-process accounts of phenomena such as persuasion, person perception, and self-knowledge (see Chaiken/Trope 1999). The dual-process perspective has broad implications for theories of narrative processing (see Gerrig/Egidi [in preparation]). Here, I want to focus on a particularly fundamental type of judgment: Readers’ assessments of what seems normal in a particular context. Consider an example from Interpreter of Maladies. The Das’s youngest child, their daughter Tina, has arrived back from the restroom. However, Mrs. Das—Mina—has yet to return: “I don’t have to go to the bathroom anymore,” Tina announced. “Where’s Mina?” Mr. Das asked. Mr. Kapasi found it strange that Mr. Das should refer to his wife by her first name when speaking to the little girl. (45)

I suspect that most readers in the United States will also find it strange for Mr. Das to use his wife’s first name. At least in my experience, parents largely still refer to each other by their role names (i.e., variants of mother and father). Mr. Das’s utterance violates a norm and, thereby, calls attention to itself even before the text reports what Mr. Kapasi found strange. In narrative, as well as in real-life, there are any number of circumstances that can seem normal or not. Besides judging whether a parent, for example, is called by the right term, people judge whether actions seem normal given characters’ goals, whether the consequences of actions seem normal given the context in which they are executed, and so on. To explain how people make judgments about what feels normal, Kahneman and Miller (1986) introduced norm theory. Before Kahneman and Miller originated their theory, people had most often conceptualized norms as memory structures akin to schemas—static representations in

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memory. Kahneman and Miller acknowledged that there might be some domains in which people store and generate norm-based expectations. However, their major theoretical innovation was to describe a process whereby people construct norms “on the fly in a backward process” (150). They suggested that “reasoning flows not only forward, from anticipation and hypothesis to confirmation or revision, but also backward, from the experience to what it reminds us of or makes us think about” (137). Their important claim is that an experience recruits a set of memory traces against which the experience is compared. Thus, when Mr. Das refers to his wife, that experience recruits representations of past situations in which fathers have referred to mothers in front of their children. The current instance (i.e., “Where’s Mina?”) mismatches that collection of memory traces. This mismatch gives rise to the feeling that something is not normal. 2 Giovanna Egidi and I have begun to explore the context readers use to make judgments of what is normal in the course of narrative experiences (Egidi/Gerrig 2006). These experiments afford an opportunity to illustrate the distinct products of unconscious (System 1) and conscious (System 2) processes. As exemplified in Table 1, each of our stories stated an explicit goal (e.g., “[John] wanted to cross the border.”). Different versions of the story provided either moderate or urgent motivation toward the goal. In addition, each story provided an implicit statement of a second goal (e.g., “When [John] stopped to buy gas, he realized that he was tired.”). Table 1 presents the full text of each version, with one of two outcomes: Either John drives on or he does not. In our initial experiment, we asked participants to read complete stories, ending with one or the other outcome. Our interest was in measuring the amount of time participants needed to read the sentences which stated the outcomes of the scenarios. The assumption is that participants take longer to indicate that they have read and understood a sentence when that sentence contains information that is discordant with their expectations of what is normal. The story in Table 1 is structured to enable us to determine what elements of the text contribute to those judgments of normality. The text creates a conflict between an explicit global goal (i.e., John’s need to cross the border) and an implicit local goal (i.e., John’s need to address his tiredness). The prediction based on norm theory is that the local goal will matter more. Despite John’s moderate or urgent need to cross the border, the action of dozing off is normal in the context of someone realizing that he is tired. The data supported that prediction. –––––––––––– 2

My claim here is that norms are often constructed in the moment, rather than being prestored in memory. This argument is parallel to the one I made earlier that readers’ knowledge does not reside in static schemas.

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In our experiment, participants read the statement that John stretched out to doze off more quickly than they read the statement that he drove on. In a second experiment, we changed our task so that participants would engage conscious, reflective processes. In this case, we asked them to make an explicit judgment about what a character would be likely to do next. They would, for example, respond “yes” or “no” to the statement, “John stretched on the front seat and dozed off.” This task encourages participants to reflect on the whole span of the story. Under these circumstances, readers overwhelmingly indicated that John would drive on rather than dozing off. Thus, we have a clear dissociation between readers’ implicit judgments based on unconscious thought and their explicit judgments based on conscious thought. Readers’ experience of even this brief narrative is transformed as a function of the processes they bring to bear on it. One of the reasons, perhaps, that readers found it normal (as a product of unconscious processes) that John would doze off was because they didn’t have much of a stake in John’s future. If they had strong reasons to wish for John to drive on—that stood separate from the mere statement of the goal—we might expect the more global situation to wield a stronger impact on readers’ immediate responses. To explore this idea, David Rapp and I have conducted experiments in which we intended early portions of our texts to create reader preferences for particular outcomes (Rapp/Gerrig 2002, 2006). Table 2 provides a template for one of our experimental stories (Rapp/Gerrig 2006). The different versions of the stories contrasted on two features. The first contrast focused on base rate information with respect to the outcomes. For example, when a runner’s nearest competitor is several yards behind her, the outcome that she wins feels quite normal (with respect to the representations that outcome recruits from memory). The other contrast within the stories focused on reader preferences. The stories provided information that led readers to prefer the success or failure outcome. We expected readers to encode their preferences (e.g., “I hope Holly wins”) to a sufficient extent that those preferences would have a global impact on their understanding of the story. The claim is that the preference, to some extent, alters the selection of memory traces against which readers judge the normalcy of outcomes. For the experiments, we had four versions of the stories for which what was likely (given the base rate information) and what readers preferred was either consistent or inconsistent. Thus, one version of the story read: Holly had come quite far since that fateful day she’d been severely injured by a drunk driver. Holly had never won the Tri-State marathon before. When the

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finish line came into view, she was several yards back of the lead runner. She grabbed a drink from the outstretched hand of an onlooker. She noticed a piece of tape had been strung across the finish line. Moments later, Holly had failed to win the Tri-State marathon.

This version of the story creates a clash between the preference we expected readers to have (i.e., that Holly should win) versus the information that Holly is lagging behind the leader. We conducted two experiments that used the same pair of tasks as the project on goals and actions. In one experiment, participants read stories to their ends and we recorded response times to the outcome sentences. In the other experiment, we provided outcomes and asked participants to make explicit judgments about whether they thought the outcomes were likely. For this pair of experiments, we expected the two measures to provide parallel results: That is, we expected participants’ preferences to have a global impact on both what they could assimilate while reading and explicitly judge as normal. The data supported that prediction. To begin, we found that readers were generally calibrated with respect to the implications of base rates. When, for example, they had learned that Holly was several yards back, participants were generally quicker to indicate that they had understood the sentence “Moments later, Holly had failed to win the Tri-State marathon.” Similarly, they were more likely to say “yes” when we asked them to respond whether that outcome was likely. However, against this general tendency to respect base rates, participants demonstrated a consistent impact of their preferences. For example, when participants read versions of the story that inspired preferences for success but in which the contextual bias suggested failure (as in the earlier Holly example), they agreed 62% of the time that the failure outcome (e.g., “Moments later, Holly had failed to win the Tri-State marathon.”) was likely. When, instead, the stories provided a preference for failure (see Table 3 for an example), participants agreed 78% of the time that the same outcome was likely. Thus, the preferences readers brought to their judgments had a measurable impact on how they assimilated the stories’ outcomes. In these experiments, we see how different unconscious impulses—the memory-based norms a text recruits—ultimately determine readers’ responses to a narrative. 4. How Memory Processes Disentangle Texts Consider this sentence that appears late in Interpreter of Maladies: “She [Mrs. Das] turned to him [Mr. Kapasi] and glared, mustard oil thick on her frosty pink lips” (66). To understand this sentence, readers must find their

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way back to the text’s only other mention of mustard oil (which I quoted earlier): “‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged, munching on some puffed rice and licking the mustard oil from the corners of her mouth” (51). Roughly 5000 words intervene between these two mentions of mustard oil— several minutes of reading. Even the most recent mention of puffed rice occurs some 1000 words earlier: “She reached into her straw bag in search of something, then pulled out a packet of puffed rice” (63). Those intervening 1000 words present a rather intense conversation in which Mrs. Das confesses an infidelity. It seems quite likely that the whole idea of eating puffed rice with its attendant mustard oil will have become quite inaccessible in readers’ discourse representation. Yet, the mention of mustard oil provides no particular obstacle to understanding. Consider, similarly, the “frosty pink lips.” The only prior mention of Mrs. Das’s lips with their distinctive color occurred at even a greater distance. It appears early on, when Mr. Kapasi’s observations are reported in the narration: “She was a short woman, with small hands like paws, her frosty pink fingernails painted to match her lips, and was slightly plump in her figure” (46). Thus, to understand this single sentence (i.e., “She turned to him and glared…”), readers must range over nearly the full breadth of the story. I have emphasized the distances between these references to highlight a limitation of theories of text processing. Those theories typically include some notion of a focus of attention with quite limited capacity: The limited capacity arises from general constraints on working memory. For example, the construction-integration model (Kintsch 1988) includes cycles of processing (i.e., construction and integration) as people read texts. The cycles of processing largely favor the most recent portions of the text. In each cycle, only a small number of the most highly activated units of meaning are carried over from earlier portions of the text. This type of model—which has received broad empirical verification—leads to the very strong claim that “mustard oil” and “frosty pink lips” would no longer be readily accessible in readers’ working memory. What we need, therefore, is to identify a memory process that would operate outside conscious awareness to renew the accessibility of those earlier portions of the narrative. The memory process on which I focus has been called resonance. Resonance is a fast and passive process by which cues in working memory—the concepts, for example, in the most recent portion of a text—interact in parallel with information in long-term memory (Tulving 1974; Ratcliff 1978; Murdock 1983; Gillund/Shiffrin 1984; Hintzman 1986; McKoon/Ratcliff 1992; Myers/O’Brien 1998). Consider mustard oil. When readers encounter that phrase late in the story, we would expect that concept to resonate through the representation of the text to restore to working memory prior portions of the text that also invoked

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that concept (O’Brien/Albrecht/Hakala/Rizzella 1995; O’Brien/ Raney/Albrecht/Rayner 1997). Thus, resonance functions to disentangle and unify temporally disparate elements of the text (i.e., with respect to the order in which the reader experiences them) into a coherent representation. Our empirical work demonstrating the impact of resonance in circumstances of text processing arose from observations of a type of pronoun called unheralded pronouns (Gerrig 1986). These pronouns violate standard assumptions about pronoun use because, by definition, their referents are not present in the immediate linguistic environment. Let me provide my original literary example from William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury: “It’s Caddy!” the librarian said. “It is! Dilsey! Dilsey!” “What did he say?” the old Negress said. And the librarian knew whom she meant by “he,” nor did the librarian marvel, not only that the old Negress would know that she (the librarian) would know whom she meant by the “he,” but that the old Negress would know at once that she had already shown the picture to Jason. (1929: 418)

In this excerpt, Faulkner calls explicit attention to the fact that there’s something special about the pronoun: it seems that the librarian must pluck the referent of “he” out of the air. In fact, this “he” refers felicitously, because not only has “the old Negress” made appropriate assumptions about the knowledge that she shares with the librarian but also because resonance functions to make that information accessible from memory. There are subtypes of unheralded pronouns that appear with reasonable frequency in everyday conversation (Gerrig/Horton/Stent 2006). The subtype that is exemplified by the Faulkner excerpt is episodic unheralded pronouns. This type of pronoun refers correctly because resonance functions to make appropriate information accessible across conversational or narrative episodes. In this context, episodes may be defined in two different ways. Suppose that a referent has been established in one portion of a text. A pronoun refers to that referent in a later part of the text. We would assert that an episode has intervened if a topic shift had caused the referent to be displaced from working memory (thereby rendering the referent relatively inaccessible in the discourse representation). We would also assert that an episode had intervened if the text had provided a new referent to which the pronoun could quite properly refer. The Faulkner excerpt provides a strong example of the first type of episodic unheralded pronoun. Since the last mention of Jason, a long description of a room and its inhabitant has intervened. We expect that intervening episode to displace Jason (as a referent) from readers’ working

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memory. Interpreter of Maladies provides examples of the second type of episodic unheralded pronouns: Always tired, she [Mrs. Das] declined invitations from her one or two college girlfriends, to have lunch or shop in Manhattan. Eventually the friends stopped calling her, so that she was left at home all day with the baby, surrounded by toys that made her trip when she walked or wince when she sat, always cross and tired. Only occasionally did they go out after Ronny was born, and more rarely did they entertain. (63–64)

The final sentence in this excerpt uses “they” twice. These instances of “they” have the opportunity to refer to “toys” as well as “the friends.” In fact, “they” refers to Mr. and Mrs. Das, an entity that does not appear, as such, in the immediate linguistic environment but must, instead, be constructed through memory processes from earlier portions of the text. This example from Interpreter of Maladies illustrates how subtly episodic unheralded pronouns appear in narrative contexts. To demonstrate the impact of resonance on narrative experiences, my colleagues and I wrote a series of brief texts that all had an episodic structure (Greene/Gerrig/McKoon/Ratcliff 1994; McKoon/Gerrig/ Greene 1996; Gerrig/McKoon 2001). Table 3 provides an example of one of our texts (Gerrig/McKoon 2001). In the introduction, two characters refer to a third outsider character, in this case Jane’s cousin Marilyn. A sentence in the reunion portion of the story refers to this outsider character with an episodic unheralded pronoun (i.e., “Did she make the evening unbearable?” [emphasis added]). The three versions of the middle portion of the story allowed us to demonstrate the impact of resonance. In the Outsider Present version, the outsider remains in focus throughout the story. For that reason, we would expect the outsider to remain prominent in working memory across the full span of the text. In the Outsider Absent version, the text focuses away from the outsider. As that episode progresses, we would expect the outsider to be displaced from working memory. In the Competitor version, the text provides another possible referent for the pronoun when it ultimately appears (i.e., “she” could refer to Gloria’s mother rather than to Jane’s cousin). Once again, we would expect the outsider to be displaced in working memory. In all three versions of the story, readers arrive at the same reunion sentence (i.e., “Gloria was still up when Jane arrived home about midnight”). If resonance functions in this narrative context, the concepts in that sentence should resonate through the discourse structure to bring concepts from the story’s introduction back into working memory. To detect the impact of resonance, we asked experimental participants to tell us as quickly as possible whether cousin had appeared in the text. For the Outsider Absent and Competitor versions of the text, we would expect

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participants to be slow to say “yes” to cousin in the middle portion of the text (because, as I suggested earlier, we would expect the cousin to have been displaced in working memory). If resonance is at work, we would expect participants to say “yes” to cousin much more quickly just after the reunion sentence. That is precisely the pattern we observed: After the reunion sentence, cousin (and the equivalent outsiders in other experimental stories) became quickly accessible once again. We also tested participants on their ability to respond correctly to mother (when they had read the Competitor versions of the stories). Participants answered quickly to mother during the middle portion of the story. However, once the boundary was crossed into the reunion portion of the story, mother quickly became less accessible (i.e., participants’ responses became slower). These contrasting patterns—the simultaneous waxing of one concept and waning of the other—demonstrates how resonance functions as an unconscious process to help determine the contents of readers’ working memory. Note that resonance is expressly not a goal-directed process. When we look at the story in Table 3, we can see how important it would be for readers to gather together the material in the introduction and reunion portions of the story (particularly in the Outsider Absent and Competitor versions of the stories). We might argue that readers ought to be prepared to learn how Jane’s evening turned out. The claim, however, is that readers’ readiness to assimilate that information emerges from the normal operation of a pervasive memory process. We made this point concrete with another experiment (McKoon et al. 1996). If resonance is at work, then a full range of concepts garnered by readers in the introductory portion of the story should become accessible again (after the reunion sentence), and not just a concept such as cousin that seems to have a special function. To test this hypothesis, we used words like dreading (from the story’s first line) as test words. Participants’ responses to dreading demonstrated the same pattern of renewed accessibility (after the reunion sentence) as they had for the more central concept cousin. In another group of experiments, we demonstrated the consequences of resonance for long-term representations of texts (McKoon et al. 1996). We predicted that concepts that were present together in working memory would also be more tightly bound in the long-term memory representation. To support that prediction, we conducted a series of experiments in which we had participants read several stories all at once. Rather than testing participants as they read the stories for the accessibility of particular concepts (e.g., cousin and dreading), our tests occurred after they completed the set of stories. At that point, we looked for priming relationships between concepts in different parts of the story. Priming occurs widely in

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mental life. For example, if someone utters the word cat, the concept dog immediately becomes more accessible (for most people) through unconscious memory processes. For example, experiments demonstrate that people will read the word dog aloud more quickly if the previous word on a list of words was cat. Our experiments had much the same logic. If concepts from a story have become linked in long-term memory, we would expect one concept to prime the other when they appear adjacent on a list. Consider the story in Table 3. For these experiments, we used slightly different versions of the stories. In this case, the pronoun sentence was “Gloria asked Jane, ‘Did she play you old disco records?’” (rather than “Gloria asked Jane, ‘Did she make the evening unbearable?’”). Consider the Outsider Absent version of the story. The word dreading appears in the story’s introduction. The word eggs appears in the middle portion. The word disco appears in the reunion portion. If we look only at the linear order of the story, we might expect eggs and disco to be more closely bound in a long-term representation of the text. However, our prediction was that resonance functions to disentangle the text so that, in fact, dreading would yield priming for disco. The data supported that prediction. When participants made sequential judgments of whether words had appeared in the texts they had read, their responses indicated that concepts in the introduction and reunion portions of the texts had been drawn together. At the same time, eggs was not an effective prime for disco, further suggesting that resonance had disentangled the text. In this section, I have suggested that resonance functions as an unconscious memory process to span, for example, the long textual gap between the instances of “mustard oil” in Interpreter of Maladies. I emphasized that resonance does not serve any special goals with respect to narrative processing. Rather, it is a general memory process that operates at all times. Because readers are endowed with such memory processes, authors have the privilege of dispersing concepts in their texts. 5. Cognitive Psychology and Narratology In this essay, I have reported the results of cognitive psychological research that uses brief texts. These brief texts clearly do not possess the wealth of features that motivate most theoretical work in narratology (see Fludernik 2009). The texts scarcely provide anything beyond basic plots. In fact, within cognitive psychology itself, researchers have critiqued the use of such “textoids” as a means to draw broad implications about narra-

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tive processing (Graesser/Millis/Zwaan 1997). Even so, most text processing researchers, myself included, continue this practice. To explain my own use of textoids, I note that my research focuses largely on cognitive processes—and particularly, as I have illustrated in this essay, on unconscious processes. These unconscious processes are outside readers’ control. For that reason, if my conclusions are correct, these processes should apply broadly across the full range from brief textoids to the much richer texts that are narratologists’ particular focus. I intended the excerpts from The Interpreter of Maladies to illustrate the impact these processes have in the context of legitimate narrative. My conclusions would only be incorrect were it possible to demonstrate that there are types of narratives for which these processes were inoperative. Still, I would never claim that these processes are sufficient to explain the full range of readers’ experiences. In fact, narratological research calls attention to important insufficiencies in the scope of cognitive psychological theories (Bortolussi/Dixon 2003). It would be to the great benefit of psychological theories to embrace the products of narratological research. Still, when that happens, cognitive psychological analyses of narratological insights will still make use of the distinction between conscious and unconscious processes. Consider the important topic of focalization. In a review of this topic, Jahn (2007) provided an excerpt from Charles Dickens’s novel David Copperfield. Based on his analysis, Jahn asserted that “an attentive reader of these pages might ask, isn’t the passage mainly seen through the child-character rather than through the adult narrator?” (100). For a cognitive psychologist, the heart of this intriguing claim is “attentive reader.” Were I to pursue this claim, I would want to understand what type of attention—what type of conscious processing—readers would need to apply to arrive at the insight Jahn attributes to them. I’d also want to understand what unconscious processes provide the background experience with respect to which readers apply that conscious attention. I have quoted Jahn to illustrate one example of an insight that narratology might provide to psychological researchers. However, I also use this quotation to illustrate why narratologists might benefit from understanding the deeper implications of a phrase such as “attentive reader.” If narratologists embrace this essay’s major distinction between conscious and unconscious processes, they may be able to formulate theories of important phenomena, such as focalization, with more moment-bymoment precision. It’s quite possible that some or most narratologists will not be interested in understanding narrative experience at this level of analysis. However, in my view, both narratological and psychological research can only be improved through close collaboration.

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6. Final Thoughts In this essay, I have provided three case studies of the roles of conscious and unconscious processes in readers’ narrative experiences. I hope to have provided an expanded sense of the diverse impact of unconscious processes. The unconscious processes I have described are part of the repertory of all readers. Still, it is possible within this framework to understand some of the reasons why readers have different experiences of the same narrative. To begin, as I suggested earlier, many aspects of text processing are affected by readers’ vastly different stores of memory representations. For readers with literary expertise, these representations will encode not just factual knowledge (e.g., on what side people drive) but also, for example, genre expectations. Expert readers are also likely to have developed sufficient skill with respect to certain types of literary analyses that they may well have developed an augmented set of System 1 processes. We all have practiced certain skills sufficiently that they no longer require conscious effort. The easiest example of this outcome is reading. It is likely that everyone reading this essay can remember a time when reading required a substantial conscious effort. The processes that allow us to read in our native language are now almost entirely unconscious. The same might be said for the type of “reading” that literary experts do. It is quite possible that important aspects of experts’ experience of narratives—types of analyses that would be effortful for less seasoned readers—have become part of their repertory of unconscious processes. Let me conclude where I began, with the two brief paragraphs from Interpreter of Maladies: “Look,” Bobby said as the car began to gather speed. He pointed with his finger to the tall trees that lined the road. “Look.” “Monkeys!” Ronny shrieked. “Wow!”

I have attempted to provide an overview of some of the unconscious processes that give texture to readers’ experience of this narrative moment. Still, given the nature of these unconscious processes, we should be reasonably certain that each reader will encode this moment with compelling idiosyncrasies.

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References Barron 2008 Barron, James: “‘Miraculous’ Recovery for Man Who Fell 47 Floors,” The New York Times January 4. Bartlett 1932 Bartlett, Frederic C.: Remembering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Botolussi/Dixon 2003 Bortolussi, Marisa/Dixon, Peter: Psychonarratology: Foundations for the Empirical Study of Literary Response (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Chaiken/Trope 1999 Chaiken, Shelly/Trope, Yaacov (eds.): Dual-Processes Theories in Social Psychology (New York: The Guilford Press). Egidi/Gerrig 2006 Egidi, Giovanna/Gerrig, Richard J.: “Readers’ Experiences of Characters’ Goals and Actions,” in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32.6: 1322–29. Faulkner 1929 Faulkner, William: The Sound and the Fury (New York: Vintage Books). Fludernik 2009 Fludernik, Monika: An Introduction to Narratology (London: Routledge). Gerrig 1986 Gerrig, Richard J.: “Process Models and Pragmatics,” in Advances in Cognitive Science, edited by Noel E. Sharkey, 23–42 (Chichester, England: Ellis Horwood). Gerrig 1993 Gerrig, Richard J.: Experiencing Narrative Worlds (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Gerrig/Egidi 2003 Gerrig, Richard J./Egidi, Giovanna: “Cognitive Psychological Foundations of Narrative Experiences,” in Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences, edited by David Herman, 33–55 (Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications). Gerrig/Egidi (in preparation) Gerrig, Richard J./Egidi, Giovanna: “The Bushwhacked Piano and the Bushwhacked Reader: The Willing Construction of Disbelief,” in Style. Gerrig/Horton/Stent 2006 Gerrig, Richard J./Horton, William S./Stent, Amanda: “Unheralded Pronouns and Theories of Pronoun Resolution,” paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse, Minneapolis, MN. Gerrig/McKoon 2001 Gerrig, Richard J./McKoon, Gail: “Memory Processes and Experiential Continuity,” in Psychological Science 12.1: 81–85. Gerrig/O’Brien 2005 Gerrig, Richard J./O’Brien, Edward J.: “The Scope of Memory-Based Processing,” in Discourse Processes 39.2–3: 225–42. Gillund/Shiffrin 1984 Gillund, Gary/Shiffrin, Richard M.: “A Retrieval Model for Both Recognition and Recall,” in Psychological Review 91.1: 1–67.

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Graesser/Millis/Zwaan 1997 Graesser, Arthur C./Millis, Keith K./Zwaan, Rolf A.: “Discourse Comprehension,” in Annual Review of Psychology 48: 163–89. Graesser/Singer/Trabasso 1994 Graesser, Arthur C./Singer, Murray/Trabasso, Tom: “Constructing Inferences During Narrative Text Comprehension,” in Psychological Review 101.3: 371–95. Greene/Gerrig/McKoon/Ratcliff 1994 Greene, Steven B./Gerrig, Richard J./McKoon, Gail/Ratcliff, Roger: “Unheralded Pronouns and Management by Common Ground,” in Journal of Memory and Language 33.4: 511–26. Guéraud/O’Brien 2005 Guéraud, Sabine/O’Brien, Edward J.: “Components of Comprehension: A Convergence Between Memory-Based Processes and Explanation-Based Processes,” in Discourse Processes 39.2–3: 123–24. Hintzman 1986 Hintzman, Douglas L.: “‘Schema Abstraction’ in a Multiple-Trace Memory Model,” in Psychological Review 93.4: 411–28. Jahn 2007 Jahn, Manfred: “Focalization,” in The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, edited by David Herman, 94–108 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kahneman/Frederick 2002 Kahneman, Daniel/Frederick, Shane: “Representativeness Revisited: Attribute Substitution in Intuitive Judgment,” in Heuristics and Biases, edited by Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman, 49–81 (New York: Cambridge University Press). Kahneman/Miller 1986 Kahneman, Daniel/Miller, Dale T.: “Norm Theory: Comparing Reality to Its Alternatives,” in Psychological Review 93.2: 136–53. Kintsch 1988 Kintsch, Walter: “The Role of Knowledge in Discourse Comprehension: A Construction-Integration Model,” in Psychological Review 95.2: 163–82. Lahiri 1999 Lahiri, Jhumpa: “Interpreter of Maladies,” in Interpreter of Maladies, 43–69 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company). McKoon/Gerrig/Greene 1996 McKoon, Gail/Gerrig, Richard J./Greene, Steven B.: “Pronoun Resolution Without Pronouns: Some Consequences of Memory-Based Text Processing,” in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 22.4: 919–32. McKoon/Ratcliff 1992 McKoon, Gail/Ratcliff, Roger: “Inference During Reading,” in Psychological Review 99.3: 440–66. Murdock 1983 Murdock, Bennet: “A Distributed Memory Model for Serial-Order Information,” in Psychological Review 90.4: 316–38. Myers/O’Brien 1998 Myers, Jerome L./O’Brien, Edward J.: “Accessing the Discourse Representation During Reading,” in Discourse Processes 26.2–3: 131–57.

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Nosofsky/Stanton 2005 Nosofsky, Robert/Stanton, Roger: “Speeded Classification in a Probabilistic Category Structure: Contrasting Exemplar-Retrieval, Decision-Boundary, and Prototype Models,” in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 31.3: 608–29. O’Brien/Albrecht/Hakala/Rizzella 1995 O‘Brien, Edward J./Albrecht, Jason E./Hakala, Christopher M./Rizzella, Michelle L.: “Activation and Suppression of Antecedents During Reinstatement,” in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 21.3: 626–34. O’Brien/Raney/Albrecht/Rayner 1997 O'Brien, Edward J./Raney, Gary E./Albrecht, Jason E./Rayner, Keith: “Processes Involved in the Resolution of Explicit Anaphors,” in Discourse Processes 23.1: 1–24. Peracchi/O’Brien 2004 Peracchi, Kelly A./O’Brien, Edward J.: “Character Profiles and the Activation of Predictive Inferences,” in Memory & Cognition 32.7: 1044–52. Rapp/Gerrig 2002 Rapp, David N./Gerrig, Richard J.: “Readers’ Reality-Driven and Plot-Driven Analyses in Narrative Comprehension,” in Memory & Cognition, 30, 30.5: 779– 88. Rapp/Gerrig 2006 Rapp, David N./Gerrig, Richard J.: “Predilections for Narrative Outcomes: The Impact of Story Contexts and Reader Preferences,” in Journal of Memory and Language 54.1: 54–67. Ratcliff 1978 Ratcliff, Roger: “A Theory of Memory Retrieval,” in Psychological Review 85.2: 59–108. Rieger 1975 Rieger, Charles J.: “Conceptual Memory and Inference,” in Conceptual Information Processing, edited by Roger C. Schank (Amsterdam: North-Holland). Rizella/O’Brien 2002 Rizzella, Michelle L./O’Brien, Edward J.: “Retrieval of Concepts in ScriptBased Texts and Narratives: The Influence of General World Knowledge,” in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 28.4: 780–90. Rosch 1978 Rosch, Eleanor H.: “Principles of Categorization,” in Cognition and Categorization, edited by Eleanor Rosch and Barbara B. Lloyd, 27–48 (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum). Schank/Abelson 1977 Schank, Roger C./Abelson, Robert P.: Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum). Sloman 1996 Sloman, Steven A.: “The Empirical Case for Two Systems of Reasoning,” in Psychological Bulletin 119.1: 3–22.

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Sloman 2002 Sloman, Steven A.: “Two Systems of Reasoning,” in Heuristics and Biases, edited by Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman, 379–96 (New York: Cambridge University Press). Smits/Storms/Rosseel/De Boeck 2002 Smits, Tim/Storms, Gert/Rosseel, Yves/De Boeck, Paul: “Fruits and Vegetables Categorized: An Application of the Generalized Context Model,” in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 9.4: 836–44. Stanovich/West 2000 Stanovich, Keith E./West, Richard F.: “Individual Differences in Reasoning: Implications for the Rationality Debate,” in Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23.5: 645–65. Tulving 1974 Tulving, Endel: “Cue-Dependent Forgetting,” in American Scientist 62.1: 74–82.

Notes Table 1 Sample story from Egidi & Gerrig (2006) Urgent motivation John had been in desperate need of money. He robbed a Starbucks and was driving away from the city. He thought that if he could make it to Mexico before noon, the police would not get him. He wanted to cross the border. When he stopped to buy gas, he realized that he was tired. Moderate motivation John was having a great time traveling across the country. He had agreed to meeting a couple of friends in Mexico in two hours. He still had more than 150 miles to cover. He wanted to cross the border. When he stopped to buy gas, he realized that he was tired. Possible outcomes John released the hand break and went on. John stretched on the front seat and dozed off. Table 2 Sample story from Rapp & Gerrig (2006) Success preference statement: Holly had come quite far since that fateful day she’d been severely injured by a drunk driver. Failure preference statement: Holly relied on illegal steroids to prepare for the race, having acquired them from a drug dealer. Holly had never won the Tri-State marathon before.

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Success-biasing context: When the finish line came into view, her nearest competitor was still several yards behind her. Failure-biasing context: When the finish line came into view, she was several yards back of the lead runner. She grabbed a drink from the outstretched hand of an onlooker. She noticed a piece of tape had been strung across the finish line. Successful outcome: Moments later, Holly was the winner of the Tri-State marathon. Failure outcome: Moments later, Holly had failed to win the Tri-State marathon. Table 3 Sample stories from Gerrig & McKoon (2001) Introduction: Jane was dreading her dinner with her cousin, Marilyn. She complained loudly to her roommate Gloria. “Every time I go to dinner at my cousin’s I get sick.” Gloria asked, “Why did you agree to go?” Jane said, “Because I’m too wimpy to say no.” Jane went off to have dinner. (Participants read one of three middle portions of the text: Outsider Present, Outsider Absent, or Competitor.) Outsider Present: When she arrived, Marilyn was just finishing the cooking. “You’re in luck,” she said, “we’re having fried squid.” Jane knew she was in for a wonderful evening. The two of them sat down to dinner. After dinner, they talked for a while, and then Jane left. Outsider Absent: Gloria decided to cook something nice for herself for dinner. “As long as I’m home alone,” she thought, “I’ll eat well.” Gloria searched her refrigerator for ingredients. She found enough eggs to make a quiche. After dinner, she put the dishes in the dishwasher. Competitor: As long as she was staying home alone, Gloria thought she’d eat well. She called up her mother to get the recipe for chili. Her mother cautioned her to use very fresh onions. Gloria made sure to follow that advice. After dinner, she cleaned up the kitchen. Reunion: Gloria was still up when Jane arrived home about midnight. (Reunion sentence.) Gloria asked Jane, “Did she make the evening unbearable?” (Pronoun sentence.) Jane chuckled and said, “I just want to get some sleep.”

URI MARGOLIN (University of Alberta, Edmonton)

(Mis)perceiving to Good Aesthetic and Cognitive Effect 1 Abstract This essay deals with the portrayal in narrative of a variety of difficulties in or failures of perception, mostly visual. Each difficulty or failure selected will be described first in layman’s terms and then in terms borrowed from current cognitive psychology. The latter will describe the nature of the operations involved in the underlying act and identify the specific operations which went awry, and in what way(s). This descriptive stage leads to a functional one, where I assess the cognitive and aesthetic impact on the reader of the portrayal of such misperceptions. If the portrayal of the mind in action and of experientiality is one of the main goals of all narrative, then the presentation of perceptual missteps has a major role to play in it. Failures can among other things make us aware of the situationally conditioned and tenuous nature of all perception, of its inherently complex and multi-stage nature, and of its underlying felicity conditions. A variety of ensuing aesthetic and artistic functions can also be distinguished, ranging from Verfremdung to the creation of a riddle for the reader (so what WAS there after all?), to evoking consternation or laughter, depending on the specific case. 1. Mental Functioning in Cognitive Psychology and in Literary Narrative The portrayal of the working of the human mind (mental functioning) is one of the main subjects of literary narrative as well as one of the main reasons why we read it. This readerly intuition underlies recent cognitive approaches to literature, in which narrative is regarded as the semiotic representation of human experientiality. Experientiality in its turn consists of the working of a mind in a world and with respect to a world, encompassing such mental activities as viewing, perceiving, ideation and selfreflection. (For a thoroughgoing development of this approach see Fludernik 1996 and Palmer 2004.) –––––––––––– 1

I would like to express my gratitude to Ms. Birte Christ of Giessen University for her careful reading of the manuscript of this essay, and for the many excellent observations and suggestions she made. Her suggestions have helped greatly to improve the quality of the final version.

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The correlated methodological issue facing narratologists is what coherent and principled theoretical framework is available to us for the study of the portrayal of the mind in literary narrative. General semiotic considerations indicate that any such framework may focus on the expression or the content side, on the how or the what, respectively. Drawing on structuralist linguistics, Dorrit Cohn provided, a generation ago, a model of the how, that is, of the linguistic modes of the representation of mental activity in literature (Cohn 1978). What we are currently in need of is a similar general paradigm for describing the what: the basic kinds of mental activity portrayed in literary narrative, and of their interrelations: sequential, hierarchical, causal, and so on. Human culture has offered us over the millennia many such paradigms, from explicit philosophical ones to folk psychology, and many of them have been used for literary analyses, sometimes to very good effect. Nevertheless, the first unified, comprehensive and consistent model of the working of the mind (components, stages, functions, operations) is that which has been offered by cognitive psychology since the 1960s. In this view, mental functioning is basically information processing, and its stages encompass everything that occurs in the brain between sensory input and the triggering of external action. In the broadest terms, this theoretical paradigm distinguishes the stages of information intake (sensation-attention-perception), encoding or internal representation, storage, retrieval, and transformation or further processing, leading ultimately to some symbolic or behavioural output. What can one say in principle about the representations of mental functioning of any kind in artistic narrative and in cognitive psychology and their interrelations? I am ready to hazard several initial claims or general theses at this point: (1) For any kind of mental activity just mentioned, there is at least one work of literary narrative where it occurs and forms the crux of a single scene or of the narrative as a whole. The greatness of authors could be explicitly defined in this context according to the range of mental activities drawn from the above list dramatized in their works. Think of Proust for example. Authors, in their pre-theoretical ways and relying largely on intuition, have thus collectively long been aware of the complexity of mental activity explicitly represented by current cognitive models, have distinguished its main operations, and made them the core of their creative efforts. (2) Readers, on the other hand, have used the portrayal of such activities in works of the imagination in order to gain what they consider to be a deeper and better insight into the way their own minds and those of others work. The literary portrayal thus enables one to carry out a richer retrospective analysis of some of one’s own specific past cognitive acts or

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of any regular mental activity. But literary portrayal facilitates equally the construction and running of a mental model of another’s situation and the mental activities involved in it. The portrayal of mental functioning is probably one of the main areas in which imaginative literature can provide or at least imply valid knowledge regarding actuality. (3) While the portrayal of any mental activity in fiction does not have to conform to psychological reality as portrayed by cognitive theories, it is much more difficult, maybe even impossible, for us to imagine a mode of mental functioning that is radically different from the human, than to imagine a radically different body or physics/biology. It is a fact that many cognitive psychologists, and not only philosophers, often employ preexisting literary examples to illustrate their claims about a particular cognitive activity. Many of these psychologists (Goldstein 2001, 2007; Smith/Kosslyn 2007) also invent mini-narratives and use them as introductions to a given cognitive component. (4) The same cognitive activity is inevitably differently presented in the scholarly and artistic discourses. The cognitivist, as theorist, works with physical or functional abstract concepts, formulates general claims, employs statistical trends, and speaks of average human beings and prototypical individuals. Literary narratives concerned with the same mental activity work with the unique embodied and embedded (situated) activity of a single individual, and are keenly interested in its experientiality or felt quality. They ask what it is like to be bombarded by sense data, have to juggle three concurrent tasks, make a crucial decision under uncertainty and so on. For this purpose, the scenic-dramatic type of discourse with its immediacy, deictic anchoring and uniqueness of experiencer (the subjective, essential first person) is far more effective. Moreover, the literary focus is phenomenological: how things appear to an individual mind, and not in its physical or neurological basis. Literary experientiality and scholarly psychological abstraction can nevertheless be regarded not as incompatible but rather as complementary in their efforts to gain insight into the same thing, namely, mental activity, with the first portraying specific perceptual acts and products, and the second accounting for them in terms of underlying regularities and mechanisms, both logical and neurological. (5) A methodological consideration could also be introduced at this point. While it is not the purpose of the theoretical vocabulary or the models of cognitive psychology to enable us to formulate better claims about the nature of mental activity as portrayed in literature, it is precisely these vocabulary and models that provide us, in my opinion, with the best available set of tools for doing so in a coherent and non-metaphorical way. Let me draw an analogy from fictional worlds semantics. It has been shown that there are irreconcilable differences between the fictional

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worlds of literature and the possible worlds of logic and philosophy. Yet it is still the vocabulary of modal logic, developed explicitly for possible worlds, that constitutes the most productive way of discussing fictional literary worlds. So much the more so in our case, where the gap between what is claimed or implied in the two discourses is not half as wide. 2. Perception in Cognitive Psychology and in Literary Narrative In Fictional Minds, Alan Palmer described in detail the portrayal of several high level cognitive functions in numerous contemporary novels. In this essay I would like to speak of the literary representation of one much more basic, and some say the most basic, component of cognition, namely perception. I will start with a discussion of the nature of perception in general, and then restrict myself to a discussion of visual perception and its numerous stages, culminating in object recognition, as modeled in current cognitive psychology. I will next show how creative writers have intuitively distinguished the very same stages involved in achieving a coherent and meaningful mental representation of a single object or a current scene, and how they highlight such a stage or stages by problematizing them. Such highlighting has both cognitive and aesthetic impacts, and I will touch on both. Unfortunately, there is no heuristics, algorithm, or targeted search procedure to enable us to extract the best extant literary examples for each stage, and my only possible heuristics was searching my own long-term memory of literary works. But why is perception so important for a content level theory of literary narrative to begin with? Equally good reasons are provided by both current and classical narratology. In Towards A “Natural” Narratology, with which my discussion began, Monika Fludernik distinguishes several basic kinds of mental action: viewing, perceiving, emoting, volition, ideation, cognition and self-reflection, with viewing and perception forming the most basic or elementary level. Perception is as important in classical models of narrative, all of which distinguish three basic constituents or functions of narrative: telling, viewing and doing, or, in other words, narration, focalization and action. Focalization in its turn involves at least the internal inscription of external data, or the representation in a mind of specific pre-existent elements of the text’s physical, social, etc. story world as perceived and recorded by this mind. So once again physical perception is crucial. Perception is the crux of the encounter between self and world or organism and environment, and it is the sensory organs that form the interface of this encounter. A beautiful poetic definition of the nature of our

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sense organs is provided by Beckett in The Unnamable: “Perhaps I am the thing that divides the world in two: on the one side the outside and on the other the inside; that can be as thin as a foil. I am the partition: I have two surfaces and no thickness.” We notice that the two sides of the partition, world and mind, are inseparable and neither can exist without the other. In more sober terms, we hear the same claim from the authors of Handbook of Cognition: [t]he nervous system, the body and the environment are highly structured dynamical systems that are coupled to each other on multiple levels. […] [One cannot] ‘peel away’ the body and the environment as being external to the internal brain processes that are crucial to consciousness. (Lamberts/Goldstone 2005: 34)

The inseparability of our knowledge of the world from our bodily existence and physical positioning and the corresponding constraints on knowledge are poignantly conveyed in Beckett’s aphorism “we are all inside a skull, so to speak.” Put more elegantly, Merleau-Ponty asserts that “[a]ll my knowledge of the world […] is gained from my own particular point of view” (1962: viii), born through direct experience of the world, and, I would add, my own point of view is essentially linked to my body. It is sense data that give each of us a sense of self as body in the world and a correlated sense of the world as objects in relation to myself. Merleau-Ponty further notices: “sense experience is that vital communication with the world which makes the world present as a familiar setting for our life” (46). Note the implication, often dramatized in literature, that should something go wrong with our standard sense experience, the world will consequently cease to be the familiar setting of our lives. But what IS the nature of this sense experience that provides us with awareness of ourselves and of the world? If we restrict ourselves to visual experience, then cognitive psychology views it as encompassing a range of stages and activities stretching from photon to phenomenology (cf. Palmer 1999), from light energy to the internal representation of a perceived object (cf. Solso 2005). The one pole is purely physical stimuli: light of different intensity reflected off surfaces in the external world and impinging on our retina. The other pole is purely mental: the world as envisioned by us, our internal representation of our life world as experienced by us. But what about the in-between stages? The description of perception as a multi-stage process I find most conducive for literary analysis is the one by Philip Zimbardo and Richard Gerrig (2002). Our perceptual system does not simply record information about the external world but actually organizes and interprets it. Perception consists of three stages: that of sensing, that of perceptual organization, and that of identification and recognition. I might add in parentheses that this is both a temporal and a logical hierarchical order. Furthermore,

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at the sensory level of information processing, physical energy (light, sound, pressure) is detected and transformed into neural energy and sensory experience. At the organisational level, brain processes organize sensations into coherent images and give us percepts of objects and patterns. At the level of identification, percepts of objects are compared with memory representations (stored knowledge) in order to be recognized as familiar and meaningful (kinds of) objects. What one knows and expects, as well as the particular context in which the information is received, greatly influences our object recognition, which is a constructive, interpretive process. Finally, the mental representation of recognized objects and their locations in the environment (what is where) constitutes what we are consciously aware of in perception, and serves in its turn as input for higher cognitive processes such as memory storage and retrieval, information abstraction and thinking. Perception thus turns out to be a complex and multistage construction process involving the sensory and the conceptual, the bottom-up feed-forward of stimuli and the top-down feedback of concepts and categories. Like many other supposedly automatic or obvious things, the activity of perceiving becomes less than obvious as soon as it encounters difficulty of some kind or when it fails to reach its moment of culmination. It is the slowing down, delay, or failure that first make us aware that perception is not a seamless fabric, and make us wonder about its mechanisms and stages, and about the conditions for the success of this complex activity. Literary authors share with cognitive psychologists both the keen desire to explore the working of the mind (including obviously perception) and the conviction that best insights are often gained when things become difficult for the individual subject due to intrinsic or environmental factors. It is hence of little interest and informativity to the writer to have a character open his eyes and see or recognize objects and scenes clearly, immediately, and unambiguously in a smooth and near automatic manner. Instead, object recognition needs to be slowed down and de-automatized for the portrayed perceiver, be it character, focalizer or personalized narrator. Once perception is portrayed as a daunting task for a story-world participant, it loses its air of familiarity and obviousness for the reader observing this activity. Instead, it becomes the object of readerly puzzlement: what on earth is s/he doing mentally? Why can’t s/he figure it out, whatever it is? And so on. Now at this point it is perception itself, our most basic mode of contact with the world, rather than any of its objects, that gets problematized, highlighted, foregrounded and is rendered, hence, highly perceptible. The point of the exercise is to make perception itself the central object of readerly perception. Stages and processes of which we have been hitherto unaware now come to our awareness and become

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the focus of our attention. The supposedly obvious now becomes much less so. The reader who focuses his attention on the characters’ perceptual activity and monitors it and its difficulties is himself /herself engaged in a ludic meta-cognitive activity (cognition whose object is some facet of cognition). But his conclusions may later on feed into the reader’s views on the way perceptual activity works in his or her own case and in that of other actual human beings. Story-world participants in their turn may also engage in meta-cognitive activity, a serious one in their case, where, either at the moment or after the fact, they observe and analyze some of their own specific perceptual activities. Finally, for narratologists the study of the perceptual activities of story-world participants is a core component of the study of narrative focalization. 3. Individual Stages of Visual Cognition as Portrayed in Literary Narratives This concludes my discussion of general theory. Let us now move to the applied part, which I would call ‘going up the visual cognition ladder on the rungs of literary narrative portrayal.’ I would argue that the literary portrayal of the object recognition process has the following universal features (and this is my suggestion): first of all, the near instantaneous process is slowed down considerably, becoming durative rather than punctual. It is next decomposed into stages. One stage is then isolated, and the portrayal dwells on its sub-stages (sub-components, actions or activities). Beyond this point authors have the choice to portray the stage as proceeding unhindered (as Tolstoy often does) or to make it tenuous and problematic by introducing one or more of the following: hesitation, difficulty, ambiguity, trial and error (self-correction), error, or most radically, failure, leading to the disruption or interruption of the sequence of processing stages, to an inability to proceed to the next stage. The veridical or epistemic status of a character’s achieved object representation is also often put into question by authors. They ask how much of it corresponds to the outside story world, how much is an illusion and how much (0 to 100%) stems from delusion or hallucination. Luckily, in fictional contexts one can on occasion have an authoritative narratorial voice telling us with utmost certainty what is ‘really’ out there and which is what. And now to the individual stages. 1) The play of light: The very first stage of visual perception as portrayed in narrative actually precedes the first object-perception stage of line and contour, and is concerned with the visible manifestations and

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sensory detection of the source of all vision, namely light. Virginia Woolf urged authors to record the atoms as they fall upon the mind, hence pure visual stuff or sensation per se, the sensory event in its immediate quality prior to any interpretation or sense making. If vision starts with light reflected off a surface, what better place to begin with than the reflection of light on the water, water serving here as both object of perception and as analogue or metaphor to the human retina, the very organ of perception. In To the Lighthouse (1927) one encounters accordingly descrip-tions of scintillation, reflection, shimmer and flickering in the water and the colours of such reflection (lightness, hue, saturation), preceding any constant shape or contour. Such descriptions are reminiscent of late nineteenthcentury pointillism and neo-impressionism in painting and aim to capture the mind-world interface at the level of sensory excitation, of the innocent eye and the qualitative feel of the eye-world encounter. The object of perception, light reflection in the water, is inherently insubstantial and fluid with no definite shape or constancy, and so is its visual image. Perception at this point is an evanescent, purely sensory and ephemeral experience. 2) Attention: Another precondition of object perception is attention: the selection by the mind of some out of the innumerable stimuli we are constantly exposed to and their subjection to further processing. At this point Leopold Bloom, roaming the streets of Dublin, enters our picture. Bloom is our homme moyen sensuel: he is not overloaded by the constant stream of stimuli to the point of shutting down, nor is he in an inattentional state. On the other hand, he does not show any signs of vigilance or active attention, of being guided by some current intention or goal. His is the normal openness of the senses to the stream of external stimuli, and his attention is spread over the whole scene. And as in most other matters, he just takes things as they come to him, with no prior attention filter. His attention is thus passive or stimulus driven. The stimuli themselves are scraps of low level, random sensory experience: bits of sound, perceived movements, and glimpses of objects, both at rest and in motion. It is the saliency of the stimuli, hence bottom up, that determines for him which of them will catch his attention for a split second and, as we say informally, ‘register in his mind.’ But as the salient stimulus itself changes every instant, Bloom’s attention too jumps incessantly from one stimulus to the other. His attention thus engages in a certain stimulus, quickly disengages from it, immediately shifts to another stimulus in which it engages and so on in an open series. The random, momentary, fragmentary, and discontinuous nature of the recorded stimuli is reflected in the disjointed syntax and nominal phrases used for their portrayal. The stimuli are not interrelated and do not undergo any further logical processing, and for this the

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paratactic syntax is the proper reflection. Is Bloom’s attention merely implicit or is it explicit? In other words, is he consciously aware of what he perceives, in the sense of being able to report it? Hard to tell. The only way to portray the working of the mind in literature is via words, in our case an internal monologue, where Bloom’s mind seems to verbalize and report all registered stimuli. But they may well register below the threshold of awareness, and are verbalized merely because of the constraints of the reporting medium. 3) The quest for contours or for the figure in the carpet: The final goal of perception may be the recognition of three-dimensional objects. But it’s a long way to this goal, as we have seen, and the first step consists of extracting two-dimensional features from a given visual scene. The scene as a whole, say a wall-covering wall paper, is mentally divided into regions (in this context breadths); a particular region is selected for further attention, and in it one seeks to discriminate a figure from the ground and achieve a so-called primal sketch (cf. Marr 1982) consisting of lines, spots, edges and their location, orientation and colour. One also seeks to achieve closure, that is, a grouping together into one continuous contour of elements from the same region. The core part of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wall-paper” (1891) consists of the heroine’s obsessive desperate search for a shape or figure in the wall paper and for any regularity or periodicity of its occurrence in the visual field as a whole, i.e. for a pattern defining the overall two-dimensional organization of this field. But this amazing story provides much more regarding perception. Let me try and sort out some of its elements according to the cognitive ladder. The heroine first notices the wallpaper’s colour, which obviously shifts in the light, and which is alternately lurid orange, sickly sulfur, etc. She tries to follow a line in the wallpaper and its curve (Treisman’s model), hoping to trace a figure, but the line “commits suicide” after a while. Different lines “plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions” (Gilman 1998: 31). The figure, if there is one, is a “strange, provoking, formless sort of figure” (ibid.: 33). It has no familiar or recognizable shape, looking at best like a fungus or series of toadstools. Speak of perceptual hesitation, ambiguity, trial and error, correction etc. As for any regular recurrence of figures forming an overall pattern or design, “the pattern is torturing. You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a backsomersault and there you are” (ibid.: 37). For each area of the wall it seems there is a pattern, yet it is not any known two-dimensional design: it’s not radiation or alternation, neither repetition nor symmetry. There is a “lack of sequence, a deficiency of law” (ibid.). I cannot think of a better dramatization of practically all the elements and operations distinguished

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in this context by current cognitive psychology. (This failure of twodimensional perceptual organization is followed in the story by a supposedly successful two-dimensional object recognition in terms of an image of bars and a woman behind them in the wallpaper. But this mental representation is evidently based on perceptual illusion, that is, error or misinterpretation of a visual stimulus. What follows next is a purely delusional three-dimensional object organization, as the illusory static image of the woman behind the bars turns into a live three-dimensional object in the heroine’s mind, is dynamized, gets out from or from behind the wallpaper and joins the heroine in stripping it off the wall.) 4) Surfaces: From lines we move to oriented surfaces and, unsurprisingly, my next example is Robbe-Grillet’s La jalousie. Here too we find minute descriptions of two-dimensional colour and shape contrasts, for example on the railing : “entre la peinture grise qui subsiste, palie par l’age, et le bois devenu gris […] paraissent de petites surfaces d’un brun rougeatre” (Robbe-Grillet 1969: 79 [“Between the remaining gray paint, faded by time, and the wood grayed by the action of humidity, appear tiny areas of reddish brown”]). One can trace on the wall the line of a watermark from a leak, leading all the way to the floor. But the pride of place goes to the description of buildings, the most paradigmatic of three-dimensional objects, in terms of the two-dimensional play of shades on surfaces, reminding us that light and shadow are quite literally the source of all our mental representations of the material, solid, substantial and enduring. To cite just a couple of examples: “maintenant [=the instant of perception] l’ombre du pilier divise l’angle de la terrasse” (Robbe-Grillet 1969: 3 [“Now the shadow of the column divides the corner of the veranda”]); “maintenant, l’ombre du pilier se projette sur les dalles [...]. La direction oblique du trait sombre indique” (ibid.: 91 [“now the shadow of the column falls across the flagstones […]. The oblique direction of the dark line points”]). What we have here is a perfect illustration of the second stage of perception, the one following the primal sketch. We are actually presented with what David Marr termed the two-and-a-half-dimensional sketch: a viewer- (Husband’s?) centred representation of the geometry of the surfaces of objects. The resultant view is schematized, geometrized, consisting of lines, shapes, surfaces, angles and relative locations. What is missing is of course the depth or spatial being of objects and the human significance or categorization of such three-dimensional objects. Robbe-Grillet has been accused by many of killing the human element in his descriptions, and Barthes has stated that his method consists of the “assassination of the object, at least as literature has traditionally represented it” (Barthes 1965: 16). But Robbe-Grillet, as a major figure of the école du regard, is a consummate artist in portraying the intermediate stage of perception, and in

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making us aware how much it cries for further processing in the standard human way. (Robbe-Grillet’s descriptions have also been likened to what a video camera can capture: surfaces without meaning, recording without seeing, and this verbal cum cinematic technique goes well with his actual cinematic practice.) 5) Parts and wholes: In two-dimensional as well as in threedimensional perception there is a dialectic of part and whole giving rise to the corresponding eternal chicken and egg question which bedevils cognitive psychologists: do we perceive first a schematic whole and then parts within it, or rather first schematic simplified parts and then we assemble the whole from their combination? (In the case of three-dimensional objects these would be Biederman’s cylindrical geons.) It is not the task of literature to decide this empirical question, but literature does provide examples of both directions of perception. If we start with the whole, then what we would be getting in the perceptual act is the decomposition of the whole into parts. Here is an amusing example from Nabokov’s Lolita (1955), complete with a realistic motivation: “Presently, the lady herself [Mrs. Haze] – sandals, maroon slacks, yellow silk blouse, squarish face, in that order – came down the steps” (Nabokov 2000: 37). In spite of the absurd feeling, this is precisely how someone coming down the stairs will be perceived by someone else standing at the bottom of the stairs. Speak of the familiar made unfamiliar. And what if we start with the schematized parts of the human body? Then we are dealing with recognition by components. Here once again it is Beckett to the rescue, this time at his Cubist best. The lover, sitting near the window, watches his beloved approach: her face appears at the window. […] Now this window being flush with your eyes from where you sit […] you cannot but wonder if she has not sunk to her knees. Knowing from experience that the height or length you have in common is the sum of equal segments. […] [Y]ou close your eyes the better with mental measure to measure and compare the first and second segments namely from sole to kneepad and thence to pelvic girdle. […] A single leg appears. Seen from above. You separate the segments and lay them side by side. You leave the pieces lying there and open your eyes to find her sitting before you. (Beckett 1980: 56–58)

Notice that here too object perception is initially schematic, simplified and geometric. Only at the end does the individual object present itself in all its uniqueness and fullness of detail. One could also read this passage as portraying not immediate perception but rather as a second-level inner representation of the process of perception, but the parts-to-whole direction will still remain the same. 6) Difficulties within three-dimensional object mental or inner representation: For some literary characters, the transition from the two-and-ahalf-dimensional viewer-centered object representation to the threedimensional one is smooth, even automatic. But in this case there is really

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nothing remarkable to tell. Things become more interesting when the transition seems to be unstable and even reversible. The enthusiast, the hero of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story Abenteuer der Silvesternacht (The Adventure of New Year’s Eve), is unsure of the nature of some women he saw at the New Year’s Eve party. Were they real three-dimensional ones or were they his animation of the two-dimensional representation of three-dimensional women in a Rembrandt painting hanging on the wall, which he has been observing? On other occasions there is no doubt one is perceiving a threedimensional object. But what are its exact dimensions, shape, position and so on? Given poor observational conditions in terms of lighting, the observer’s location, occlusion by other objects, etc., the observer becomes unsure, and might well try and formulate several alternative hypotheses and then compute their relative probability. Or he might formulate and reject them one at a time until he reaches a satisfactory one or declares failure and gives up the task. Such things obviously happen in the actual world, but in literature they become crucial, as they are often associated with key narrative situations: a detective watching a suspicious location (Holmes stories), soldiers on a reconnaissance mission etc. To this group also belongs hesitation between animate and inanimate (mobile and motionless), as in Claude Simon’s Les Georgiques, where a homosexual situation involving two naked men turns out to be a Greek sculpture of two wrestlers. 7) In their article cited earlier, Zimbardo and Gerrig have distinguished three stages of perception: sensing (sections 1 and 2 above), perceptual organization (3–6) and object identification, recognition and categorization, to which we now turn. As a reader, one is always struck by the description of an object in literal, neutral, physical volumetric terms without any semantic category term or label, which is ultimately what defamiliarization is all about. For example, a doctor’s stethoscope could be described as a looped black rubber hose with a white metal disk hanging in the middle. In psychopathology there are sad actual cases of people who have lost their category terms due to brain lesion and are therefore unable to recognize (that is, identify and categorize) an object shown to them and need consequently to resort to descriptions like the above. At this point we can clearly see what object recognition or high level vision really is: the intersection of visual input and stored semantic knowledge, the matching of a standard representation in memory with an inner representation of organized sensory input. It is actually an activity akin to problem solving: the observer must decide which of all the category notions or prototypes in his memory best fits the object in question. In the case just described, the observer possesses a stable, invariant and correct internal image of the object, as the above description indicates, but cannot match it with any

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category in his or her knowledge base. To use Kantian terms once more, the observer possesses a percept but no concept to match it. And, in Kant’s memorable phrase, “Anschauungen ohne Begriffe sind blind” (1968: III, 97). And blind they certainly are, since vision occurs in the mind, not the eye. In literature things are slightly different. The author usually chooses an object for which readers do possess the category label, but s/he refuses to use this label in description and thus prevents or at least delays standard recognition of the object by the reader. If the defamiliarizing object description comes from a character, then the author made the character such that he or she is unable to recognize the object (a child or outsider of some sort). In this case we can say that the author won’t recognize the object while the character can’t do so. In most cases where a character’s object recognition fails, readers are still able to do the category matching, giving them an (intended) epistemic superiority over the character, and also laying bare for them the necessary and sufficient conditions of object identification. (It’s not obvious or automatic or purely sensory. Some prior knowledge base is essential.) One exception would be SF novels of exploration, where earthlings land on some unfamiliar planet and encounter for the first time objects the likes of which do not exist on earth. Not knowing the function or purpose of such objects, they have no choice but to refer to them initially in purely physical, neutral descriptive terms. Here the reader is on equal cognitive footing with the characters, sharing their puzzlement. But the author who made up the objects to begin with knows by stipulation what they are, for how otherwise could s/he have characters discover ultimately what these things “are?” Another case would be perceiver hesitation as to which category of all the accessible and probable ones best matches a given object, or, quite simply, what this thing actually is. An amusing example is provided in Gogol’s Dead Souls where the main character, Chichikov, approaches the estate of a well-known miserly landlord, Pliushkin by name. Seeing a human-like figure in the distance he cannot decide whether it is a scarecrow or a person, male or female, young or old, master or serf. Notice the hierarchical order of decisions, from most to least basic. It turns out eventually to be the old miser himself, so not only is object identification finally achieved, but a unique individual one as well. The use of a particular set of perceptual data for unique individual identification is of course a very old topos in literature, going back to Odysseus’ scar, and continuing to present-day mystery and suspense tales. Yet this is not immediately relevant to our topic. A more complex variety of failed categorical recognition is the one involving symbolic, purely conventional, second order semiotic categories,

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like those associated with the arts. Everybody is familiar with Shklovsky’s example of Natasha’s (the heroine of Tolstoy’s War and Peace) incomprehension of an opera performance the first time she is exposed to one (Shklovsky 1965: 16). Now her first-level or literal object and scene recognition is perfectly OK. She does recognize a man and a woman singing at the top of their voices against a painted cardboard background with some yellowish illumination above. Where she fails is at second-order identification, based on a purely semiotic set of categories, which would make this literal situation be mentally represented by the spectator as a lovers’ duet in a grove on a moonlit night. 8) Beyond single object recognition I: While most scientific discussion of perception is concerned with the single static object, literature portrays a much wider array of perceptual activities. I will mention just a few of these. There is first of all the panoramic perception of a whole scene, of numerous interrelated objects in space. Literature abounds in such scene and landscape perceptions. There is also dynamic vision: our perception and mental representation of moving objects, or of static objects while we are in motion, with its attendant peculiarities such as object blurring at high speed. One fine example is St. Loup’s fists being perceived under the light of a street lamppost by the narrator of Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27) as moving ovoids (Proust 1987–89: II, 480). European literature teems with characters’ perceptions of the passing scene out of a train window. One major kind of dynamic scene consists of events, and especially of human activities. Here, too, perception can be restricted to registering the physical doing, and only an additional set of culturally acquired categories will enable the perceiver to “see” in them purposive, meaningful human actions. One striking example is Briony in Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001) failing to understand the amorous activity of her sister and causing a disaster as a result. Vision in cognitive psychology is the natural unaided vision of the human eye. Yet, instrument-aided vision and especially the difference in the nature of the perceived between it and natural vision are often explored in literature. Field glasses are quite common here: perceived distance and size of objects are of course greatly different, and so is the degree of detail. Objects at a fair distance may appear looming, and so on. It is the use of binoculars, and forgetting that the scene they offer is not natural but enhanced, that drives Nathanael in Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann (1817) to madness, attempted murder and suicide. 9) Beyond single object recognition II: Alan Palmer has written about intermental activity or the group mind. In our particular context this would translate into the extension of the perceiving activity beyond the individual agent. The simplest and most common form would be when

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several narrative agents are perceiving the same scene, but its mental representation in the mind of each is somewhat different due to differences in physical position and/or mental makeup. This is of course the multiple focalization of standard narratology. And what about the “we saw” or “we heard” mode of reporting? In a most unlikely case everybody indeed heard and saw the same. But differences in observers’ position and mental makeup alike make this an unlikely occurrence. More likely is the assumption that this claim constitutes a collective consensual after-the-fact report, based on in-group negotiation, that is, comparing, evaluating, and collating the various individual perception reports. Such a “we” report on group perception may be quite different from that of each and every individual in isolation. On other occasions the object or scene to be perceived cannot be taken in all at once by one agent because of its scope, such as a whole battlefield or even all sides of a building. The author could then have different observers providing simultaneously real-time individual reports, each on the sector or segment of the total object or scene they perceive. This is strikingly analogous on the group level to the Parallel Distributed Processing model for the individual mind adopted by numerous cognitive scientists, led by D. E. Rumelhart. But these reports will inevitably have to be textually represented in succession, either serially or inter-cutting. The global picture could then be left for the individual reader or movie viewer to be pieced together mosaic-like from the individual partial snapshots. Otherwise, one could have some higher-level narrating voice acting as central awareness, coordinating and integrating the partial snapshots into a panoramic view, and providing the overall representation as well as significance of the perceived object or scene as a whole. Once again, this process provides an intriguing analogy to Hildreth and Ullman’s claim that even in the individual mind the threedimensional structure of an object is generated through an extrapolation from several different two-dimensional views. 4. Concluding Remarks In this essay I have reversed the standard narratological procedure, whereby one begins by singling out a textual element on the expression or content level and then proceeds to elucidate it through the use of concepts, models or theoretical claims stemming from another discipline, in our case cognitive psychology. Instead, I started with a systematic roster of the stages of visual perception as described in contemporary cognitive psychology and then provided literary examples for the functioning or

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malfunctioning of each. One may well ask what narratological studies stand to gain from proceeding in this particular manner. What I have presented is obviously not a theory but rather a toolkit or instrumentarium for narratological description and theorising, a toolkit which, I believe, could be employable and useful in four areas, which I will now list in ascending order of generality. – In the first place, the list of stages is pertinent to the study of focalization, especially if it is understood in the strictly sensory, visual sense. It could help one specify the type and main features of the mental representation produced in a given focalizer from the encounter of an external object and a perceiving mind, especially when different representations of the same object in different minds are at issue. – Secondly, approaching the issue of typification from the angle of creative artistic activity, the roster of stages also defines a spectrum of options or alternatives open to the writer who wishes to portray both the activity and the products of perception. For example, shall one have the character perceive objects in their full three-dimensional totality, as twodimensional surfaces, or as mere patches of light or colour? As I have argued earlier, it is difficult for us to imagine mental operations and products that are radically different from the human ones. Hence this spectrum may even be all that is available for writers to choose from. – The way visual perception—both process and product—is represented by a given author, school, movement or period is both determined by and helps determine their overall artistic method or method of portrayal of reality and mind alike. The nouveau roman for example was initially referred to as l’école du regard, making a particular kind of the representation of visual perception the defining feature of this radically innovative school. Moreover, since widely different authors, such as, say, Balzac and Robbe-Grillet, often have their characters perceive the same kinds of objects (houses, streets, people) in radically different ways, being able to define clearly the differences in their portrayal of this perception and its end result is an important tool of any contrastive study of their overall artistic methods. Possibly such an analysis may also point to their underlying, implicit concepts of the working of the mind. – Finally, what the eye/mind sees and how it sees is a major issue in defining artistic styles in the visual arts. The human body has not changed since Classical Antiquity. Yet its perceived image, as represented on the canvas, has undergone major shifts over time, as did the representation of perceived physical reality in literature, especially in Modernism. The specific nature of the resultant perceived object/field as defined by cognitive psychology could well serve as a major means for intermedial comparisons, for instance, describing in a principled, non-impressionistic way,

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parallels, equivalences or similarities between the verbal and the visual, such as the fragmented image of the beloved as perceived by the character in Beckett’s Company, and in Cubist paintings of women. Phrases and brushstrokes, lines or colours cannot be directly compared, being heterogeneous in nature, but the properties and structures of the perceived objects signified by them definitely can. References Barthes 1965 Barthes, Roland: “Objective Literature: Alain Robbe-Grillet,” in Two Novels by Robbe-Grillet, translated by Richard Howard, 11–25 (New York: Grove Press). Beckett 1980 Beckett, Samuel: Company (London: John Calder). Biederman 1987 Biederman, Irving: “Recognition–by–Components: A Theory of Human Image Understanding,” in Psychological Review 94.2: 115–47. Cohn 1978 Cohn, Dorrit: Transparent Minds (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Farah 2004 Farah, Martha: Visual Agnosia, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Fludernik 1996 Fludernik, Monika: Towards a “Natural” Narratology (London: Routledge). Gilman 1998 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The yellow wall-paper” and the History of Its Publication and Reception: a Critical Edition and Documentary Casebook, edited and compiled by Julie Bates Dock (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press). Goldstein 2001 Goldstein, Bruce (ed.): Blackwell’s Handbook of Perception (Oxford: Blackwell). Goldstein 2007 Goldstein, Bruce: Sensation and Perception, 7th ed. (Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth). Hildreth/Ullman 1989 Hildreth, Ellen/Ullman, Shimom: “The Computational Study of Vision,” in Foundations of Cognitive Science, edited by M. L. Posner, 581–630 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Kant 1968 Kant, Immanuel: Werke, edited by Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp). Lamberts/Goldstone 2005 Lamberts, Koen/Goldstone, Robert (eds.): Handbook of Cognition (London: Sage Publishers). Marr 1982 Marr, David: Vision (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co.).

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Merleau-Ponty 1962 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice: Phenomenology of Perception, translated by Colin Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Nabokov 2000 Nabokov, Vladimir: The Annotated Lolita, edited with preface, introduction and notes by Alfred Appel Jr. (London: Penguin). Palmer 2004 Palmer, Alan: Fictional Minds (Lincoln: University of Alaska Press). Palmer 1999 Palmer, Stephen: Visual Science: Photon to Phenomenology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Pinker 1984 Pinker, Stephen: “Visual Cognition: An Introduction,” in Cognition 18: 1–63. Pomerantz 2003 Pomerantz, J. R.: “Perception: Overview,” in Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, vol. 3, 527–37 (London: Nature Publication Group). Proust 1987–89 Proust, Marcel: A la recherché du temps perdu, edited by Jean-Yves Tadié (Paris: Gallimard). Robbe-Grillet 1969 Robbe-Grillet, Alain: La jalousie (London: Methuen). Shklovsky 1965 Shklovsky, Victor: “Art as Technique,” in Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, edited by Lee Lemon and Marion Reis, 3–24 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Smith/Kosslyn 2007 Smith, Edward/Kosslyn, Stephen: Cognitive Psychology: Mind and Brain (NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall). Solso 2005 Solso, Robert: Cognitive Psychology, 7th ed. (Boston: Pearson). Treisman 2002 Treisman, Anne: “Features and Objects in Visual Processing,” in Foundations of Cognitive Psychology, edited by Daniel Levitin, 399–412 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Vendler 1967 Vendler, Zeno: Linguistics in Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Wilson/Keil 1999 Wilson, Robert A./Keil, Frank (eds.): MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Woolf 1992 Woolf, Virginia: To the Lighthouse, edited by Susan Dick (Oxford: Blackwell). Zimbardo/Gerrig 2002 Zimbardo, Philip/Gerrig, Richard: “Perception,” in Foundations of Cognitive Psychology, edited by Daniel Levitin, 133–88 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

ALAN PALMER (Independent Scholar, London)

The Mind beyond the Skin in Little Dorrit Abstract There are two perspectives on thought: the internalist, stressing those aspects of the mind that are inner, introspective, and private; and the externalist, stressing those that are outer, public, and social. Both are necessary for the study of fictional thought. The social mind is the term used to describe the mental functioning that is revealed through the externalist perspective. Although social minds are crucially important to fictional narratives, they have been neglected by traditional narratology. An important element in the social mind is intermental (joint, group, shared, or collective) thought, as opposed to intramental (or individual or private) thought. This essay describes the functioning of some of the small intermental units in Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit. Examples include the units formed by Clennam and Mrs Clennam; Clennam and Flora; Mrs Clennam, Flintwinch and Affery; Clennam, the Meagles family and Gowan; and Pet and Little Dorrit. 1. Introduction There is a scene in Little Dorrit in which the villain Blandois arrives one evening at a French inn. The narrator remarks that, as a result of his arrival, [t]here had been that momentary interruption of the talk about the stove, and that temporary inattention to and distraction from one another, which is usually inseparable in such a company from the arrival of a stranger. (Dickens 1967 [1857]: 167–68)

Later in the novel, Mr Meagles admits that “we do, in families, magnify our troubles and make mountains of our molehills in a way that is calculated to be rather trying to people who look on—to mere outsiders” (370). Mr Meagles also explains to Arthur Clennam that: There is one of those odd impressions in my house, which do mysteriously get into houses sometimes, which nobody seems to have picked up in a distinct form from anybody, and yet which everybody seems to have got hold of loosely from somebody and let go again, that she [Miss Wade] lives, or was living [near Park Lane]. (373)

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These statements do not count as representations of consciousness within traditional narrative theory. How could they? Surely they relate to groups of people and not to individual minds! The purpose of this essay is to show that this is exactly what these statements are, as well as the large number of other statements like them that are to be found in the text of Little Dorrit and most other novels; they are representations of consciousness. 2. Theoretical Context Speaking very broadly, there are two perspectives on the mind: the internalist and the externalist one. These two perspectives form more of a continuum than an either/or dichotomy, but the distinction is, in general, a valid one. – An internalist perspective on the mind stresses those aspects that are inner, introspective, private, solitary, individual, psychological, mysterious, and detached. – An externalist perspective on the mind stresses those aspects that are outer, active, public, social, behavioural, evident, embodied, and engaged. The social mind and the public mind are the synonyms that I will use to describe those aspects of the whole mind that are revealed through the externalist perspective. The private mind is rendered most visible through the internalist perspective. As the following table shows, some of the concepts that are used to analyse the workings of fictional minds tend to fit easily into one or other of these perspectives. Internalist perspective social minds first person subjectivity of self unreadable minds focalization introspection intramental thought stream of consciousness interior monologue personal identity

Externalist perspective private minds third person subjectivity of others readable minds aspectuality theory of mind intermental thought continuing consciousness Bakhtinian dialogicality situated identity

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Some of these pairs oppose each other precisely; in other cases the pairings are a little looser. Some of the terms that may be unfamiliar to narrative theorists are defined below. The term aspectuality refers to the fact that the actual world is always experienced under some aspects and not others. People experience the same events in different ways. The storyworlds created by fictional texts are equally aspectual. They are necessarily only ever experienced by the characters who inhabit them under some aspects and not others. Within the internalist/externalist framework, I see focalization and aspectuality as complementing each other. Focalization occurs when the reader is presented with the aspect of the storyworld that is being experienced or presented by the focalizer at that moment. But the concept of aspectuality is a reminder to readers that, meanwhile, the storyworld is also experienced differently, under different aspects, by the other characters in the text. Those characters who are not currently being focalized experience other aspects of the storyworld. Any of those other characters could have been focalized if the narrator had chosen to do so. The term continuing consciousness stands for the process whereby readers create the illusion of a continuing consciousness for a character out of the scattered, isolated mentions of that person. The character continues to exist in the storyworld even when not present at a particular point in the text. The concept of aspectuality links very nicely with the idea of continuing consciousnesses. Other characters’ consciousnesses continue to exist while, at any single point in the narrative, only one character’s consciousness is being focalized. It is by means such as these that the internalist/externalist framework is helpful in expanding the concept of subjectivity. As the list suggests, the term can be used in both a first person way to describe the subjectivity of self and a third person way to refer to the subjectivity of others. My usage of the term aspectuality again serves to foreground the existence of the subjectivity of others, a subjectivity that is available to us through the use of our theory of mind. Such a theory, which is explained in more detail below, allows us to be aware of the existence of other minds. In fact, we can take the expansion of the concept of subjectivity a stage further. The study of the presentation of consciousness in fiction should take place as much between individual characters as within them. Within this approach, subjectivity is seen not just as a property of individual, isolated subjects (whether first- or third-person), but also as a quality that is situated between individuals. It may be helpful to put this point in terms of what I call situated identity (cf. Palmer 2004: 68–69). If an aspect of our identity is under consideration, how is it to be determined? Which is more reliable: our own first-person attribution of various attributes to ourselves, or the third-person attributions of others? Where is our identity

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situated: in our own views about ourselves, or in the views of others? If you want to find out about an aspect of someone’s mind, say whether or not they are selfish, who do you ask? Certainly not just them, because you know that you cannot be sure that you will get a complete answer. Selfish people are not likely to admit to being selfish. We are all reluctant to take somebody’s word for the workings of their own mind, and this seems to me to be a tacit admission that there is a strong sense in which our mind is distributed amongst those other people who have an image of us in their minds. How else can we say that someone is selfish when there is no representation of selfishness in their mind? This image is in the minds of others but we are attributing it to this particular mind. Surely, then, our identity is situated among the minds of others. It seems to me that the traditional narratological approach to the representation of fictional consciousness is an internalist one that stresses those aspects that are inner, passive, introspective, and individual. This undue emphasis on private, solitary, and highly verbalized thought at the expense of all the other types of mental functioning has resulted in a preoccupation with such concepts as free indirect discourse, stream of consciousness, and interior monologue. If I am right, then this causes a puzzle. Why is there so little narrative theory about social minds? One very general reason is the individualistic bias of much of Western philosophy, which has traditionally conceived of consciousness as a property of entirely isolated individual subjects. A more specific reason is that the modern subject area of narratology had its beginnings in the nineteen sixties in linguistic Structuralism. Narrative theorists conceived of the representation of individual consciousness in the novel in terms of such linguistic categories as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and free indirect discourse, and these categories do not lend themselves easily to analysis in terms of social minds. As a result, the social nature of fictional thought has been neglected. But, as the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio suggests, “the study of human consciousness requires both internal and external views” (2000: 82), and so an externalist perspective is required as well, one that stresses the public, social, concrete, and located aspects of mental life in the novel. An important part of the social mind is our capacity for intermental thought (cf. Palmer 2005), which is joint, group, shared, or collective thought, as opposed to intramental, or individual or private thought. It is also known as socially distributed, situated, or extended cognition, and also as intersubjectivity. Intermental thought is a crucially important component of fictional narrative because much of the mental functioning that occurs in novels is done by large organizations, small groups, work colleagues, friends, families, couples, and other intermental units. It could plausibly be

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argued that a large amount of the subject matter of novels is the formation, development, maintenance, and breakdown of these intermental systems. This sort of thinking, though taken little account of in traditional narrative theory because of its preference for the internalist perspective, is common in fictional discourse. 1 Within the real-mind disciplines of psychology and philosophy there is a good deal of interest in the mind beyond the skin: the realization that mental functioning cannot be understood merely by analyzing what goes on inside the skull but can only be fully comprehended once it has been seen in its social and physical context. For example, social psychologists routinely use the terms mind and mental action not only about individuals, but also about groups of people working as intermental units. So, it is appropriate to say of groups that they think or that they remember. As the psychologist James Wertsch puts it, a dyad (that is, two people working as a cognitive system) can carry out such functions as problem solving on an intermental plane (1991: 27). You may be asking what is achieved by talking in this way, instead of simply referring to individuals pooling their resources and working in cooperation together. The advocates of the concept of distributed cognition such as the theoretical anthropologists Gregory Bateson (1972) and Clifford Geertz (1993), the philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers (1998) and Daniel Dennett (1996), and the psychologists Edwin Hutchins (1995) and James Wertsch all stress that the purpose of the concept is increased explanatory power. That is, they argue that the way to delineate a cognitive system is to draw the limiting line so that you do not cut out anything which leaves things inexplicable (cf. Bateson 1972: 465). For example, Wertsch tells the story of how his daughter lost her shoes and he helped her to remember where she had left them. Wertsch asks: who is doing the remembering here? He is not, because he had no prior knowledge of where they were, and she is not, because she had forgotten where they were. Neither remembered on their own: it was the intermental unit formed by the two of them that did so (cf. Sperber/Hirschfeld 1999: cxxiv). The branch of social psychology called attribution theory is the study of how we ascribe states of mind to others (Heider 1958; Kelley 1973; Wilson 2002). In relation to real minds, when we are coming to a view on why someone is acting as they do in a particular situation, we ask ourselves such questions as: would other people act in the same way in this situation? Is this individual acting in the way that they normally do in similar situations? Would this person act in the same way if some of the cir––––––––––––

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However, for work by postclassical narrative theorists on distributed cognition, see Margolin (1996 and 2000) and Herman (2003a and 2003b).

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cumstances were different? Attribution theory can be taken in a number of different directions, for example in order to analyse the generally positive, situational aspects of in-group attributions and the typically negative, generalising and scapegoating nature of out-group ascriptions. As attributions are central to the construction of fictional minds, this theory can make important contributions to a systematic analysis of the narrative reading process. It can be used to formulate tentative answers to questions such as these: How do readers attribute states of mind such as emotions, dispositions, and reasons for action to characters based on all the explicit evidence made available to them, together with any implicit or inferential evidence such as characters’ patterns of behaviour? How do heterodiegetic narrators attribute states of mind to their characters? By what means do homodiegetic narrators attribute states of mind to themselves and also to other characters? How do characters attribute mental states to themselves and to other characters? And, most importantly in terms of the subject matter of this essay: how do readers, narrators, and individual characters attribute mental functioning to groups? Attribution theory rests on the concept of theory of mind, the term used by philosophers and psychologists to describe our awareness of the existence of other minds, our knowledge of how to interpret our own and other people’s thought processes, our mind-reading abilities in the real world. Readers of novels have to use their theory of mind in order to try to follow the workings of characters’ minds. Otherwise, they will lose track of the plot. The only way in which the reader can understand a novel is by trying to follow the workings of characters’ minds and thereby by attributing states of minds to them.2 Of particular importance to the concept of the social mind is the fact that this mind reading also involves readers trying to follow characters’ attempts to read other characters’ minds. A basic level of minimal mind reading is required for characters to understand each other in order to make life possible. At the next level up, characters who know each other well form intermental pairs and small groups. To put the point simply, they are more likely to know what the other is thinking than total strangers will. These small groups will obviously vary greatly in the quantity and quality of their intermental thought. In addition, individuals may be part of larger groups that will also have a tendency to think together on certain issues. In all of these units, large and small, the individuals that belong to them will, of course, frequently think separately as well. It is this balance between public and private thought, intermental and intramental functioning, social and individual minds, that novels are preoccupied with, and Little Dorrit is no exception. –––––––––––– 2

For more on theory of mind and the novel, see Zunshine (2006).

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Social mind is the fundamental or basic term that I use to refer to all of the public, outer, and evident aspects of the mind that are revealed by the externalist perspective. In particular, social minds would not be possible without the theory of mind ability that we all have (with some well-known exceptions such as those with autism) which allows us to achieve intermental thought. The term theory of mind is very misleading. It suggests that everyone has a fully worked out and completely self-conscious theory of consciousness, which is obviously not the case. It is simply, as I said, the ability to follow the workings of other people’s minds. People put their theory of mind ability to good and bad uses: to achieve a close and loving relationship, to manipulate others for selfish purposes, and so on. We should have no preconceptions about the quality of intermental thought. It can be as beautiful and ugly, destructive and creative, exceptional and commonplace as intramental thought. Social minds, intermental thought and theory of mind are neutral concepts. Like all tools, they can have both positive and negative effects, and be used for both ethical and unethical purposes. For example, Arthur Clennam has what may be called a positive social mind that is open to the aspectuality and partiality of experience. Equally, though, intermentality can have negative manifestations and deleterious effects. Henry Gowan has a negative social mind—he employs his knowledge of other minds to control and manipulate them. Obviously, moral choices are not always so straightforward. On the one hand, shared minds can result in people feeling less isolated and alone than they would otherwise do. On the other hand, though, intermentality can be regarded as an encroachment on a person’s sense of their own mental independence. I was explaining my work on social minds and intermental units once to my host at a conference, and I noticed that she was becoming uncomfortable. She said that she found the idea of having her freedom as an independent individual curtailed by being in such a unit repugnant. By contrast, others will welcome the intimacy and love that can arise from within such units. An emphasis on social minds will inevitably question these twin assumptions: first, that the workings of our minds are not accessible to others; and, secondly, that the workings of our own minds are unproblematically accessible to ourselves. This essay will question the first assumption but will make almost no reference to the equally questionable second one. To adapt Porter Abbott’s vivid phrase—unreadable minds—I will be discussing the readable minds that are to be found in Little Dorrit. However, I must stress that I am certainly not saying that minds are always readable. Sometimes, they are; sometimes, they are not. In Little Dorrit, I will argue, on the whole, they are (although I will also point out those occasions

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when they are not). But in different sorts of novels, different levels of readability and unreadability will apply. I am not saying that fictional minds are the same as real minds. I am saying that they are similar to real minds in some ways and different from them in other ways. We will not understand fictional minds unless we understand both of these aspects: both their similarities to, and their differences from, real ones. Any challenge to this approach that argues that fictional minds are semiotic constructs and therefore utterly and unbridgeably different from real minds does not, in my view, work. They are certainly semiotic constructs, but many of the semiotic operations that are necessary to recover meaning from them involve those aspects of fictional minds that are similar to real minds. I have assembled a large amount of evidence relating to the functioning of intermental units in Little Dorrit. What is presented in this essay is only a small sample. This is the third in a series of three essays on the subject of social minds in this novel. The first, called “Social Minds in Little Dorrit” focuses on physically distributed cognition and some of the specific ways in which social minds communicate with each other (such as the face, nonverbal communication and the look), as well as the large intermental units in the novel. The second, “Small Intermental Units in Little Dorrit” analyses the workings of the two most important units in the novel: the Dorrit family, and Clennam and Little Dorrit. The purpose of this essay is to focus on some of the other small intermental units in the novel—in particular, those formed by Clennam and Mrs Clennam; Clennam and Flora; Mrs Clennam, Flintwinch, and Affery; Clennam, the extended Meagles family and Gowan; and Pet and Little Dorrit. (Arthur Clennam is the hero of the novel who thinks that he is in love with Pet Meagles. After she marries Henry Gowan, Clennam discovers that he was really in love with Little Dorrit all the time. Mrs Clennam, his mother, is looked after by her married servants, Flintwinch—who becomes her business partner—and Affery.) Some general points emerge from the analyses of individual units that follow and it may be helpful to signpost some of them now. – It is necessary to draw a distinction between long-term dispositions to behave in certain ways and short-term, immediate, individual mental events. For example, Clennam knows that his mother has a secretive disposition, but he does not know the precise nature of her biggest secret, the one regarding his birth that forms the plot of the novel. – It is difficult in many cases to separate out the obviously cognitive element in intermentality from the affective and emotional one. When one character knows what another is thinking, this is often

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because they have a certain emotional investment in that person. They like them or they love them. Little Dorrit and Pet know what the other is thinking and feeling because they develop a strong and immediate liking for each other. Knowing what someone else is thinking is inseparable in many cases from knowing what they are feeling. (This is not always the case though—see Flintwinch and Mrs Clennam.) Sometimes the degree of intermentality, cognitive or emotional, is balanced or symmetrical; sometimes it is not. The relationships between Flintwinch and Mrs Clennam and between Little Dorrit and Pet are, in their different ways, well-balanced and symmetrical. The relationships between the ‘clever ones’ (Flintwinch and Mrs Clennam) and Affery, and between Clennam and Gowan are not. Some characters (Clennam and Mr Meagles) have positive social minds, are open to intermentality and are disposed to form intermental relationships with others. Others (Mrs Clennam and Gowan) are devious, secretive, or self-absorbed. These latter characters use mind-reading for selfish and exploitative reasons and tend to take part in dysfunctional and unbalanced intermental units. Once the externalist perspective has been applied, it becomes evident that the absence of intermental thought is as significant as its presence. In fact, in some cases such as married couples and parents and offspring, the absence of intermental thought can be more significant than its presence, because of the increased expectations regarding such relationships. These relationships can usefully serve as a benchmark against which more successful pairings and groupings can be measured. 3. Clennam and Mrs Clennam

This is a dysfunctional unit in which there is little evidence of any intermental thinking. She is a rigidly religious woman who regards Clennam (not her natural child) as tainted because he is the result of an adulterous relationship. She also resents his well-meaning attempts to find out family secrets that, unknown to him, relate to his origin. What they do know about each other is the sort of person the other is, their character or personality, their dispositions to behave in certain ways. He knows her to be cold, arrogant, and unbending. She knows him well enough to identify what she regards as weakness in him. When Clennam was a child, Mrs

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Clennam could see him looking at her “with his mother’s face” (859) and therefore knows that he will, as she thinks, take after his real mother. But it is precisely this knowledge that fuels her hostility towards him and drives them further apart. Certainly, as I have said, Clennam knows that his mother has a secretive disposition and he guesses that she has secrets. But these are circumstantial or contextual guesses based on circumstances and his knowledge of her character. They do not arise from any knowledge of her detailed thought processes as they arise in everyday contexts. Clennam is well aware that Mrs Clennam does not have any sort of intermental bond with him. “He touched the worsted muffling of her hand— that was nothing; if his mother had been sheathed in brass there would have been no new barrier between them” (76). As a sensitive man, he feels the lack of any bond very deeply. As a consequence he has little desire for her company: “[h]e had no intention of presenting himself in his mother’s dismal room that night, and could not have felt more depressed and cast away if he had been in a wilderness” (203). Clennam is watchful in her presence, forever unsuccessfully seeking clues to her state of mind and also to the family secrets. “Mrs Clennam glanced at her son, leaning against one of the windows. He observed the look” (92). Clennam is a character who believes in positive social minds. For him, it is an ethical decision to be as open as possible in his cognitive functioning. He thinks that people should be capable of empathy, and is willing to try to follow the thought processes of others for good reasons. “A swift thought shot into his mind. In that long imprisonment here, and in her own long confinement to her room, did his mother find a balance to be struck” (129). What little knowledge he has of his mother’s thought processes leads him to try to achieve a reconciliation with her. She rejects the offer. Indeed, the conflicted conversations reveal fresh misunderstandings and inabilities to communicate. “‘You knew I would. You knew me’ she interrupted. Her son paused for a moment. He had struck fire out of her, and was surprised” (87). Although she is acknowledging that he knows what sort of person she is, the key point is that he is, nevertheless, surprised. He still does not know her well enough to be able to predict her emotional reactions. There is a lack of balance in that Clennam is trying to find a meeting of minds and his mother is not. His mother’s rejection of an open relationship is echoed in the behaviour of Gowan and also Miss Wade which I will consider later. However, to put this relationship in context, it is worth noting that Mrs Clennam can be surprisingly sensitive to the thought processes of others. This seems particularly true of Little Dorrit. She tells her: “You love Arthur. (I can see the blush upon your face)” (859). When Little Dorrit later recoils from her, she seems to care,

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responding: “[e]ven now, I see you shrink from me, as if I had been cruel” (860). 4. Clennam and Flora Several of Clennam’s relationships illustrate the general points made earlier about subjectivity and identity. He generally displays a sensitive awareness of the aspectuality of individuals, the fact that every person contains many different individuals because they are viewed under different aspects by different people. As Walt Whitman said, “[w]e contain multitudes.” For example, he is acutely conscious of the possibility that his Little Dorrit could become a “domesticated fairy” (305) and thereby lose contact with what he thinks might be her own conception of herself (i.e. her own “Little Dorrit”). Clennam is aware that he may be making use of her by creating an image of her in his mind that may not fit her own self-image. Furthermore, he is concerned that he may be doing so in order to supply his own emotional needs. A similar sort of problem arises in his relationship with Flora. For about twenty years, the image of Flora in Clennam’s mind has been of the young-Flora. This image takes no account of the passing of time. He forgets to make any adjustments in his mind to anticipate what an older-Flora might be like. The inevitable happens. Clennam’s previous, young-Flora dies instantly as soon as he meets the older-Flora. “Clennam’s eyes no sooner fell upon the subject of his old passion than it shivered and broke to pieces” (191). Interestingly, Flora realizes what has happened: “‘I know I am not what you expected, I know that very well.’ In the midst of her rapidity, she had found that out with the quick perception of a cleverer woman” (195). However, what is so amusing about Flora’s character is that she keeps forgetting what she has so perceptively noticed. She keeps adopting the behaviour of young-Flora, in an attempt to transform Clennam into his younger self as well. This, of course, causes the older-Clennam great discomfort. Clennam is comically uncomfortable with a look from Flora: “In his ridiculous distress, Clennam received another of the old glances without in the least knowing what to do with it” (194). However, Flora’s sympathy for Little Dorrit and her wholehearted welcome of Clennam’s happiness eventually press her to stay in olderFlora character. Flora’s mental functioning is locked into a Bakhtinian dialogical embrace with Clennam’s. To use Gregory Bateman’s formula as described in the previous section, for increased explanatory power, the way to delineate Flora’s cognitive system is to draw the limiting line so that you do not cut out anything which leaves things inexplicable. That means not leaving out

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of account either young-Flora or older-Flora, either Clennam’s-Flora or her own Flora (or Flora-Flora). Together, these different Floras comprise her situated identity. The internalist perspective gives us only the FloraFlora, while the externalist perspective reveals them all. 5. Mrs Clennam, Flintwinch, and Affery The business partnership of Flintwinch and Mrs Clennam (frequently referred to by Affery as “the clever ones”) is a fiercely conflicted, competitive unit. Their conversations are games of chess that others would find difficult to follow. The closeness of their joint thinking is frequently emphasized, often by Flintwinch’s recriminations during their regular arguments: “It doesn’t matter whether you answer or not, because I know you are, and you know you are” (224). Flintwinch knows what she is thinking, she knows that he knows, he knows that she knows, and so on. Their minds are transparent to each other. He remarks to her: “Now, I know what you mean by opening your eyes so wide at me” (850). He even shouts at Mrs Clennam: “But that’s the way you cheat yourself” (851). (This is a reference to her concealment of the circumstances surrounding Clennam’s birth and upbringing.) He is saying that he knows her better than she does herself. In my terms, he is claiming that his third-person attributions of her states of mind are more accurate and reliable than her own first-person ones. Nevertheless, despite these very real tensions, they form an alliance, knowing that they are stronger together than they are alone. Both recognize that the other is a very strong character. Perhaps this had originally been the mainspring of the understanding between them. Descrying thus much force of character in Mr Flintwinch, perhaps Mrs Clennam had deemed alliance with him worth her while. (225)

In a very telling phrase, Flintwinch tells Mrs Clennam that “[t]he peculiarity of my temper is, ma’am, that I won’t be swallowed up alive” (224). When two people are in such a close relationship, to the point where it can be said that an intermental mind is being formed (even in the case of a conflicted unit such as this), the fear of being swallowed up, of losing one’s individuality, subjectivity or identity can be a very real one. In fact, as we shall see below, this is what does happen to Affery. Intermental units are fluid. This one is sometimes a pair but, at other times, it becomes a trio when “the clever ones” exercise the large degree of control that they have over Affery’s mind. Despite her very sluggish intramental functioning, Affery, by her repeated use of this phrase, recognizes the strength of the intermental unit formed by Flintwinch and Mrs Clennam. She asks herself: “What’s the use of considering? If them two

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clever ones have made up their minds to it, what’s left for me to do? Nothing” (78). “But as ‘them two clever ones’—Mrs Affery’s perpetual reference, in whom her personality was swallowed up—were agreed to accept Little Dorrit as a matter of course, she had nothing for it but to follow suit” (94). Note the recurrence also of the phrase, “swallowed up,” that was used by Flintwinch earlier. The difference is that Affery is, in fact, being swallowed up. Clearly, intermentality can be used to bad ends, as here, in the dissolution of Affery’s personality. Her fate also demonstrates why the host at my conference might be threatened by the notion of shared minds. The unit becomes so strongly defined that, later in the text, the narrator does not even feel it necessary to use the quotation marks: Affery is “held in very low account by the two clever ones, as a person, never of strong intellect, who was becoming foolish” (389). Outsiders are aware of the nature of this unit. When Flintwinch abuses Affery and threatens her with violence in front of Blandois, he callously remarks, “Husband and wife I know, from this playfulness” (396). One very noticeable feature of the passages in the text that feature this intermental unit is their descriptions of characters’ watchfulness of others, their use of the look. 3 When Mr Dorrit goes to see Mrs Clennam, “he felt that the eyes of Mr Flintwinch and of Mrs Clennam were on him. He found, when he looked up, that this sensation was not a fanciful one” (686). “As Mrs Clennam never removed her eyes from Blandois … so Jeremiah never removed his from Arthur” (602). Together, they attempt to exercise control over others. The power of the look is an outward manifestation of this control. This look is employed with regularity on Affery in order to subjugate her to their joint will: “Mrs Clennam and [Flintwinch] had exchanged a look; and had then looked, and looked still, at Affery” (834). The term situated identity is intended to convey a balance between the perceptions of individuals regarding themselves and the perceptions of others regarding those individuals. In the case of Affery, the balance is upset. She is an example of a character who loses her intramental identity by being subsumed into an intermental unit that contains much stronger characters than her. As the following passage shows, she becomes as mysterious to herself as she is to others. First person attributions are as unreliable as the third person kind. In the vagueness and indistinctness of all her new experiences and perceptions, as everything about her was mysterious to herself she began to be mysterious to others: and became as difficult to be made out to anyone’s satisfaction as she found the house and everything in it difficult to make out to her own. (229)

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For more on the importance of the look, see Palmer (forthcoming).

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It is then made entirely explicit in the text that, in addition to having her personality swallowed up, Affery is “sensible of the danger in which her identity stood” (405). This is an extreme example of the points made earlier about identity. In Affery’s case, her identity becomes so grotesquely distributed between two much stronger personalities that it barely continues to exist in the traditional sense of an individual, isolated subjectivity. In parallel with, but separate from, the issue of socially distributed cognition, another aspect of the social mind is called physically distributed cognition: “our habit of off-loading as much as possible of our cognitive tasks into the environment itself” (Dennett 1996: 134). Although concerned with objects rather than other people, it is an aspect of the social mind because this type of cognition is outer, evident, and embodied. Physically distributed cognition is achieved mainly through tools such as pen and paper and computers. However, in a less obvious sense, we also make use of our whole environment as a cognitive aid. Put simply, when we are in our own homes, we know where everything is and our cognitive functioning runs smoothly; when we are put into an alien environment, the quality of our thinking can suffer. Dennett convincingly illustrates the importance of physically distributed cognition to old people by describing how they tend to become disoriented when taken out of their own homes and put into the unfamiliar environment of a nursing home. As Dennett says, “[t]aking them out of their homes is literally separating them from large parts of their minds” (1996: 128, my italics). As with socially distributed cognition, the term physically distributed cognition is a neutral, descriptive term. It has positive aspects such as convenience and emotional attachment, as well as negative ones—chiefly the potential trauma arising from the withdrawal of a cognitive aid. One example in the novel of physically distributed cognition is the passage quoted in the introduction in which Meagles comes close to saying that the information that Miss Wade lives in Park Lane is literally contained in the Meagles’ family house. Another is Mrs Clennam’s house, as in this description of her room: Yet there was a nameless air of preparation in the room, as if it were strung up for an occasion. From what the room derived it … no one could have said without looking attentively at its mistress, and that, too, with a previous knowledge of her face. (832)

Furthermore, much of the threat to Affery’s identity comes from the mysterious and menacing noises that she hears in Mrs Clennam’s house and which are later explained by its eventual collapse.

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6. Clennam, the Meagles Family, and Gowan In my opening paragraph, I quoted two examples relating to the efficient working of the close intermental unit of the Meagles family. As often happens with such units, others are welcomed into them, and they immediately make Clennam feel at home. Significantly, nonverbal communication is employed: Mrs Meagles uses “a look which thanked Clennam in a manner agreeable to him” (581). Clennam’s mind-reading of the Meagles family is very accurate and this is particularly true of Pet. (In a sense this is unsurprising since he believes for a while that he is in love with her. On the other hand, it can equally well be argued that love makes us blind to the thought processes of the loved one. Indeed, this happens when, as discussed below, Pet does not recognize the moral flaws in her future husband, Gowan.) Clennam continues to be perceptive when he sees to his regret that Pet lights up when she sees Gowan. He also notices the shadow that falls over Mr and Mrs Meagles for the same reason (246). A pattern of Clennam’s insight into Pet’s thought processes is established: “[i]t was either the fact too, or he fancied further, that Pet herself was not insensible to these little incidents” (249); and “[t]here was a flutter in her manner, which Clennam had never seen in it before; and as he came near her, it entered his mind all at once that she was there of a set purpose to speak to him” (382). She, in turn, develops a good understanding of Clennam’s mind: “[h]e bound himself to do all she asked, and she knew full well that he would do it” (386). In contrast to some of the other theory of mind in the novel, for example the relationship between Mrs Clennam and Flintwinch, Clennam’s attempts at mind-reading are well-intentioned and altruistic. He decides, when thinking about proposing to Pet, that what matters is not what he thinks about it, and not what the parents think about it, “but what she thought of it” (239). The relationship between Clennam and Gowan is very interesting. Although the two men form a competitive, conflicted unit, it differs from the equally conflicted one comprised of Mrs Clennam and Flintwinch because it is also unbalanced and asymmetrical. That is to say, it is Gowan who wishes it to be so; Clennam’s aims are very different. For example, Clennam tries hard to understand the workings of Gowan’s mind. In a particularly vivid image, when Clennam watches Gowan when he is unaware, “[t]here was something in his way of spurning [stones] out of their places with his heel, and getting them into the required position, that Clennam thought had an air of cruelty in it” (245). The externalist Dickens is particularly adept at creating telling descriptions of small, inconsequential examples of behaviour that appear to other characters and also to the reader to sum up the character performing the action.

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At other times, though, despite his best attempts to achieve what may be called positive intermentality, Clennam’s theory of mind lets him down. He cannot empathize sufficiently with Gowan’s mental functioning to understand his dilettante attitude towards the arts and his casual attitudes towards Pet and others. Gowan enjoys Clennam’s struggles to understand and his resulting discomfiture: Mr Henry Gowan seemed to have a malicious pleasure in playing off the three talkers against each other, and in seeing Clennam startled by what they said […]. His healthy state of mind appeared even to derive a gratification from Clennam’s position of embarrassment and isolation among the good company. (362)

Clennam keeps trying: Clennam tried to convey by all quiet and unpretending means, that he was frankly and disinterestedly desirous of tendering him any friendship he would accept. Mr Gowan treated him in return with his usual ease, and with his usual show of confidence, which was no confidence at all. (451)

To adapt the narrator’s words, it is the usual show of openness, which is no openness at all. Gowan is a manipulative character who enjoys using his theory of mind dishonestly. He knows that Clennam wants openness in order to show that he (Clennam) has no hard feelings that he (Gowan) has won the woman, Pet, who Clennam at that time thinks he loves. Gowan pretends to be open; he knows that he is not really being open; he enjoys Clennam’s disappointment that he is not. Gowan knows the minds of well-meaning people such as Clennam and is ruthless in exploiting such weakness. He uses his knowledge of Clennam’s mind precisely to repel the possibility of intermental thought, thus making this a very asymmetrical relationship. Clennam’s disappointment in Gowan leads him into a familiar phenomenon related to first person attribution: “[i]t would have been so cruel if he had meant it, that Clennam firmly resolved to believe he did not mean it” (453). In the modern phrase, Clennam is in denial. During a later encounter, Clennam is described as “smarting under these coolhanded thrusts, of which he deeply felt the force already” (721). Such cruelty requires a very refined theory of mind. Gowan and his mother make a good deal of their family connection. He remarks that “I belong to a clan, or a clique, or a family, or a connection, or whatever you like to call it” (451). Clennam sees through this, as he sees through the Dorrit family’s continual talk of the “family credit” and the “family dignity,” and thinks that Gowan’s talk of disappointment at the Meagles connection is “an assertion of station which the bridegroom brought into the family as his property” (452). Mrs Gowan plays a similar sort of game to her son. To use the term recently employed as a book title by the philosopher Colin McGinn, she enjoys mindf*ucking. So, for example, she talks to Clennam about her attribution of cynical motives

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to the Meagles family and, in particular, her allegation that they are eager for the match. This is completely dishonest because she knows perfectly well that Mr and Mrs Meagles are very upset by their daughter’s marriage. Again, the use that she makes of her theory of mind ability is ruthless. She knows that Clennam knows that she is lying, but she also knows that she can get away with it. Gowan also uses his refined theory of mind on his new wife for equally cruel purposes. In encouraging Blandois to become a friend, Gowan does so for the sole reason that he knows that Pet would much rather that he did not. He “opposed the first separate wish he observed in his wife” (541). The tone of that sentence is a reminder that the relationship between Gowan and Pet, set as it is in Italy, is an oddly compelling anticipation of the marriage between Osmond and Isabel Archer in Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady. “From the days of their honeymoon, Minnie Gowan felt sensible of being usually regarded as the wife of a man who had made a descent in marrying her” (541). At first reading, this sounds like a simple example of intramental thought report. However, Minnie’s dialogic anticipation of the feelings of others contains an intermental component which is disguised within the passive construction (‘regarded as’). It may be decoded as follows: the group of people who know her regard her (Minnie thinks) as that sort of wife. 4 The text does not reveal the extent of Pet’s knowledge of Gowan’s responsibility for the creation of this hostile intermental consensus on her. However, just like Clennam, Pet too is in denial. 7. Little Dorrit and Pet During Pet’s growing realisation that her marriage will not be the genuinely intermental unit that she had hoped for, she has a consolation in the strong unit that she forms with Little Dorrit. The narrator points out that “[t]here was a sympathetic understanding already established between the two” (563); and also that: there was a silent understanding between them […]. She [Little Dorrit] looked at Mrs Gowan with keen and unabated interest; the sound of her voice was thrilling to her; nothing that was near her, or about her, escaped Little Dorrit. (544)

Little Dorrit tells Clennam that “I loved her almost as soon as I spoke to her” (521). Her love for Pet enables her to read her mind very efficiently. During their first meeting, “[t]here was a sorrowfully affectionate and –––––––––––– 4

For more on the use of the passive voice to construct intermental functioning, see Palmer (2005).

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regretful sound in [Pet’s] voice, which made [Little Dorrit] refrain from looking at her for the moment” (496). In addition to such vocal cues, Little Dorrit’s face-reading works well too. “Little Dorrit stopped. For there was neither happiness nor health in the face that turned to her” (857). Little Dorrit is aware of the intermental consensus that Pet and her family had set out to catch Gowan as a good social connection. However, “Little Dorrit’s interest in the fair subject of this easily accepted belief was too earnest and watchful to fail in accurate observation. [...] she even had an instinctive knowledge that there was not the least truth in it.” (563) Part of the reason for Little Dorrit’s scepticism is her perceptive awareness of the dynamics within the Gowan marriage. Although, oddly, she becomes a favourite of Gowan (544), this does not prevent her from being unsparing in her judgements of his mental functioning: Little Dorrit fancied it was revealed to her that Mr Gowan treated his wife, even in his very fondness, too much like a beautiful child. He seemed so unsuspicious of the depths of feeling which she knew must lie below that surface, that she doubted if there could be any such depths in himself. (548)

She is also very penetrating in her judgements of Gowan’s behaviour generally. When the Dorrit family behaves with insufferably munificence towards Gowan as a painter, “Little Dorrit was not without doubts how Mr Henry Gowan might take their patronage” (554). And her doubts are justified when he takes it badly. Little Dorrit is also aware of the fact that Pet refuses to understand the quality of Gowan’s mind: she writes to Clennam regarding Pet and Gowan that “I believe she conceals [all his faults], and always will conceal them, even from herself” (607). A rather surprising intermental unit that develops in the second half of the novel is that formed by Little Dorrit, Pet, and Blandois. To both Little Dorrit and Pet, “Blandois behaved in exactly the same manner; and to both of them his manner had uniformly something in it, which they both knew to be different from his bearing towards others” (563). Little Dorrit’s aversion to Blandois is visible and therefore public: “[s]he went down, not easily hiding how much she was inclined to shrink and tremble; for the appearance of this traveller was particularly disagreeable to her” (497). She becomes fascinated by his stare: “[t]hroughout he [Blandois] looked at her [Little Dorrit]. Once attracted by his peculiar eyes, she could not remove her own, and they had looked at each other all the time” (546). Pet is equally repelled by him and knows that he has killed her dog. The two women are reduced to an intermental conspiracy and use secrecy and silence in the communications between their minds that occur within their relationship: “[t]heir looks met. Something thoughtfully apprehensive in [Minnie’s] large, soft eyes, had checked Little Dorrit in an instant” (544).

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8. Tattycoram and Miss Wade Generally, Miss Wade’s mind is difficult for other characters to read. When talking to Mr Meagles and intent on revealing nothing of her mind, she “stood by the table so perfectly composed and still after this acknowledgement of his remark that Mr Meagles stared at her under a sort of fascination, and could not even look to Clennam to make another move” (376). This is a vivid illustration of the importance of publicly available cues when reading other minds. Sometimes those cues are missing, as when Miss Wade deliberately reduces them in order to keep the workings of her mind hidden, and makes use of “her distant, proud, and selfsecluded manner” (719). When this happens, then Meagles is at a loss. Like the other characters, Miss Wade’s identity is situated. She is part of the quarantine party at the beginning of the novel; “[a]nd yet it would have been as difficult as ever to say, positively, whether she avoided the rest, or was avoided” (62). Although this is a statement about Miss Wade’s disposition to be unsociable, it is also about the intermental functioning of “the rest”: their awareness of her disposition and their resulting behaviour in avoiding her. This aspect of her identity, her unsociability, is situated between her and the rest of the group to which she does not quite belong. However, in the unforgettable scene in which Miss Wade watches Tattycoram bitterly crying, it is unmistakably an intermental pairing that is being created. As she looks at the young girl, she knows what she is thinking and feeling. She also knows that Tattycoram will come to understand that they have these thoughts and feelings in common: [t]he visitor [Miss Wade] stood looking at her [Tattycoram] with a strange attentive smile. It was wonderful to see the fury of the contest in the girl, and the bodily struggle she made as if she were rent by the Demons of old. (65)

Tattycoram has a generally easily readable mind, though, and so others too can see, literally, what she is thinking and feeling. Clennam notices by the reflection of the mirror, Tattycoram stop in passing outside the door, listen to what was going on, and pass away with an angry and contemptuous frown upon her face, that changed its beauty into ugliness. (238)

The ethical judgements implied by the very different language used to present the two revelations of Tattycoram’s mind are noteworthy. For Miss Wade, it is a “wonderful” experience that she smiles to see; for Clennam it is an experience of ugliness. There is another moment in the text when Clennam reads her mind. “An impatient glance from Tattycoram seemed, as Clennam saw it, to answer ‘With my eyes!’ But her only answer in words was: ‘I met her near the church’” (240). He knows that what he sees in her eyes is a much more reliable indicator of her thoughts than the words she uses.

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Mr Meagles is surprisingly sensitive, perhaps, when he analyses the possible reasons, motives, and intentions behind Tattycoram’s actions: “[t]here are times when that girl’s whole nature seems to roughen itself up against seeing us so bound up in Pet” (241); and “[w]hat did we think she, Tattycoram, might have been if she had been caressed and cared for in her childhood, like her young mistress?” (371). It appears that his speculations are quite accurate. Similarly, he accuses Miss Wade when he tells Tattycoram about “[t]hat power over you, which we see she exercises” (378). He also says directly to Miss Wade: “I don’t know what you are, but you don’t hide, can’t hide, what a dark spirit you have within you” (379). Revealingly, Tattycoram herself echoes the use of his word “power” when she says of Miss Wade: “I knew she had got a power over me through understanding what was bad in me so well” (880). Miss Wade and Tattycoram form an example of what I have called competitive, conflicted, or destructive intermentality. Both know the other’s mind, but both are equally unable to form a harmonious, positive, productive relationship as a result. 9. Conclusion I stressed at the beginning of this essay that both perspectives on fictional minds, the internalist and the externalist, are required for an understanding of mental functioning in the novel. The narrator of Little Dorrit recognizes this truth. The narrator employs the internalist perspective on those aspects of the mind that are inner, introspective, solitary, private, individual, psychological, mysterious, and detached, when he remarks of Mr Dorrit that “[o]nly the wisdom that holds the clue to all hearts and all mysteries, can surely know to what extent a man, especially a man brought down as this man had been, can impose upon himself” (275). The externalist perspective that stresses those aspects of the mind that are outer, active, public, social, behavioural, evident, embodied, and engaged, is used when the narrator comments of Mr Chivery that, “[a]s to any key to his inner knowledge being to be found in his face, the Marshalsea key was as legible as an index to the individual characters and histories upon which it was turned” (346). Within this balance, I have emphasized social minds for two reasons. One is that they have been neglected by traditional narrative theory. The other is that, in my view, the social minds in this particular novel are more important than the solitary or private ones. It is not possible to understand Little Dorrit without an understanding of the public minds that operate within its storyworld. It is difficult to think of any important aspect of the novel that is left out of an externalist analysis of it. A good deal of the

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significance of the thought in the novel is lost if only the internalist perspective is employed. My intention in quoting so frequently from the novel was to show that these social minds are woven into the fabric of its discourse. As shared cognition is such an important part of our lives, it is necessary for narrative theory not to be limited by the focus on individual subjectivity that is so characteristic of traditional Western philosophy. This would put the mind beyond the skin at the centre of the study of the novel. Once this is done, the next stage will be to adopt a more historicized approach. For example, it may be that social minds are more prevalent in nineteenth century novels than in, say, modernist texts. On this point, more research is required. References Bateson 1972 Bateson, Gregory: Steps to an Ecology of Mind: A Revolutionary Approach to Man’s Understanding of Himself (New York: Ballantine). Clark/Chalmers 1998 Clark, Andy/Chalmers, David J.: “The Extended Mind,” in Analysis 58: 7–19. Damasio 2000 Damasio, Antonio: The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness (London: Heinemann). Dennett 1996 Dennett, Daniel C.: Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson). Dickens 1967 [1857] Dickens, Charles: Little Dorrit, edited by John Holloway (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Geertz 1993 Geertz, Clifford: The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (London: Fontana). Heider 1958 Heider, Fritz: The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (New York: Wiley). Herman 2003a Herman, David: “Stories as a Tool for Thinking,” in Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences, edited by David Herman, 163–92 (Stanford: CSLI Press). Herman 2003b Herman, David: “Regrounding Narratology: The Study of Narratively Organized Systems for Thinking,” in What is Narratology: Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory, edited by Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Müller, 303–32 (Berlin: de Gruyter). Hutchins 1995 Hutchins, Edwin: Cognition in the Wild (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Kelley 1973 Kelley, Harold: “The Processes of Causal Attribution,” in American Psychologist 28: 107–28.

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Margolin 1996 Margolin, Uri: “Telling Our Story: On ‘We’ Literary Narratives,” in Language and Literature 5.2: 115–33. Margolin 2000 Margolin, Uri: “Telling in the Plural: From Grammar to Ideology,” in Poetics Today 21.3: 591–618. Palmer 2004 Palmer, Alan: Fictional Minds (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Palmer 2005 Palmer, Alan: “Intermental Thought in the Novel: The Middlemarch Mind,” in Style 39.4: 427–39. Palmer 2007 Palmer, Alan: “Attribution Theory,” in Contemporary Stylistics, edited by Marina Lambrou and Peter Stockwell, 81–92 (London: Continuum). Palmer [forthcoming] Palmer, Alan: “Social Minds in Little Dorrit.” Sperber/Hirschfeld 1999 Sperber, Dan/Hirschfeld, Lawrence: “Culture, Cognition, and Evolution,” in The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, edited by Robert Wilson and Frank Keil, cxi–cxxxii (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Wertsch 1991 Wertsch, James V.: Voices of the Mind: A Sociocultural Approach to Mediated Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Wilson 2002 Wilson, Timothy: Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Zunshine 2006 Zunshine, Lisa: Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel (Columbus: Ohio State University Press).

MONIKA FLUDERNIK (University of Freiburg, Germany)

The Category of ‘Person’ in Fiction: You and We Narrative-Multiplicity and Indeterminacy of Reference 1 Abstract Besides providing a brief introduction to deixis, this essay illustrates the inherent strategies of referential indeterminacy that proliferate in you and we narratives. These are significant for narrative theory in so far as they undermine clear-cut dichotomies of discourse and story (or the extra-/ intradiegetic levels); moreover, they thrive on the unclear status of producers and recipients of narrative discourse within the narrative text. Additionally, as will be shown, you and we narratives are particularly prone to playing with the fact vs. fiction distinction, employing metalepsis and disorienting, or at least re-orienting, readers’ habits and frames of expectation. The article also outlines the large range of possible combinations of addressee (or speaker) reference on the narrational level with the protagonists on the level of story. 1. Introduction Besides proffering a comparison of you and we narratives from the perspective of deixis, my main aim in this paper will be to illustrate the inherent strategies of referential indeterminacy that proliferate in you and we narratives. These are significant for narrative theory in so far as they undermine clear-cut dichotomies of discourse and story (or the extra-/ intradiegetic levels); moreover, they thrive on the unclear status of producers and recipients of narrative discourse within the narrative text. Additionally, as will be shown, you and we narratives are particularly prone to play with the fact vs. fiction distinction, to employ metalepsis and to disorient, or at least re-orient, readers’ habits and frames of expectation. –––––––––––– 1

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference “La Grammaire et le Style: Domaine Anglophone” at Aix-en-Provence in November 2006. I would like to thank the LERMA research group for hosting me, and especially Monique De Mattia-Viviès, who did such a wonderful job organizing the colloquium.

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For readers unfamiliar with you and/or we narratives, I start with some initial remarks on deixis and provide some introductory information on you and we narratives. The bulk of the essay will consist in outlining a variety of deictic options in these two types of narrative and will analyze and draw conclusions from this discussion. The article has two appendices. Appendix A gives a list of all second-person texts that have come to my notice since the publication of the bibliography in Fludernik (1994b); Appendix B has a complete list of all we narratives that I am familiar with. I have only listed texts which clearly can be categorized as second-person texts (or we narratives), discarding items I found cited but could not check or which, when checked, did not have (a) protagonist(s) on the story level referred to as you/we. The list of we narratives is overwhelmingly indebted to Brian Richardson’s (2006: 141–42). 2. Deixis and Pronouns The use of pronouns in narrative, and particularly in fiction, has a long critical tradition. Pronouns belong to the larger pragmatic category of deictics, which also includes position-dependent verb forms like come and bring in English, 2 Japanese honorifics, and lexical forms of address or reference such as papa, your Honour, darling or baby (in adult child language). What conjoins all these deictic forms is the fact that they can only be used from a particular position and thus allow the listener/reader to determine who is speaking from where or when. A deictic therefore does not have a universal lexical meaning but changes its meaning and reference pragmatically in accordance with its context of use: Essentially deixis concerns the ways in which languages encode or grammaticalize features of the context of utterance or speech event, and thus also concerns ways in which the interpretation of utterances depends on the analysis of that context of utterance. Thus the pronoun this does not name or refer to any particular entity on all occasions of use; rather it is a variable or place-holder for some particular entity given by the context (e.g. by a gesture). (Levinson 1983: 54) 3

–––––––––––– 2 3

See Fillmore’s first chapter in his Lectures on Deixis, which discusses the sentence May we come in? (1997: 5–26). By way of comparison see the definitions of deixis by Crystal and Fillmore: (A) “A term used in linguistic theory to subsume those features of language which refer directly to the personal, temporal or locational characteristics of the situation within which an utterance takes place, whose meaning is thus relative to that situation; e.g. now/then, here/there, I/you, this/that are deictics (‘deictic’ or exophoric words). The term is also used for words which refer backwards or forwards in discourse (anaphora and cataphora respectively), e.g. that, the following, the former. This is sometimes known as discourse (or text) deixis, which should be distinguished from social deixis, the encoding of social distinctions that relate to participant roles (speaker–addressee, etc.), as encountered in such matters as pro-

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The most common and familiar deictics are spatial and temporal adverbs like here and now that are related to the current speaker’s position in time and space, their so-called deictic center (Bühler 1990 [1934]; Duchan et al. 1995). The deictic center is the locus of a speaker’s embodied subjectivity, which determines his or her view of the world from that particular perspective. I and you, the personal pronouns employed in face-to-face interaction, alongside possessive pronouns my, mine, and demonstrative pronouns this vs. those constitute a center of speaker-subjectivity which—in fictional discourse—can be transferred imaginatively to a protagonist’s imaginary deictic center. 4 In free indirect discourse (McHale 1978, 1983; Banfield 1982; Duchan et al. 1995; Fludernik 1993a), the hero’s thoughts may be represented in the third person and past tense, but the use of demonstrative pronouns this/these and proximal deictics of space and time (here, now) can signal to the reader that a passage is to be understood as rendering a character’s subjective perspective on the fictional world. In this paper I also rely on Emile Benveniste’s classic work on tense and personal pronouns, distinguishing first- and second-person narratives from third-person narratives on the basis of deictic proximity and distance (Benveniste 1966, 1971, ch. 18 and 19). My focus will be on two paradoxical types of texts which complicate and modify the familiar terms in which personal pronouns in narrative are now generally discussed. As the reader will remember, Benveniste saw pronouns of address and self-reference as belonging to a different, deictic category linked to the speaker’s position as interlocutor in face-to-face communication; he distinguished these proximal deictics I and you from the merely referential, non-deictic ‘third person’ he, she, they, whose referents are not part of a current conversation––––––––––––

4

nouns, honorifics, vocatives and forms of address. The notion of deixis has proved to be fruitful in several areas of linguistics, especially in pragmatics, and in language acquisition studies, where some investigators view the learning of these items by children as constituting a significant feature of early development” (Crystal 2008 [1980]: 133). (B) “Deixis is the name given to those formal properties of utterances which are determined by, and which are interpreted by knowing, certain aspects of the communication act in which the utterances in question can play a role. These include (1) the identity of the interlocutors in a communication situation, covered by the term person deixis; (2) the place or places in which these individuals are located, for which we have the term place deixis; (3) the time at which the communication act takes place—for this we may need to distinguish as the encoding time, the time at which the message is sent, and as the decoding time, the time at which the message is received— these together coming under the heading of time deixis; (4) the matrix of linguistic material within which the utterance has a role, that is, the preceding and following parts of the discourse, which we can refer to as discourse deixis; and (5) the social relationships on the part of the participants in the conversation, that determine, for example, the choice of honorific or polite or intimate or insulting speech levels, etc., which we can group together under the term social deixis” (Fillmore 1997: 61). See also Fludernik (1991b).

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al exchange. When one turns from speech to writing, from discours to récit or histoire, there is an analogous change from the passé composé of face-toface interaction to the passé simple of Romance narrative (Benveniste 1966, 1971, ch. 19; Weinrich 1985 [1964]). However, this model needs to be revised when we look at novels. Novels have both passages of discourse (dialogue, the narrator’s communication with the narratee) and of narrative (the report of actions, descriptions). Thus, the narrative persona of authorial discourse, as in Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), ‘talks’ to the narratee (the narrative audience 5) by employing all the linguistic devices of Benvenistean discours. At the same time, the story itself is rendered in the classic passé simple of narrative or histoire, referring to the protagonist Tom Jones as he. A good French example of this famous duality is Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste (1765–80, publ. 1796), in which Jacques and his master in their fictional world are part of thirdperson histoire, duly written in the passé simple, whereas the narrator’s discourse and his addresses to the audience operate in the mode of face-toface communication using the present-tense system with the passé composé for anteriority. This duality of linguistic systems within the French novel used to be even more pronounced in the first-person novel, where the discourse of the first-person narrator in reference to the act of writing (‘as I have just informed you’) obeyed the proximal discourse model, whereas the passages narrating the narrator’s past experiences in the role of a character (the story) were cast in the passé simple of distal narration: Je suis obligé de faire remonter mon lecteur au temps de ma vie où je rencontrai pour la première fois le chevalier des Grieux. Ce fut environ six mois avant mon départ pour l’Espagne. Quoique je sortisse rarement de ma solitude, la complaisance que j’avais pour ma fille m’engageait quelquefois à divers petits voyages, que j’abrégeais autant qu’il m’était possible. Je revenais un jour de Rouen […] j’arrivai le lendemain […] Je fus surpris […] d’y voir tous les habitants en alarme. (Prévost 1965 [1731]: 9–10) 6

There was, therefore, a grammatical (and ultimately deictic) distinction made between the presentation of the narrating self and that of the expe–––––––––––– 5

6

See: “Rabinowitz distinguishes between the authorial audience (the audience assumed by the author as he or she makes rhetorical choices, an audience that recognises that the work is a work of fiction) and the narrative audience (an imaginary audience that takes the narrator as ‘real’)” (Rabinowitz 2008: 30). “I must begin by taking my reader back to the time in my life when I first met the Chevalier Des Grieux. It was about six months before my departure for Spain. Although I rarely left the retirement in which I was then living, my desire to help my daughter sometimes led me to undertake various short journeys, which I tried to keep as brief as possible. I was returning one day from Rouen […] I arrived next day […]. I was surprised […] to see all the inhabitants in state of alarm” (Prévost 2004: 7).

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riencing self. 7 My use of the past tense in the last few sentences, however, indicates that this distinction has been set aside in more recent French narrative literature, starting with the famous use of the present perfect by Albert Camus in his The Stranger (L’Étranger, 1942). Yet, in the thirdperson novel, the distinction between discourse and story—marked by, or grounded in, the pronominal planes of the I and you versus the he, she and they—remains in force (including the use of the passé simple). Even in French, more and more novels are using the present tense as the main narrative tense, thus evading the passé simple, which is beginning to sound quite outmoded. My focus in this paper, however, is not narrative tense, though this is an issue that I have been studying extensively for years. 8 Nor do I want to deal with deictics in relation to the deictic center, the evocation of subjectivity, free indirect discourse, internal focalization, or paragraph openings (cf. Fludernik 1993a; Emmott 1997). My topic in this paper is secondperson fiction and we narrative, i.e. texts in which pronouns of the first and second person come to operate both on the level of discourse and on that of the story. My interest lies in showing how this crossing of deictic boundaries affects the reading process, what the consequences for models of deixis in fiction are, and to what extent first- and second-person pronouns share analogous patterns of meaning or narrative functions, or whether you and we texts in fact operate in quite dissimilar manner. 3. Address-You as Fictional Referent—Second-Person Fiction Update Second-person fiction, the current term for narrative which uses a pronoun (or term) of address in reference to the main protagonist of a story, began its career in narratology after the publication of Michel Butor’s novel La modification (1957), which sparked some initial analysis of early examples of you narratives. 9 Since the 1990s, research, particularly in English Studies, continued to flourish and has resulted in several models and typologies 10 as well as in an increasingly impressive list of discovered –––––––––––– 7 8

9 10

The terminology is Stanzel’s (1971: 60–70, 1984: passim). Tense, particularly in the context of the epic preterite, has been the frame of emphasis in The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction (Fludernik 1993a) as well as in a number of essays (1991a, 2003a, in progress). See Morrissette (1965), Ynduráin (1969), Holthusen (1976), Laberge/Sankoff (1979), Hopkins/Perkins (1981), Bonheim (1983), Gnutzmann (1983), Meyer-Minnemann (1984), Hantzis (1988), Capecci (1989). See e.g. Kacandes (1991, 1993, 1994), Fludernik (1993a, 1994a), Wiest (1993, 1999), Margolin (1994), Schofield (1998), DelConte (2003), Parker (2005), and Reitan (in print).

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second-person texts (Fludernik 1994b).11 My own work on second-person fiction has followed three trajectories. Most importantly, I tried to define second-person fiction and to distinguish it from other uses of the second person in narrative fiction and non-literary texts, outlining influences from non-literary genres such as the travel guide, How-to literature or legal discourse. Of particular relevance in this connection was the cross-over from you as addressee to you as protagonist, which often operates on the basis of you in the meaning of ‘one,’ ‘anyone,’ therefore: ‘possibly, me.’ The second focus of my research was historical. I tried to prod into the origins of second-person narrative. With the help of Irene Kacandes, who supplied the reference to Sully’s biography, I started to map out a variety of early texts, from the legend of St. Giles by John Lydgate from the fifteenth century to the increasingly numerous texts after the 1880s and a veritable explosion of literary production since the 1960s. The third issue that has dominated my work on second-person narrative concerns the typological placing of you narratives within a model of narrative forms. This is a particularly tricky business since both Stanzel’s and Genette’s typologies were designed before second-person fiction became a major concern for narratologists. Stanzel’s typological circle moves from the first-person realm to the third person and back to the first person, which makes it difficult to place second-person narrative anywhere on the circle. Genette’s model, though less hampered by lack of space, suffers from the either-or dichotomy of homodiegesis vs. heterodiegesis, a binary opposition that does not seem to allow for a third term. My solution to this conundrum was to propose a synthesis of the Stanzelian and Genettean typologies, which transfers the concepts of narrating and experiencing self to the addressee. It thereby creates the distinction between an addressee-you and an experiencing-you, with the same ‘identity of realms of existence’ characteristic operating between them as is familiar from Stanzel’s first-person narrative in relation to narrating and experiencing self. At the same time, I extended Genette’s concepts of homo-/heterodiegesis to a distinction between narratives with, or without, a communicative level, inventing the terms homocommunicative and heterocommunicative fiction. In homocommunicative fiction, the narrator and/or narratee are also protagonists on the level of the story, whereas in heterocommunicative fiction neither of them has an existence on the story level – they only exist on the extradiegetic level of narrator–narratee communication. –––––––––––– 11

Appendix A to this article provides an update to the original 1994b list. Thanks go to Dennis Schofield and Joshua Parker for their helpful bibliographies in their theses and, as always, to Brian Richardson, il miglior lectore.

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In addition, I also noted that—in analogy with Stanzel’s teller/reflector mode—there are narratives with, and narratives without, a communicative (extradiegetic) level. This insight vouchsafed for the possibility of having a reflectoral you narrative in which the you refers exclusively to the protagonist on the story level and not to a possible addressee on the discourse level—in fact, such narratives (e.g. Joyce Carol Oates’s “Journey” or “In a Public Place”) have no narrator persona and therefore also no narratee in the function of addressee of a narrator’s discourse. To visualize these possibilities, let us look at diagram 1, “The Communicative Situation in You Narratives”: (I)

(you)

narration

(I)

you

story

Diagram 1: The Communicative Situation in You Narratives

As one can see from this diagram, the only necessary element in secondperson narrative is for there to be a you protagonist on the story level. This you referent may, but need not, also be an addressee on the discourse level, i.e. on the level of narration. You texts, moreover, can, but need not, have a narrator. If there is a narrator, he/she can show up either exclusively on the narratorial level (the narrator addresses the narratee, who is also a character on the story level) or can be a full-fledged first-person narrator, who is a character in the story and, like the you referent, has an existential connection with his/her past. The diagram therefore suggests a number of set-ups for secondperson narrative, here visualized in diagrams 1A to 1F. The most minimal version of second-person fiction—and it can only occur in fiction!—is represented in diagram 1A. You exists only on the plot level; there is no narrator. In other words, we have a reflector mode narrative in which the narratee is not addressed by a narrator and therefore does not seem to be part of a communicational situation. However, this analysis fails to render justice to the fact that—like all you narratives—the story initially seems to be addressing the actual reader (you being interpreted as ‘one’ and therefore ‘possibly, me’ by the reader). Only after the referent has been estab-

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lished as a character in the story (‘not-me, actually she or he’) does the lack of address function become apparent: the sentences are all narrative clauses; the referential function (according to Jakobson 1987 [1958]) dominates. There are no expressive or conative sentences (e.g. imperatives), deictically pointing to a speaker/narrator. Richardson (1991) calls this type of second-person fiction “autotelic”. Ø

Ø

Ø

you

Diagram 1A: Reflectoral You Narrative

An example of type A is the story “Mouth” by Kaite O’Reilly: You wanted it, this cluttering creature, the welts and crusted parasites on its hardcase shell. You wanted it, but not to own; to trace the rhythms and undulations with your internal skin. To remember it. To best understand its surfaces, dimensions, taste. You wanted to look at it, without your eyes, like the furriness of the bee whose scalding sting shot through to your bone. […] It moved, its impatience and fear greater than your own. The sound of horn, of bone, of shell as it scuttered across and into the water. Mammy’s voice, plaintive, finally reaching your ears. Come on, now. I’m hoarse with calling you. We’re going. (O’Reilly 1994: 94–95)

The protagonist of this story is a child who likes to taste things with her mouth, a predilection that meets with her mother’s outrage and disgust. In the cited passage we get a rendering of the girl’s consciousness from her internal perspective. Yet earlier there are elements of address, imperatives that, one begins to understand, issue from the mother’s exasperated remonstrations: You always did look with your mouth. The sun-warmed pebble, salty-smooth against your tongue. Oh Jesus, she’s swallowed something again—your Mammy prising open your mouth like you did to Tiny, the Jack Russell. Come on, now, spit it out, spit it out. Your gums aching from clenched teeth, sand in your eyes from your tussling. What’s got into you, at all? Mammy embarrassed before her friend. Do what Mammy says—her nails clawing at your jaw—spit it out, now. She won’t be vexed. Its smoothness, its grainy smoothness against your flesh. Now I’m warning you—that note of dying patience in Mammy’s voice. The struggle would soon be over, you would have to yield to her nails and sharpening tongue. Open up, come on, now.

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The pebble dropped into the sand. You watched it fall with sad resignation. Your mouth was empty, now; void of the fullness which had moulded to the shape of your palate. (O’Reilly 1994: 93)

Because “Mammy” shouts at her daughter, the repeated use of you in its address function initially camouflages the more radical use of you to designate the protagonist’s internal self-reference. It is only when rereading the story that the internal focalization of the opening sentence (“You always did look with your mouth”) becomes apparent; it is the protagonist’s analysis of her own idiosyncratic way of feeling or seeing the world, through the taste buds of her mouth rather than her eyes or fingers. Type A has a second possible variant, namely an authorial version in which there is no self-reference by the narrator, but there exist evaluative sentences or report clauses that cannot possibly be aligned with the you protagonist’s consciousness and knowledge. However, there is still no address to you (beyond the use of the address pronoun you in narrative report clauses)—no imperatives, no hint at a situation of communication between a narrator and a narratee on the extradiegetic level. Whereas the reflectoral version of Type A is most frequently written in the narrative present,12 the authorial version often employs past-tense narrative. A good example of the authorial type is Thomas Keneally’s A Dutiful Daughter (1971). Type B (see diagram 1B below) is an extended version of 1A, a narrative that has both a first-person and a second-person protagonist, but no perceivable narrator (speaker) or narratee on the extradiegetic level. This is a very rare case. An example is Robert McGill’s The Mysteries (2004), a present-tense narrative that moves into a figural third-person mode in the latter half of the novel. The I-and-you sections do not thematize any narrational exchange.

Ø

Ø

I

you

Diagram 1B: Non-Communicative I-and-you Narrative

Type C is much more common. It is a first-person narrative with a narrating and experiencing self, but uses no address function or communication with a conative you on the extradiegetic level. Because of the continuity –––––––––––– 12

On the narrative present see Petersen (1992) and Fludernik (2003a).

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between the narratorial present and the narrator’s past, these texts often employ past-tense narrative. The most famous of these novels is Günter Grass’s Katz und Maus (1961; in English: Cat and Mouse). 13 Very often in this category, the you referent is absent or dead, and hence could only be addressed in the imagination anyway. This is the case in Grass’s novel, Edmund White’s Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978) and Alice Munro’s “Tell Me Yes or No” (1974). I

Ø

I

you

Diagram 1C: First-Person Narrative with You Protagonist

In a fourth constellation (see diagram 1D below), the you referent is clearly being addressed on the extradiegetic level; he or she is the target of a discourse directed at him or her. At the same time, this you is also the protagonist. In this version of second-person fiction, the you displays the same ‘identity of the realms of existence’ (Stanzel) as does the I in standard firstperson fiction. Whereas in the case of Genettean homodiegetic narrative, the identity in person is between narrator and protagonist, here the identity subsists between addressee and protagonist. (I have called this type homodiegetic you narrative in order to reflect on this parallel.) There are in principle two forms of Type D, one in which there are signs of a narratorial figure on the extradiegetic level (the narrator not only addresses the you but also displays authorial omniscience or even foregrounds his or her own discourse and personality); and the second, more common, type which is represented by Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (orig. 1982). Here, it is merely the excessive use of the imperative that indicates the presence of a narrator persona. Other examples of this constellation can be found in some of the stories in Lorrie Moore’s collection Self-Help (1985), and to some extent in Reginald McKnight’s “Soul Food” (1992). These texts all have a prominent imperative function which could be called hortatory: the (implied) speaker orders the narratee to do things, exhorts and ridicules him or her, gives advice or criticizes the addressee. Brian Richardson has called this type of second-person fiction the sub––––––––––––

13

See, for example, Amit Marcus’s insightful essay (2010).

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junctive mode (1991), since it often echoes advice literature in which virtual scenarios are being delineated. [I]

you

you Diagram 1D: Homodiegetic You Narrative

Let us look at two brief examples. Junot Diaz’s “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie” (1995) is a typical example of the subjunctive mode: “Wait for your brother and your mother to leave the apartment. […] Clear the government cheese from the refrigerator. […] Shower, comb, dress” (1997 [1995]: 111). Somebody is clearly addressing our protagonist, but this person remains a voice that exhorts him and does not become foregrounded as a narrator persona or add any information that is beyond the ken of the protagonist. By contrast, Natalie L.M. Petesch’s “Main Street Morning” (1978) seems to involve a kind of authorial viewpoint beyond the immediate depiction of the scene, which is presented largely from Marie’s perspective. There are very few direct addresses to the you. One comes on page 164–65 in a passage with hints of omniscience: You turn away from the window, understanding very well that what you’ve tried to do is destroy your feelings. Good: you’ve destroyed them, Marie, how clever of you–now what are you going to do with the bits and pieces? You get up from your aching knees (you should have placed a pillow in front of the window, but you were too nervous and you forgot). (Petesch 1978: 164–65)

The use of psychonarration (“understanding very well”) and external description (“You get up from your aching knees”) implies a backgrounded, liminal authorial standpoint. The more common subjunctive mode is particularly interesting due to its metaleptic quality. Because an imperative suggests the presence of a voice in the here and now, addressing the protagonist lifts that figure onto the communicational level; however, in most texts written in the subjunctive mode, there is in fact no embodied you addressee in the here-and-now of narration (contrasted with the you as the there-and-then protagonist). To this extent, the text grammatically suggests what I have tried to visualize in diagram 1D, but actually, in terms of presence of the you on the

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extradiegetic level, many texts might just as well be figured as bracketing the addressee as well: [I]

[you]

you One could argue that such texts anticipate the metaleptic transgression between narrative levels that is constitutive of second-person texts because they always involve the actual reader as the possible implied addressee of the textual you. The fifth type of constellation consists in a you protagonist and an address to the you, but this address seems to be more of a self-address rather than a really clear speaker-interlocutor interaction (see diagram 1E). It is important to note that for such texts to be second-person narrative, there must be narrative clauses referring to the story world and depicting the protagonist as part of that world; if a text appears to be self-address exclusively, it would no longer be second-person fiction but interior monologue with a strong emphasis on self-address. The distinction may, however, become difficult to make in practice. In Fludernik (1993b: 238–39) I noted Lillian Smith’s Strange Fruit (1944) as an example of this type of selfaddress merging into second-person narrative.

you ?

you Diagram 1E: Self-Address Narrative

My final category is 1F, and it is the most encompassing. It has a narrator, who is also a character in the story, hence a (peripheral or central) firstperson narrator; and a you protagonist who is being addressed and who— like the first-person narrator—is identical to his/her past self. Both narrator and narratee are homodiegetic (or homoconative in the latter case). A good example of this type is Gloria Naylor’s novel Mama Day (1989), in

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which the continuity of identity between the you in the story and on the discourse level is, however, somewhat strained: as we find out later, the addressee is dead, though believed to be still present in some sense. Category F occurs very frequently in connection with a letter exchange or a dramatic monologue. For instance, in Mavis Gallant’s “Mlle. Dias de Corta” (1992), a first-person narrator addresses the you on the level of narration, who also refers to their interaction on the story level in the past: You moved into my apartment during the summer of the year before abortion became legal in France; that should fix it in past time for you, dear Mlle. Dias de Corta. You had just arrived in Paris from your native city, which you kept insisting was Marseilles, and were looking for work. […] You will find no changes in the apartment. […] You need not call to make an appointment. I prefer to live in the expectation of hearing the elevator stop at my floor and then your ring, and of having you tell me you have come home. (Gallant 1992: 171, 177)

Type F includes a large number of texts in which the addressee is no longer alive and the address to the you is therefore imaginary and commemorative: Angela Carter’s “Elegy for a Freelance” (from Fireworks, 1987) and Alice Munro’s “Tell Me Yes or No” are two prominent examples.

you

I

I

you

Diagram 1F: Communicational I-and-you Narrative

Having gone over the large variety of you narratives, we can now turn to some theoretical analysis. What the various modes of second-person texts, or the different types of deictic alignment, show is the flexibility of second-person texts. Many different combinations of narratorial figure, protagonists, and addressees are possible. What has become very clear are the fluid shifts of inclusion and exclusion that dominate second-person fiction, shifts that pronominal reference allows between, on the one hand, narrators and narratees, either or both of these, and, on the other, the fictional protagonists. Moreover, as we shall see, the involvement of the actual reader through generic you and the implied reader function extends the scope of the addressee pronoun further to bridge the boundary between intra- and extrafictional reference. Before proceeding with my analysis, however, let me first discuss the similarly difficult case of we narrative.

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I + You = We = I + He/She/They This fluidity seems to be even more puzzling when one turns to we narratives, texts in which the first-person plural pronoun refers to two or more protagonists. Unlike you narrative, which is highly odd—one usually does not tell one’s interlocutor his or her story—we narratives, both inclusive (I + you) and exclusive (I + he/she/they), are quite common in real-life storytelling. Couples tell of their experiences hiking, setting up house, managing unemployment or disease; soldiers, students, pupils, office colleagues and members of choirs, chess clubs, sports competitions, football teams and so on and so forth—all tell stories about their various shared experiences. As discourse analysts have shown, couples perfect their storytelling routines by devising orchestrated performances (Goodwin 2006, Ochs/Capps 2001). The large majority of these tales, however, use exclusive we; the addressee is excluded. Thus, a couple will tell of their encounter with a mountain lion (we = I + s/he) to their friends, who were not part of the experience. Likewise, many witnesses to historical events tell their stories (I + they) to outsiders. Inclusive we is much rarer, but common when the memorialization of past experience is at issue. Thus, at class reunions, pupils will nostalgically dwell on particularly funny events that they all witnessed together (we = I + you-plural or I + you + they). The addressee in such scenarios is often plural. 14 Even more importantly, historical upheavals and common memories give rise to collective memories (of the Blitz, of 1968, of 1989, etc.), and they allow narrators to reconstruct a mutually satisfactory account of transpersonal experiences. All historical writing that includes our own recent lives borders on collective memory and on we narration. Many traditional historians in fact openly use the pronoun we for the nation, thus extending personal collective memory back into the past. We narration should be analyzed extensively in the narratology of factual narratives. Reminiscences of shared experiences in inclusive we narratives are less common in everyday storytelling, though couples may remind one another of key moments of excitement or surprise during a trip or another episode in their past. It is, therefore, also rare to find an I + you narrative in fiction, particularly one that uses the pronoun we, as does Stuart Dybek’s “We Didn’t” (1994). There is an obvious sliding scale from you narratives, in which narrator and narratee share both a story world and a discourse –––––––––––– 14

See Uri Margolin’s excellent analysis of these complicated combinations of pronominal reference in we narratives (1996, 2000).

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realm, to we narratives, in which the commonality rather than the tension between the I and the you are foregrounded. Diagram 2 attempts to figure inclusive we narrative:

you

I

(I)

we

(you)

Diagram 2: Inclusive We Narrative

As can be seen, the situation is almost the same as in 1F, except that I + you are lexicalized as we on the story level. More problematic is the visualization of exclusive we, which can be figured as I + A, B, C, ... :

I

you

I + A,B,C... Diagram 3A: Exclusive We Narrative

In the diagram, the story level focuses on the narrator and an open number of other people. The communicational level includes only the I (the narrator). By contrast, we could also invoke plural telling (a group as storytellers on the extradiegetic level), in which case one would have a situation as pictured in 3B:

We (I + A,B,C…)

you

We (I + A,B,C...) Diagram 3B: Homodiegetic Exclusive We Narrative

Here the same collective serves as both narrators and protagonists. One should, therefore, perhaps label the narrative situation in 3B collective

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homodiegetic (exclusive we) narrative, reflecting the fact that the homodiegesis may be located both in a single person (standard first-person narrative) and in a collective (3B). 15 From the fact that exclusive we narration does not involve a narratee except on the extradiegetic level, it follows that this common type of we narrative is easily subsumable under Genette’s homo- and heterodiegesis. Likewise, they narratives are clearly heterodiegetic (diagram 4):

you

I

A,B,C... Diagram 4: They Narrative

With the recent emphasis on collectivities in the narrative representation of consciousness (see Alan Palmer on the social mind: 2005a, 2005b, forthcoming), we narrative is bound to draw further attention to itself. Amit Marcus (2008b) has noted that in some languages we narrative can actually mark its inclusiveness by means of the pronominal dual form (a number of languages even have verbal dual forms), thus signaling the fact that narrator and narratee are mutually involved in the events. 16 Developing insights from Margolin (1996, 2000), Marcus, moreover, points out that the precise reference of we is often unclear in exclusive we narratives, since at any given point we may refer to a different set of individuals, such as we = I + A, we = I + A + B + C, we = I + D + F, etc. (Marcus 2008b: 3). Even more excitingly, he notes that one of the functions of we narrative is to shift responsibility to others in order to hide behind a collective (11–13). In reference to Grass’s Katz und Maus, Marcus also documents how you and we narrative are interbraided in that novel. This results in the juxtaposition of two types of passages, those in which we refers to narrator and dead narratee (I + you) and those in which we exclusively –––––––––––– 15

16

This is basically true of inclusive we narrative, too; in this case, the storytellers are more than one person who are part of a larger collective (now in addressee position) with which they co-experienced the narrated events. Languages with dual morphology are, for instance, Slovene and Hebrew. Several IndoEuropean languages, Semitic and Finno-Ugric languages have duals. The situation is quite complex in some languages, where the I + you dual has a different form from the I + s/he dual or the A + B dual (see e.g. Cape York Creole). Quite a few languages, like Slovene, also have dual inflection in their verbal morphology. See Rukeyser (1997) and Southerland/Katamba (1997: 575–76).

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references the group of boys around the guilty narrator, Pilenz, in distinction from the narratee, Mahlke (see Marcus 2008b, 2010). Similarly, Alan Palmer has shown how in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, the social mind consists of a variety of different groups in loose contiguity, some of which may merge or coalesce in particular circumstances (Palmer, under review). Moreover, the social mind is likewise particularly well suited to hiding individuals’ responsibility for certain views. 4. Transgressions of Realistic Existential Boundaries—The Ambivalences of You and We As has been noted repeatedly, 17 second-person fiction owes its charm, but also its uncanniness, to the transgressive quality of its address pronoun, which seems to be directed to the real reader rather than remaining safely confined within the realms of fiction. Many second-person texts start with a passage that immediately involves us as addressees. It is only as we continue reading that we begin to discover that this has not been an address to us, outside fiction, but to a fictional persona, the emerging protagonist of the tale: 18 You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, “No, I don’t want to watch TV!” Raise your voice—they won’t hear you otherwise—“I’m reading! I don’t want to be disturbed!” Maybe they haven’t heard you, with all that racket; [...] Of course, the ideal position for reading is something you can never find. [...] Nobody ever thought of reading on horseback; and yet now, the idea of sitting in the saddle, the book propped against the horse’s mane, or maybe tied to the horse’s ear with a special harness, seems attractive to you. With your feet in the stirrups, you should feel quite comfortable for reading; having your feet up is the first condition for enjoying a read. In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven’t Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. [...] (Calvino 1982 [1979]: 9–10)

We have, in fact, just bought the book and are currently sitting down to read it; though of course, in 2009, it is likely that the novel has been lying about for years and we have never gotten around to reading it until now; it certainly is not new anymore. Still, this is a good guess on the author’s –––––––––––– 17 18

See Richardson (1991), Fludernik (1993b, 1994a), and others. See e.g. Bonheim (1983: 72) and Kacandes (1993: 139–45).

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part; we give him the benefit of the doubt; we just might pretend to be one of the first readers. As a consequence, we initially take the opening clauses as non-fictional acts of communication by the author surrogate (‘Calvino’) and feel interpellated as real readers who have just bought the text. As the passage gets more absurd, with attempts to read sitting on a horse, the scenario called up by the textual voice of address becomes increasingly virtual; the ‘author’ is trying to create a possible situation of reading for us, in a location where we are not alone in the house. We recognize that this is not our situation—it is a scenario that might obtain, but, as it happens, is not the one that fits our current reading circumstances. As we continue, the virtual story becomes more and more fictionalized until the you encounters another reader in the bookshop. At this point at the very latest, the you can no longer be read as a virtual version of the real reader; we start to realize that we are faced with a fictional persona to whom the you refers, and hence with a you narrative. The move into second-person narrative is often manipulated in this manner; a pretense of non-fictional address retrospectively turns out to be a transgressive ploy, metaleptically and by association involving us, the real readers, in a fictional world. The transgression occurs before it can be measured as such. Ostensibly, the reading process slides from ‘real life’ into the quagmire of fiction—the horror story monster reaches its claws out from the bog and draws us in. Yet once we are thoroughly immersed, we can jump out again and be free of the nightmare. We now know that it is not us, really, inside the swamp, just somebody we mistakenly thought was us. Now we can sit back again and enjoy the story in the detached manner that Harald Weinrich sketched in his Tempus (1985), as readers sitting in our armchairs, listening and being entertained. Another type of mixing of the real and the fictional can be observed in literary texts that take the generic model of self-help literature as their template: Back at home, days later, feel cranky and tired. Sit on the couch and tell him he’s stupid. [...] He will try to kiss you. Turn your head. Feel suffocated. (Moore 1986: 57)

This typical example of the subjunctive mode, as Richardson calls it, illogically asks the narratee to feel (rather than merely do) things. Parodying self-help manuals, the text again takes the reader on a dangerous series of identificational moves and slides which will only be set aside once the you has been recognized as a fictional protagonist and not a you equalling ‘anyone, and possibly me.’ The identificatory potential is perhaps not as strong in this case, but the transgressive opening—pretending to factuality when we are reading fiction—remains valid. Such immersive strategies are especially successful, since difficult to resist, when we are reading reflectoral

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texts, where the internal focalization, the perspective through the protagonist’s consciousness, enhances empathy to the point of delusional selfrecognition: The telephone rings. It’s right beside you—you jump—reach for the receiver. “Yes?” A tiny instant’s silence. Then: “Jacqueline?” A man’s voice—deep, civilized— with a somehow caressing intonation that is yet quiet and respectful. Your heart beats. “No,” you say, with a little apologetic laugh. (Sarah 1975: 22)

Conveying a situation with which every woman reader will be familiar, this passage seems to draw the actual reader into the virtual scenario. Former experience is appropriated emotionally in the reading of the fictional scene. In this case the wrench of fictionalization occurs slowly in an easing off of personal investment in the scene; and the transgressive quality of the initial identification is experienced as less disruptive and more benign. With the situation being so familiar, the text lays the groundwork for a lasting empathy with the protagonist, a setup that is able to straddle the fact vs. fiction divide. On the other hand, you narrative can also mark the reader’s emotional and experiential distance from the fictional world. As Leslie Jeffries notes in reference to Medbh McGuckian’s poem “Pain tells you what to wear,” immersion in the you protagonist can be blocked because of a lack of experienced communality: “In other words, the reader is invited into an oddly unfamiliar world of images that are difficult to unravel and which cause problems in deciding whether this text world corresponds to the reader’s actual world” (Jeffries 2008: 82). So far I have focussed on the narratee and his/her interpellation, which initially results in a factual misrecognition of the text. I would now like to turn to the speakers in these texts and their ontological status. Naturally, this is an issue particularly relevant to we narrative, but it also affects second-person fiction. As we saw above, in many you texts the foregrounded address function implies the existence of a person who utters these exhortations, comments and commands. To the extent that the (real) reader initially feels directly implicated, he or she will also take that voice as emanating from a real person, i.e. the author. Only when the fictionality of the text has been established does the reader move on to a reinterpretation of a text-internal, though extradiegetic, communicational set-up, recognizing the speaker as a narratorial speaker without an existential link to the real world. Without such disassociation, or without the establishment of the text’s fictionality, no narrator persona can be said to exist.

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In we narrative, as Amit Marcus has shown (2008a, 2008b: 10), the we, like the I in you texts, often hovers uneasily between a fictional and nonfictional reading. As in second-person texts, where you as ‘one’ is often used to segue into the tale, we in a general meaning (‘we men,’ ‘we humans,’ ‘we Americans’) tends to disguise the fictional reference at key points in the text. The indiscriminate use of we in generalized references that include readers in their real-world existence occurs widely in nineteenth-century realist narrative, especially in the work of George Eliot: The wood I walk in on this mild May day [...]. These familiar flowers, these wellremembered bird-notes [...] —such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle inextricable associations, the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them. (Eliot 1996 [1860]: 41–42; my emphasis)

Here the narrator of The Mill on the Floss (1860) focuses on “our” imagination, thus implying a continuity between the world of the novel and that of the reader and implicating the contemporary reading public of the novel. Common experiences, shared knowledge and current assumptions are all part of the make-up of realist fiction and its negotiation of sympathy with the reading public of its day, and beyond. Victorian novels also frequently introduce narrator personae that hover on the boundaries of the fictional world; at key moments they step into the fiction and seem to become part of it. Such transformations of authorial narrators into (very marginal) peripheral first-person narrators can be observed, for instance, in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849). In chapter 37 we suddenly learn that the extradiegetic narrator is a member of the village community: The other day I passed up the Hollow, which tradition says was once green, and lone, and wild; and there I saw the manufacturer’s day-dreams embodied in substantial stone and brick and ashes—the cinder-black highway, the cottages, and the cottage-gardens; there I saw a mighty mill, and a chimney, ambitious as the tower of Babel. I told my old housekeeper when I came home where I had been. (Brontë 2006 [1849]: 607) 19

If this jerks readers out of their complacent assumption concerning the fictional status of the omniscient narrator persona, the problem becomes more puzzling and disturbing for the present-day reader of Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688). The peripheral first-person narrator of the frame narrative in that novel turns out to have acquired the very feathers that the historical Behn presented in person to the theatre for the performance of John Dryden’s The Indian Emperour (1665). Here the slide between fact and fiction destroys the distinction completely. –––––––––––– 19

Stanzel’s excursus on Vanity Fair and the narrator’s appearance at Pumpernickel (Vanity Fair, 1847–48, ch. 76) first discussed this type of oddity (Stanzel 1984: 202–5).

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Such metalepses underline the ontological illogicality of a crossing of borders. They occur moreover on the discourse level as well (producing rhetorical or discourse metalepsis—see Fludernik 2003b; Ryan 2005). Observe the following two examples (I have emphasized the relevant phrases): We must now go back a little and describe how Frank had been sent off on special business to London. (Trollope 1947 [1858] : 464) [we = I; or we = I + you] We now return to the Marquis de Montalt, who having seen LaMotte safely lodged in the prison of D**y [...] had returned to his villa [...] (Radcliffe 1974 [1791]: 196) [we = I; or we = I + you]

The we in these two passages can be taken to refer to the narrator alone or to include the narratee. In both cases the personae stationed on the extradiegetic level of the narrative seem to be moving metaphorically into the fictional world. The narrator refers to his own discourse in terms of a journey and has to return to a former stage of his story, possibly accompanied by the narratee. From such harmless beginnings, discourse metalepsis may, however, blossom into more extensive metaleptic ploys, as when the metaphor seems to get re-ontologized: [...] and indeed Fanny was the only creature whom the daughter would not have pitied in her situation; wherin, tho’ we compassionate her ourselves, we shall leave her for a little while, and pay a visit to Lady Booby. (Fielding 1987 [1742, 1741]: 255; my emphasis) Yet even in those days of scarcity there were curates: the precious plant was rare, but it might be found. […] You shall see them, reader. Step into this neat gardenhouse on the skirts of Whinbury, walk forward into the little parlour—there they are at dinner. Allow me to introduce them to you: —Mr Donne, curate of Whinbury; Mr Malone, curate of Briarfield; Mr Sweeting, curate of Nunnely. These are Mr Dunne’s lodgings, being the habitation of one John Gale, a small clothier. Mr Donne has kindly invited his brethren to regale with him. You and I will join the party, see what is to be seen, and hear what is to be heard. At present, however, they are only eating; and while they eat we will talk aside. (Brontë 2006 [1849]: 6)

In order to account for such playfulness, one can try to extend the communication model in fiction in order to account for this kind of empathetic transfer. Rather than reducing the narrator–narratee exchange and that of author and reader to a mimetic reproduction of face-to-face communication, one may want to posit a continuity between these worlds in some contexts, particularly at openings and endings of texts, where a framing of fiction also occurs in natural narrative (Labov/Waletzky 1967; Fludernik 1992). Literally, the extradiegetic narratee and narrator seem to be visiting Lady Booby on the plot level or to be intruding on the three curates in their parlour in Whinbury. Yet, the ploy is not too different from the in-

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troductions to conversational narrative in which real-world narrators and narratees communicate prior to immersing themselves in the storyworld. One can achieve such a sliding scale by noting that in first-person, second-person and we texts the barrier between the diegetic and extradiegetic levels is already porous since the first-person narrators (or you protagonists, or the we protagonists) share an existential core with a narrator or narratee on the extradiegetic plane (cf. diagrams 1–3). The successful strategy of you and we narrative has been to draw the reader into the text by way of imaginative immersion (Ryan 2001). Paradoxically, the strategies we have been looking at (narrative we, you, French on, ‘one’) do not use metafictional strategies to call attention to the fictionality of the texts. Rather, they at first lure the reader into safe identification, enhancing the assumption of a continuity between the fictional and factual realms. Secondperson fiction and we narrative thus often use their transgressive potential purely in order to extend their ultimately mimetic effects. What I have tried to show in this article is the flexibility of you and we narratives. Although my disquisitions have pointed towards a mapping of several combinatory options, in actual fact, texts deploy a variety of constellations that suggest a sliding scale between you and we narratives, and between several subcategories within these. Rather than shipwrecking on the deictic problems of the epic preterite (the distinction between the deictic tenses of the narrator and the adeictic tense of the fiction) or the referential problems of speech act theory in the Searlean mode (the fictional as non-referential), we and you narratives heroically straddle traditional theoretical divides. Their deictic alignments allow for multiple and extremely fuzzy addressee positions, counteracting classical here-and-now versus there-and-then dichotomies. Their referential quality is likewise manipulable, compromising a neat fiction versus fact distinction. In this, you and we narratives in fact only generalize in the narrative genre what is true of the generic or indefinite pronoun you in English usage (Hyman 2004). You and we narratives thus also illustrate the flexibility of cognitive categories. Even where these are deemed to be exclusive, they can be extended, diffused and customized to perform as immersive frames for our stories. References Banfield 1982 Banfield, Anne: Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Benveniste 1966 Benveniste, Émile: Problèmes de linguistique générales, 1 (Paris: Gallimard).

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Benveniste 1971 Benveniste, Émile: Problems in General Linguistics, Miami Linguistics Series, 8 (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press). Bonheim 1983 Bonheim, Helmut: “Narration in the Second Person,” in Recherches Anglaises et Américaines 16: 69–80. Brontë 2006 [1849] Brontë, Charlotte: Shirley, edited by Jessica Cox (London: Penguin). Bühler 1990 [1934] Bühler, Karl: Theory of Language: The Representational Function of Language, translated by Donald Fraser Goodwin (Amsterdam: John Benjamins). Calvino 1982 [1979] Calvino, Italo: If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver (London: Picador). Capecci 1989 Capecci, John: “Performing the Second-Person,” in Text and Performance Quarterly 1: 42–52. Crystal 2008 [1980] Crystal, David: A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell). DelConte 2003 DelConte, Matt: “Why You can’t Speak: Second-Person Narration, Voice, and a New Model for Understanding Narrative,” in Style 37: 204–19. Diaz 1997 [1995] Diaz, Junot: “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie,” in Drown, 111–16 (New York: Riverhead). Duchan/Bruder /Hewitt 1995 Duchan, Judith F./Bruder, Gail A./Hewitt, Lynne E. (eds.): Deixis in Narrative: A Cognitive Science Perspective (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Eliot 1996 [1860] Eliot, George: The Mill on the Floss, edited by Gordon S. Haight, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Emmot 1997 Emmott, Catherine: Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fielding 1987 [1742, 1741] Fielding, Henry: The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews […] and An Apology for the Life Mrs. Shamela Andrews (New York: Norton). Fillmore 1997 Fillmore, Charles J.: Lectures on Deixis (Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications). Fludernik 1991a Fludernik, Monika: “The Historical Present Tense Yet Again: Tense Switching and Narrative Dynamics in Oral and Quasi-Oral Storytelling,” in Text 11.3: 365–98. Fludernik 1991b Fludernik, Monika: “Shifters and Deixis: Some Reflections on Jakobson, Jespersen, and Reference,” in Semiotica 86.3–4: 193–230.

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Fludernik 1992 Fludernik, Monika: “Narrative Schemata and Temporal Anchoring,” in The Journal of Literary Semantics 21: 118–53. Fludernik 1993a Fludernik, Monika: The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction: The Linguistic Representation of Speech and Consciousness (London: Routledge). Fludernik 1993b Fludernik, Monika: “Second Person Fiction: Narrative YOU as Addressee and/or Protagonist. Typological and Functional Notes on an Increasingly Popular Genre,” in Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik [AAA] 18.2: 217– 47. Fludernik 1994a Fludernik, Monika (ed.): Second-Person Narrative, special issue, Style 28.3. Fludernik 1994b Fludernik, Monika: “Second-Person Narrative: A Bibliography,” in Style 28.4: 525–48. Fludernik 2003a Fludernik, Monika: “Chronology, Time, Tense and Experientiality in Narrative,” in Language and Literature 12.2: 117–34. Fludernik 2003b Fludernik, Monika: “Scene Shift, Metalepsis, and the Metaleptic Mode,” in Style 37.4: 382–400. Fludernik (in progress) Fludernik, Monika: “Narratology and Literary Linguistics,” in Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics. Volume: Tense/Aspect, edited by Robert Binnick (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Gallant 1992 Gallant, Mavis: “Mlle. Dias de Corta,“ in The New Yorker (December 28): 171– 77. Gnutzmann 1983 Gnutzmann, Rita: “La novela hispanoamericana en segunda persona,” in Iberoromania 17: 100–20. Goodwin 2006 Goodwin, Marjorie H.: “Participation, Affect, and Trajectory in Family Directive/Response Sequences,” in Text and Talk 26.4–5: 515–43. Greber 2006 Greber, Erika: “Wer erzählt die Du-Erzählung? Latenter Erzähler und implizites gendering (am Beispiel einer Kurzgeschichte von Tschechow),” in Narration und Geschlecht: Texte—Medien—Episteme, edited by Sigrid Nieberle and Elisabeth Strowick, 45–72 (Cologne: Böhlau). Hantzis 1988 Hantzis, Darlene Marie: “‘You Are about to Begin Reading’: The Nature and Function of Second Person Point of View,” diss., Louisiana State University. Holthusen 1976 Holthusen, Johannes: “Zu den Funktionen des Erzählens in der zweiten Person,” in Welt der Slaven 21: 103–11.

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Hopkins/Perkins 1981 Hopkins, Mary Frances,/Perkins, Leon: “Second Person Point of View in Narrative,” in Critical Survey of Short Fiction, edited by Frank N. Magilll, 119–32 (New Jersey: Salem Press). Hyman 2004 Hyman, Eric: “The Indefinite You,” in English Studies 85: 161–76. Jakobson 1987 [1958]. Jakobson, Roman: “Closing Statement. Linguistics and Poetics,” in Roman Jakobson: Language in Literature, edited by Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy, 62–94 (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press); reprinted in The Stylistics Reader, edited by Jean Jacques Weber (1996: 10–35) (London: Arnold). Jeffries 2008 Jeffries, Leslie: “The Role of Style in Reader-Involvement: Deictic Shifting in Contemporary Poems,” in Journal of Literary Semantics 37.1: 69–85. Kacandes 1991 Kacandes, Irene: “Narrative Apostrophe: Case Studies in Second-Person Fiction,” PhD diss., Harvard University. Kacandes 1993 Kacandes, Irene: “Are You In the Text?: The ‘Literary Performative’ in Postmodernist Fiction,” in Text and Performance Quarterly 13: 139–53. Kacandes 1994 Kacandes, Irene: “Narrative Apostrophe: Reading, Rhetoric, Resistance in Michel Butor’s La Modification and Julio Cortázar’s ‘Graffiti,’” in Style 28.3: 329–49. Laberge/Sankoff 1979 Laberge, Suzanne/Sankoff, Gillian: “Anything You Can Do,” in Discourse and Syntax, edited by Talmy Givón, 419–40 (New York: Academic Press). Labov/Waletzky 1967 Labov, William/Waletzky, Joshua: “Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience,” in Essays on the Verbal and Visual Art, edited by J. Helms, 12–44 (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press). Levinson 1983 Levinson, Stephen C.: Pragmatics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). McHale 1978 McHale, Brian: “Free Indirect Discourse: A Survey of Recent Accounts,” in Poetics and Theory of Literature 3: 249–87. McHale 1983 McHale, Brian: “Unspeakable Sentences, Unnatural Acts. Linguistics and Poetics Revisited,” in Poetics Today 4.1: 17–45. Marcus 2008a Marcus, Amit: “A Contextual View of Narrative Fiction in the First Person Plural,” in Narrative 16.1: 46–64. Marcus 2008b Marcus, Amit: “We are you: The Plural and the Dual in ‘we’ Fictional Narratives,” in Journal of Literary Semantics 37.1: 1–22.

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Marcus 2010 Marcus, Amit: “Narrators, Narratees, and Mimetic Desire,” in Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses, edited by Jan Alber and Monika Fludernik (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press). Margolin 1994 Margolin, Uri: “Narrative ‘You’ Revisited,” in Language and Style 23.4: 1–21. Margolin 1996 Margolin, Uri: “Telling Our Story: On ‘We’ Literary Narratives,” in Language and Literature 5.2: 115–33. Margolin 2000 Margolin, Uri: “Telling in the Plural: From Grammar to Ideology,” in Poetics Today 21.3: 591–618. Meyer-Minnemann 1984 Meyer-Minnemann, Klaus: “Narracion homodiegetica y ‘segunda persona’: Cambio de piel de Carlos Fuentes,” in Acta Literaria 9: 5–27. Moore 1986 [1985] Moore, Lorrie: Self-Help: Stories by Lorrie Moore (New York: Plume). Morrissette 1965 Morrissette, Bruce: “Narrative ‘You’ in Contemporary Literature,” in Comparative Literature Studies 2: 1–24; reprinted and expanded 1985 in Novel and Film: Essays in Two Genres, 108–40 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). O’Reilly 1994 O’Reilly, Kaite: “Mouth,” in New Writing 3, edited by Andrew Motion and Candice Rodd, 93–95 (London: Minerva). Ochs/Capps 2001 Ochs, Elinor/Capps, Lisa: Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Palmer 2005a Palmer, Alan: “Intermental Thought in the Novel: The Middlemarch Mind,” in Style 39: 427–39. Palmer 2005b Palmer, Alan: “The Lydgate Storyworld,” in Narratology Beyond Literary Criticism, edited by Jan Christoph Meister 151–72 (Berlin: de Gruyter). Palmer (under review) Palmer, Alan: “Large Intermental Units in Middlemarch,” in Postclassical Narratology: New Essays, edited by Jan Alber and Monika Fludernik. Palmer (forthcoming) Palmer, Alan: Social Minds (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press). Parker 2005 Parker, Joshua: “Ecrire son lecteur: L’évolution du narrateur américain et l’emploi de la deuxième personne, 1750–2000,” PhD diss., Université Paris VII – Denis Diderot. Petersen 1992 Petersen, Jürgen H.: “Erzählen im Präsens: Die Korrektur herrschender Tempus-Theorien durch die poetische Praxis in der Moderne,” in Euphorion 86: 65–89.

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Petesch 1978 Petesch, Natalie L. M.: “Main Street Morning,” in The Best American Short Stories 1978, edited by Ted Solotaroff and Shannon Ravenel, 163–76 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin). Prévost 1965 [1731] Prévost, Abbé: Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (Paris: Éditions Garnier Frères). Prévost 2004 Prévost, André: Manon Lescaut, translated by Angela Scholar (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Rabinowitz 2008 Rabinowitz, Peter J.: “Audience,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, edited by David Herman, Manfred Jahn and Marie-Laure Ryan, 29–31 (London/New York: Routledge). Radcliff 1974 [1791] Radcliffe, Ann: “The Romance of the Forest,” in The Novels: Complete in One Volume (Hildesheim: Olms). Richardson 1991 Richardson, Brian: “The Poetics and Politics of Second Person Narrative,” in Genre 24: 309–30. Richardson 1994 Richardson, Brian: “I etcetera: On the Poetics and Ideology of Multipersoned Narratives,” in Style 28: 312–28. Richardson 2006 Richardson, Brian: Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Postmodern Contemporary Fiction (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press). Rukeyser 1997 Rukeyser, Allison: “A Typology of the Nominal Dual: Evidence from IndoEuropean, Finno-Ugric, Semitic and Australian Languages,” Davis Working Papers in Linguistics 6. Available on the net: Ryan 2001 Ryan, Marie-Laure: Narrative as Virtual Reality. Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and the Electronic Media (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press). Ryan 2005 Ryan, Marie-Laure: “Logique culturelle de la métalepse, ou: La métalepse dans tous ses états,” in Métalepses. Entorses au pacte de la représentation, edited by John Pier and Jean-Marie Schaeffer, 201–24 (Paris: Editions des Haute Études en Sciences Sociales). Sarah 1975 Sarah, Robyn: “Wrong Number,” in The Fiddlehead 105: 22–24. Schofield 1998 Schofield, Dennis: “The Second Person: A Point of View? The Function of the Second-Person Pronoun in Narrative Prose Fiction,” PhD diss., Curtin University [Perth, Australia]. Stanzel 1971 Stanzel, Franz Karl: Narrative Situations in the Novel, translated by James P. Pusack (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press).

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Stanzel 1984 Stanzel, Franz Karl: A Theory of Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Southerland/Katamba 1997 Southerland, Ronald H./Katamba, Francis: “Language in Social Contexts,” in Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, edited by William O’Grady et al., 540– 90 (London: Longman). Trollope 1947 [1858] Trollope, Anthony: Doctor Thorne (London: Zodiac Press). Weinrich 1985 [1964] Weinrich, Harald: Tempus: Besprochene und erzählte Welt (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer). Wiest 1993 Wiest, Ursula: “‘The refined though whimsical pleasure’: Die youErzählsituation,” in Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik [AAA] 18: 75–90. Wiest-Kellner 1999 Wiest-Kellner, Ursula: Messages from the Threshold: Die You-Erzählform als Ausdruck liminaler Wesen und Welten (Bielefeld: Aisthesis). Ynduráin 1969 Ynduráin, Francisco: “La novela desde la segunda persona: Análisis estructural,” in Clásicos Modernos: Estudios de crítica literaria, 215–39 (Madrid: Gredos). Zimmermann 1995 Zimmermann, Silke Cathrin: Das Ich und sein Gegenüber: Spielarten des Anderen im monologischen Erzählen. Dargestellt an ausgewählten Beispielen der europäischen Erzählkunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Horizonte, 18 (Trier: WVT).

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Appendix A Update on Second-Person Narrative This list of second-person texts includes all narratives that have come to my notice since 1994, the publication date of the list published in Style 28.4 (1994): 525–48.

Texts

Aldiss 1994 Aldiss, Brian W.: Somewhere East of Life: Another European Fantasia, 29–30 (London: Flamingo). Baldwin 1996 [1962] Baldwin, Shauna Singh: “Montreal,” in English Lessons and Other Stories, 13–16 (Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane). Bank 2000 [1999] Bank, Melissa: “You Could Be Anyone,” in The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing, 207–22 (London: Penguin). Barthelme 1977 Barthelme, Donald: “What To Do Next,” in Amateurs, 79–86 (New York: Pocket). Bibby 1986 Bibby, Peter: “Taking the Road Out,” in Imprint: The Short Story Magazine 8.3: 63–67. Bobin 1996 Bobin, Christian: Le plus que vie (Paris: Gallimard). [cited Parker 2005] Brand 1988 Brandt, Barbara: “Life with the Orange,” in Meanjin 47.2: 325–27. Breytenbach 1984 [1983] Breytenbach, Breyten: Mouroir: Mirrornotes of a Novel (New York: Farrar. Straus.Giroux). [sections: “The Execution”; “Tuesday”] Bunin 2006 [1906] Bunin, Ivan: “Cifry,” “Die Zahlen,” in Antonäpfel: Erzählungen 1892–1911, translated by Erich Ahrndt, Charlotte Kossuth, Larissa Robiné and Georg Schwarz, 234–44. [cited Greber 2006: 48, note 9] Campbell 1988 Campbell, Marion: “Fragments from a Paper Witch,” in Not Being Miriam, 121–24 (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press). Carter 1974 Carter, Angela: “Elegy for a Freelance,” in Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces, 112–31 (New York: King Penguin). Chekhov 1976 [1887] Chekhov, Anton: “Novogodnjaja pytka,” in 3ROQRHVREUDQLHVRÿLQHQLMLSLVHPY-i tomach, vol. 6, 7–11 (Moscow: Nauka). [discussed at length Greber 2006] Chekhov 1976 [1882] Chekhov, Anton: “Baron,” in 3ROQRHVREUDQLHVRÿLQHQLMLSLVHPY-i tomach, vol. 1, 451–56 (Moscow: Nauka). [noted Greber 2006]

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Chekhov 1976 [1883] Chekhov, Anton: “Patriot svoego otetchestva,” in 3ROQRHVREUDQLHVRÿLQHQLMLSLVHP v 30-i tomach, vol. 2, 66–67 (Moscow: Nauka). [noted Greber 2006] Chekhov 1976 [1883] Chekhov, Anton: “V Moskve, na Trubnoj ploshtchadi,” in Polnoe sobranie VRÿLQHQLM L SLVHP Y -i tomach, vol. 2, 145–48 (Moscow: Nauka).[noted Greber 2006] Chekhov 1976 [1886] Chekhov, Anton: “Na reke (Vesennie kartinki),” in 3ROQRH VREUDQLH VRÿLQHQLM L pisem v 30-i tomach, vol. 5, 76–82 (Moscow: Nauka). [noted Greber 2006] Diaz 1997 Diaz, Junot: “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie,” in Drown, 111–16 (New York: Riverhead). Dunmore 2000 [1999] Dunmore, Helen: With Your Crooked Heart (London: Penguin). [cited Keen, Suzanne (2003) Narrative Form, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan] Encarnaçao 1984 Encarnaçao, John J.: “Coming of Age in Australia,” in Joseph’s Coat: An Anthology of Multi-Cultural Writing, edited by Peter Skrzynecki, 36–39 (Marickville, NSW.: Hale and Iremonger). Gallant 1992, 1993 Gallant, Mavis: “Mlle Dias de Corta,” in The New Yorker (Dec 28/Jan 4): 171– 77. Gibbs 1988 Gibbs, Anna: “Going Somewhere,” in Telling Ways: Australian Women’s Experimental Writing, edited by Anna Couani and Sneja Gunew, 52 (Adelaide: Australian Feminist Studies). Gibbs 1988 Gibbs, Anna: “Traffic,” in Telling Ways: Australian Women’s Experimental Writing, edited by Anna Couani and Sneja Gunew, 53 (Adelaide: Australian Feminist Studies). Golding 2000 Golding, Paul: The Abomination (New York: Knopf). [cited Parker 2005] Gray 1994 [1993] Gray, Alasdair: “You,” in Tall Tales and True, 60–73 (London: Penguin). Grstein 1999 Gstrein, Norbert: Die englischen Jahre (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp). Houbein 1988 Houbein, Lolo: Walk a Barefoot Mile (Crows Nest, NSW: Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Insingel 1971 [1968] Insingel, Mark: Reflections (New York: Red Dust). Johnson 1997 Johnson, Charles: “Executive Decision,” in Outside the Law: Narratives on Justice in America, edited by Susan Richards Shreve and Porter Shreve, 93–105 (Boston: Beacon Press). Keneally 1984 [1971] Keneally, Thomas: A Dutiful Daughter (London: Penguin).

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Kocan 1987 [1980]/[1983] Kocan, Peter: The Treatment and The Cure (Sydney: Angus & Robertson). Kurahashi 1975 Kurahashi, Yumiko: Kurai Tabi, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Shinchosha). McGill 2005 [2004] McGill, Robert: The Mysteries (London: Vintage). Manhire 1988 Manhire, Bill: The Brain of Katherine Mansfield (Auckland: Auckland University Press). [discussed Schofield 1997] Mansell 1991 Mansell, Chris: “The Violin,” in Southern Review 24: 54–56. Meeter 1968 Meeter, Glenn: “A Harvest,” in Epoch, reprinted 1977 in Experimentelle amerikanische Prosa. Zweisprachig, edited by Brigitte Scheer-Schäzler, 38–69 (Stuttgart: Reclam). Morse 1988 Morse, Ruth: “A Journey,” in Meanjin 47.1: 75–80. Olshan 1994 Olshan, Joseph: Nightswimmer (New York: Simon & Schuster). Raynaud 1987 Raynaud, Jean-Michel: Pour un Perec Littré, Chiffré (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille). Robbins 1994 Robbins, Tom: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (New York: Bantam). Sarde 1995 Sarde, Michèle: Vous, Marguerite Yourcenar: La passion et ses masques (Paris: Robert Laffont). Scharang 1970 Scharang, Michael:“Geschichte zum Schauenend,” in Schluß mit dem Erzählen und andere Erzählungen, 73–84 (Neuwied: Luchterhand). Scharang 1970 Scharang, Michael: “Geschichte über ein Hörspiel zum Schauen,” in Schluß mit dem Erzählen und andere Erzählungen, 87–97 (Neuwied: Luchterhand). Scott 2008 [1871] Scott, Sir Walter: Rob Roy, edited by David Hewitt (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Sethi 1996 Sethi, Robbie Clipper: “The Bride Wore Red,” in The Bride Wore Red: Tales of a Cross-Cultural Family, 1–16 (Bridgehampton, NY: Bridge Works). Sinclair 1919 Sinclair, May: Mary Olivier: A Life (New York: Macmillan). Smith 2002 Smith, Ali: Hotel World (London: Penguin). [cited Keen, Narrative Form] Stefan 2007 Stefan, Verena: Fremdschläfer (Zurich: Ammann).

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Swan 1996 Swan, Mary: “Where You Live Now,” in Sudden Fiction (Continued), edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas, 126–30 (New York: Norton). Tsuzuki 1975 [1961] Tsuzuki, Michio: Yabunirami no Tokei, orig.: The Clock of Squinting (Tokyo: Chuokoron-sha). Winckler 1998 Winckler, Martin: La Maldie de sachs (Paris: P.O.L.). Xiaoqui 1994 Xiaoqi, Ding: “Indica, Indica,” in Maidenhome, translated by Chris Berry and Cathy Silber, 50–65 (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books). Zech 1925 Zech, Paul: Die Geschichte der armen Johanna (Berlin: Dietz).

Criticism

Bal 1996 Bal, Mieke: “Second-Person Narrative,” in Paragraph 19.3: 179–204. Bal 2001 Bal, Mieke: “Second-Person Narrative: David Reed,” in Looking In: The Art of Viewing, edited by Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson, 213–38 (Amsterdam: G&B Arts). Bouquet 2003 Bouquet, Simon: “Les pronoms de deuxième personne en français envisagés dans le cadre d'une linguistique des genres,” Paper given at the conference ‘Pronoms de 2ème personne et formes d’adresse dans les langues d’Europe,’ Institut Cervantes. [cited Parker 2005] Chénetier 1992 Chénetier, Marc (ed.): La voix dans la fiction américaine contemporaine, special issue, Révue française d'Etudes Américaines 54. Coffen 2003 Coffen, Béatrice: “Rôle attribué aux pronoms d'adresse dans la construction identitaire,” Paper given at the conference ‘Pronoms de 2ème personne et formes d'adresse dans les langues d’Europe,’ Institut Cervantes. Cornis-Pope 1994 Cornis-Pope, Marcel: “From Cultural Provocation to Narrative Cooperation: Innovative Uses of the Second Person in Raymond Federman’s Fiction,” in Style 28.3: 411–31. de Haard 1990 de Haard, Eric: “Notes on Second-Person Narration: Tolstoj’s First Sebastopol’ Story,” in Semantic Analysis of Literary Texts: To Honor Jan van der Eng on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, edited by Eric de Haard, Thomas Langerak, and Willem G. Weststeijn, 257–74 (New York: Elsevier). DelConte 2003 DelConte, Matt: “Why You can’t Speak: Second-Person Narration, Voice, and a New Model for Understanding Narrative,” in Style 37: 204–19. Eekman 1975 Eekman, Thomas: “The Narrator and the Hero in Chekhov’s Prose,” in California Slavic Studies 8: 93–129. [cited in Greber 2006]

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Fludernik 1994a Fludernik, Monika (ed.): Second-Person Narrative, special issue, Style 28.3. Fludernik 1994b Fludernik, Monika: “Introduction: Second-Person Narrative and Related Issues,” in Style 28.3: 281–311. Fludernik 1994c Fludernik, Monika: “Second-Person Narrative as a Test Case for Narratology: The Limits of Realism,” in Style 28.3: 445–79. Fludernik 1994d Fludernik, Monika: “Second-Person Narrative: A Bibliography,” in Style 28.4: 525–48. Freese 1992 Freese, Peter: “Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City, or How to Compound Happiness out of Small Increments of Mindless Pleasure,” in Text—Culture— Reception: Cross-Cultural Aspects of English Studies, edited by Rüdiger Ahrens and Heinz Antor, 523–53 (Heidelberg: Winter). Gault 1978 Gault, Pierre: “Genesis and Function of Hencher in The Lime Twig,” in Les Américanistes: New French Criticism and Modern American Fiction, edited by Ira D. Johnson and C. Johnsaon, 138–55 (Port Washington, NY: Kenniket Press). Greber 2006 Greber, Erika: “Wer erzählt die Du-Erzählung? Latenter Erzähler und implizites gendering (am Beispiel einer Kurzgeschichte von Tschechow),” in Narration und Geschlecht: Texte—Medien—Episteme, edited by Sigrid Nieberle and Elisabeth Strowick, 45–72 (Cologne: Böhlau). Green/LeBihan 1994 Green, Keith/LeBihan, Jill: “The Speaking Object: Daphne Marlatt’s Pronouns and Lesbian Poetics,” in Style 28.3: 432–44. Herman 1994 Herman, David: “Textual You and Double Deixis in Edna O’Brien’s A Pagan Place,” in Style 28.3: 378–410, reprinted with revisions in Story Logic (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Hymann 2004 Hyman, Eric: “The Indefinite You,” in English Studies 85: 161–76. Hymann 2006 Hyman, Eric: “The All of You-All,” in American Speech 81: 325–31. Kacandes 1994 Kacandes, Irene: “Narrative Apostrophe: Reading, Rhetoric, Resistance in Michel Butor’s La modification and Julio Cortázar’s ‘Graffiti,’” in Style 28.3: 329–49. Kirby 1992 Kirby, John T.: “Toward a Rhetoric of Poetics: Rhetor as Author and Narrator,” in JNT 22: 1–22. McInerney 2003 McInerney, Jay: “Remains of the Dog,” in New York Times Book Review 5. Meyer-Minnemann 1984 Meyer-Minnemann, Klaus: “Narracion homodiegetica y ‘segunda persona’: Cambio de piel de Carlos Fuentes,” in Acta Literaria 9: 5–27.

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Mühlhäusler/Harré 1990 Mühlhäusler, Peter/Harré, Rom: Pronouns and People (London: Blackwell). Nance 1994 Nance, Kimberley A.: “Self-Consuming Second-Person Fiction: José Emilio Pacheco’s ‘Tarde de agosto’ (‘August Afternoon’),” in Style 28.3: 366–77. Noreiko 1983 Noreiko, Stephen: “Person to Person: Apostrophe of the Reader in Some Novels in Popular French,” in French Studies 37: 59–67. [courtesy of Schofield] Parker 2005 Parker, Joshua: “Ecrire son lecteur: L’évolution du narrateur américain et l’emploi de la deuxième personne, 1750–2000,” PhD diss., Université Paris VII – Denis Diderot. [Parker cites numerous texts which have not been integrated into this bibliography because they were not accessible to me to confirm they are second-person narratives, i.e. that the you is not merely a narratee but also a protagonist.] Phelan 1994 Phelan, James: “Self-Help for Narratee and Narrative Audience: How ‘I’—and ‘You’?—Read ‘How,’” in Style 28.3: 350–65. Prince 1973 Prince, Gerald: “Introduction à l’étude du narrataire,” in Poétique 14: 178–96. Reitan [in print] Reitan, Rolf: “Theorizing Second-Person Narratives: A Backwater Project?,” in Strange Voices, edited by Per Krogh Hansen, Henrik Skov Nielsen, Stefan Iversen and Rolf Reitan, Narratologia (Berlin: de Gruyter). Richardson 2006 Richardson, Brian: Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction (Columbus: Ohio State University Press). Salvatolri 1986 Salvatori, Mariolina: “Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller: Writer’s Authority, Reader’s Autonomy,” in Contemporary Literature 27: 182–212. Schofield 1998 Schofield, Dennis: “The Second Person: A Point of View? The Function of the Second-Person Pronoun in Narrative Prose Fiction,” PhD diss., Curtin University, Perth, Australia. Available on the net: Schofield 1997 Schofield, Dennis: “Beyond The Brain of Katherine Mansfield: The Radical Potentials and Recuperations of Second-Person Narrative,” in Style 31.1: 96–117. Wales 2003 Wales, Katie: “Second-Person Pronouns in Contemporary English: The End of a Story or Just the Beginning?,” in Franco-British Studies: Journal of the British Institute in Paris 33–34: 172–85. Wiest-Kellner 1999 Wiest-Kellner, Ursula: Messages from the Threshold. Die You-Erzählform als Ausdruck liminaler Wesen und Welten (Bielefeld: Aisthesis).

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Zimmermann 1995 Zimmermann, Silke Cathrin: Das Ich und sein Gegenüber: Spielarten des Anderen im monologischen Erzählen. Dargestellt an ausgewählten Beispielen der europäischen Erzählkunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Horizonte, 18 (Trier: WVT).

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Appendix B We Narratives This list collocates the texts noted in Margolin (1996, 2000), Richardson (1994, 2006), and Marcus (2008) and adds further examples culled from a variety of other sources.

Texts

Adams 1999 Adams, Hazard: Many Pretty Toys (Buffalo: SUNY Press). [Richardson 2006] Alvarez 1992 [1991] Alvarez, Julia: How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (New York: Plume Book). [Richardson] Armah 1973 Armah, Ayi Kwei: Two Thousand Seasons (Nairobi: East African Publ. House). Bacon 1924 Bacon, Francis: New Atlantis, edited by Alfred B. Gough (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Barbusse 2003 [1916] Barbusse, Henri: Under Fire, translated by Robin Buss (New York: Penguin). [Richardson] Barth 1982 Barth, John: Sabbatical (London: Granada/Panther). Barthelme 1992 Barthelme, Donald: “We Dropped in at the Stanhope…,” in The Teachings of Don B. Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme, edited by Kim Herzinger, 227–28 (New York: Turtle Bay Books). [cited Richardson 2006] Bass 1991 Bass, Rick: “The Legend of Pig-Eye,” in The Best American Short Stories 1991, edited by Alice Adams, 1–20 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin). Beckett 1958 [1950] Beckett, Samuel: The Unnamable, translated from the French by the author (New York: Grove Press). [cited Richardson 2006] Brechon/Brechon 1966 Brechon, Arlette/Brechon, Robert: Les noces d’or (Paris: Albin Michel). Brown 1993 [1984] Brown, Rebecca: “Bread,” in The Penguin Book of Lesbian Short Stories, edited by Margaret Reynolds, 219–39 (London: Viking). Butor 1969 Butor, Michel: “La Gare Saint-Lazare,” in Illustrations, 55–79 (Paris: Gallimard). [cited Richardson 2006] Camus 1956 Camus, Albert: La chute: récit (Paris: Gallimard). [cited Amit Marcus, “We are You”] Camus 1959 [1947] Camus, Albert: La Peste (Paris: Gallimard). [cited Richardson 2006]

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Chamoiseau 1997a Chamoiseau, Patrick: L'Esclave vieil homme et le molosse (Paris: Gallimard). [Richardson] Chamoiseau 1997b Chamoiseau, Patrick: “The Noutéka of the Hills,” in Texaco, translated by Rose-Myriam Réjouis and Val Vinokurov, 121–31 (New York: Pantheon Books). [cited Richardson 2006] Chase 1983 Chase, Joan: During the Reign of the Queen of Persia (New York: Harper & Row). Conrad 1914 Conrad, Joseph: The Nigger of the Narcissus (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc.). [Richardson] Cortázar 1981 Cortázar, Julio: “Queremos tanto a Glenda,” in Queremos tanto a Glenda y otros relatos, 19–28 (Madrid: Alfaguara). [Richardson] Dorris 1994 Dorris, Michael: A Yellow Raft in Blue Water (London: Flamingo). Dybek 1994 Dybek, Stuart: “We Didn’t,” in The Best American Short Stories 1994, edited by Tobias Wolff, 79–89 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin). Echenoz 1992 Echenoz, Jean: Nous trois: Roman (Paris: Minuit). Erdrich 1988 Erdrich, Louise. Tracks (New York: Henry Holt). [Richardson] Eugenides 1993 Eugenides, Jeffrey: The Virgin Suicides (London: Abacus). Faulkner 1950 [1948] Faulkner, William: “A Courtship,” in Collected Stories of William Faulkner, 361– 80 (New York: Random House). Faulkner 1950 [1930] Faulkner, William: “A Rose for Emily,” in Collected Stories of William Faulkner, 119–30 (New York: Random House). Faulkner 1950 [1931] Faulkner, William: “That Evening Sun,” in Collected Stories of William Faulkner, 289–309 (New York: Random House). Faulkner 1950 [1931] Faulkner, William: “A Justice,” in Collected Stories of William Faulkner, 343–60 (New York: Random House). Faulkner 1950 [1931] Faulkner, William: “Divorce in Naples,” in Collected Stories of William Faulkner, 877–94 (New York: Random House). Faulkner 1950 [1932] Faulkner, William: “Death Drag,” in Collected Stories of William Faulkner, 185– 206 (New York: Random House). Faulkner 1950 [1935] Faulkner, William: “That Will Be Fine,” in Collected Stories of William Faulkner, 265–88 (New York: Random House).

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Faulkner 1950 [1943] Faulkner, William: “Shingles for the Lord,” in Collected Stories of William Faulkner, 27–44 (New York: Random House). [all Faulkner examples cited Richardson 2006] Fowles 1963 Fowles, John: The Collector (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.). Fremont 1994 Fremont, Helen: “Where She Was,” in Prize Stories 1994: The O. Henry Awards, edited by William Abrahams, 304–12 (New York: Anchor). Gaskell 1980 [1848] Gaskell, Elizabeth: Cranford, World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Glissant 1997 [1975] Glissant, Edouard: Malemort (Paris: Gallimard). Glissant 1997 [1981] Glissant, Edouard: La Case du commandeur (Paris: Gallimard). Glissant 1987 Glissant, Edouard: Mahagony (Paris: Éd. du Seuil). [all Richardson] Fernandes/Oates 1975 Fernandes/Oates, Joyce Carol: “The Brain of Dr. Vicente,” in The Poisoned Kiss and Other Stories from the Portuguese, 26–28 (New York: Vanguard Press). Goytisolo 1991 [1988] Goytisolo, Juan: The Virtues of the Solitary Bird, translated by Helen R. Lane (London: Serpent’s Tail). Grass 1961 Grass, Günter: Katz und Maus (Neuwied: Luchterhand). [Marcus, “We and You”] Hawthorne 1974 [1835] Hawthorne, Nathaniel: “Little Annie’s Ramble,” in Twice-Told Tales, in The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, vol. 9, 121–29 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press). [Marcus, “We and You”] Hawthorne 1974 Hawthorne, Nathaniel: “Old News,” in The Snow-Image and Uncollected Tales, 132–60 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press). Hawthorne 1974 Hawthorne, Nathaniel: “Main-Street,” in The Snow-Image and Uncollected Tales, 49–82 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press). Helprin 1981 Helprin, Mark: “North Light—A Recollection in the Present Tense,” in Ellis Island & Other Stories, 63–67 (New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence). Jewett 2000 [1877] Jewett, Sarah Orne: “Deephaven,” in Deephaven and Selected Stories and Sketches, 1–122 (Gloucester: Dodo Press). [Marcus, “We and You“] Kafka 1996 [1924] Kafka, Franz: “Josephine, die Sängerin, oder das Volk der Mäuse,” in Die Erzählungen und andere ausgewählte Prosa, edited by Roger Hermes, 518–38 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer). [Marcus, “We and You”]

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Kristof 1986 Kristof, Agota: Le Grand cahier (Paris: Seuil). [Marcus, “We and You”] Krysl 1986 Krysl, Marilyn: “The Artichoke,” in Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories, edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas, 217–18 (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith). Li 2005 Li, Yiyun: “Immortality,” in A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, 44–67 (New York: Random). Li 2005 Li, Yiyun: “Persimmons,” in A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, 172–85 (New York: Random). [both Richardson 2006] Mann 2004 [1930] Mann, Thomas: Mario und der Zauberer (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer). McCorkle 2001 McCorkle, Jill: “Billy Goats,” in Creatures of Habit: Stories, 1–20 (Chapel Hill, NC: Shannon Ravenel Books). Mda 1995 Mda, Zakes: Ways of Dying (Cape Town: Oxford University Press). [Richardson] Morrison 1972 [1970] Morrison, Tony: The Bluest Eye (New York: Washington Square). [Marcus, “We and You”] Nabokov 1966 [1951] Nabokov, Vladimir: Speak Memory, Speak, 195–310 (New York: Putnam). [Richardson 2006] Ngugi 1976 [1967] Ngugi, wa Thiong’o: A Grain of Wheat (London: Heinemann). [one chapter of we narration; Richardson] Oates 1999 Oates, Joyce Carol: Broke Heart Blues (New York: Dutton). [Marcus, “We and You”] Oz 1973 [1966] Oz, Amos: Elsewhere, Perhaps, translated by Nicholas de Lange (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich). [Marcus, “We and You”] Perec 2001 [1966] Perec, Georges: Quel petit vélo à guidon chromé au fond de la cour? (Paris: Denoël). [Marcus, “We and You”] Perera 1985 Perera, Padma: “The Schoolmaster,” in Birthday Deathday and Other Stories, 17– 28 (London: Women’s Press). Rao 1967 [1963] Rao, Raja: Kanthapura (New York: New Directions). Roche 1988 [1966] Roche, Maurice: Compact, translated by Mark Pollizotti (Elmwood Park, IL: Dalkey Archive). [sections; cited Richardson 2006]

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Robbe-Grillet 1962 [1954] Robbe-Grillet, Alain: “Le chemin du retour,” in Instantanés, 31–47 (Paris: Minuit). Robinson 1994 Robinson, Roxana: “Mr. Sumarsono,” in The Best American Short Stories 1994, edited by Tobias Wolff, 264–76 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin). [alternates between we and I narrative] Sarraute 1989 Sarraute, Nathalie: Tu ne t’aimes pas (Paris: Gallimard). Scharang 1970 Scharang, Michael: “Die Ausbreitung des Unglaubens,” und “Wie man mit dem Dienstherrn verfahren möchte wenn man könnte Wenn er nicht mit einem verfahren könnte, wie er möchte,” in Schluß mit dem Erzählen und andere Erzählungen, 99–100, 101–3 (Neuwied: Luchterhand). Schwartz 1983 Schwartz, Lynne Sharon: Disturbances in the Field (New York: Harper & Row). Senesi 1963 Senesi, Mauro: “The Giraffe,” in Harper's Magazine 226.1352: 80–82. Serge 1967 [1931] Serge, Victor: Birth of our Power, translated by Richard Greeman (New York: Doubleday). [Richardson 2006] Shepard 1994 Shepard, Jim: “Batting against Castro,” in The Best American Short Stories 1994, edited by Tobias Wolff, 277–92 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin). [we-narrative that ends as I narrative] Silone 2000 Silone, Ignazio: The Abruzzo Trilogy: Fontamara, Bread and Wine, The Seed Beneath the Snow, translated by Eric Mosbacher (South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Italia). [Richardson] Silvain 1971 Silvain, Pierre: Les Éoliennes (Paris: Mercure de France). Sontag 1978 Sontag, Susan: I, etcetera (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux). [“Baby” and “Old Complaints Revisited”] [Marcus] Stein 1937 Stein, Gertrude: “America,” in Everybody’s Autobiography, 166–295 (New York: Random House). [cited Richardson 2006] Vargas Llosa 1973 [1967] Vargas Llosa, Mario: Los Cachorros (Lima: Perua). [Richardson 2006] Whalen 1986 Whalen, Tom: “The Visitation,” in Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories, edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas, 141–43 (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith). Wohmann 1975 [1968] Wohmann, Gabriele: “Schilderung eines Aufenthaltes,” in Ländliches Fest, 76– 77 (Darmstadt/Neuwied: Sammlung Luchterhand).

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Wright 1988 [1941] Wright, Richard: 12 Million Black Voices (New York: Thunder’s Mouth). [Richardson] Zamyatin 1952 [1924] Zamyatin, Eugene: We, translated by Gregory Zilboorg (New York: Dutton).

Criticism

Fludernik (in print) Fludernik, Monika: “The Narrative Forms of Postcolonial Fiction in English,” in Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature, edited by Ato Quayson (Cambridge University Press). Marcus 2008 Marcus, Amit: “We are You: The Plural and the Dual in ‘We’ Fictional Narratives,” in Journal of Literary Semantics 37.1: 1–22. Margolin 1996 Margolin, Uri: “Telling Our Story: On ‘We’ Literary Narratives,” in Language and Literature 5.2: 115–33. Margolin 2000 Margolin, Uri: “Telling in the Plural: From Grammar to Ideology,” in Poetics Today 21.3: 591–618. Parker 2005 Parker, Joshua: “Ecrire son lecteur: L’évolution du narrateur américain et l’emploi de la deuxième personne, 1750–2000,” PhD diss., Université Paris VII – Denis Diderot. Richardson 1994 Richardson, Brian: “I etcetera: On the Poetics and Ideology of Multipersoned Narratives,” in Style 28.3: 312–28. Richardson 2006 Richardson, Brian: Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Postmodern Contemporary Fiction (Columbus: Ohio State University Press).

PART II TRANSMEDIAL, TRANSGENERIC, AND INTERDISCIPLINARY NARRATIVE STUDY

WERNER WOLF (Graz)

Narratology and Media(lity): The Transmedial Expansion of a Literary Discipline and Possible Consequences Abstract Most (albeit not all) of classical narratology disregarded the interrelation between narrativity and media, since it tended to focus on one medium only: verbal (literary) stories. Postclassical narratology has started to dismantle this hegemony of narrator-transmitted narratives and has emphasized the transmedial nature of narrativity as a cognitive frame applicable to ever ‘remoter’ media and genres. In this context drama and lyric poetry have come under narratological scrutiny, moreover—and outside literary (sub-)genres—film, the pictorial medium and music. This contribution will continue this expansionist trend by investigating the narrative potentials of the plastic arts (using the “Laokoon” group in the Vatican Museum as an example). Narratology should, however, not merely ‘colonize’ ever more media as areas of research but also stop and think about the consequences of this expansion. This will be attempted in the last part of the contribution. On the one hand, there are a number of positive effects: creating bridges to other disciplines and contributing to the elucidation of narrative as one of man’s most important means for generating meaning undoubtedly belongs to them. On the other hand, the interdisciplinary ‘exportation’ of narratological inquiry also brings about certain risks and problems. Disregarding limits of scholarly expertise, rashly abandoning one’s scholarly home domain or splitting up narratology into a plethora of separate narratologies are some of them. The essay argues in favour of a continuing allegiance to a unified narratology, although on the basis of a transmedial, cognitive and prototypical reconceptualization of narrativity and the use of a flexible concept of ‘medium.’ Moreover, it proposes to integrate mediality into the system of narratology, both in systematic and functional respects. The essay draws on Chatman’s classification of media as the “substance of [narrative] expression” (1978: 24) as well as on Ryan’s (2005a) reflections on the narratological relevance of media and argues that media may impose certain restrictions on the realization of narrativity but are also responsible for the shaping of narrative potentials—which is

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why the verbal media can in many respects still be considered the domain par excellence of prototypical narratives. 1. Introduction: Narratology—No Longer Merely a Theory of Verbal Narratives Narratology was, and to a large extent still is, a literary discipline. With a few exceptions classical narratologists focussed on verbal narratives, in particular print-mediated fiction. 1 Lämmert (1990 [1955]), Stanzel (1979), Rimmon-Kenan (1983), Genette (1972),2 Prince (1982) and many others have in fact privileged this medium in their narratologies without considering others. Nor do they seem interested in interrelations between narrativity and mediality as such except for postulating a narrator as a necessary transmitter of stories. Even today, some publications in the field continue this tradition (e.g. Keen 2003; Schmid 2005). Yet if one takes the subject of the present volume seriously to highlight Current Trends in Narratology, one must acknowledge that the previous all but exclusive concentration on novels and short stories has dramatically changed during the past few years. Today, for better or worse, narratology can no longer be said to be the theory of only verbal narratives. Indeed, postclassical narratology has started to efficiently dismantle the hegemony of narrator-transmitted narratives as an object of research and has emphasized the transgeneric and indeed transmedial nature of narrativity as a form of organizing information that is found to be applicable to ever remoter media and genres. In this context, drama and lyric poetry have come under narratological scrutiny.3 The narratological horizon has moreover expanded well beyond the confines of literature and now includes other media. The table of contents of a relatively recent volume on Narrative Across Media, for instance, lists contributions on “Pictorial Narrativity” including “Graphic Narrative,” “Film,” “Music” as well as “Digital Media” (Ryan 2004: n.p.). Other

–––––––––––– 1

2 3

Exceptions are early narratologists such as Bremond (1964) and Barthes (1966), who opened up narratology to other media at least in principle, while still concentrating on verbal narratives; Chatman (1978, cf. also 1990) is a pioneer who systematically included film in his literary narratology. However, Genette’s aesthetic (and not necessarily narratological) reflections have recently also included other media (cf. 1999 and 2004). For drama, see e.g. Jahn (2001), Nünning/Sommer (2002) and Nünning’s contribution to this volume; for lyric poetry Hühn (2004 and 2005), and Müller-Zettelmann (2002) as well as her article in this volume.

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scholars have already extended this list by dealing with the narrativity of photography, audioliterature/radio drama and even architecture. 4 In spite of the impressive expansion which narratology has witnessed in the recent past, the reservoir of media which can be fruitfully elucidated has not yet been exhausted. In the following, I will give an example of a further field of narratological investigation. The addition of another item to the list of potentially narrative media might be criticized as an attempt by narratologists to ‘colonize’ yet another area of study and thereby extend their disciplinary influence. It might also be faulted for, perhaps, ‘diluting’ the results of the inquiry. Considering expansionism of subject matter as a major current trend in narratology, I believe that the moment has come to stop and reconsider. Narratology needs to reflect on the consequences of including ever more media in its area of research. Such consequences shall be the focus of the last part of this contribution. 2. Possibilities of Further Expanding Narratology—an Example: The Potential Narrativity of Sculpture Among the traditional visual arts there is one whose potential of narrativity has largely escaped the attention of both narratologists and art historians; the latter tend to take the narrativity of sculpture and the plastic arts at large for granted (cf. Lammert 1999: 157). 5 Sculpture thus seems to constitute a good testing ground for expanding the scope of narratology. This experiment will not simply take the existence of ‘narrative sculpture’ –––––––––––– 4

5

Cf. also, as a further collection of essays on various media, Lämmert (1999), Nünning/Nünning (2002), Meister et al. (2005); for narratological discussions of individual, non-literary media see Lothe (2000) (for film); Micznik (2001) and Wolf (2002: ch. 4) (for music, a field in which the discussion of narrativity has been particularly intense over the past two decades); Huwiler (2005) (for radio drama); Thomsen (1987) (for architecture, cf. also, in part, Seidel [2005]); and Abbott (2005) (for hypertexts). As for the narrativity of pictures, an area which is closest to the subject under discussion in this essay, mentioning a few more studies may be justified: Brilliant (1984), Dieterle (1988), Fowler (2003), Frank/Frank (1999), Giuliani (2003), Kemp (1987 and 1989), Kibédi Varga (1990), Pochat (1996), Schaeffer (2001), Sonesson (1997), Steiner (1988), and Wolf (2002: ch. 3, 2003, 2004 and 2005). Lammert’s rhapsodical essay does not, however, contribute much to closing that gap. The wide-spread lack of narratological interest amongst art historians generally tends to inform treatments of ‘narrative sculpture,’ whose narrativity is often taken as much for granted as that of many paintings. (This can be seen when comparing, e.g., Alpers 1976 and Klokke/Fountain 2000 or Pochat/Wagner 2005.) This practice was already criticized by Steiner (1988: ch. 1, reprinted in Ryan 2004: 145–77), who complained that the “typical arthistorical usage of the term ‘narrative painting’ is very loose” (8).

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for granted 6 but will inquire into the extent to which sculpture can be narrative in the first place. An obvious reason for the narratological neglect of sculpture is the fact that it has been eclipsed by painting as a potential narrative medium. Thus sculpture does not figure in Ryan’s collection of essays on the narrativity of media other than fiction; the same holds true for a volume on ‘transgeneric, intermedial and interdisciplinary narratology’ edited by Vera and Ansgar Nünning in 2002. Finally, a recent illuminating essay on “La Temporalité dans l’image peinte” (Voilloux 2007) counts sculpture as one of the media which produce ‘images’ (cf. 319) but then abandons it in favour of painting. 7 Whether this state of affairs can be traced back to Alberti’s De Pictura (1435/36) is debatable. There he links narrative and temporal subjects, i.e. istoria, with painting and not with ‘static’ statua (which he considered in De Statua [1434/35, cf. Reuter 2007: 287–90]). Even one of the classic authors on the comparative arts, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, seems to have fallen prey to the curious attraction exerted by painting with regard to the temporality of the visual arts. In spite of the fact that his treatise Laokoon takes its departure from a famous example of classical sculpture, Lessing quickly shifts his focus to the representational problems of painting and ‘poesy,’ as his subtitle betrays (“Von den Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie”). Only occasionally does he return to the eponymous sculpture in the Vatican Museum. 8 In the following, I propose to resist the pull of painting and concentrate instead on sculpture as a medium in its own right. Like painting, sculpture occurs in different medial variants and forms: in the following I will disregard reliefs which can be regarded as hybrids which combine painterly and sculptural features. For instance, the relief series on Trajan’s column in Rome appears to have a narrative potential that is comparable to a pictorial series. Rather, I propose to concentrate ––––––––––––

6

7 8

A typical case of an art historical investigation of ‘narrative sculpture’ (or rather relief sculpture) that simply takes narrativity for granted is Fontein (2000); as in many analogous studies on narrative painting, the author does not make the slightest attempt to justify his use of the term ‘narrative.’ This also applies to Reuter (2007), whose groundbreaking study of temporality in sculpture rarely mentions ‘narrativity’ at all, and does so as a matter of course (cf. 285, 292, 299, 301). A laudable exception is Seidel (2005), although she does not deal with sculpture per se but with sculpture and relief in the context of the architectural space of the abbey church at Moissac. For a thorough historical treatment of the temporality of post-medieval sculpture, see Reuter (2007). For a precursor of Lessing’s concern with the ‘pregnant moment’ depicted in the visual arts as a device to trigger temporality (and hence narrativity), see Lottes’s essay (1989) on Shaftesbury and his The Language of Forms (1711–13); note that Shaftesbury also illustrates his remarks with examples from painting, not from sculpture.

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on a more difficult question: can a single sculpture possess narrativity without the support of a background ‘plate?’ My example is the aforementioned sculpture “Laokoon” (see Illustration 1). Much has been written about it, from Lessing and Goethe to contemporary art historians. Yet its potential narrativity has only been addressed indirectly, if at all, in the discussion of the temporal dimension implied by it (cf. Pochat 1996: 131–35). This is all the more surprising as art-historical discussions—paradigmatically epitomized by Goethe’s “Über Laokoon” (1798)—contain revealing narrativizations of the sculpture that both point to its narrativity and the problems involved in narrativizing the plastic arts.

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Illustration 1: “Laokoon” (c. 200 B.C.-1st c AD, Vatican Museum)

The relative neglect of sculpture as a potential narrative medium is not coincidental. For even a single, monophase or monoscenic picture 9 can fulfil narrative expectations more easily than a single sculpture. Particularly –––––––––––– 9

In art history, ‘monophase’ or ‘monoscenic’ pictures are distinguished from ‘polyphase’ or ‘polyscenic pictures’, which represent more than one temporally distinct scene within one and the same frame. Obviously, such pictures, like picture series, can more easily suggest a temporal dimension and trigger narrativity more readily than monophase pictures (cf. Wolf 2002: 55–57).

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within the post-medieval Western tradition of illusionist art, a picture easily simulates a spatial setting of vast extensions that may be limited only by the horizon. It can ‘fill’ the setting with a plethora of details (of a room, a cityscape, a landscape), thus providing the recipient with a variety of narratively readable clues 10 and in this resembles semi-plastic reliefs. Fully plastic sculpture, by contrast, cannot represent setting to the same extent and the same ease. It can employ a more or less elaborate pedestal and represent some immediately proximate background—in the case of “Laokoon” a stone block and some steps possibly representing an altar. Yet except for this, a sculptural setting is, as a rule, very limited. The setting of a sculpture can at best be hinted at or must be imagined in its entirety when it comes to distance (setting meaning here the extension of the ideal representational space occupied by the sculpture, not the actual space, e.g. temple or garden, in which it is positioned). 11 In addition, paintings may take greater liberties in the number of characters they depict. In this respect “Laokoon,” which sports three figures and two snakes, is already an exception, for in the majority of Western sculpture we see only the representation of one human figure, but this is not what we typically find in stories. Last, but not least, all of the medial problems which apply to pictures as spatial representations—which Lessing stressed or overstressed12—also apply to sculptures. Individual sculptures, like single paintings, cannot represent change: they have no beginning, middle and end, etc. 13 And yet my hypothesis as a narratologist and not an art historian is that sculptures such as “Laokoon” can be ‘read’ as narratives, albeit with difficulties. As is the case when considering many single pictures, the impulse to narrativize what we see rests on an intermedial reference of the visual representation to a well-known verbal story.14 In this case— –––––––––––– 10

11 12 13 14

Excellent examples of the narrative aids presented by setting include the individual plates in Hogarth’s picture series such as Marriage à-la-Mode. Thus, in the first plate of this series we see a palace under construction through an open window. The workmen have stopped work; this indicates a lack of money and thus one of the reasons why the aristocratic father is motivated to marry his son to the daughter of a rich bourgeois family. Another figure from the setting visibily frowns on this union, namely the representation of a Medusa’s head inside a picture within the picture. In the case of the “Laokoon” group the original setting appears to have been a temple-like construction in which it was discovered in 1507, near the Titus Bath on Rome’s Mount Esquiline. For a summary of the criticism directed at Lessing’s theory, see Giuliani (2003: 23–37). For the medial problems of pictures concerning narrativity, see Giuliani (2003: ch. 1 and 8) and Wolf (2002: ch. 3, and 2004). This is not, however, to say that such a reference is indispensable for narrativity in the visual arts. In an otherwise illuminating discussion of narrativity in the pictorial arts, Giuliani (2003: 52, 286, 289) links narrativity to the condition of such a reference too closely. In contrast to him, I claim that an intermedial reference to a verbal narrative helps

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depending on the actual date of the gestation of the sculpture (there is no agreement on it, and estimations vary from 200 B.C. to the 1st c)—there is a reference to an episode from Virgil’s Aeneid (book 2) or a tradition predating Virgil’s text. In Virgil’s version the priest of Neptune, Laokoon, warns the Trojans about the wooden horse, thus threatening Ulysses’ plan to enter Troy secretly. The priest and his two sons are killed by two seamonsters while they are offering a sacrifice to Neptune. The Trojans regard this as a punishment for Laokoon’s diffidence towards the Greeks and permit the wooden horse, the alleged Greek gift, to enter their walls—with the well-known disastrous consequences. Even if one brackets out an awareness that this sculpture is a free illustration, or more precisely an intermedial transposition, of (a part of) a verbal story, one can argue that it still contains elements that may trigger the viewer to narrativize. It clearly did so for Goethe, although he did not use narrative expressions such as “erzählen” or “Geschichte” in his essay. For a start, the sculpture shows three contorted bodies in a moment of physical movement which is full of psychic ‘e-motion’ (pain, anxiety). Both the external and internal kinds of movement indicate changes in space and time, for our world knowledge tells us that such dynamic states are ephemeral and imply a past as well as a future in which they will not last. Götz Pochat (1997) 15 posits this classic argument when it comes to temporalizing static spatial representations: the implication of a temporal dimension, a prime precondition of all stories, thus prepares the ground for diagnosing potential narrativity even in the plastic media. In addition, the sculpture contains visible clues concerning the causes of the bodily motions and psychic e-motions represented there. Thus chronology is complemented with causality: two snakes are shown attacking three people—this alone implies the eminently ‘tellable’ schema of an ‘attack and struggle,’ which in itself has a highly narrative potential.16 Besides the element of violent conflict (a prime example of an action), this potential is also based on the implied temporal dimension: attacks and ensuing struggles extend both backward and forward in time. They go –––––––––––– 15

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to trigger the frame narrative of a visual artwork but it is not a necessary condition (see also below, my discussion of “Aphrodite and Pan”). The presence (or possibility of inference) of time in a sculpture is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition of narrativity (a fact that does not always become clear in Pochat 1997). Thus, the plastic representation of a single dancer indicates temporality in a way similar to “Laokoon,” but not narrativity; the figure may be imagined circling round and round, but there is no need to imagine reasons for this nor a telos of the activity. This potential for activating common world knowledge is independent of references to known stories and works. I differ here from Giuliani (2003): drawing on the idea that pictorial narrativity ought to refer to a discernible verbal narrative (see above, note 13), he regards a pictorial representation of a fight with a lion that does not refer to any known ‘mythos’ as the ‘description (!) of an extreme situation’ and not as potentially narrative (cf. 53).

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backward with reference to the reasons for, and previous stages in, the attack, and forward with regard to the outcome of the struggle and what the consequences will be. Different stages in the attack and struggle are represented by the three characters. Presented simultaneously, these stages nonetheless suggest an implicit chronology: the boy to the left (as seen by the viewer) is more entangled by the snakes than the others; perhaps they attacked him first. The apparently less aggressive snake’s head nears his breast and he tries to ward it off, while the boy to the right has only had his right arm and left foot constricted by the other snake, and he is trying to disentangle himself from it. However, the most spectacular element of the attack focuses on the middle-aged male figure in the centre—clearly the ‘hero’: he is being bitten by a visibly aggressive snake. Goethe called this the depiction of the snakes’ action in different stages (“stufenweise,” 1988[1798]: 63). The reactions of the three figures to what is happening to them are equally varied and strongly contribute to a narrative reading: the boy on the left displays the least muscle tension and resistance, while the other two figures’ bodies indicate their violent resistance. Additional triggers of narrativity are provided by the different interactions of the figures: the boy on the left, presumably overwhelmed by the attack, reclines his head and does not interact with anyone else. By contrast, the boy on the right gazes fearfully and painfully at the man, as if expecting help from him. Yet the man, obviously in pain himself and gasping from the snake bite, is so absorbed that he cannot heed the boy’s appeal. So what we see is indeed a frozen, or a Lessingian ‘pregnant moment.’ 17 Goethe compares the scene to a ‘frozen flash of lightning’ (“ein fixierter Blitz,” 1988 [1798]: 60). Yet it is a moment which implies the central constituents of narrativity: a past and a future, and with these features causality and even teleology. In the past, the three figures had not yet been attacked, and the snake attack is the visible reason for their different reactions, their bodily movements in resistance to the snakes. 18 This fight inevitably has a telos: a state in which (all or some of) the figures are either able to free themselves of the attackers and perhaps even win, or in which –––––––––––– 17

18

Lessing’s ‘pregnant moment’ (1974 [1766]: ch. 16) has, however, been interpreted in several ways. While Goethe reads it, with reference to “Laokoon,” as the climax (“die Handlung [...] gegenwärtig auf dem höchsten Punkt steht” [64]), Giuliani regards the moment immediately before the climax (cf. 2003: 288) as the most ‘pregnant’ one because of the narrative potential of a monophase visual representation. The important thing in any case seems to be that the chosen moment permits us both to see traces of a past state and to surmise a probable future development (here, the death of all as the snakes’ victims). Cf. Goethe: “der Künstler hat uns eine sinnliche Wirkung dargestellt, er zeigt uns auch die sinnliche Ursache. Der Punkt des Bisses [...] bestimmt die gegenwärtige Bewegung der Glieder [...]” (1988 [1798]: 61).

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they will be strangled and/or poisoned by the snakes. The actual outcome of the attack is not represented, since the represented moment ‘hovers,’ as Goethe says, ‘in the transition from one state to another one’ (“schwebt auf dem Übergang eines Zustandes in den anderen,” 1988 [1798]: 62). From what we see it is, however, not impossible to surmise the outcome of the attack. Although we do not know that the snakes are poisonous, 19 the dramatic scene and our enculturation strongly direct us to believe that they are. It therefore may well be that the lack of muscle tension displayed by the boy on the left ought to be read as an effect of the poison which is about to bring death. In other words what we view here is the scene after the snake has bitten, as opposed to the actual moment of biting pictured in the centre and a possible future bite on the right. Thus the sculpture not only implies the future by triggering the schema ‘attack and struggle’ but also suggests what this future will be: the probable death of the ‘hero’ and the other two figures permits the viewer to employ yet another schema from his or her cultural reservoir which is a special case of narrative, namely ‘tragedy’ (Goethe classified the scene as a ‘tragic idyll,’ see 1988 [1798]: 59). As we can see, the sculptor or rather sculptors 20 have chosen a ‘pregnant moment’ within a suspenseful, tellable series of actions that powerfully triggers narrative associations. This procedure dynamizes and temporalizes a medium that according to its material conditions is basically static and spatial and hence cannot truly represent the consecutive stages of a story. The main diagonal composition line of the group arranged in a distorted triangle underscores this dynamic aspect and thus supplements what we see in the various expressions of the figures and their different degrees of muscle tension, so that the entire group appears like a freeze in a three-dimensional ‘movie’: “in Bewegung sehen” (60) is also the term which Goethe uses in his description of the effect of a sculpture such as “Laokoon.” It is, however, a ‘movie’ still whose movement forward the viewer can at best envision in his or her mind’s eye and which must be completed through inference. This indicates that sculpture appeals as much if not more to the viewer’s imagination than painting or photography. For the imaginary continuation of action backward and forward in time and generally for narrativization to occur, a knowledge of the textual background of the represented story is not indispensable. At least, this would be true if –––––––––––– 19 20

Goethe justly contradicted Lessing when he warned: “besonders sehe man keine Wirkung des Gifts bei einem Körper, den erst im Augenblicke die Zähne der Schlange ergreifen [...]” (1988 [1798]: 61). Allegedly Hagesandros, Athanadorus and Polydorus (cf. Fuchs 1984 [1966]: 212).

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the viewer contented him- or herself with imagining a scene that extended over a very short time span. Yet only the familiarity with the verbal narrative on which the sculpture is arguably based (and which could more easily be identified by a detailed painterly background) permits one to find a cause for the snake attack, which otherwise would remain a quite unmotivated blank or Leerstelle sensu Iser. Only through knowledge of the background story can the viewers identify the stone block as an altar, the two boys as the sons of the central figure, and only then can they anticipate the wider consequences of the three deaths which are implied by what they actually see (in painting, but not in the medium of sculpture, all of this could be indicated by a representation of Troy, the wooden horse etc.). Arguably, most viewers will respond not only aesthetically but also emotionally and feel the beauty of the representation as well as pity and fear for the characters. 21 But the intermedial knowledge of the underlying verbal story would, no doubt, enhance the viewer’s experiential involvement and perhaps even immersion (in the sense of aesthetic illusion). However, even with this knowledge the sculpture remains vague in areas where a verbal narrative would leave no doubts. This, for instance, is true of the scene’s immediate pre-history. Since the sculptor(s) visibly deviated from Virgil, who represented the snakes as real monsters, and since it is not even clear that Virgil’s version is the actual intermedial basis in the first place, there is no real way to falsify or corroborate Goethe’s constructed account: “a father slept next to his two sons, they were entangled by snakes and, awaking, try to tear themselves from the living web.” 22 Goethe even admits that he invented the background story to endow his narrativization with a moment of ‘intensification,’ 23 yet one may well imagine this as a possible scenario. The sculpture’s narrative vagueness also refers to the interpretation of the left snake: has it already bitten the boy, as I have suggested, or is it about to bite or leave off without biting? The sculpture cannot say, nor can it relate its pre-history or future as precisely as a verbal narrative could. To a certain extent, the narrativization of sculptures, even of a seemingly story-telling sculpture such as “Laokoon,” thus always remains debatable.

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Goethe, continuing his tragic reading of the group, identifies the emotional effects in terms of Aristotelian tragedy as “Mitleiden” and “Furcht” as well as “Schrecken” (1988 [1798]: 65). “Ein Vater schlief neben seinen beiden Söhnen, sie wurden von Schlangen umwunden und streben nun, erwachend, sich aus dem lebendigen Netze loszureißen” (1988 [1798]: 59). “[...] damit wir bei Betrachtung der Momente eine Steigerung vor uns sähen” (1988 [1798]: 63 f.).

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3. Consequences for the Discipline (I): Positive Consequences Given the manifold possibilities of extending narratological inquiries across medial boundaries to which I have merely contributed yet another facet, it is now time to stop and consider the following: what are the effects of our expansionist activities as narratologists? Such disciplinary “metareflections on the consequences of deliberately extending narratological methods and their field of application” were already mentioned in Meister et al. (2005: xii), but only as a missed aim. The following remarks may therefore be regarded as meeting the desideratum mentioned by Meister. Extending the limits of narratological enquiry beyond fiction and even beyond literature may have quite positive consequences for shedding light on humans as story-telling beings and for narratology. The benefits of this expansionist activity include and extend beyond the classification of media, arts and genres according to their narrative potentials. Classification, which—in a poststructuralist era—is sometimes looked down upon as a futile and arbitrary activity, is in fact a fundamental part of creating mental maps and reflection, scholarly and otherwise. Surveying the narrative potential of individual media and genres may, for instance, lead to important insights concerning both the profiles of these media and genres and the profile of narrativity itself. One result could be to show that not all of these media are equally fit for narrativity, another that by looking across the boundaries of literature we can really substantiate the feeling, voiced by Toolan, that “[n]arratives are everywhere” (1988: xiii). It is indeed only by means of such expanded horizons that we can see how narrativity works as a powerful, perhaps even the most powerful means humans have of experiencing and making sense of their existence in time. The traditional arts and the media are only a part of this vast narrative field. Monika Fludernik has, for example, shown that the ‘natural’ narratives of our everyday conversation also belong to this field (1996). One might add that further discourses such as historiography, the narratives used in philosophy, religion, law, natural history, evolutionary theory and even computer games could be analyzed in terms of narrativity. This even holds true for the tinned experience provided by ghost trains of old or their successors in contemporary theme parks such as ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’ The extended horizon of potential narrative fields at the same time enhances the importance of our discipline, which seems to have become the master-discipline of the current “narrative turn everywhere” (Ryan 2007: 22). In fact, literary narratology may be compared to the mother country of many colonies, domains outside literature where narrativity also plays a role. In the following I will explore some of the negative effects of narratology’s (greedy) colonization of new subject matter.

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4. Consequences for the Discipline (II): Problems Caused by ‘Exporting’ Literary Narratology into Non-Literary Media and Possible Solutions for a Transmedial Narratology However, history has shown that colonization can be a dangerous and highly problematic enterprise. It always implies that the colonizers depart from their home country. This can be read as an aspect of imperial strength or as an indication that the home country has lost some of its attraction. Thus the question arises of whether abandoning literature as the original home domain of narratology does not bespeak literature’s loss of status as a whole. This may not only apply to the public at large in societies where other media, in particular film and computer transmitted representations, appear to be much more attractive but also, and sadly, to many apostate academics whose actual task it used to be to analyze as well as to promote literature. In addition, exporting literary narratology into non-literary media causes several other problems, some of which shall be discussed below as well as possible solutions. Emphasizing Medial Differences Narratologists who leave their original domain in order to discover new areas of narratological activity are confronted with a general difficulty: they enter territories in which they are not at home and where they may be likely to erroneously overstress similarities. Recently, Irina Rajewsky (2007) has addressed this danger in her discussion of drama as a narrative genre: drama is narrative in the general sense of its being able to transmit stories 24 but also in the narrower sense of its possessing ‘epic’ potential, which some scholars emphasize to the point of equating certain dramas with narrator-transmitted fiction. 25 Similarly, one must guard against the temptation to find an equal narrative potential in all media, for if everything becomes equally narrative, no one thing can be particularly narrative any more. Thus the notion of narrativity would lose its heuristic value. Ways to avoid this problem are clearly apparent: finding similarities between new objects and those one is already familiar with is understand––––––––––––

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See Nünning and Sommer in the present volume. While it would be an overstatement to completely dissociate drama from narrativity, Rajewsky’s main and plausible objection is that while narrators in fiction seem to produce the narratives, ‘epic’ presenter figures in drama do not. Therefore, they cannot simply be equated with narrators. The same danger of indiscriminately attributing narrativity to genres and media can be seen to beset attempts to read lyric poetry as narratives (see MüllerZettelmann in the present volume and several publications by Hühn (2004) on the subject of lyric narrativity).

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able and in harmony with cognitive processes. This is a necessary precondition to becoming aware of dissimilarities. This is what I have tried to highlight in the above discussion of narrative sculpture. However, the question remains of how to deal with the obvious resistance media such as sculpture show to attempts at narrativization. Does this resistance exclude sculpture from the field of narrative media? And are literary narratologists competent to discuss sculptural narrativity? Both questions point to general problems in a transmedial narratology. The Cognitive, Prototypical and Transmedial Reconceptualization of Narrativity Colonizing new areas may result in feelings of alienation as well as the justified resistance of the colonized. In terms of disciplines and interdisciplinarity a danger exists that literary narratologists will venture into arts, media and cultural fields for which they have no real expertise. Experts in these fields may rightly feel dissatisfied with dilettante narratological comments on objects that actually fall in their domain. This is a serious problem particularly in combination with the aforementioned possibility that literary narratologists’ colonial gestures are symptomatic of their increasing uncertainty about their home domain of literature. For how can the insights and skills of literary narratologists be well received if it becomes clear that they are no longer sure about the status of their original object? It is clear that the expertise of literary narratologists lies in the analysis of narrative texts and that it is this expertise, if any, which may be required by other disciplines for the analysis of non-literary objects. Therefore the original textual techniques of analysis should not be abandoned but adapted. Yet this requires a continuing allegiance to their actual business as literary scholars. It also requires a continuing awareness that the study of literary texts is a privileged forum for the analysis of narrativity, as well as allowing some scepticism concerning the current tendency to decentre narratology and atomize it in a proliferation of narratologies. 26 While there is nothing wrong with propagating ‘post-classical’ applications of narratology, or narratological approaches to new fields, it should remain clear that these do not constitute truly independent ‘narratologies.’ At best these differentiations refer to sub-fields of an over-arching narratology which, at least for the sake of its transmedial relevance, should be thought of in terms of one theory. This is, in particular, advisable with respect to scholars from other fields. Confronted not with one theory but with any –––––––––––– 26

See e.g. Nünning/Nünning (2002).

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number of rivalling narratologies, they may be even more puzzled than narratological insiders by current debates about what narratology comprises. My call for a continued allegiance to narratology as a coherent subject as well as to the literary origins of narratology does not mean that literary scholars should not extend their interests to the skills of other potentially narrative fields. Rather, I wish to point out that they will always be at a disadvantage in comparison to experts in these other fields, who, in turn, are not usually narratologists. So, what is requisite is interdisciplinary cooperation between literary narratologists and experts from other media and arts. Such cooperation would certainly have considerable advantages. Yet is narratology really ripe for such cooperation? Promising developments towards a transmedial narratology already exist (e.g. Ryan 2004 and 2005b; Meister 2005), but some work still needs to be done. Perhaps the most decisive preparatory step in this interdisciplinary direction is a reconceptualization of narratology that allows for transmedial applications of its findings. This concerns three issues in particular: a) a transmedial reconceptualization of the founding concept of narrativity on the basis of a clear description of typical narratives, b) the use of a flexible concept of ‘medium’, c) the integration of media into a systematic description of narratives. The reconceptualization of narrativity presupposes a clear concept of what narrativity is in general. After decades of literary-narratological debate no consensus has as yet been reached in this respect. Yet we can at least speak of some convergences concerning major issues in influential contemporary narratologies. For instance, the fact that narratives are world-building representations that permit the recipient to (re-)experience possible worlds has become a received notion. This is also true for the insight that these representations are centred around anthropomorphic beings who are capable of conscious choices, plans and activities, and experience emotions and desires. Moreover, there is now wide-spread agreement that these representations emphasize temporal and causal, while not entirely predictable, changes and explain them in terms of causality and teleology (see e.g. Ryan 2005b: 4 and 2007). All of these insights into narratives should be maintained in transmedial narratology. In addition, recent narratology has developed two highly promising approaches that need to be pursued and ‘fine-tuned’ in transmedial applications. The first approach is the cognitive conception of narrative and thus also of the defining quality of narratives, narrativity. As a result, narrative and narrativity appear less as exclusive properties of texts and artefacts but also as a cognitive master-frame located in our minds. This cog-

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nitive view has been powerfully advocated by Fludernik (1996) and more recently by Ryan (2005b: 4). According to recent research with deaf-mute children, there is evidence that this frame is acquired independently of the verbal: this points to a fundamental anthropological ability of humans to narrate (Van Deusen-Phillips et al. 2001). This insight allows us to disregard—at least provisionally—the link between narrativity and the verbal medium by describing narrative as a medium-independent cognitive schema or frame. In principle, this frame can be realized equally in several media, e.g. in drama or film, and not only in verbal fiction. It is moreover open to an even wider range of further media—in spite of more or less discernible medial resistance. Precisely because narrative is a cognitive frame I was able to narrativize “Laokoon,” although one does not actually see a story unfold in front of one’s eyes. Narrativization results, on the one hand, from the interaction between our cognitive capacity to decode narrativity and apply frame ‘narrative.’ On the other hand, it results from the stimulation of certain triggers by the artefact at hand. “Laokoon” does so not just by activating our knowledge of the verbal ‘story behind the scene,’ but also by appealing to our world knowledge. This refers, for instance, to the potential danger presented by snakes, our experience of attacks, or our ability to ‘read’ facial and bodily expressions. To test our ability to narrativize without a precise background story one may look at Illustration 2. Arguably most recipients will not need long to narrativize this charming representation.

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Illustration 2: “Aphrodite and Pan” (c. 100 B.C., Athens, National Museum)

“Aphrodite and Pan” appeals to our world knowledge as well as our knowledge of Greek mythology. 27 The following story can be inferred on the basis of what the viewer sees: Little Eros hovers over the two eponymous figures and playfully touches one of Pan’s phallic horns, thus indicating that Pan has fallen victim to Eros’ (here non-existent or invisible) arrow. This and Aphrodite’s equally apparent naked beauty obviously –––––––––––– 27

As a rule, paratexts such as titles and captions are particularly helpful (albeit sometimes also misleading) for triggering narrativizations—in particular in ‘obscure’ cases. However, in this case I trust that narrativization is possible independently of the title of the sculpture, at least for persons able to decipher the iconology of the group.

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trigger Pan’s desire. Trying to seduce Aphrodite, he grips her left arm. She, however, tries to fend him off, beating him with her free hand in which she holds her sandal. Yet her gesture and visual expression do not betray fear or even great exasperation. It is possible that she only displays a mock resistance or that she does not take the satyr’s sexual advances very seriously. In this way, the representation may be said to play with different possible outcomes of the story (which, of course, are not and cannot be represented in one and the same sculpture). Similar to “Laokoon,” this sculpture thus arguably possesses a certain degree of narrativity. The second approach within a transmedial reconceptualization of narrativity is to describe narrativity by means of prototypes. In this context one must return to the question of how to deal with media which show a certain resistance to narrativity. According to the prototypical approach which has been theorized in a ground-breaking way by Fludernik (1996), narrativity appears as both the defining quality of the abstract frame ‘narrative’ as well as a multifactorial and gradable quality of concrete texts and artefacts which can be used to fulfil the frame narrative more or less (cf. also Ryan 2005b: 5). This gradability avoids the problematic overexclusivity of more rigid approaches. Instead of including or excluding certain texts or artefacts on the basis of a binary ‘yes-no’-opposition, it allows for a certain degree of flexibility on the basis of ‘more or less.’ It also avoids the no less problematic consequences of over-inclusive earlier attempts to describe narratives which concentrated on minimal definitions: this applies, for instance, to Gerald Prince’s repeatedly quoted (e.g. in Richardson 2000: 169) formula, which is a modification of a previous definition by Labov, one of the pioneers in the field (cf. 1977 [1972]: 360): “narrative is the representation of at least two real or fictive events or situations in a time sequence, neither of which presupposes or entails the other” (Prince 1982: 4). The weakness of this definition is obvious, since it could, for instance, also apply to a recipe (cf. Ryan 2007: 25–26). An individual artefact’s degree of narrativity and the narrative potential of individual media depend on the occurrence of certain features typical of narrative, which Gerald Prince, in his pluri-componential analysis of narrativity called “narratemes” (1999: 46). The problem with this prototypical approach is, of course, how to select narratemes, determine their individual and relative importance as well as to choose prototypical examples. There is no space for a detailed discussion of these topics here, but since I have enlarged on them elsewhere (Wolf 2002, 2003, 2004), it may suffice merely to outline the conceptualization. Drawing in particular on Prince and Fludernik, I distinguish between three main types of narratemes. The first type are general narratemes, which fulfill fundamental

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functions of narratives: representationality, experientiality and meaningfulness (in particular with reference to the explanation of events in time). In addition, I show that content narratemes, the second type, are the ‘building blocks’ of the narrative’s possible worlds, most obviously setting, characters, and action. Content narratemes also include what Prince has described as “disnarrated elements” (1996: 98): unrealized alternatives which nevertheless have been taken into consideration in the story. Lastly, there are the ‘syntactic’ narratemes, the ‘mortar’ that binds the building blocks together, such as chronology, causality and teleology (cf. Ryan 2005b: 3–9). In post-classical narratology, two questions concerning these narratemes have arisen that are of a particular relevance to transmedial work: the first is the contention that there are “narratives without plot.” This dissolution of ‘action’ as the backbone of narrativity was attempted by Fludernik in her book on ‘Natural’ Narratology (1996: 13). She does so in order to highlight what she regards as the constitutive role of ‘experientiality’ in narrativity and to include experimental modernist stream-ofconsciousness texts in the field of narrative. However, experientiality can stem from the perception of both dynamic change and temporal and spatial states and situations. Thus narratives share this characteristic with some non-narrative representations (for instance, certain descriptive poems or painterly still lifes). Experientiality is therefore a category that extends beyond narratives; it is actually co-extensive with all of the triggers of aesthetic illusion, whereas, according to a wide consensus, the concatenation of actions or events is the essence of all typical stories. While experientiality is thus an important, albeit a non-exclusive constituent of narratives, represented action must be regarded as a central narrateme in any transmedial narratology. In contrast to this the representation of consciousness, which Fludernik appears to raise to the level of a core narrateme (cf. 1996: 311), should not be given an exalted state. Even within fiction the so-called camera-eye technique dispenses with the representation of consciousness. Yet no one would affirm that, for instance, short stories by Hemingway which employ this device are in any way less than fully narrative. From a transmedial point of view insisting on the representation of consciousness as a narrateme is all the more problematic, as it marginalizes the visual media, which at best can give indexical hints at thoughts but cannot fully represent them. A second question has emerged in post-classical narratology concerning another fundamental narrateme besides action: Porter Abbot has recently claimed that “narrative leaves off and something else begins [...] when the story is no longer felt to precede the telling” (2005: 534). He has called “the sense of the precedence of the event [...] a defining condition of

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narrative” (535). This is indeed crucial, since much of narrative’s persuasive power to make sense, in particular its causality and teleology, rests on the expectation that the outcome of a story exists before it is told or represented. Narratives are, therefore, re-presentations also in the sense that recipients are convinced that a script (as well as a script writer) must already be there and is actually, as it were, re-activated when a narrative is presented. This, however, creates problems with the classification of interactive constructs such as computer games or hyperfictions, which Abbott diagnoses as “an infiltration of the prenarratable” (537). Yet as long as recipients feel that there is some sort of script which limits their choices, narrativity still applies, albeit to a reduced extent. All of the aforementioned narratemes may be illustrated using verbal narratives—Fludernik opts for oral narratives to do so (1996) and I for fairy tales (which stem from oral tales) (Wolf 2002: 43–51). Yet this is not to imply that these narratemes can only be realized by narrator-transmitted media or genres. Rather, it will be noted that nothing has been said in the foregoing enumeration of narratemes about a narrator or the verbal medium. This ‘omission’ is a consequence of the intermedial approach adopted here: the choice of a particular medium and, a fortiori, of a particular media-specific genre are merely variables within this approach. A transmedial conceptualization of narrative therefore accounts for the fact that stories can be represented in different media and describes how this is done. The transmedial nature of narrative does, however, not imply that medial conditions have no influence on the realization of the frame narrative. Quite to the contrary, as our example “Laokoon” has illustrated. This sculpture certainly represents an already present script; it provides experientiality including emotional involvement. Arguably, the sculpture also meaningfully exemplifies the precariousness of existence. Or, if one is aware of the myth behind this representation, it may also illustrate the power of the gods. Yet in contrast to the possibility of rendering this meaningfulness explicit as verbal narratives can do, the visual narrative remains implicit in this case and needs the recipient to detect it. The same holds true for another core narrateme, namely the temporal dimension, as well as the causality and teleology of the represented event: all of these elements are not actually present in the artefact but are implied by it, are mostly an effect or reception and result out of the process of reading the clues correctly. Further details, such as the incapacity of sculpture and painting to represent ‘disnarrated elements’ are perhaps unnecessary to mention here. It has become clear that what is essential in our context is the prototypical and cognitive reconceptionalization of narrativity. This reconception allows us to determine more about a work such as “Lao-

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koon” than whether or not it is narrative; it permits us to assess the sculpture’s degree of narrativity (in this case its reduced degree), for instance, in comparison to verbal narratives (but also to other media); and it also enables us to account for missing elements that may nevertheless be provided through the recipient’s mental activity as soon as he or she activates the cognitive frame ‘narrative.’ Above all, this cognitive and prototypical reconceptualization opens narratology to a transmedial application of its findings without right from the start excluding what might seem to be non- or less narrative. The Use of a Flexible Concept of ‘Medium’ The goal of a ‘transmedial’ reconceptualization of narrativity entails the concept of medium. Medium is an abstraction and designates phenomena which cannot be observed in themselves but only with reference to certain manifestations (cf. Lüdeke 2004: 23). Since the range of these manifestations can be conceived of in a variety of ways, the concept of medium is notoriously vague and presents problems for narratology, as Marie-Laure Ryan has recently pointed out in an illuminating article (2005a; cf. also Ryan 2005b: 14–17)—for a start, different views on what a medium actually is: on the one hand, there is what Ryan calls “the transmissive definition,” which rests on the technical and material aspects of how information is transmitted and yields ‘media’ such as “television, radio, the Internet”; on the other hand, there is a “semiotic definition” of media which focusses less on the channel of transmission than on the semiotic nature of the message such as “language, [...] image” or music (2005a: 289). As a third ‘ontological’ “dimension” beyond the semiotic and material or technological ones, Ryan mentions the “cultural use” of media (Ryan 2005b: 16). In addition, different views prevail on the functions of media: on one end of the spectrum, we have what Ryan aptly terms “the hollow pipe interpretation” (2005a: 289), in which the medium is viewed as a neutral element that transmits but in no way affects the narrative message. The opposite extreme view is McLuhan’s contention that the “medium is the message” (1964: 7–21); this relegates the content of the transmitted message to a marginal position and overemphasizes the power of the medium to shape and indeed create meaning. To enact a transmedial narratology we must find a compromise between the functional and the ontological descriptions of media. With regard to function, it is clear that neither of the extreme views is viable in a transmedial narratology: the ‘hollow pipe view’ excludes the relevance of media altogether. By contrast, the ‘medium-is-the-message view’ places the medium in such a strong position that a medium-independent concep-

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tion of narrativity in cognitive and prototypical terms becomes impossible, for if media are the ultimate reality, cognitive frames become negligible (as well as medially transmitted contents). McLuhan’s position is equally incompatible with the idea that a story can be transmitted in more than one medium and still remains recognizably the same. Thus the function of media in a transmedial narratology must be conceived of in a more flexible way as influencing, but not a priori as determining, narrativity and narrative content. As for the nature of medium, narratology (as well as any theory of intermediality that purports to include literature and other arts) must take into account both technical/material (cf. also Lüdeke 2004) and semiotic factors as well as cultural-historical (including institutional) ones. All of these ‘dimensions’ influence the kind of story that can be transmitted— and in liminal cases whether narrativity can be transmitted at all. They also determine how stories are transmitted, how they are received and what experiential effects they can produce. I would therefore like to propose the following compromise definition of media. It includes all of the ontological dimensions as well as the functional aspects which have just been discussed. As applicable to transmedial narratology, medium is a conventionally and culturally distinct means of communication; it is specified not only by technical or institutional channels (or one channel) but also and primarily by its use of one or more semiotic systems to transmit its contents, in particular within the public sphere; according to the nature and format of their constituents, different media have different capabilities for transmitting as well as shaping narratives. This definition is in harmony with Ryan’s pragmatic description of the extent to which mediality is relevant in narratology: [...] what counts as a medium for the narrative scholar is a type of material support [...] that truly makes a difference as to what kind of narrative content can be evoked [...] how these contents are presented [...] and how they are experienced. (Ryan 2005a: 290)

The Integration of Media into a Systematic Description of Narratives By proposing flexible conceptions of narrativity as well as of medium, some of the building blocks which will contribute to transmedial narratology have already been created. But how are they to be integrated systematically into narratology as a general description of narratives? In influential

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narratologies (e.g. by Stanzel, Genette or Fludernik) 28 the factor ‘medium’ is hardly ever discussed in detail and, as a rule, is not even allocated a systematic theoretical location within the respective theories. It is therefore appropriate to remember that one of the pioneers of structuralist narratology, Seymour Chatman, made a simple and convincing proposal for how to integrate medial concerns into a systematic description of narratives in Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (1978). Drawing on Hjelmslev (1953 [1943]), he equates Todorov’s constitutive levels of narratives ‘story’ and ‘discourse’ (see 1966) with narrative “content” and “expression.” In addition, Chatman differentiates between “substance” and “form” within each of these categories (in practice, of course, ‘form’ cannot exist without ‘substance,’ as has already been adumbrated with reference to ‘medium’ as an abstract concept). While the content of ‘story’ refers to the individual narratives told, its form is what Propp analyzed in his Morphology of the Folk Tale (1969). As for ‘discourse,’ the bulk of Chatman’s narratology (like most other narratologies) is concerned with the form of discourse (see 1978: 25); this includes, e.g. the use of heteroor homodiegetic narrators, the use of discourse-time as opposed to storytime etc. However, the substance of discourse receives at least a brief mention, and this is where mediality is introduced: Chatman defines the substance of discourse as “its appearance in a specific materializing medium, verbal, cinematic, balletic, musical, pantomimic, or whatever” (22). This characterization of medium as an aspect of ‘discourse’ presents a viable possibility for how to include the category of medium in narratologies in general as well as in narratological interpretations and places it on the level of four ‘intracompositional’ dimensions that require attention both in theory and in interpretive practice (see Figure 1). STORY: substance DISCOURSE: substance (media)

STORY: form DISCOURSE: form

Figure 1: The position of media within a system of narrative constituents (based on Chatman 1978)

What we still need, however, are elaborations of what in the above Figure 1 appears in the slot ‘media as the substance of discourse.’ This concerns the wider context of placing media in relation to other basic categories which are requisite for a systematic description of narratives; it also relates ––––––––––––

28

Fludernik’s seminal reflections (2000) on “narrative modalities” concentrate on “genres, text types [and] discourse modes,” not on media.

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to determining the relationship between the typical properties of individual media and their potential to affect narrativity. The fulfillment of the first task requires that media be posited within a wider system of cognitive (macro-)frames or semiotic macro-modes. In this context one must also account for the fact that these macro-frames can also occur on the micro-level of individual works (where narrative passages can be juxtaposed with descriptive, argumentative etc. ones), for something analogous is also possible for the use of individual media in plurimedial works. Perhaps the best way to systematize what is under discussion here is to start with the category of cognitive macro-frames or what one may, from a semiotic perspective, call basic semiotic ‘macro-modes.’ On this abstract level ‘narrative’ with its defining, gradable quality of narrativity is opposed to ‘the descriptive,’ ‘the argumentative’ etc. (the paradigm in question is an open one). Fludernik, in an illuminating essay (2000), named this top level that of “macrogenres” (282). These macro-frames or macro-modes are, however, highly abstract. To be realized they require not only genres but also, and above all, the very thing that is of central concern here, namely media (such as the verbal and pictorial media, film, instrumental music etc.). The fact that narrative, like all macro-frames, can be realized in more than one medium shows that these macro-frames are to a large extent media-independent. The next level after the level of media is the level of genre. It refers, firstly, to general genres (which sometimes overlap with media) 29 such as drama or narrations of the type ‘novel,’ ‘epic’ and ‘short story’ (as typically narrator-transmitted genres) and, secondly, to historical genres: within the pictorial media these include, for instance, religious painting, historical painting, still life. As a rule, the dominant occurrence of macro-frames is a defining feature of both general and historical genres. (As stated above, in individual texts and artefacts, macro-frames can nonetheless be used on the microlevel alongside other, subdominant frames.) Thus, narrative is dominant in verbal media in the general genres of novel and drama as well as in historical genres such as Gothic fiction or comedy. In pictorial media, this is also true to a certain extent, e.g. for the genre history painting. Similarly, the argumentative mode prevails in verbal genres such as the philosophical essay, the scientific treatise etc., and the descriptive mode dominates in verbal Bildbeschreibung as well as in painterly still lifes. In summary, narrative is a semiotic macro-mode or macro-frame that can be realized in several media and may occur, within individual media, in –––––––––––– 29

See Fludernik (2000: 282), who subsumes “novel, drama, film” under “genres/text types.”

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general, as well as in historical genres. Narrative can be dominant in which case it then informs the macro-level of the genre, but it can also occur on the micro-level of texts and artefacts; in this case narrative may be only present as a subdominant frame among other frames. With its dual potential to be located on two different levels—on a higher, macro-level as well as on a lower, micro-level—narrative resembles other semiotic macro-modes. With reference to a typology of verbal texts, this potential recursivity has already been proposed with particular clarity by Virtanen (1992) and in similar terms by Fludernik (2000). For the purpose of developing a transmedial typology these findings can be adapted, and the resulting typological possibilities be visualized as in Figure 2. One should, however, emphasize that in Figure 2 all registers (1–5) show only examples and hence do not represent the full repertoire of possible options.

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1) semiotic macro-modes/ cognitive macroframes

the descriptive

NARRATIVE

argumentative

other

2) media in which the macro-modes can be realized (examples)

verbal media, pictorial medium, film, music (?)

verbal media, pictorial medium, film, music (?)

verbal media, pictorial medium (?)

…

3) examples of genres in which the macro-modes/frames can be realized on the macrolevel

still life, ekphrasis, …

soap opera, (sentimental) novel, …

philosophical essay, scientific treatise, …

…

4) examples of the use of macro-modes/frames on the micro-level of individual genres together with other frames (the subdominant modes in brackets) 5) verbal examples of macro-modes on the micro-level

the descr.

descriptive passages in an ekphrasis

(the arg.)

argumentative passages in an ekphrasis

narr.

(the descr.)

narrative passages in a novel

descriptions in a novel

(the arg.)

the arg.

(narr.)

narratorial explanations in a novel

the main argument in a treatise

narrative illustrations in a treatise

Figure 2: The position of narrative within a typology of cognitive macro-frames/ semiotic macro-modes, media and genres

Having proposed possible ways to integrate ‘medium’ as a general category into a systematic narratology, one must now address the relationship between the typical properties of individual media and their potential to affect narrativity. In spite of individual explorations of this field in transmedially orientated narratological discussion, a systematic treatment of this status of media has received very little attention. Indeed, compared to the many forms of discourse which narratology has devised, systematic reflection on the categories that may apply to media as the substance of discourse has been remarkably scant. It is clearly not enough to simply

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enumerate well-known narrative media in this context in an unsystematic or haphazard way. Once again one must be grateful to Marie-Laure Ryan for having at least started work on this rich topic. In her aforementioned article (2005a) she proposes six categories and some additional sub-categories that may serve as criteria for evaluating individual media narratologically. In Figure 3 I have systematized Ryan’s categories by occasionally reformulating and completing them. (Ryan’s wording is indicated by quotation marks.) In addition I have allocated a space to my example of “Laokoon” with a capital L:

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Medial categories and properties affecting narrativity “Spatio-temporal extension” “Kinetic properties”

“Senses [...] addressed/ semiotic codes [...] used”

“Priority of sensory channels”

“Technological support”/ nature of the signs used

“temporal” “spatial” “spatio-temporal” “static” “dynamic” static and dynamic ‘mono-codal’/‘monosensory’ visual aural language etc. ‘pluri-codal’/‘pluri-sensory’ (‘pluri-medial’) without priority with priority of: visual aural language etc. analogical transmission digital transmission symbolic signs iconic signs indexical (+iconic) signs

“methods of production/ distribution” “Cultural role”

corresponding media (unsystematic examples) fiction, music painting, sculpture (L) film, dance film stills, sculpture (L) film, drama, dance film, drama

sculpture (L) music fiction theatre, film, opera, dance (mono-codal media) (L) (pluri-codal media) film opera theatre conventional photography (L) digital photography fiction painting, photography (L) conventional photography

other differentiations mass production individual production and distribution high cultural medium popular culture medium

opera (L) comic strip

primarily pragmatic use primarily non-pragmatic use

TV news story Shakespeare play (L)

newspaper sculpture (L)

other differentiations Figure 3: Criteria for media in narratology (based on Ryan 2005a: 291); (L) = applies to “Laokoon”

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The heuristic value of these categories lies in their revealing aspects of media which are narratologically important. Thus the spatio-temporal extension as well as the kinetic properties of various media have a direct relevance to narrativity, just as some of the narrative problems occurring in “Laokoon” are linked with the spatial and static nature of the plastic medium. As for the senses which are addressed, one can imagine that ‘pluri-codal’ or ‘plurimedial’ media can easily attain a particularly high degree of experientiality. This is arguably one reason for the importance of film in today’s culture. The priority of sensory channels, in particular in pluricodal media, is narratologically relevant. For instance, the priority of the visual in film pre-structures this medium’s production as well as reception in a way which is not the case in theatre, where the verbal code is more important. The technological support and the nature of the signs used are relevant, since, for instance, traditional, analogical photography as an indexical as well as iconic medium has a highly documentary value, which digital photography possesses only to a reduced degree. 30 Finally, the influence of the cultural role of various media and the influence of methods of production and distribution on narratives is inextricably linked to generic conventions. Such conventions are responsible for the fact that highly different versions of the same story can be produced depending on whether it is transmitted as an opera or a comic strip. 5. Narrative Potentials of Individual Media in Comparison, and the Reinstatement of Verbal Media as Privileged Triggers of Narrativity The previous reflections have demonstrated that the relationship between narrativity and mediality in a transmedial narratology is curiously ambivalent: on the one hand, transmedial narratology presupposes a mediaindependent conception of narrativity; on the other hand, it must allocate an influential role to mediality in the systematic description of narrativity. Media are not in fact mere ‘hollow pipes’ that neutrally transmit stories. Rather, they function as empowering, but also as restrictive factors in the production and reception of narratives. In the plastic arts as discussed above one could see the great extent to which the medium influences narrativity. What was shown here can in principle be transferred to other media as well. –––––––––––– 30

This is due to the increased possibilities of manipulation which reduces indexicality; painting (except for a portrait) has even less documentary value, as it is only iconic (see Ryan 2005a: 291).

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However, one should also be aware of the fact that media is not destiny. Rather, as Ryan has pointed out, media when used in individual works do not “rigidly constrain the form of narrative” but should be seen as “sets of virtualities which may or may not be actualized” (2005a: 290). This includes the possibility of going with or against the grain of the medium, of ignoring it, playing with it, foregrounding, or, even, “fight[ing] some of the properties of the medium for expressive purposes” (ibid.). There is not enough space here for a systematic analysis of the narrative potentials and limits of the manifold media that can be used for the production and transmission of stories. Such an analysis must remain the task of a media-conscious narratology, and this is a project which is yet to be developed. This project would not only include comparisons of the technical and material aspects of narrative media but also analyses of their position within the framework of social history, the history of perception and mentalities, and the history of media-configurations (cf. Lüdeke 2004: 24). However, what can be said at this stage is that a comparison of media with reference to narrativity will create a hierarchy (the same can be said about e.g. literary genres). In this hierarchy, the top register would certainly be occupied by media that use the verbal in combination with other codes (such as film), or rely exclusively on the verbal code. Verbal language has the unique advantage of being able to make “distinct propositions” (Ryan 2005a: 291) in an infinite variety of fields. Thus prototypical cases of narratives will invariably be chosen from media and genres that involve language in a prominent way. If indeed the verbal media represent the domain par excellence of prototypical narratives and if such prototypes are relevant to other media, then it also is understandable that a transmedial narratology will take its roots in literary narratology. The foregoing reflections were developed on this assumption. Yet, as has hopefully become clear, this does not mean that the current trend in narratology to discover new areas of narrativity should be checked: quite on the contrary. It just means that the narratological expeditions into new territories should be undertaken with care. They should include an awareness that not everything which is taken for granted in the home domain of verbal narratives can be expected to exist in the same way in new narrative territories.

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Wolf 2002 Wolf, Werner: “Das Problem der Narrativität in Literatur, bildender Kunst und Musik: ein Beitrag zu einer intermedialen Erzähltheorie,” in Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär, edited by Ansgar and Vera Nünning, 23–104 (Trier: WVT). Wolf 2003 Wolf, Werner: “Narrative and Narrativity: A Narratological Reconceptualization and Its Applicability to the Visual Arts,” in Word & Image 19: 180–97. Wolf 2004 Wolf, Werner: “‘Cross the Border—Close that Gap’: Towards an Intermedial Narratology,” in European Journal of English Studies (Beyond Narratology) 8.1: 81– 103. Wolf 2005 Wolf, Werner: “Pictorial Narrativity,” in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, edited by David Herman, Manfred Jahn and Marie-Laure Ryan, 431–35 (London/New York: Routledge).

BRIAN RICHARDSON (University of Maryland)

Endings in Drama and Performance: A Theoretical Model Abstract This essay identifies the wide range of strategies used by playwrights in ending their dramas, paying particular attention to distinctively theatrical aspects that are not normally present in narrative fiction. Among the strategies for ending are familiar topics like the deus ex machina, ideological closure, and the open ending; the essay also contains discussions of more radical practices such as multiple endings, “denarrated” endings, temporally circular endings, endings which are chosen by the audience, and conclusions in the performance that occur after the represented action has ceased. The essay suggests that all endings are artificial and ultimately arbitrary ruptures in a larger web of events. It offers a theoretical grid that both encompasses and moves beyond traditional theories of endings and is thus able to do justice to the experimental works discussed within it. The playwrights included range from Aristophanes and Shakespeare to Samuel Beckett, Caryl Churchill, and Dario Fo. Some of the ideological issues often associated with closure and its deferral are also reflected on. 1. Introduction Endings have always been difficult to theorize. Since the time of Aristotle, rather simple binary oppositions have often been set forth, but these oppositions are often quickly supplemented by modifications that may stray from or contradict the original position. In the Poetics, the basic definition would be almost embarrassingly obvious did it not seem to beg the question it attempts to answer: “A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end”; while an end “is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it” (Aristotle 1971: 52). This account is immediately complicated by a number of other issues, beginning with the admonition that a well constructed plot will not end haphazardly, but will “naturally” follow from the events that precede it. Hence, the unmotivated end or the resolution by deus ex machina is denounced as is episodic plot construction (cf. ibid.: 54). Aristotle

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goes on to add several more qualifications, including that the change in fortune that occurs should be from good to bad, due to frailty rather than vice, and produce a single tragic effect. Aristotle also knows this puts him in something of a minority position: the double plot, as found in the Odyssey, where, at the end, the good are rewarded and the bad punished, is thought by some to be the best; but in a critical move that will be repeated in our time, he blames this inferior practice on authors who pander to “the weakness of the spectators” (ibid.: 55) in this regard. The classical Sanskrit poetics set forth by Bharata oscillates similarly. It starts with a deceptively simple statement (the conclusion is to bring together the narrative “seeds” and objects of the play’s different segments once “they have attained fruition” [Bharata 1961: 384–85]), goes on to provide advice on the subplot(s), then proscribes certain offensive finales, and indicates the complexities of producing the desired final emotional state (rasa) in the spectators. Neoclassical theory follows a similar path. Dryden stated that, at the end of a play, there you see all things settling again upon their first foundations; and, the obstacles which hindered the design or action of the play once removed, it ends with that resemblance of truth and nature, that the audience are satisfied with the conduct of it. (Dryden 1971: 234)

I suspect that few works of any kind can be said to fully meet these stipulations; “truth and nature” are not so easily conjoined. It appears then that there is always something deceptively complex about closure, that the stakes it involves are high, and that satisfactory endings are in fact rather difficult to attain. To quote Aristotle again, “many poets tie the knot well, but unravel it ill” (Aristotle 1971: 59). In the same vein, Lessing complained about plays in which a perfectly healthy character suddenly appears to “die of the fifth act. Truly, the fifth act is a nasty form of distemper that does away with many who were promised a much longer life by the first four acts” (Hamburg Dramaturgy, cited in Schmidt 1992: 1). The sense of an ending is evidently quite fragile; there almost seems to be something alien or destructive about the end that constantly threatens to vitiate, undermine, or violate the narrative sequence that precedes it—not in a bracing act of deconstructive transgression but rather a collapse of will or ingenuity or even artistic integrity. In a very important sense, a definitive ending is utterly unnatural; it is a difficult artifice that may be seamlessly or awkwardly attached to a set of events, but one that always, by its very presence, threatens to alter and vitiate the integrity of the totality of represented events. It is clear that an ending can be bad in many different ways. In addition to Aristotle’s animadversions toward insufficiently motivated conclu-

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sions and excessive poetic justice, we have, in the modern period, a general distaste for any kind of definitive conclusion as being inherently unrealistic since, as James astutely observes, “really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle within which they shall happily appear to do so” (James 1972: 5). I suggest that this is a better model for thinking about endings than Aristotle’s; life never comes with readily demarcated beginnings or endings. Nietzsche denounced societies that were too weak to endure tragedy; many later authors have felt that a happy ending is intellectually dishonest. As Miss Prism describes the system of poetic justice in her novel in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest: “The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means” (Wilde 2006: 26). Finally, in the urge to “make it new,” playwrights and novelists have focused on the ending as a particularly fruitful site for literary innovation and intervention. Given the polyfunctional nature of the ending, it is clear from the outset that we will need a theory that is both multifaceted and polymorphous if it is to embrace the range of current practices. In what follows, I will use the term ending to refer to the point where the play ceases, and use closure as Armine Kotin Mortimer defines it as depending “on a feeling of satisfaction that the story’s elements ended at their necessary spot, problems posed are resolved […] in sum, what was opened is now closed” (Mortimer 1985: 15). I will stress the importance of the concepts fabula, syuzhet, and performance for effectively circumscribing the subject.1 At first glance this may seem a bit odd; after all, in the vast majority of plays, once the enactment of the syuzhet ends, no further fabula can be derived from it. Nor is it likely that the performance will continue once the story is concluded; in realist drama, this is the point where the lights come up and the spectators go home. Nearly all theorists limit their discussions of endings to discussions of the end of the fabula, as is evident in the statements of the classical theorists I have quoted –––––––––––– 1

Other theorists who have employed a comparable general framework include Richard Neupert (story and discourse in film) and Remigius Bunia (story, discourse, and text). Neither theorist discusses drama. It is perhaps not surprising that earlier theorists have not employed this framework since it is only relatively recently that the syuzhet in drama has been repeatedly deployed in theoretically interesting ways. By using these terms to discuss both fiction and drama, I am employing a conception of narrative that is based on the representation of events, rather than on narration, as has been done by numerous theorists from Aristotle to Russell Reising. For a powerful and indeed incontrovertible defense of such an approach to drama as narrative, see Fludernik (2008). It will also be observed that I will draw attention to significant differences occasioned by staged enactment in the plays I go on to discuss.

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above. And there is little discussion of the many nonrealist or antimimetic endings that appear in numerous works of the past hundred years. 2. Fabula: Fixed Endings We begin with the fabula or story. The general position articulated by Todorov is widely shared in one form or another: The minimal complete plot consists in the passage from one equilibrium to another. An ‘ideal’ narrative begins with a stable situation which is disturbed by some power or force. There results a state of disequilibrium; by the action of a force directed in the opposite direction, the equilibrium is re-established. (Todorov 1977: 111)

Todorov’s observations can also be articulated from a poststructuralist perspective. In Narrative and its Discontents, D.A. Miller asserts that the “narratable,” that is, the instances of insufficiency, disequilibrium, and deferral that give rise to a narrative, is “opposed to the ‘nonnarratable’ state of quiescence assumed by a novel before the beginning and supposedly recovered by it at the end” (Miller 1981: ix). This kind of formulation is perfectly adequate for plays like Antigone or She Stoops to Conquer which are tightly plotted and whose stories have a definitive conclusion. Even as Aristotle affirmed the supremacy of this kind of ending, he also acknowledged the possibilities of other kinds, such as the infamous deus ex machina variety, which are equally fixed though inartistically imposed. Since most of the theoretical discussions of endings in drama historically have focused on the relation between the play’s final events and those that lead up to them, some discussion of these issues is appropriate here. The conclusion of a fabula may follow ineluctably from the preceding events, or it may be unprepared, wayward, adventitious, or awkward. It is useful to imagine a spectrum, with the most seamless, causally connected closure on one side and what I will designate with the deliberately bland term “casual” to cover, on the other side, all the more relaxed or gratuitous endings. One must be quite cautious about the name that gets applied to the latter, since it is here that issues of variable genre requirements, period tastes, personal sensibilities, audience demands, and the level of authorial skill in plot resolution may all intersect: think of the differences between the unmotivated endings of many of Euripides’ plays, the arbitrary cessations found in much traditional Chinese drama, the abruptly affixed resolution of some of Thomas Middleton’s pieces, or the sudden, unmotivated rush of sentimentality that triggers the peripeteia in

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the typical Broadway musical of the fifties. 2 Though the conclusive ending of tragedy has been critically valorized for millennia, it is by no means clear that this position is the only valid one. Ejner Jensen argues that comedies often do not rely on fixed or conclusive endings to resolve the drama in its entirety, and warns that “to crown the end rather than see it as a necessary and inevitable part of the total work is to […] distort both the nature and function of Shakespeare’s comedies” (Jensen 1991: 21). Some of the “tacked on” endings can serve a definite political purpose. In the rollicking Tudor morality play, Youth, all the Rabelaisian antics cease when a seemingly unmotivated ending imposes the ideological conclusion demanded by church and state—a policing phenomenon that still can be found reenacted most nights on network television in the USA. A fixed though unprepared-for resolution, that is, can be indicative of either poor craftsmanship or political maneuvering. Genre demands can also transpose the direction taken by endings, as in the metadramatic reversal of fortunes in The Beggar’s Opera: as Macheath is about to be hanged, an actor complains to the beggar who wrote the play, “friend, this is a downright deep tragedy. The catastrophe is manifestly wrong, for an opera must end happily” (Gay 1995: 205). The beggar then gives up his goal of “strict poetical justice,” and changes the ending by giving Macheath a reprieve in order “to comply with the taste of the town” (205). Recent examples of this abrupt, metadramatic swerve away from what seems to be the inevitable ending can be found in Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman (2003), which allows the protagonist to save his writing from being destroyed. If a powerful closure can enforce official ideologies, then too much closure can prove to be destabilizing—the gratuitous fifth marriage at the end of Measure for Measure is certainly a synechdoche of the arbitrary nature of every such conclusion. As Peter Rabinowitz observes, the conventional ending can be “undermined not by overthrowing it, but rather by following it in such an ostentatious way that it looks absurd. […] Farce is particularly apt to use this mode” (Rabinowitz 1987: 167). Likewise, the preposterous series of revelations and couplings at the end of Cymbeline, The Importance of Being Earnest, What the Butler Saw, and Travesties mercilessly parody the classical impulse toward anagnoresis enshrined by Aristotle and observed by so many playwrights.

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See Francis Dunn for a fine exploration of Euripides’ various refusals of conventional tragic closure.

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3. Fabula: Open Endings Up to this point we have been examining dramas with fixed endings, no matter how tightly or arbitrarily they follow upon the actions that lead up to them. We now can turn to open endings, where the work resists the resolution of its various instabilities and disharmonies. Shakespeare is particularly adept in producing an impression of finality in the theater that is readily problematized by additional analysis, so much so that Samuel Johnson, in a famous criticism, declared his conclusions were usually “improbably produced or imperfectly represented” (Johnson 1971: 333). He went on to claim that when Shakespeare “found himself near the end of his work, and in view of his reward, he shortened the labour, to snatch the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigourously exert them” (ibid.: 333). From The Taming of the Shrew to The Tempest, many of the plot resolutions are highly tenuous and subject to dispute (my students are always very worried about Prospero’s safety on that long voyage back to Milan). 3 Modern theorists offer very different evaluations of Shakespeare’s tendency toward irresolution. Ejner Jensen remarks that the very category of “problem plays” designates comedies whose resolutions are felt to be in various ways unsatisfactory (cf. Jensen 1991: 1–2). Ostensibly “extemporaneous” works like The Critique of the School for Wives may have an ending that seems arbitrary. 4 Another drama that ends stubbornly without any proper resolution is King Lear, which ignores poetic justice and leaves a dangerous power vacuum in the kingdom. Not surprisingly, this ending was rewritten in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to mitigate its tragic effect and provide a stronger resolution to the action. In a letter to Suvorin, Chekhov, complaining about the difficulty of coming up with an ending for a play in which the chief character neither gets married nor shoots himself, also observed, “I have an interesting subject for a comedy, but I haven’t yet invented the ending. Whoever will contrive new endings for plays will open a new era” (Chekhov 1973: 213). The play Chekhov refers to here has left no traces, but the goal of an original kind of ending has continued to resonate. Just what may be done with endings is adumbrated by Virginia Woolf in her discussion of the apparently inconclusive endings of much Russian fiction, where the end might be simply a note of interrogation or merely the information that they went on talking, as it is in Chekov […]. Probably we have to read a great many stories before we feel,

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4

Jean E. Howard (1986) discusses a number of problematic resolutions in Shakespeare’s comedies. The endings of these three plays are discussed by Jagendorf (1984) though the theoretical framework employed minimizes the inconclusive nature of these ends.

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and the feeling is essential to our satisfaction, that we hold the parts together, and that Chekov is not merely rambling disconnectedly, but struck now this note, now that with intention, in order to complete his meaning. (Woolf 1984: 176)

What Woolf describes here (and enacts in novels like To the Lighthouse) is not the absence of any closure, but the creation of an alternative kind of ending. More precisely, the traditional, expected resolutions of the major concerns of the story line are superseded by a much more subtle pattern, reversal, or vision that has its own completeness. The aims of the characters are unfulfilled and their conflicts are unresolved as an aesthetic design and music-like resolution supplant them. A form of closure, which we may call “aesthetic,” is still present, but it is one which dispenses with or indeed is at war with traditional expectations; it refuses to say what happened next to the characters and offers instead an alternative, formal resolution of the major motifs of the piece. The play’s story is left open while the discourse achieves closure: though we don’t know how the work’s central issues and events will be concluded, we do know the work is complete. It provides what Barbara Herrnstein Smith describes as “hidden closure,” where “the poet will avoid the expressive qualities of strong closure while securing, in various ways, the reader’s sense of the poem’s integrity” (Smith 1968: 244). It will surprise no one that such a form often creates a divided audience, as professors who have taught modernist texts to undergraduates know all too well (to say nothing of the producers who continue to decline to undertake another staging of The Cherry Orchard). Though generally thought of as an exclusively modern technique, early prototypes of plays with unresolved endings can be found in Moliere’s The Misanthrope and in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. In the latter drama, the world of the play is left in a state of “radical disharmony,” as Jonathan Dollimore observes (1984: 58) and at the end of the performance Pandarus bequeaths venereal disease to the audience. There are, I suspect, far fewer completed works entirely devoid of any strategy of closure than is generally believed; David Richter is right to caution that even the most modern novels […] modern in terms of their technical innovations […] are similar to the old fashioned variety in that both types usually come to end in aesthetically satisfying ways… . [‘open form’] is hardly a license to demonstrate a vision of chaos in an equally chaotic narrative […] the word [‘form’ in ‘open form’] is fully operative, after all. (Richter 1974: 4)

Though these statements may not seem quite as solid as when they first appeared in 1974, Richter’s general position is well founded and has a particular resonance for drama, where, due to its public nature, audience expectations and desires for some sense of an ending may be more marked than in fiction or even the cinema. But utterly open endings do

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exist; one might even debate over which drama is the most resistant to closure. One author whose work suggests itself is Sam Shepard. Shepard has said that “I’d just as soon not end anything. But you have to stop at some point just to let people out of the theater. A resolution isn’t an ending; it’s a strangulation” (cited in Oumano 1986: 4). At the end of True West, the protagonists, two brothers, apparently about to fight to their death, are left staring at each other as the lights go slowly to black. This final tableau incarnates the central image of Lee’s unwritten screenplay, of one man chasing another through the Texas panhandle, an image alternately depicted as phoney and authentic, clichéd and original: And they keep ridin’ like that straight into the night. Not knowing. And the one who’s chasin’ doesn’t know where the other one is taking him. And the one who’s being chased doesn’t know where he is going. (Shepard 1984: 27)

Shepard’s aversion to resolutions is here narrated as a mise-en-abyme and incarnated on stage in the play’s final tableau. Some of Harold Pinter’s work is, if possible, even more open: I know of individuals who have been asked by the director to start clapping after the play’s last lines are uttered so the audience would know the performance was over. Perhaps the most open work in terms of both story and performance is Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan. As Manfred Pfister explains: At a complete loss as to how [the inhabitants] might unite their ethical demands with the ability to survive in the world, the gods escape upwards by fleeing back into heaven on a ‘pink cloud’ (a deliberate reversal of the deus-ex-machina ending). (Pfister 1988: 97)

The gods deny that there is any significant disharmony to be resolved. The play’s central dilemma remains, however, that moral injunctions are often incompatible with human survival. The central characters are left as it were in medias res; in an epilogue, the audience is invited to speculate on the inconclusive nature of the play’s ending, and implicitly urged to change the society that engenders such contradictions as the performance moves outward toward the world of the audience: It is for you to find a way, my friends, To help good men arrive at happy ends. You write the happy ending to the play! There must, there must, there’s got to be a way! (Brecht 1988: 113) 5

There has been considerable speculation concerning the ideological and mimetic valences of open and closed endings. Since the 1960s many have –––––––––––– 5

The comparable lines in the German original read: Der einzige Ausweg waer aus diesem Ungemach / Sie selber daechten auf der Stelle nach / Auf welche Weis dem guten Menschen man / Zu einem guten Ende helfen kann. / Verehrtes Publikum, los, such dir selbst den Schluss! / Es muss ein guter da sein, muss, muss, muss! (Brecht 1988: 279).

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felt that conclusive endings tended to be conservative or otherwise support the status quo, whereas more open endings were perceived to be more progressive politically, though this position has been questioned by a number of recent scholars including Alison Booth who states: “we do not find a clear correlation between disruption of formal convention and radical departure from social convention” (Booth 1997: 9). Russell Reising, examining major works of American literature in several genres, argues that the formal imperative to conclude a work often clashes with the unresolvable ideological tensions that generated its central events. Feminists and lesbians rightly objected to the narrow range of options for women in the closed ending of the traditional “marriage plot” as well as the implicit heterosexual norm it implied (e.g. Rachel Blau duPlessis [1985], Judith Roof [1996]).6 It is also the case that many authors, scholars, and theorists in the twentieth century have felt that closed endings were unrealistic; life doesn’t come packaged quite so simply: relations end nowhere, as we have seen Henry James affirm. June Schlueter observes that every ending has “an afterlife […]. Richard II, though thoroughly complete in itself, prepares the reader for 1 Henry IV” (Schlueter 1995: 20–21) and concludes that any “ending, despite its terminal position, always permits a new beginning” (21). J. Hillis Miller, scrutinizing Aristotle’s own definition and his example of Oedipus Rex, shrewdly observes that: It cannot be said that nothing follows causally from it. Oedipus is left at the end of the play uncertain about what Creon will do with him, whether or not he will allow him to go into exile. […] Moreover, as the audience well knows, the events of the day are only an episode in a story that leads to Oedipus’ own death and transfiguration in Colonus. (Miller 1998: 11)

Closure, in short, is always already a fabrication.7 4. Endings to Antimimetic Fabulas Up to this point we have been discussing plays with a single, linear, noncontradictory story; as is well known, many modern dramas refuse to comply with this convention. One type, not uncommon over the last hundred years, utilizes a cyclical pattern to return, with the key events unresolved, to the play’s point of origin. In Yeats’ Purgatory, two souls from purgatory return to the house they once inhabited to re-live their transgressions. The child of that union, now an old man, returns with his –––––––––––– 6 7

For a discussion of these and related issues, see my essay, “Linearity and Its Discontents.” Schmidt similarly observes: “Fictions must have conclusions; life does not. A fictional ending, like a beginning, is an interruption” (Schmidt 1992: 1).

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own son to the haunted place. A drama of repetition ensues during which the boy, sixteen years old, tries to kill his father—exactly as the father had killed his own father many years earlier when he too was sixteen. The old man however wins this contest, and kills his son with the same knife he used to slay his own father with. Having “finished all that consequence,” he hopes the soul of his mother will now be freed. Almost immediately, he hears the distant ghostly hoof beats that signify the generative scene, his father’s drunken copulation with his mother, will be enacted again and again. Once these events are repeated, we see that the play attains its closure by demonstrating that its story will never end. Beckett’s Play also contains an infinite fabula that will not end; the events of the play are repeated syllable for syllable for eternity. The circular ending has itself become the subject of a play. In Improvisation, or The Shepherd’s Chameleon, Ionesco parodies his own tendency to rely on structural repetitions. At the beginning of the drama, three Brechtian critics, each of whom has entered the stage speaking the same lines, approach the actor playing Ionesco and offer dramaturgical advice. The character Ionesco readily admits that the play he is currently writing is not easy: “It’s got to be perfect, no repetition, no dull passages. I’m always being accused of going round in circles in my plays […] so I’m tightening, tightening it up […]” (Ionesco 1967: 404, Ionesco’s elipses). The rest of the play chronicles the playwright’s attempts to elude the numerous vicious circles that always threaten, despite his best intentions, to bring him back to his point of origin. Other fabulas contain mimetically (or indeed, logically) impossible sequences; these result in some very unusual endings. J. B. Priestley’s Dangerous Corner is a kind of temporal spiral in which the ending of the play is also the beginning of a very different play that would have unfolded had a single event been different. Something like Borges’ Garden of Forking Paths, this work dramatizes two possible sets of events that occur at the same time. One of the most inventive endings in modern drama—and one which has no precise equivalent in narrative fiction—is found in Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine. This play has two acts, between which the characters age twenty-five years. In each part the same characters are played by different actors, thus enabling one figure, Betty, to literally embrace her former self in front of almost all the other characters at the play’s end, and thus provide a powerful sense of closure to a series of actions and events that otherwise remain ostentatiously inconclusive. In the history of drama, one finds some plays with more than one ending. Sir John Suckling’s 1637 tragedy Aglaura has two endings, one for the popular audience in which the king is killed, and another for the court where he is not. Once he learned that the original German production of

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the scandalously open ended A Doll’s House was using a different, milder ending, Ibsen sat down and wrote his own alternate conclusion for the audiences that could not bear the original. In such cases, one version is usually considered superior or definitive or else the two are treated as independent plays. A recent play extends the strategy used two centuries earlier by John Gay. Dario Fo’s Il ratto della Francesca (1986; adapted into English as Abducting Diana [1994]), provides a series of endings to the drama’s fabula. In the first, the wealthy protagonist leaves all the others to die in an explosion. As the countdown reaches zero, Diana partially steps out of character to explain, Sorry, audience! I can’t allow it to end like this. Wouldn’t look good. Rich heiress, who set up the whole thing, getting away scot free with all the money, having blown up everyone else. What would the media make of that? (Fo 1994: 114–15)

Instead, Diana ensures that her wealth will “trickle down” to all present on stage, who in turn express their gratitude and their faith in the capitalist system. She exits; a blackout follows. After a pause, an enormous explosion is heard. The audience is left to determine whether the last sound is the final part of the play or an extension of the performance; in other words, which one is the actual ending. In some contemporary dramas, the audience is explicitly required to choose the ending. This happens in extreme avant garde works like Paul Fournel and Jean-Pierre Énard’s Oulipo experiment, The Theater Tree: A Combinatory Play which allows for either a happy or an unhappy ending. Intriguingly, this practice is also common in popular drama. In many dinner theaters in the U. S., plays are performed in which the audience, at every turning point in the plot, chooses from among two or more possible events the one that will be enacted; this is also true of the play’s resolution. In these works, we have a variable fabula with a variable ending. The most adventuresome deployment of variable endings appears in Alan Ayckbourn’s Intimate Exchanges (1982), a play that branches off into eight possible trajectories, each of which has two possible endings. Interestingly, it is usually a trivial event that produces radically different consequences, as was also the case in Priestley’s Dangerous Corner. 5. Disjunctions Between Fabula and Syuzhet Pinter’s anti-chronological play Betrayal presents nearly all of its scenes in a reverse temporal order: the syuzhet of the drama begins with its catastrophe; it ends with its protasis. The conventional ending is here defamiliarized by being placed at the beginning; the end of the play’s syuzhet discloses the rather arbitrary commencement of the affair dramatized in the

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rest of the work. Here, paradoxically, the enactment of the beginning of the story provides a very effective sense of closure. A comparable effect is attained in Stoppard’s Artist Descending a Staircase. Each scene moves progressively further into the past until it reaches the middle of the syuzhet; then the play is presented in chronological segments that lead back into the narrative present as each earlier scene is returned to and continued, forming a sequence of 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. The sense of an ending is provided both by the resolution of the mystery of the death and by the completion of the symmetrical pattern of temporal representation. In Heiner Müller’s Cement (1972), the endings of both syuzhet and the fabula are variable: as Henry Schmidt observes, Müller “indicates that his final scenes are interchangeable, depending on whether a particular staging is to conclude on a note of idealism or disillusionment” (Schmidt 1992: 147– 48). There are also a number of interesting cases in which a drama’s story continues beyond the ending that has been presented on stage. This is most palpably the case in works with sequels, particularly historical cycles like Shakespeare’s Richard II and Henry V tetralogy, and also present in works like Beaumarchais’ The Barber of Seville and his subsequent The Marriage of Figaro, in which the story of Figaro is extended. Other relations are also possible: the final scene of Brian Friel’s Translations shows Irish rebels confidently marching out to do battle with the English; but, since this rebellion is set in 1833, the audience knows the Irish will be crushed and that the famine will soon be at hand. The ending is open for the characters, but closed (and tragic) for the spectators. We are not intended to block out our knowledge of the historical events that followed those presented on stage anymore than we are to ignore our knowledge of events that occurred before the play’s action begins. In a similar vein, Barbara Hodgdon has discussed the ways in which the finales of many of Shakespeare’s history plays resist closure and instead “insist on opening onto future history” (Hodgdon 1991: 235). For our purposes, perhaps the most interesting case of a play that exceeds its closure is Colley Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift, which ended with a very rapid reformation of the rakish hero (played by Cibber) into a responsible gentleman. But this conversion was much too rapid to be true to nature, John Vanbrugh felt. He therefore wrote a sequel, The Relapse, in which the protagonist reverts to his former character before experiencing a much more plausible transformation to his new, moral state. For those who understandably hesitate to refer to actions as depicted by two different, rival authors as somehow referring to the same character, it should be pointed out that the lead role of Lord Foppington was again played on

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stage by none other than Colley Cibber. Here, the physical body of the actor establishes an identity between the story worlds. 6. Closure in Performance In the theater, closure can be signaled by theatrical or semiotic cues. As most plays move toward their endings, the following transformations frequently occur: the setting may change considerably, as interior scenes yield to the outdoors; confrontations grow more physical—duels and fist fights are placed here, and any guns brandished earlier in the drama must now be fired; all the characters who have appeared in the play have a tendency to show up on stage at this point; the lighting technician follows the cues that lead to the final blackout before the house lights come back on, and stage discourse can move from represented speech to direct address to the audience, as actors step out of their roles, or narrators provide an epilogue. These signs are perhaps the theatrical corollary of the familiar reading experience of “seeing in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity” and that a happy ending is imminent, as Jane Austen described this perception near the end of Northanger Abbey. Sometimes, however, the performance threatens to cut short the fabula. At the end of the first scene of Roger Vitrac’s surrealist drama, The Mysteries of Love, the curtain falls abruptly, then a shot is heard. A figure identified as the theater manager appears and announces to the audience that the play is over, and that the author of the play has just killed himself. Someone in the audience shouts “Author!” The cry is taken up, and soon an actor playing the author appears, his clothes covered in blood. He laughs heartily. After another curtain falls, the play resumes. Such “false closure” appears in other plays as well. As Schmidt points out: “In Giradoux’s The Trojan War Will Not Take Place, the curtain begins to fall when peace is in view, but as the action unravels, the curtain rises again, finally to fall when the Trojan War has become unavoidable” (Schmidt 1992: 24). 8 In Pirandello’s Each in His Own Way, a character identified as the stage manager indicates that, as a result of the events that have just taken place, the play will have to be prematurely ended—and the play does cease at this point. Finally, at the end of Sam Shepard’s La Turista, the protagonist “runs straight toward the upstage wall of the set and leaps right through it, leaving a cut-out silhouette of his body in the wall. The lights –––––––––––– 8

See Schmidt’s discussion of this and other examples of “false closure” (Schmidt 1992: 24– 25).

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dim” (Shepard 1984: 298). The protagonist, that is, leaves the world of the play to inhabit a different realm. As has already been indicated, not all plays end once the final scene is over; there are often elements of the performance that extend beyond the representation of events. After the ending of the represented action of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck (still in character) addresses the audience, comments on the play, and asks for applause. At the end of 2 Henry IV, a speaker identified as “Epilogue” enters and addresses the audience. As his speech continues, he begins to act more like the speaker of the prologue to another play: If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John [Falstaff] in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France. Where, for anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already ‘a be killed with your hard opinions. (Epilogue 24–29)

And, as the epilogue of Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan discloses, there are plays whose performance both continues and extends beyond the end of the story. At the end of many Elizabethan and Jacobean masques, the spectators are invited to join the characters in a dance that both concludes the story and extends the performance. For a more recent example of this practice, we may look to Amiri Baraka’s black revolutionary play, “Slave Ship.” Finally, I wish to discuss the ending of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, whose story also extends beyond fabula and syuzhet into another region altogether. The play is presented as the words of a few unidentified voices that hover around the ideas of pain, death and psychosis. What seems to be the central voice recounts its desire for death and plans for suicide. At the end of the play, this figure seems to commit suicide: I have no desire for death no suicide ever had watch me vanish watch me vanish watch me watch me watch It is myself I never meet, whose face is pasted on the underside of my mind. please open the curtains. (Kane 2001: 244–45)

The play is based on incidents in the author’s life, including her deepening depression, suicidal thoughts, and the fact that she found herself awake, every morning, at 4:48. Shortly after completing the work and arranging for its dissemination, she committed suicide. As David Greig observes in his introduction to Kane’s work, the play “is perhaps uniquely painful for the reader [or spectator] in that it appears to have been written in the al-

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most certain knowledge that it would be performed posthumously” (Kane 2001: xvi). The author’s death is inscribed within the discourse of the work. It is hard to imagine a more conclusive finale. Historically, the theory of endings in drama has been preoccupied with a rather narrow concept of the resolution of the story, one that is typically infused with moral and ideological considerations. During the last seventy years, the majority of attention has been confined to the question of open and closed endings, subjects which are, I argue, considerably more complex than is generally acknowledged. Only by exploring the range of intersecting issues connected to fabula, syuzhet, and performance can we arrive at a more comprehensive conception of endings in drama and do justice to the numerous experimental forms prominent during the past one hundred years. To summarize our findings, we may begin by rejecting all theories that have only a few terms or binary oppositions or even long lists to attempt to embrace the enormous wealth of possible endings in a play. Precisely because, as we have seen, endings perform many different functions, aesthetic, ideological, and mimetic, I suggest we will be most successful in our critical and theoretical analyses if we employ an alternative kind of modeling, one that applies a series of different, independent grids upon the endings of any play. We may ask whether each fabula is 1) closed or open, 2) probabilistically bound to the events that precede it or arbitrarily conjoined, 3) formally resolved or inorganically open, 4) ideologically closed or open, 5) single or multiple 6) mimetic or non-mimetic, and if non-mimetic what pattern is formed by the fabula and what is its relation to its syuzhet and 7) whether the story and the performance are largely coextensive or whether one exceeds or transgresses the boundaries of the other. These terms should not be seen as exclusive oppositions, but as end points of a spectrum. (In general, narratology would do well to move away from binary oppositions.) The terms I employ here are not mutually exclusive and may vary from play to play by the same author: Moliere’s Misanthrope is open ended, unlike nearly all of his other works; the last scene of The School for Wives is tightly bound to the preceding scenes while Tartuffe ends abruptly with the king acting as a deus ex machina; Scapin is nonideological while Tartuffe is highly ideologically charged. The Critique of the School for Wives is a metadramatic vehicle with a partially non-illusionistic ending, and so on. In the same vein, the ending to an antimimetic comedy, like that of a play by Aristophanes, may be firmly closed, formally and ideologically resolved, there may be minimal plausible connection between the events leading up to the ending and the ending itself, and the work may edge outward in the choral passages far beyond the story proper, to the life of

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the author and the politics of the day, as in the concluding passage from The Frogs: First, o divinities under the ground indwelling, we pray you grant fair journey to the poet as he goes back to the daylight; grant him success in all the thoughts that will prosper our city, so at last may we find surcease from the sorrows we suffer through war’s encounters. Let Kleophon and all similar aliens Who love to fight go home and fight – in the lands of their fathers. (Aristophanes 1984: 583)

Here, the ending is triggered as the world of the play merges with the world of the audience; here too we see another example of a work that eludes conventional critical accounts. We see again the artificial and arbitrary nature of closure. Events in life form a plenum of experience; narrative attempts the illusion of a discrete ending. As Louis O. Mink has observed: “Stories are not lived but told. Life has no beginnings, middles, or ends” (Mink 1970: 557). References Aristophanes 1984 Aristophanes: Four Plays by Aristophanes, translated by William Arrowsmith (New York: New American Library). Aristotle 1971 Aristotle: “Poetics,” translated by S. H. Butcher, in Critical Theory Since Plato, edited by Hazard Adams, 47–66 (New York: HBJ). Bharata 1961 Bharata: The Natya’astra, vol. 2, Bibliotheca Indica, no. 272, translated by Manomohan Ghosh (Calcutta: The Asiatic Society,). Booth 1997 Booth, Alison (ed.): Famous Last Words: Changes in Gender and Narrative Closure (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia). Brecht 1983 Brecht, Bertold: Two Plays: The Good Woman of Setzuan and The Caucasian Chalk Circle, translated by Eric Bentley (New York: New American Library). Brecht 1988 Brecht, Bertolt: Werke, vol. 6 (Berlin/Frankfurt am Main: Aufbau and Suhrkamp). Bunia 2006 Bunia, Remigius: “Framing the End,” in Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media, edited by Werner Wolf and Walter Bernhart, 359–80 (Amsterdam: Rodopi). Chekhov 1973 Chekhov, Anton: Letters of Anton Chekhov, edited by Avrahm Yarmolinsky (New York: Viking).

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Dollimore 1984 Dollimore, Jonathan: Radical Tragedy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Dryden 1971 Dryden, John: “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy,” in Critical Theory Since Plato, edited by Hazard Adams, 227–57 (New York: HBJ). Dunn 1996 Dunn, Francis M.: Tragedy’s End: Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press). duPlessis 1985 duPlessis, Rachel Blau: Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth Century Women Writers (Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press). Fludernik 2008 Fludernik, Monika: “Narrative and Drama,” in Theorizing Narrativity, edited by John Pier and José Ángel García Landa, 355–84 (Berlin: de Gruyter). Fo 1994 Fo, Dario: Abducting Diana, adapted by Stephen Stenning from a translation by Rupert Lowe (London: Oberon). Gay 1995 Gay, John: “The Beggar’s Opera,” in The Beggar’s Opera and Other Eighteenth Century Plays, introduced by David W. Lindsay, 145–206 (London: Dent). Hodgdon 1991 Hodgdon, Barbara: The End Crowns All: Closure and Contradiction in Shakespeare’s Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Howard 1986 Howard, Jean E.: “The Difficulties of Closure: An Approach to the Problematic in Shakespearean Comedy,” in Comedy from Shakespeare to Sheridan, edited by A. R. Braunmiller and J. C. Bulman, 113–28 (Newark: University of Delaware Press). Ionesco 1967 Ionesco, Eugene: “Improvisation: or, The Shepherd’s Chameleon,” in Masterpieces of the Modern French Theatre, edited by Robert W. Corrigan, 397–438 (New York: Macmillan). Jagendorf 1984 Jagendorf, Zvi: The Happy End of Comedy: Shakespeare, Jonson, Moliere (Newark: University of Delaware Press). James 1972 James, Henry: Theory of Fiction: Henry James, edited by James E. Miller (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Jensen 1991 Jensen, Ejner: Shakespeare and the Ends of Comedy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Johnson 1971 Johnson, Samuel: “Preface to Shakespeare,” in Critical Theory Since Plato, edited by Hazard Adams, 329–36 (New York: HBJ). Kane 2001 Kane, Sarah: Complete Plays, introduced by David Greig (London: Methuen).

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Miller 1981 Miller, D. A.: Narrative and Its Discontents: Problems of Closure in the Traditional Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Miller 1998 Miller, J. Hillis: Reading Narrative Discourse (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press). Mortimer 1985 Mortimer, Armine Kotin: La Cloture Narrative (Paris: Corti). Mink 1970 Mink, Louis O.: “History and Fiction as Modes of Comprehension,” in NLH 1: 541–58. Neupert 1995 Neupert, Richard: The End: Narration and Closure in the Cinema (Detroit: Wayne State University Press). Oumano 1986 Oumano, Ellen: Sam Shepard (New York: St. Martin’s). Pfister 1988 Pfister, Manfred: The Theory and Analysis of Drama, translated by John Halliday (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Rabinowitz 1987 Rabinowitz, Peter: Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). Richardson 2000 Richardson, Brian: “Linearity and Its Discontents: Rethinking Narrative Form and Ideological Valence,” in College English 62.6: 685–95. Richter 1974 Richter, David H.: Fable’s End: Completeness and Closure in Rhetorical Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Roof 1996 Roof, Judith: Come As You Are: Sexuality and Narrative (New York: Columbia University Press). Schlueter 1995 Schlueter, June: Dramatic Closure: Reading the End (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press). Schmidt 1992 Schmidt, Henry J.: How Dramas End (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Shakespeare 2004 Shakespeare, William: Complete Works, edited by David Bevington, 5th ed. (New York: Longman). Shepard 1984 Shepard, Sam: Seven Plays (New York: Bantam). Smith 1968 Smith, Barbara Herrnstein: Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Todorov 1977 Todorov, Tzvetan: The Poetics of Prose, translated by Richard Howard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).

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Wilde 2006 Wilde, Oscar: The Importance of Being Earnest (New York: Norton). Woolf 1984 Woolf, Virginia: The Common Reader: First Series (New York: Harcourt).

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ANSGAR NÜNNING AND ROY SOMMER (Gießen, Wuppertal)

The Performative Power of Narrative in Drama: On the Forms and Functions of Dramatic Storytelling in Shakespeare’s Plays 1 Abstract Focussing on some Shakespearean plays, this essay explores the role of narratives and storytelling in drama, pursuing two main goals: On the one hand, an attempt is made to systematize the manifold forms and complex functions of dramatic storytelling by drawing on a narratological framework and analytical toolkit. On the other hand, the essay attempts to outline some of the characteristic features and functions of Shakespeare’s dramatic and theatrical uses of narrative and narration, highlighting what Barbara Hardy has felicitously called “the theatrical power of narrative, its capacity to change events.” In addition, the article provides short overviews of recent discussions surrounding the question of whether drama should be regarded as a narrative genre as well as of previous research on the narrator’s functions in drama. The concluding section suggests that much more work needs to be done if we wish to come to terms with the theatrical power and performative force of narrative; it outlines areas of research that could open up productive new horizons and that arguably deserve to be given more scholarly attention than they have hitherto received.

–––––––––––– 1

The present essay is a revised and extended English version of a paper first given at the biannual meeting of the German Shakespeare society which was later published in the yearbook of that society; cf. Nünning/Sommer 2006. We should like to thank our assistants Simon Cooke and Ilke Krumholz for their invaluable help in preparing the present article. We are also very grateful to our colleagues and friends Monika Fludernik, John Pier, Brian Richardson, and Werner Wolf for valuable comments and suggestions.

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1. “Tell thy story” 2—Narration as a Means of Constructing Dramatic Storyworlds and of Sense-making When Othello claims that narrating his life story has helped him win Desdemona’s love and emphasizes that this was the only form of witchcraft he employed (“This only is the witchcraft I have us’d” 3), he points to the remarkable power of storytelling. How Othello himself falls victim to this power as the action unfolds represents more than an example of the dramatic irony which, as is well known, abounds in this tragedy. Rather, the fact that Iago’s malicious allusion to Desdemona’s alleged unfaithfulness becomes a full-fledged story in Othello’s imagination exemplifies the performative power of character narration that stems from its realityconstituting potential: By means of dramatic storytelling, both the actual storyworld of a play and other possible worlds emerge, even though their respective correspondence to reality in Shakespeare’s plays is often difficult to establish. Particularly Othello shows that narrations which do not correspond to the actual textual storyworld, i.e. the fictional ‘reality’, still have the capacity to change the actual dramatic storyworld. Their realitychanging potential depends on their correspondence to the culturally available schemata and plots of the respective periods and on whether they appear sufficiently plausible to the characters in the play. As the example from Othello demonstrates, narrations in Shakespeare’s plays frequently do more than influence the progress of the action with far-reaching consequences for characters’ destinies; additionally, they also determine what is ‘really’ the case in the fictional storyworld. Thus, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre the actual identity of the hero’s daughter, who is believed to be dead, is not unveiled until act five. The melancholic protagonist, who does not recognize his daughter Marina at first, repeatedly asks her to tell her life story in such a way that her narration may convince him of its truthfulness. With the help of the super-ordinate dramatic ‘narrator’ John Gower, Pericles illustrates the worldmaking power of storytelling on a second level; he demonstrates the ability of narration to generate whole worlds. Strangely enough, however, the ubiquity and importance of narration in Shakespeare’s plays stands in stark asymmetry to the attention it has received in literary criticism. Even narratology has largely neglected the analysis of narrative elements in drama. Contrary to the generally accepted –––––––––––– 2

3

William Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, ed. by Philip Edwards. New Penguin Shakespeare (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), 5.1.134 (p. 127). All the quotations from Pericles are from this edition. All the quotations from Othello are from the following edition: William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. by M.R. Ridley. The Arden Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1958), 1.3.169 (p. 31).

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view that drama does not tell a story but shows or scenically represents one, the narrative rendition of stories takes on an extraordinarily important role in Shakespearean as well as in a host of modern and postmodern plays, especially in what Hans-Thies Lehmann has called Postdramatisches Theater (Lehmann 1999; cf. Wehrmann 2004). The enormous significance of narration in Shakespeare is reflected not only on the diegetic level, but in some cases also on the super-ordinate level of narrative mediation. Statistical evidence alone attests to the importance of narration in Shakespeare, as can be demonstrated by the frequency of entries in relevant concordances for words like “tell,” “recount,” “tale,” “story” and “history”: Pericles’ repeated plea to his daughter to tell her story culminates in the entreaties, “Tell thy story” (5.1.134) and “Recount, I do beseech thee” (5.1.141). This prevalence exemplifies more than the enormous significance of narrations at the end of a number of Shakespeare’s plays. It also refers to the ‘narrativistic imperative,’ the anthropological need every human being has for stories. In Shakespeare’s plays this imperative may also constitute the most important means of constructing meaning and identity. Through their numerous explicit narrative passages, Shakespeare’s plays exemplify the immense anthropological meaning and the everyday existential relevance of narrating which narrative psychology has emphasized time and again. What Peter Brooks (1985: 3) noticed about the relations between life and narration is also valid for Shakespeare’s plays and characters: “Our lives are ceaselessly intertwined with narrative, with the stories that we tell, all of which are reworked in that story of our own lives that we narrate to ourselves. [...] We are immersed in narrative.” Despite the extent and significance of “Shakespeare’s dramatic art of narration” (Schlüter 1958), literary studies have discussed this aspect of his plays with notable hesitation. This is the case even though, as Kate McLuskie and Manfred Pfister have demonstrated in recent contributions, his dramatic narration can be characterized by a skilful overlap of epic and performative traits or as a tension between different forms of narrative and those of theatre. 4 There are a couple of essays on the functions of narrative forms in selected plays, 5 but only three monographs by Kurt Schlüter, Rawdon Wilson and Barbara Hardy have so far been published which emphasize the role of narration in Shakespeare’s plays. Notwithstanding their valuable insights and merits, these works mostly lack a systematic approach and foundation in narrative theory. Conversely, narra–––––––––––– 4 5

Cf. e.g. McLuskie (2006), Pfister (2006), Nünning/Sommer (2006). Cf. e.g. Hardy (1981), McLuskie (2006), Nünning/Sommer (2006).

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tology has only quite recently begun to concern itself with the forms and functions of narrative and narration in drama. 6 Tying in with the approaches of ‘trans-generic narratology,’ 7 which applies the models and methods of narratology to the discussion of other genres, we will attempt to show how the insights and analytical categories of narratology can be fruitfully applied to provide a systematic description and interpretation of the narrative dimensions in Shakespeare’s plays. However, merely transferring narratological terms to the analysis of drama is not an adequate approach, for this would not account for the specific qualities of narration in drama and theatre. As Barbara Hardy has rightly emphasized, narration in plays is characterized by a specific way of handling narrative forms that foregrounds their theatricality: “Drama need not apologize when it is narrative but handles narrative in special ways to make it theatrical” (Hardy 1997: 29). This entails not only transforming narrative content into dialogues (cf. ibid.: 15), but also involves the characteristics of performance and the associated performativity of dramatic narration, “the performance of telling” (ibid.: 62), as Shakespeare’s “internal narratives are designed to be performed, on the stage” (ibid.: 13). Instead of merely applying narratological models to Shakespeare’s plays, then, it is important to develop a systematic compilation of the most important forms and functions of dramatic narration and, at the same time, to place the emphasis on the distinctive features of their dramatic storytelling. As opposed to the ahistorical, gender-indifferent and text-centred approach of structuralistic narratology, one of the major insights of recent approaches in postclassical narratologies (Herman 1999) is that narrative forms do not constitute ideal types. Rather, they can be understood as historical and cultural indicators of social, political and ideological issues. This is one of the reasons why narratives are so informative from a cultural-historical point of view. Furthermore, the question pertaining to the functions of narratives is at least as interesting as the question of a systematization of narrative forms, which is usually the focus of discussion from a narratological perspective. This essay cannot exhaust a topic as complex as the importance of narration in Shakespeare’s plays, however, it can give an overview of the spectrum of the diverse forms and functions of narration in these plays and indicate areas for future research in the field. Whereas other recent essays address topical aspects and examine the question of what kinds of tales and myths are being told in Shakes–––––––––––– 6

7

Cf. e.g. Richardson (1988, 2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2007), Jahn (2001), Fludernik (2007), Sommer (2005) and Nünning/Sommer (2002, 2006, 2007). Cf. the articles in a number of recent collections of essays, e.g. Nünning/Nünning (2002), Ryan (2004) and Meister (2005), as well as Hühn/Sommer (2009).

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peare’s plays (cf. Pfister 2006; Laqué 2006), we deal with Shakespeare’s dramatic storytelling and his use of intra- and extradiegetic narrators. As we will demonstrate, the narrators’ functions in Shakespeare’s plays are by no means limited to compensating for the well-known architectural restrictions of the Shakespearean stage with a variety of different narrative strategies. In fact, Shakespeare not only uses ancient elements of drama, like the chorus or the prologue, but anticipates numerous later developments as well: Most of the narrative structures of communication which characterize epic theatre from Tennessee Williams to Peter Shaffer and a multitude of other twentieth-century authors can already be detected in Shakespeare. Our second thesis alludes to the functions, or in other words the performative and theatrical power, of narration in Shakespeare. We will argue that dramatic narrative, with its “capacity to change events, its control and compounding, its passion and its immediacy” (Hardy 1997: 60), fulfils not only dramaturgical but also a broad range of cultural functions and has epistemological implications: Storytelling helps to create complex storyworlds and to raise issues of identity and gender. From a narratological perspective, then, Shakespeare’s storytelling reveals the world-making power which characterizes narration in general and narration in drama and on the stage in particular. 2. Drama as a Narrative Genre? Normative Genre Theories Revisited from a Narratological Point of View Anybody who attempts to explore Shakespeare’s narrated worlds with narratological categories of analysis will initially be confronted with a variety of critical reservations and normative prejudices that have become dogmatic assumptions: Narratology and drama are still, at best, regarded as “strange bedfellows,” and are, at worst, considered highly incompatible. Narration is generally believed to belong to the domain of narrative literature and narrative theory. In the case of drama, narration can apparently only be understood in a metaphorical way when speaking of Shakespeare as a narrator or of his dramatic art of narration. From the point of view of normative genre theory, Brecht’s epic theatre is considered an exception to the rule that drama is not narrative. The commonly accepted doctrine can be summed up as follows: The novel tells, drama shows. Proponents of this classical position consider the mediating quality of narrative, viz. the presence of a mediating narrative instance, as a constitutive attribute of narrative texts which distinguishes them from nonnarrative literature such as drama and lyric poetry. Hence Franz Stanzel, whose Theory of Narrative has become a classic both in school and in many

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universities, categorically excludes dramatic texts without narratorial mediation from the domain of narrative theory: “Whenever a piece of news is conveyed, whenever something is reported, there is a mediator—the voice of a narrator is audible. I term this phenomenon ‘mediacy’ (Mittelbarkeit). Mediacy is the generic characteristic which distinguishes narration from other forms of literary art” (Stanzel 1986: 4). This fundamental difference between the communicative situation of dramatic plays, on the one hand, and epic-narrative texts, on the other hand, is supported by Keir Elam (1980: 119) from the point of view of semiotics of theatre. In an equally categorical manner he states: “Drama is without narratorial mediation.” Manfred Pfister, who has developed what is to this day the most sophisticated typology of epic structures of communication in drama, also posits a definite difference between drama and narrative literature: “For, whilst the receiver of a dramatic text feels directly confronted with the characters represented, in narrative texts they are mediated by a more or less concrete narrator figure” (Pfister 1988: 3). The traditional division of the genres, which is still upheld by normative theories of genre, drama and narrative, has not been accepted unquestioningly in recent years, but has been criticized for diverse reasons and from different sides. Firstly, any normative insistence on criteria for differentiation appears obsolete in an era of generic and medial crossing of boundaries. Secondly, those who postulate the assumed constitutive difference between dramatic and narrative texts conceal that modern narrative theory itself emerged from the Aristotelian dramatic theory and analysis. Monika Fludernik refers to this fact in her study Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology (1996) which reconsiders the premise of narratology from a cognitive point of view: It is a little-remarked-upon fact that the discourse vs. story distinction is fundamental to the drama, too, and in the wake of narratology one has to remind oneself that, actually, Aristotle’s model set out to discuss Greek drama and not narrative. Thus, paradoxically, narratology has taken its origin from a text of drama criticism, but this foundational frame has been repressed so successfully that drama has now frequently come to occupy the position of narratology’s nonnarrative Other. (Fludernik 1996: 333)

Even though several narrative theorists have published important articles on narration in drama during the past couple of years, 8 Fludernik has emphasized drama’s narrative quality more than anyone else. Describing drama as “the most important narrative genre whose narrativity needs to be documented” (Fludernik 1996: 348), she stresses “drama’s basically narrative nature” (351). This by no means uncontroversial position must be understood in the context of her cognitive approach and of her defini–––––––––––– 8

See footnote 6.

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tion of narrativity as the evocation of human experientiality. Nonetheless, she directs our attention to an important and far too often neglected dimension of drama, especially in Shakespeare’s plays, to which scholarly research has not paid the attention it deserves. Shakespeare’s work offers a rich repertoire of diegetic elements for countering the exclusion of drama from narrative research which has originated in the one-sided reception of Aristotelian genre theory. The examples quoted at the beginning of this essay or the ghost’s narrative reply in Hamlet 9 are typical of those epic structures of communication which Manfred Pfister characterizes as linguistically mediated, character-related and internal to the play. 10 Such overtly narrative passages in Shakespeare’s plays are not exceptions, but the rule: Shakespeare’s characters are often narrators; his dramatic plots are frequently not shown but narrated actions. It must be made clear that the abundance of narrative elements does not stand in contrast to the performative quality of Shakespeare’s plays, rather it serves to enhance their performativity: Showing and telling do not really form an opposition in Shakespeare in that intradiegetic storytelling itself has a distinctly performative character. 3. Diegetic and Mimetic Narrativity Given the broad range of diegetic narrative elements in drama discussed below (see section 4), it seems sensible to suggest that one should distinguish between diegetic and mimetic kinds of narrativity. Mimetic narrativity could be defined as the representation of a temporal and/or causal sequence of events; the amount of narrativity hinges upon the degree of eventfulness. Diegetic narrativity, on the other hand, refers to verbal transmission of narrative content, i.e. to the representation of a speech act of telling a story through character narration (making use of intradiegetic storytellers) or by means of ‘superordinate’ or ‘generative’ narrators (extradiegetic narrative mediation). Whereas diegetic narrativity presup––––––––––––

9

10

Cf. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, ed. by John Dover Wilson. The New Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936): “I could a tale unfold whose lightest word / Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, / Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres, / Thy knotty and combinéd locks to part, / And each particular hair stand up on end / Like quills upon the fretful porpentine” (1.5.115-120). Pfister (1988: 76) terms these epic structures “structures of epic communications in which a mediating communication system is created by figures situated inside rather than outside the dramatic action.“ He goes on to elaborate: “This kind of ‘personal union’ of dramatic figures and epic mediator can occur in prologues and epilogues, as well as in the chorus and in commentaries by individual figures” (ibid.: 76f.).

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poses the presence of a speaker or, more precisely, storyteller, a proposition, a communicative situation, and an addressee or a recipient role, mimetic narrativity does not. Similarly, while diegetic narrativity presupposes an underlying ‘communicational paradigm’ (Fludernik 1996: 340), mimetic narrativity does not. 11 The cognitive parameters and concepts introduced by Fludernik’s (1996) natural narratology provide another way to distinguish between mimetic and diegetic narrativity. Mimetic narrativity focuses on the projection of a sequence of events, highlighting the kinds of aesthetic illusion that Werner Wolf has termed ‘illusion of action’ and ‘illusion of characters’ (cf. Wolf 1993: 97). Diegetic narrativity, by contrast, serves to create the illusion of a teller, a personalized voice that serves as a narrator. By suggesting the presence of a speaker or narrator, diegetic narrativity foregrounds the act of narration rather than the narrated storyworld. Further, it does not have to disturb the aesthetic illusion as such; rather, by accentuating the act of narration, it can serve to create a different type of illusion which triggers a different strategy of naturalization, viz. what Fludernik (1996: 341) has felicitously called ‘the frame of storytelling’. Mimetic narrativity foregrounds ‘the story frame’ rather than ‘the telling frame’ (ibid.: 339). In order to avoid possible misunderstandings, one should add that diegetic narrativity is not confined to plays featuring a ‘generative narrator’, i.e. an agent who, according to Richardson (2001: 685), “generates a fictional world (hence my name for this practice) in a manner similar to that of an omniscient narrator.” 12 In drama and in narrative fiction, diegetic narrativity is not restricted to such narrators who tell, and generate, stories on an extradiegetic level of communication. It can occur on various levels of a dramatic text: Many prologues and choric narrations are typical examples of extradiegetic narratives, while the stories told by characters in both novels and plays represent intradiegetic narratives which can feature a high degree of what we have called diegetic narrativity. In addition to avoiding the dangers involved in reductive definitions of narrativity that privilege one of the possible dimensions of narratives at the expense of the others (eventfulness, the presence of a narrator, or experientiality), the proposed distinction opens up productive new horizons for a transgeneric, and, one might add, transmedial narratology (see –––––––––––– 11 12

For a more extensive and elaborated explanation of the distinction between diegetic and mimetic forms of narrativity, which in some cases deviates from Genettean terminology, see Nünning/Sommer (2007). Examples of such generative narrators whose presence constitutes a discursive level of communication in drama include many plays by Brecht, Beckett, Cocteau, Wilder, Pinter, Kundera and Gertrude Stein (cf. Richardson 1988, 2001).

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Nünning/Nünning 2002b; Ryan 2004). It allows us to account for the fact that different genres typically display different kinds of narrativity. On the one hand, mimetic narrativity tends to prevail in drama while diegetic narrativity typically dominates in oral storytelling and many novels. On the other hand, there are many exceptions to the rule. Memory plays like Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus (cf. Nünning 1994), for instance, are paradigmatic examples of a dramatic subgenre characterized by a high degree of diegetic narrativity, whereas their degree of mimetic narrativity is usually fairly low. As far as fiction is concerned, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy serves to show that a novel can also have a high degree of diegetic narrativity and very little (if any) mimetic narrativity, while Virginia Woolf’s works as well as a host of other modernist novels that focus on the representation of consciousness display quite a low degree of both diegetic and mimetic narrativity. Instead, they privilege the projection of experientiality. The proposed distinction between diegetic narrativity and mimetic narrativity not only helps to overcome the traditional dichotomy between narrative and dramatic art; it also provides a rough yardstick that allows one to determine the respective portions of mimetic and diegetic narrative features that a given play or novel displays. Hardy (1997) has alerted us to the fact that narratives are as prominent in Shakespeare’s plays as characterization and imagery (see also Hardy 1981; Jewkes 1984; Wilson 1995; Costigan 1996). Recent work on the genre that has come to be known as the memory play by, for instance, Brunkhorst (1980) and Nünning (1994), has served to show that the latter relies much more heavily on diegetic rather than mimetic narrativity: The stage manager or dramatic narrator fulfils more or less the same functions as a homodiegetic or heterodiegetic narrator in novels. Thus functional characters and the representation of sequences of events are by no means the only regular elements of drama which can be classified as ‘narrative.’ On the contrary, diegetic narrative techniques also include various forms of metalepsis, i.e. transgressions of the boundaries between diegetic levels (cf. Wolf 2005), which often serve to make the audience aware of the fact that a story is being told. Metalepsis can occur in direct audience addresses by a narrator or character, or in a prologue, epilogue, asides, soliloquies, and parabasis (i.e. an opening song performed by the classical chorus, addressing members of the audience). To this list one might add narrative techniques such as choric speeches and messenger reports in Greek drama as well as modern narrator figures, e.g. the stage manager in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, verbal summaries of offstage action, the play within the play, mise en abyme, narratives embedded within dramatic action, all kinds of metanarrative comment (cf. Nünning 2004) and stage directions. The repertoire of diegetic elements in drama

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could even be expanded to include transgeneric narrative strategies and story-telling techniques which can be used by both playwrights and novelists such as montage techniques or reversals of chronology. As these examples show, narrativity in drama is restricted neither to the mimetic imitation of an action or a sequence of events in the Aristotelian sense, nor—in narratological terminology—to the ‘showing’ or representation of (a series of) events. It can also make use of the diegetic mode of narration, i.e. of a wide range of techniques for extradiegetic narratorial mediation, or the ‘telling’ of stories by intradiegetic character narrators. Traditionally, diegetic elements in drama have either been labelled as ‘undramatic’ exceptions to the (mimetic) rule or they have been closely linked to specific rhetorical functions such as exposition or the communication of events that cannot be shown because of temporal, spatial or practical stage restrictions. According to this view, narrative is primarily used in drama in order to provide backstory, explain chronological gaps or represent armies, landscapes, seasons, etc. which cannot be shown. Another way of naturalising dramatic narrative was developed by Brecht, who explicitly linked the diegetic strategies used in his plays to specific ideological effects and purposes such as defamiliarization or antiillusionism. It is important to highlight that both mimetic and diegetic narrativity have always figured prominently in plays written for the stage. The history of English drama alone features a great diversity of dramatic storytellers, and Shakespearean plays represent cases in point (see Nünning/Sommer 2006). Prominent examples of plays that display a particularly high degree of diegetic narrativity include Othello, As You Like It, The Tempest, Henry V, and Pericles. The latter features a highly self-conscious extradiegetic narrator, John Gower. Gower fulfils all of the functions typically associated with an authorial narrator in narrative fiction, even metanarrative functions which are oriented towards the act of narration, i.e. utterances by the generative narrator that predominantly relate to the level of discourse. 4. Narration in Shakespeare—A Brief Survey of the Literature Despite the above-mentioned approaches of a transgeneric narratology, a brief glance at the current state of research reveals several significant gaps in areas dealing with the questions of “Shakespeare as narrator” and “narration in drama.” Nonetheless, the interest in formal aspects of narration in Shakespeare reaches back to the beginnings of professional research on the author. Thus, this article also takes its place in a long tradition within the German Shakespeare Society. About 130 years ago one of the board

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members of this society, the associate professor Nikolaus Delius from Münster, held a lecture on “the epic elements in Shakespeare’s plays” at the annual assembly. 13 The lecture’s introduction outlined the problem and indirectly hinted at the reservations which a thesis arguing for a predominance of narrative elements in Shakespeare’s plays is still confronted with today: Wanting to find evidence of epic components in the works of the one poet who is regarded as the most dramatic in the whole world might quite easily appear to be a daredevil attempt to deny these works their true dramatic nature and to accuse the author himself of an unseemly mixture of two different ways of writing—the dramatic and the narrative. But this, indeed, is far from my intention. On the contrary, I hope to be able to explain the residuum of narrative, which we find in Shakespeare’s plays, as a necessary ingredient of his dramatic work. (Delius 1877: 1) 14

In his lecture Delius identifies and distinguishes two kinds of epic elements, namely the narrated back story and the episodic elements. He again subdivides the former into those events that date far back in time and into those which are only partially and loosely connected to the play’s action and dramatis personae. Episodic elements are classified according to whether they result from practical considerations regarding poor stage technology or whether they are flashforwards and flashbacks that serve to reduce unnecessary dramaturgic scenes. Admittedly, even a cursory look at the classification proposed by Delius reveals a number of shortcomings: Firstly, Delius places aspects of content or topic, namely the narrated back story, on the same level of abstraction as formal qualities. Secondly, the latter are not systematically differentiated any further and are only justified by economical and dramaturgical reasons. Despite the fact that from today’s perspective the typology is far from convincing, Delius’ pioneering article accords him an important position within the history of Shakespeare criticism. His “daredevil attempt” significantly contributed to forming an entire school of thought, especially in German-speaking drama research, which has repeatedly sought out epic elements in drama and possibilities to classify them. Delius’ claim that ‘epic components’ in Sha–––––––––––– 13 14

Orig.: “Die epischen Elemente in Shakespeare’s Dramen.” Transl. by authors. Orig.: “[I]n den Werken desjenigen Dichters, der in aller Welt als der im höchsten Sinne dramatische gilt, epische Bestandtheile nachweisen zu wollen—das erschiene doch leicht als ein tollkühner Versuch, eben diesen Werken ihren echtdramatischen Charakter abzusprechen und den Verfasser selbst einer ungehörigen Vermischung zweier verschiedener Dichtarten, der dramatischen und der epischen, zu bezichtigen. Eine solche Absicht aber liegt mir durchaus fern. Im Gegentheil hoffe ich dieses scheinbare Residium der Epik, welches wir in Shakespeares Dramen finden, wesentlich als ein nothwendiges Ingrediens seiner Dramatik erklären zu können.” Transl. by authors.

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kespeare’s plays are not foreign bodies but can be considered “a necessary ingredient of his dramatic work” has proven to be particularly perceptive. Kurt Schlüter’s 1958 study Shakespeares dramatische Erzählkunst is yet another influential contribution from earlier research whose discussion of narrators, narrational situations, and the purposes of narration in Shakespeare anticipates some of the concerns of current narratological research. With his discussion of narrating as a dramatic action as well as the reaction of the recipient and his emphasis on the functions of narration, Schlüter names some of the research desiderata that are now considered to be central to narratology. His argument, however, proceeds from the traditional assumption that the sole purpose of narrative mediation in drama is to support dramatic action (Schlüter 1958: 18). Not surprisingly, then, his conclusion emphasizes Shakespeare’s ability to present storytelling in a dramatic way (ibid.: 146f.). This notion of narrative as inferior to dramatic action is still defended by some critics and continues to have a strong influence on contemporary approaches to screenwriting. It fundamentally differs from the more recent approach to the repertoire of epic dramatic techniques from antiquity to the present developed by Manfred Pfister. In his seminal work Das Drama, first published in 1977 and translated into English in 1984, Pfister argues that epic tendencies can be found throughout the history of drama. He initially differentiates between linguistic and non-linguistic structures of communication in a tree diagram. The repertoire of epic techniques can be classified according to the textual level in which the subject of enunciation of the epic comment is located. On the outer textual level one can locate the following elements: authorial stage directions which assume the function of narrative-descriptive passages; the epic annotation of the interior level of action through projections, banners, titles of scenes etc.; and the emphasis of epic form through play-external characters who deliver the prologue or epilogue, for example. The structures of linguistic communication important to the questions addressed in this essay are again divided into non-character-based linguistic structures of communication, on the one hand, and character-based linguistic structures of communication, on the other (see Pfister 1982 [1977]: 109–23). The latter includes both play-internal (diegetic) and play-external (extradiegetic) characters. On the one hand, epic techniques of communication presented through extradiegetic characters such as the narrators of the prologue and epilogue, narrators or masters of ceremony, or the chorus, are especially interesting for a systematic classification of narrative forms. On the other hand, intradiegetic characters often serve as character narrators, recounting their own or other characters’ stories. The spectrum

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ranges from short narrative replies within the character dialogue to longer embedded narrations. The ubiquity and importance of narrative elements in Shakespeare’s plays have most prominently been acknowledged by Hardy’s study Shakespeare’s Storytellers (1997): In hundreds of narratives and fragments of narrative, Shakespeare illustrates— and also contemplates and studies—narration, its expression of character, its social and psychic genre, its affective drive, its styles of construction and its dynamic relationships. (ibid.: 17)

Contrary to Helmut Bonheim’s structuralist analysis of the narremestructure in Shakespeare’s plays which claims that the “proper narratology of drama” is restricted to the “recurring patterns of action, place and time we call narremes” (Bonheim 2000: 1), i.e. to the plot level, Hardy’s monograph succeeds in highlighting the diversity of Shakespeare’s narrators and in specifying dramatic techniques of narration by means of a broad spectrum of illustrative interpretations. Her inductive method of analysis enables Hardy to gain important insights into the characteristics of narration in Shakespeare’s plays. The following sections illustrate how such an analysis can be complemented by a context-sensitive narratological approach which is concerned with a systematic description of narrative techniques in drama and with the cultural functions of dramatic narrative. 5. Forms of Narration in Shakespeare Recent contributions to a transgeneric narratology of drama prove to be especially fruitful for a systematization of the characteristics of the wide spectrum of narrative forms in Shakespeare’s plays. The application of narratological categories, models and methods to drama theory and analysis facilitates the description and discussion of different forms of narrative transmission, diegetic narrativity and narrators, as well as of single- and multi-perspective forms of representation. Due to the detailed methodology this discussion can take place on a theoretically and typologically advanced level along with an examination of the potential functions of narrative techniques. Such a transfer of descriptive narratological models to the analysis of drama also allows for a testing of the validity of analytical categories. The unfamiliar text corpus raises an awareness of some shortcomings of narratology which has, up to now, mostly extracted its models and methods from realistic and modernist novels. In order to do justice to the characteristics of Shakespeare’s dramatic art of narration, the performative quality of dramatic narration mentioned above must be focused on.

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Against the background of the current approaches to Shakespeare research within transgeneric narratology, the main features of the broad spectrum of different narrative forms in Shakespeare’s plays need to be systematized and described. Brian Richardson’s and Manfred Jahn’s studies constitute a particularly appropriate frame of reference (esp. Richardson 2001; Jahn 2001). Both demonstrate that diegetic narrativity in dramatic texts can be a profitable object for narratological examination. Richardson and Jahn thus need to be credited for showing how narratological categories can be transferred to the analysis of drama and for delivering the building blocks for a systematic narratology of drama. But they also prove the productivity of such a transgeneric approach within narrative theory by means of analyses of single plays. In his pioneering contribution to point of view in drama, Richardson (1988, 2001) rightly laments the lack of interest in narrative mediation and in the narratological categories of voice and point of view in drama. At the same time he points out that a narratological analysis of drama could lend classical narratology new impulses while simultaneously rendering the rich tradition of the study of narrative forms accessible to the study of drama: [S]everal important works on cinematic narration have appeared. Comparable investigations of the theater, however, are still extremely rare. This is an unfortunate state of critical affairs for two reasons: it is important to acknowledge the rich tradition of narration in drama, and by doing so it will allow us to identify certain blind spots in theories of point of view based too narrowly on postJamesean novels. Analysis of narration on stage can also lead to interesting questions about other aspects of traditional narrative theory such as the relations between mimesis and diegesis, consciousness and representation, and even the author and the text. (Richardson 1988: 194)

Richardson’s approach is particularly fruitful for an analysis of narrative forms in Shakespeare’s plays. Unlike normative drama theory it does not conceive of dramatic narration as an exception to the rule of mimetic imitation of actions and speech acts. Rather, Richardson considers narrative elements to be part of the repertoire of dramatic representational techniques which playwrights have used on a regular basis and with varying intentions in the course of drama history. According to Richardson, the use of narrators ranks first on a long list of narrative techniques. In contrast to the use of a ‘narrator’ in classical drama analysis, his definition applies not only to narrators who, like messengers, summarize events that happen off-stage. Rather, it refers to those characters which function as narrators in a narratological sense of the word: I am designating the speaker or consciousness that frames, relates, or engenders the actions of the characters of a play—e.g., Gower, the dubious source and prologue of Shakespeare’s Pericles, or Henry Carr, the dramatized psyche behind Stoppard’s Travesties. (Richardson 1988: 194)

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On the basis of this designation, Richardson’s various examples—ranging from modes for presenting consciousness to the narrative situation and the implied author—show that narrative mediation or what we have called ‘diegetic narrativity’ can be found in drama as well. The different types and forms of narrators in Shakespeare’s plays can be arranged according to a model consisting of several narrative levels. Richardson’s model shows notable overlaps with the communication model of narrative mediation in narrative texts. Richardson distinguishes between ‘intratextual narrators,’ (i.e. characters on the level of the action who tell stories using speech and dialogue), and ‘monodramatic narrators’ (for instance, in a dramatic monologue). Whereas these two forms of narrators differ merely quantitatively in terms of the length of their utterances, a third type, the ‘generative narrator’ (like the ‘frame narrator’) is located on a different level of communication: As an acting character he is part of the dramatis personae. His function as ‘generator’ and cognitive centre of the fictional world, however, places him on a level of communication which is superordinate to that of action—much like the authorial, or first-person, narrator in a novel. The generative function of the narrator becomes especially clear when the narrating character addresses the reader or audience directly as a superordinate speaking subject, as in the prologue or epilogue. The narrator thus appeals to the imagination, summarizes events, introduces characters and comments on the action. A typical example is found in the functions of a narrating character or heterodiegetic narrator who, like John Gower, is located outside of the action. More, he functions not only as Chorus and narrator at the beginning of every act of Pericles, but he also acts as a source for, and a presenter of, the dumb shows which are included in his narrations as well as presented scenically. Therefore, the characteristic that creates coherence in Pericles is “a fundamental reliance on the techniques of narration rather than of drama” (Arthos 1953: 262). Ingrid HotzDavies (2000: 465–66) has concisely summarized Gower’s most important functions and the consequences of his presence for the play’s overall structure: Gower’s presence functions simultaneously as narrator, chorus, source and director and brings in a strong epic element that shifts the drama to the realm of narrative, to the realm of obsolete, archetypical tales. Through Gower’s constant ability to enter, summarize, select, evaluate, foreshadow and even subvert the action, a moment of distancing develops, a tension between ‘showing’ and ‘telling.’ 15

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Orig.: “Die Anwesenheit Gowers, der Erzähler, Chor, Quelle und Regisseur zugleich ist, sorgt für ein stark episierendes Element, welches das Drama in den Bereich der narrativen Überlieferung verschiebt, in den Bereich überkommener, archetypischer Erzählungen. Indem Gower jederzeit sich einschalten, zusammenfassen, auswählen, werten, vorausdeuten,

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On the one hand, this reveals that Gower adopts some of the authorial narrator’s most important functions in narrative literature. These range from summarizing events not shown on stage and constituting the dramatic world to selecting and evaluating the scenically presented passages. On the other hand, it needs to be emphasized that Gower also fulfils the functions of a ‘generative’ narrator who, much like the director in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, actually establishes the level of narrated as well as presented events. It is his function to consistently interrupt the mimetic mode of presentation and thus design a complex system of narrative framings of the action similar to the relations of embedding in narrative texts. Gower’s function to generate a fictive world becomes especially clear, for instance, whenever he addresses a recipient directly to stimulate his or her imagination, or when he thematizes that person’s own narration with metalinguistic and metanarrative statements. John Gower’s generative and metanarrative functions become particularly obvious at the beginning of scene 18, when he appeals directly to the audience. He self-consciously explains his own style of narration in a long metanarrative comment: Thus time we waste, and long leagues make short, Sail seas in cockles, have and wish but for’t, Making to take your imagination From bourn to bourn, region to region. By you being pardoned, we commit no crime To use one language in each several clime Whereas our scene seems to live. I do beseech you To learn of me, who stand i’th’gaps to teach you The stages of our story. […] (4.4.1–9)

Narration in Shakespeare is of course not restricted to the extradiegetic level of communication (not just in Pericles, but, e.g., in Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and Troilus and Cressida as well), but also plays an important role on the intradiegetic level of the characters themselves. In many of his plays, narrating characters also exert performative power and display reality-constituting effects, even if they are not generative narrators in Richardson’s sense. Pericles and Marina, for instance, are narrated as well as narrating characters: Their stories help them to assure themselves of their identities. Just like Pericles and Marina, most of the main characters in Shakespeare’s plays function as narrating characters on the diegetic level. Their tales—which are partly true and partly made up or false—serve a variety of functions which will be highlighted in the following section. In As You Like It, All’s Well that Ends Well and especially in the histories, the characters’ narrative accounts of actions often play a more important role ––––––––––––

eventuell auch die Handlung unterwandern kann, entsteht ein Distanzmoment, eine Spannung zwischen ‘showing’ und ‘telling.’” Transl. by authors.

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than the performed action itself. The frequency and scope of narrative passages on the diegetic level demonstrates the significance of narrations in the fictional storyworlds created by Shakespeare. At the end of this short overview two very modern techniques will be singled out from the variety of narrative modes found in Shakespeare’s plays. These techniques are not only particularly interesting from a narratological point of view, but they are also characteristic of Shakespeare’s art of narration in general: firstly, the multiperspectival diversification of the presented storyworlds and the events that are narrated, and secondly, the elaborate use of unreliable narrators. As Hardy (1997: 22) points out, this highly self-reflexive mode renders Shakespeare a pioneer of multiperspective narration: Characteristic of Shakespeare’s reflexive narration is the repetition, variation or revision of an event the audience has already seen acted. Multivocalism was not invented by James Joyce, and Shakespeare too tells the same story from different points of view, at different times, in different moods.

The various forms of multiple perspective narration used by Shakespeare in King Lear, Othello and many other plays lead to a diversification of events and a contrast of multiple, often incompatible, versions of reality. These represent the complexities of life at courts, as portrayed on the stage: Antony and Cleopatra and Macbeth problematize the politics of hegemony and oppression, in a network of the unreliable, manipulative and dangerous communications of rulers, spies, secret agents and reporters. (ibid.: 23)

This raises the question of which of the competing stories can claim authority, validity and truth. The performative power of narrating is based in no small part on the credibility and power of effect of stories which, in a still largely oral culture, can become a central medium of manipulation, propaganda and sense-making: narratives in Shakespeare’s plays can potentially make the difference between war and peace or life and death. 6. Dramaturgic and Cultural Functions of Narration in Shakespeare’s Plays In his Ars Poetica Horace writes that the narrative transmission of action in drama has a purely surrogate function whose effect falls behind the one of scenic presentation. Pfister (1982 [1977]: 276) has rightly pointed out that narrative transmission in drama may not be reduced to such a surrogate function: Trying to by-pass stage restrictions by telling what cannot be shown can hardly be considered the sole motivation for the use of narrative techniques in drama. In fact, the tendency to employ narration in

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drama and the establishment of complex structures of epic communication are so pronounced in Shakespeare that they by far exceed what is considered necessary for reasons of dramatic economy. The diversity of different narrative strategies used by Shakespeare, then, cannot merely be regarded as compensation for the well-known restrictions of the Shakespearian stage, especially with regard to playhouse architecture, stage technology and acoustics. Rather, this diversity needs to be considered as evidence of the pragmatic co-existence and dynamic interaction of telling and showing on the Elizabethan stage. In order to grasp the wide spectrum of the functions of narrative in Shakespeare it is helpful to make a distinction between primarily dramaturgic and cultural functions—or, to use a better term for the latter: cultural poetological functions. Given our knowledge of Elizabethan stage architecture, technology and theatrical conventions, it is comparatively easy to distinguish whether the use of narrative transmission was due to technical restrictions and economical constraints, for instance with respect to staging battles or showing horses on stage (cf. Butler 2005: 87f.), or whether it was preferred for aesthetic reasons. Hypotheses about the cultural functions of narrative in Shakespeare’s plays are more difficult to establish; they are included in the complex of retrospective functionassignments which from today’s view constitutes Shakespeare’s specific cultural significance. In order to prevent possible misconceptions it is necessary to add that these functions naturally do not only apply to narrative techniques: Corresponding effects can also be evoked by using nonnarrative techniques as well as non-verbal signals. Dramaturgic functions abound for extradiegetic (‘generative’) narrators who observe the action from a superordinate position. In several histories, the Chorus performs similar functions to John Gower in Pericles: In Henry V, for instance, the narrator locates, anticipates and sums up the action on stage—or better: the stories told by the characters on stage (cf. Brennan 1981; Milward 1983–1984). When taking a closer look at the Chorus’ narrative passages, one can point out at least four aspects which show the broad spectrum of functions with respect to both the spatial and temporal orientation, along with communication within the theatre. Firstly, the Chorus informs the audience about the action’s location. Secondly, he challenges the audience to allow fantasy to prevail and to embellish what is being narrated and reported on stage accordingly. Thirdly, the Chorus’ narrations summarize earlier events, supplement the presentation on stage by describing simultaneous events and establish the temporal relations between the scenes and the acts. Thus, the Chorus—as announced in the prologue—serves as an “hourglass,” as an organizer and a summarizer of time. Fourthly, the Chorus poses as an evaluative authority judging the

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characters and their actions; he helps to elicit and direct the audience’s sympathies. Both the scope and the kind of functions taken on by the Chorus largely match those of the authorial narrator in a novel. Since most dramaturgic functions of intradiegetic forms of narration (i.e. character narration) have already been thoroughly described by Pfister (1982 [1977]: 109–22, 276–84) and Hardy (1997: 17), we will content ourselves with offering some examples. In drama, narrative techniques primarily serve as a means of transmitting information, such as, for instance, a summarized report of prior events (exposition) and the mediation of action off-stage or hidden from the view of the audience. These expository functions clearly predominate at the beginning of the play where narrative techniques usually play an important role (cf. Hardy 1997: 65-71). Three prominent examples of this mainly narrative transmission of expository information are the long narration of Egeon, the merchant, in the first act of The Comedy of Errors; Orlando’s narrative pseudo-dialogue with one of the servants, Adam, at the beginning of As You Like It; and Prospero’s extensive expository narration in the second scene of the first act in The Tempest. The same functions also prevail in the messenger’s report, which was already among the most salient forms of narration in Euripides (cf. de Jong 1991). Moreover, narrative forms of transmitting information allow for the establishment of parallel actions and the inclusion of events that occur off-stage. Further dramaturgic functions of narration in Shakespeare’s plays include the variation of the temporal structure through summaries, flashbacks and flashforwards; these techniques work to increase suspense as well as create focus and add to emphasis through multiple thematizations (cf. Pfister 1982 [1977]: 282–84). Another vital function of narration consists in its significant contribution to direct and indirect characterization, to contrasting perspectives and thereby, of course, to eliciting and directing sympathy. Shakespeare’s dramatic narration, on the one hand, particularly distinguishes itself by its highly individualized forms and styles tailored to the respective narrators and their audience. On the other hand, the artful variation of the characters’ individual and often very expressive narrative styles reflects their social status, their gender and generational affiliations as well as the contexts in which the stories are told. Thus, the characters’ different narrative modes contribute greatly to foregrounding their respective idiolects. Shakespeare presents narration as an equally personal and social act (Hardy 1997: 58) which may only be understood in the context of historically and culturally variable values and norms. Instead of merely regarding narrative techniques in Shakespeare’s plays as a compensatory form of information transmission or of concentrating solely on general regularities and structures of the narrative in the structuralist tradition, the narratolog-

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ical approach to Shakespeare outlined here acknowledges that his individualized and dramatized narrators reflect a pronounced consciousness of a “social construction of gendered narrative” (Hardy 1997: 21). The ways in which both his men and women characters narrate expresses their backgrounds, gender and generational affiliations as well as their individual perspectives, particular situations and social constellations. Such ‘gendered’ storytelling serves simultaneously to indicate women speakers’ roles as victims of a patriarchal, violent society and their social status within the court’s hierarchy. It is exemplified by the speeches by Queen Margaret, Queen Elizabeth, and the Duchess of York in Act 4 (4.4) of Richard III. In this scene, in which the women lament the murders of their husbands and brothers, old Queen Margaret insists that her rank and age should give her precedence in mourning: “If ancient sorrow be most reverend / Give mine the benefit of seigniory, / And let my griefs frown on the upper hand. / If sorrow can admit society, / Tell o’er your woes again by viewing mine. / I had an Edward, till a Richard kill’d him; / I had a husband, till a Richard kill’d him.” (4.4.35–41) 16

Queen Margaret then turns to Queen Elizabeth, acknowledging her loss: “Thou hadst an Edward, till a Richard killed him; / Thou hadst a Richard, till a Richard kill’d him” (4.4.42–43). When the Duchess of York continues, she employs almost identical words and syntactical structure to express her grief: “I had a Richard too, and thou didst kill him; / I had a Rutland too: thou holp’st to kill him” (4.4.44–45). The women are not portrayed as helpless victims of Richard’s schemes, though; exchanging their stories helps them both overcome their personal traumas and form an opposition to Richard. Storytelling precedes action, as Queen Margaret’s famous invocation of heavenly justice implies: It ends with her famous denouncement of Richard, “hell’s black intelligencer”: “Cancel his bond of life, dear God I pray, / That I may live and say, ‘The dog is dead’” (4.4.77–78). As this example shows, the narrations of intradiegetic storytellers exceed the dramaturgic function of moving the action forward: as a playwright and observer of human behaviour, Shakespeare anticipated various findings which feminist narratology and gender-oriented narrative research have made fruitful for interpretation only during the past two decades (cf. Nünning/Nünning 2004). In some cases they display such power and potency that they determine a character’s fate. Drawing on speech act theory, according to which speech always implies action, one can justifia–––––––––––– 16

All the quotations from Richard III are from the following edition: William Shakespeare, King Richard III, ed. by Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson and David Scott Kastan. The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works, 701–41 (Revised Edition. London: Thomson Leraning, 2001).

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bly establish the thesis that narration in Shakespeare’s plays often constitutes an independent and particularly efficient way of behaving within the storyworld. Interestingly, the narration’s performative power to alter situations is independent from the truth—narrations may unfold their worldmaking potential even if they are based on lies. The most striking example of this is, of course, Iago. His suggestive narrations and allusions drive three honest and upright characters to their deaths. Similarly, the proceedings in As You Like It, King Lear and The Winter’s Tale, which are also promoted by narrations, underline “the powers of true or false telling, fantasy and report” (Hardy 1997: 23). In sum, narrations in Shakespeare’s plays may firstly convey messages or information in order that “scenes not shown” (Butler 2005) can be incorporated. Secondly, they serve to explain the storyteller’s motives, aims and intentions, and invite other characters or members of the audience to share their world-views. Apart from fulfilling such vital dramaturgic functions, storytelling is an important means of characterization, and helps characters to overcome traumatic experiences and to form alliances and conspiracies. Instead of delegating narrativity to the ‘messenger report’ (a rather unspecific category, as most characters function as ‘messengers’ at some point or other), a narratological approach to Shakespeare realizes that the act of narration on stage is a performance in its own right and that the verbal performances by the characters are as important as their actions. Moreover, narrations function as a medium of sensemaking and identity construction; they frequently contribute to resolving complex situations and clarifying dubious events and relationships at the end of plays (cf. Hardy 1997: 72–90). Finally, the stories told by characters in Shakespeare’s plays cast light on the social dynamics, and the cultural significance of storytelling in the contemporary culture. Thus, the cultural functions of narrative in Shakespeare are characterized by a higher degree of multifunctionality than the dramaturgic functions. The close interrelation between Shakespeare’s plays and the culture they derive from can be seen clearly in the various ways in which narratives are integrated into the dramatic action, and in the broad range of social practices to which they refer: On the one hand, Shakespeare’s plays feature everyday anecdotes or popular texts ranging from songs to reports about the monstrous, as, for example, in The Winter’s Tale. On the other hand, numerous examples of ritualized narratives in the form of celebrational speeches or commemorations of the dead can be found, evoking memories of a culture in which the living communicated ritually with the dead (cf. Döring 2005: 57). A survey of the cultural functions of narrative in Shakespeare needs to incorporate two more aspects of Shakespeare’s dramatic narrative art, i.e.

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its pronounced self-reflexivity and epistemological relevance. By displaying and foregrounding the act of narrating and the forms and functions of narratives, Shakespeare’s plays put narration and narrating to the test, probing their effectiveness as a means of dramatic presentation. Kate McLuskie (2006: 78) has referred to this phenomenon as “the plays’ frequent metatheatrical discussions of the nature of narrative and the difficulties of turning it into theatre.” This self-reflexive preoccupation with the possibilities and limits of narration can be regarded as evidence of Shakespeare’s interest both in the theatre as a medium for storytelling and in narrative as a mode of representation: Cassius is aware that stories have themes, Othello knows the difference between listening to a story piecemeal and ‘intentively,’ Macbeth about vacuous tales full of sound and fury, Cymbeline about circumstantial detail and abridgement, Edgar about amplification, Egeon about sequels, Cordelia about hyperbole and understatement. The language of narrative shows Shakespeare’s awareness of his subject and his art. (Hardy 1997: 21)

The epistemological function of narration can be located on more abstract levels: Given the significance of the Elizabethan theatre as a leading popular medium, narration can be understood as a sense-making cultural technique that also structures experience. The multiperspectival expansion of the dramatic action into different story-lines characterizes Shakespeare’s dramatic narrative art and inevitably raises questions about the truth-value and ethics of narration. Shakespeare’s complex play with multiperspectivity and the authority of narration anticipates several forms and epistemological functions in the dramatic genre which, from the eighteenth century onward, were increasingly taken over by the novel. When McKeon (1987: 20) attributes the triumph of this new multi-voiced genre to “its unrivaled power both to formulate, and to explain, a set of problems that are central to early modern experience” and emphasizes “the new genre’s triumph as an explanatory and problem-solving mode, its powerful adaptibility in mediating questions of truth and virtue from opposed points of view” (ibid.: 21), he simultaneously outlines important epistemological functions which multiperspectival narration fulfils in Shakespeare’s plays, specifically, and in early modern culture in general. Shakespeare’s fondness for psychological reflection also highlights the emergence of a discourse which was not fully developed and differentiated until much later on. The psychological function of his dramatic narration becomes manifest in numerous reports of dreams and the unconscious which broach the issue of remembering and forgetting. Hardy (1997: 13– 14) concisely sums up these functions of narration in his plays as follows: Shakespeare’s subtle and sustained inquiry into human behaviour covers the psychological and sociological life-forms of narrative: memory, fantasy, report,

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dream, daydream, truth-telling, lying, slander, boast, confession, confidence, gossip, rumour, news and messages.

Therefore, in retrospect, Shakespeare’s plays can also be characterized as an early example of what Doris Bachmann-Medick (1996: 11) has described as the ‘auto-ethnographic’ quality of literary texts: They reflect commonly shared beliefs and concerns of the society in which they are produced and thus give us access to the mental dimensions of material culture. In this sense, Shakespeare’s narrative explorations of the psyche appear as self-descriptions of Elizabethan society, as neo-historicist studies in the tradition of Stephen Greenblatt have demonstrated. 7. Suggestions for Further Research Even though this brief survey cannot offer a complete account of the various forms and functions of narration in Shakespeare’s plays, it paves the way for a closer cooperation between narrative theory and those approaches to drama criticism, particularly in Shakespeare, which are interested in the role of storytelling on the stage. The concluding section of this essay outlines some directions for future research in this field. From a narratological point of view, the main goal consists in developing an extensive model for a systematic description of the relationship between drama and narrative. As Monika Fludernik rightly claims, such a narratology of drama 17 should adopt a transgeneric and intermedial perspective: Much work clearly needs to be done before a full-fledged narratology of drama emerges. However, such an enterprise would only make sense, in my view, if it allowed itself to be integrated within a general model of narratological levels and instances (narrator, narratee, etc.) embracing all the various media. The narratological analysis of film, plays, cartoons and novels would need to share a basic model, even if each medium requires some optional or additional features to make it work. (Fludernik 2007: 378)

A first step towards such a narratology of drama might be a further investigation of the narreme-structure, i.e. those recurring patterns of action, place and time first described by Bonheim (2000). An analysis of narremestructures in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries provides not only a starting point for a comparative study of the applications of different patterns in various dramatic sub-genres and periods, but also allows for substantiated plot analyses. Thomas Pavel’s (1985) study of Renaissance drama provides a structuralist plot-grammar and convincingly demonstrates the transferability of narratological categories to drama anal–––––––––––– 17

Narrative theorists who have called for such a narratology of drama include Bonheim (2000), Jahn (2001) and Richardson (2001); see also Nünning/Sommer (2002).

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ysis. However, his approach needs to be supplemented by an inclusion of culturally available plots from the Elizabethan period. Secondly, the levels of embeddedness as well as the establishment of hierarchically superordinate and subordinate ‘levels of fiction’ by narrators and commenting characters, inserted dream narratives or play-within-aplay structures deserve closer scrutiny: The fluctuating relations of frame narratives and the different kinds of embedded narratives constitute a profitable research area which has only been worked on selectively (cf. Wilson 1991). Third, the various models of time and narrative developed in classical narratology can contribute to the examination of temporal structures in drama and help to highlight the importance of the speed and rhythm of inserted narratives for the timing and flow of the play as a whole. A fourth research area which is vital for a narratology of drama lies in the inclusion of the insights and models of possible worlds theory. This theory has developed analytical categories for describing one of the crucial aspects of Shakespeare’s worlds of narration: dream stories, fantasies, lies, and other fictitious narratives. Such phenomena can also create possible worlds that, due to the performative force of theatrical narration, can be of as far-reaching consequences for the actual textual world and have just as powerful an effect as ‘true’ stories. Fifth, a narratological typology of narrators in Shakespeare’s plays will shed light on the broad spectrum and functions of intradiegetic and extradiegetic narrators and commenting characters. Their respective fictive addressees or narratees are of particular importance as well: Not only do the characters have stories to tell, but there are always other characters who are willing to listen. They are transformed into attentive narratees who may believe, or disbelieve, but who never refuse to hear. (Wilson 1991: 238)

Such a typology of dramatic narrators and their counterparts should therefore be supplemented with a systematic analysis of their structures of communication. This analysis would include the relational positioning of intradiegetic and extradiegetic narrators or focalizers and their addressees (cf. Richardson 2001). The envisaged narratology of drama provides a framework for narrative approaches within Shakespeare research. Such approaches can be used to explore the diverging perspectives of narrators and commenting characters which characterize Shakespeare’s artful utilisation of multiperspectival narrational structures. Even though the unreliability of extradiegetic narrators or intradiegetic storytellers has hardly been investigated, Shakespeare’s plays offer many occasions where this concept can be usefully applied; unreliability is of significant importance to the respective

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authority of competing narrations and thus constitutes a special case of narrative world-making. Finally, self-referentiality and self-reflexivity present rich objects for narratological drama analysis. Shakespeare’s frequent employment of such self-referential techniques differs from other forms of narration in drama in that it expounds on the problems of tellability and representability of stories in general (cf. Hardy 1997: 24–30, 33–64; McLuskie 2006). Thus, a systematic analysis and description of metanarrative, metadramatic and metatheatrical techniques and comments will shed new light on the complex forms and functions of Shakespeare’s dramatic art of narration. It could further illuminate the playwright’s pronounced interest in the performative power of narration, a phenomenon which up to now has not been sufficiently appreciated, either by Shakespeare criticism or by narratological research in general. References Arthos 1953 Arthos, John: “Pericles, Prince of Tyre: A Study in the Dramatic Use of Romantic Narrative,” in Shakespeare Quartlery 4.3: 257–70. Bachmann-Medick 1996 Bachmann-Medick, Doris: “Einleitung,” in Kultur als Text: Die anthropologische Wende in der Literaturwissenschaft, edited by Doris Bachmann-Medick, 7–64 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer). Bonheim 2000 Bonheim, Helmut: “Shakespeare’s Narremes,” in Shakespeare Survey 53: 1–11. Brennan 1981 Brennan, Anthony S.: “That Within Which Passes Show: The Function of the Chorus in Henry V,” in Philological Quarterly 58: 40–52. Brooks 1985 Brooks, Peter: Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (Oxford: Clarendon). Brunkhorst 1980 Brunkhorst, Martin: “Der Erzähler im Drama: Versionen des Memory Play bei Fry, Shaffer, Stoppard und Beckett,” in AAA 5: 225–40. Butler 2005 Butler, Colin: The Practical Shakespeare: The Plays in Practice and on the Page. (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press). Chatman 1978 Chatman, Seymour: Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Chatman 1990 Chatman, Seymour: Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).

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EVA MÜLLER-ZETTELMANN (Vienna)

Poetry, Narratology, Meta-Cognition Abstract Poetry is one of the few literary modes perceived to be situated outside the ever-widening narrative realm. Indeed, its non-narrativity is often cited as its most salient characteristic, with the lyric mode allegedly being all that the narrative is not: a-temporal, non-spatial, non-dynamic, non-specific, non-experiential, and anti-illusionist. The following essay challenges these assumptions and tests the aptness of classical and more recent narratological approaches for the analysis of poetry. Taking a typical ‘lyric poem’ as prior object of investigation, the study investigates the formative conditions and typical modes of lyric narrativity. 1. The Theory of Poetry: State of the Art There is something about poetry that sets it apart from all other literary texts, something that makes it eligible to a special kind of treatment, that makes it demand an altogether different analytical approach. For many poetry scholars, the very term ‘analytical’ sits uneasily in the context of poetry and its proper appreciation. Poetry, we have learned from the theoretical writings of Antiquity, Romantic poetics and the teachings of New Criticism, owes its existence to more than just careful craftsmanship. As the Harper Handbook to Literature (1985), edited by Northrop Frye, has it: “Poets are both seers and makers, defined by characteristics of insight and language, which are often, in finished poems, inseparable” (s.v. “poetry”). Clearly, a theoretical stance which views the lyric genre as still somehow linked to the transcendental notion of divine inspiration is hardly conducive to a systematic, text-centred, state-of-the-art approach. For the past forty years narrative fiction and drama have been the objects of analyses drawing on the latest in literary theory and linguistics, in cognitive psychology, and cultural theory. Yet poetry theory has devoted comparatively scant attention to adapting its methods to contemporary modes of thought. Emblematic of this resistance to theoretical innovation is the table of contents of Jeffrey Wainwright’s introduction Poetry: The Basics published with Routledge in 2004:

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1. Because there is language there is poetry 2. Deliberate space 3. Tones of voice 4. The verse line: measures 5. ‘Free verse’ 6. Rhyme 7. Stanza 8. Image—imagination—inspiration 9. Conclusion (vii) Wainwright’s study focuses on suprasegmentals and phonetic patterning, on traditionally fixed forms of verse and stanza, on questions of style and imagery, and on imagination and inspiration as decisive factors in the creation of poetry. What it does not focus on is issues to do with fictional world creation, with the act of articulation vis-à-vis the fictional facts presented, with constituents of the innerfictional communication or the speaker’s illocutionary aims. In this, Wainwright’s book is a paradigmatic example of the combination of the formal with the mystical which is typical of so many studies on poetry today. We have now seen with which heuristic tools modern poetry theory proposes to unlock a poem’s heart. What we now need to ask is whether when poetry is approached on the basis of other fields of literary study, it is viewed differently. Are other lyric properties highlighted and brought to the reader’s attention? What is poetry’s status and position within, for instance, narratology? 2. Poetry: The Odd Genre Out With its structuralist rigour, analytical precision and impressive toolkit, narratology is ideally suited to finally bring to light what has routinely been overlooked by more traditional approaches. Placing a firm focus on textual world construction and reader collaboration, narratology appears as the approach of choice when it comes to doing justice to a genre which in addition to its undisputed “melopoetic” and “phanopoetic” (Pound 1954 [1923]: 25) properties does have a world-creating, pro-illusive potential. 1 Following this logic, let us take a look at a leading narratologist’s understanding of poetry. Manfred Jahn’s account is taken from his narratological website Poems, Plays, and Prose: A Guide to the Theory of Literary Genres. With its clarity and taxonomic precision Jahn’s introduction to the theory ––––––––––––

1

For lyric illusion see Müller-Zettelmann (2000: chap. 3.2.6.) and (2002a).

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of narrative is an immensely helpful tool for students and scholars alike. The site’s section devoted to poetry, though, is curiously different in tone: Contents P1. Rhythm and Meter P2. Rhyme, verse sequence, stanza P3. Semantic analysis of poetry P4. Minima Rhetorica P5. An interpretation of Robert Graves’s “Flying Crooked” (1938) P6. Poetry websites P7. References This model is better than Wainwright’s in that it gives a more systematic account, includes rhetorical structure and lacks Wainwright’s curious insistence on the poet’s unconscious. Its underlying theory, however, merely couples Greimas’s notion of “isotopy” (1983 [1966]: 59) with categories deriving from ancient rhetoric. Again, this is symptomatic of discussions of poetry: from looking at Jahn’s account of poetry one would not be able to tell that it was set up by one of the world’s leading narratologists. Within narratology, the genre of poetry has had an important function to fulfil: in a system indebted to the figure of antithetical binarism, poetry has always performed the role of the other. Its alleged difference has helped to delimit and sharpen common conceptions of the prototypical narrative. By constructing poetry as an exclusively a-temporal, non-spatial, non-dynamic, non-specific, and anti-illusionist mode, 2 narratology has been able to elevate the antitheses of these features into the rank of generic narrative properties. 3 Positioned within a neatly antipodal framework, narrativity is everything that poetry is not: spatial, temporal and kinetic in its make-up, the prototypical narrative features specificity, verisimilitude and the effet de réel among its defining characteristics. Conversely, whatever additional features may be attributed to poetry, it is its non-narrativity which is generally regarded as its one essential trait. 4 Regarding this tendency, I wish to quote from Manfred Jahn again, this time from the project jump page. His graph (which he adapted from Chatman 1990: 115) shows the genre taxonomy upon which the website is ––––––––––––

2

3 4

Cf. Fludernik (1996: 356): “The lyric mode […] may perhaps be defined as deploying a pure voice factor for the purposes of an essentially metalinguistic preoccupation with sensibilia […].” For alternative studies exploring poetry’s narrative potential see Müller-Zettelmann (2000 and 2002b), Hühn (2005), Hühn/Kiefer (2005). A further difference between the two modes of lyric and narrative textualisation appears to be that non-poeticity (i.e. narrativity) is a well-expounded concept, while non-narrativity (i.e. the lyric mode) is not.

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based. Its internal logic revolves around a dyadic division into narrative and non-narrative genres, with an additional tripartite division into written texts, scripts and performed text types. The chart lists several narrative genres—the novel, the ballad, drama, film and even opera—but there is only a single non-narrative mode: lyric poetry. Genres narrative written/printed novel

non-narrative [desciption, argument, ...] performed

short narrative script play film opera poem story play filmoperascript script script

lyric poem

The taxonomic isolation of poetry and its relegation to the lyric find a counterpart in another graph taken from a narratological study on intermedial narrativity (Wolf 2002: 96). This graph illustrates the degree of narrativity in relation to different media:

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Abnahme von Narrativität in Abhängigkeit vom werkseitigen Potential unterschiedlicher Medien narrationsindizierend

genuin narrativ

quasinarrativ

Anteil werkseitiger Narreme Anteil rezipientenseitig nötiger Narrativierung prototypisches episches Erzählen

Drama

Film, Comic Strip

dominant verbale Medien

Bildserien

PolyphasenEinzelbild

dominant bildliche Medien

MonophasenEinzelbild

Instrumentalmusik

Musik

As one would expect, the diagram locates a high level of narrativity in genres such as narrative fiction, drama, and film; this narrativity is shown to gradually diminish in pictorial art and music. What I would like to stress here is that while this graph concedes a certain amount of narrativity even to the indisputably non-semantic medium of music, it makes no mention of poetry. Here, as in Manfred Jahn’s account, poetry is the odd genre out. 3. Poetry as the Taxonomic Other Narrative has come to be viewed as a basic human strategy, as a cognitive scheme fundamental to our coming to terms with process and change. 5 On a narrower scale, the concept of narrative within literary studies has likewise gradually expanded to encompass a wide variety of genres. In this, narrative is subject to the danger of all basic modes of explanation: in becoming a near all-encompassing category, narratology risks losing its poignancy and distinctive character. As Manfred Jahn’s depiction demonstrates so graphically by visualising poetry’s isolated position in spatial terms, poetry is the only genre which can be constructed as an exception –––––––––––– 5

Cf. Turner (1996), Bortolussi/Dixon (2003).

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to the all-embracing narrative mode. Not only has lyric poetry helped to throw narrativity into relief, but it is also the sole genre which can give literary narrativity its validation as a classificatory tool. In other words, it is poetry’s alleged otherness which permits the setting up of taxonomic models such as the one by Manfred Jahn where a dichotomy of +/- narrativity is applied as a prior classificatory criterion. The one-sided view of poetry as poésie pure safeguards narrativity’s dominant position within the network of text types. Furthermore, this classification ensures that narrativity remains not too narrow a concept to be applicable to core narrative, but not too broad either, since such broadness would endanger narrative’s distinctiveness. Portraying lyric poetry as narrative’s antipode has meant ignoring many, if not most of its modes of composition. Whatever traditional accounts of the genre may suggest, poetry does in fact command a much broader range of functions than simply rendering the delicate and intangible, capturing emotion, tone, mood or atmosphere. But while even the most subtle variation in metrical pattern or rhyme scheme is made to bear a name of its own, poetry theory does not yet have tools to distinguish between different types of speaker position, mediation, thought and speech representation, or various kinds of (physical, linguistic and/or cognitive) events. This is not to say that no poems conform to the notion of poetry as self-referential artefact, or poetry as word music, or poetry as the philosophical musings of a disembodied, non-descript voice—because of course some do. Yet what I do claim is that the classic lyric triad of melopoeia, phanopoeia and logopoeia 6 represents just a section of a particularly broad formal spectrum. This spectrum is broader, I want to suggest, than with many other genres or media. 4. Poetry and Narratology: Investigating a Possible Alliance There are two fundamental ways in which the concept and study of narrative are relevant to the study of poetry: 1. The first is concerned with analytical stance and heuristic focus: With its largely haphazard and intuitive approach, poetry theory could greatly profit from narratology. Particularly narratology’s aim to provide a comprehensive description of discourse modes and their specific textual features would lend theoretical vigour to poetry analysis. It would also benefit from narratology’s practice of probing the relation between story ––––––––––––

6

In his essay “How to Read” (1954 [1923]), Ezra Pound identifies three basic poetic modes: melopoeia, or, the poetry of sound, phanopoeia, or, the poetry of images, and logopoeia, or, the poetry of thought.

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and discourse and between text-based stimuli and their cognitive representation. Such basic heuristic devices can be applied even to the analysis of lyric texts which are non-narrative in character. 2. Many poems do make use of narrative strategies, however, and it is with these that a narratological analysis of poetry should principally be concerned. The conceptualisation of narrativity has become a contentious issue, the major controversy being between traditional narratology (as propounded by Gérard Genette and Franz-Karl Stanzel) and new approaches to the study of narrative of which Natural Narratology 7 is the most comprehensive re-conceptualisation to date. Yet both classical and new approaches to narrative have rejected poetry either on the grounds of its non-sequentiality and its non-mediation or because of its nonspecificity and lack of embodiment. Thus it is high time that the validity of these attributions were tested. In what follows, I will take an average lyrical poem and look at it from various narratological angles. I will first apply part of the basic toolkit of classical narratology and then open up my analysis to incorporate concepts prevalent within more recent, ‘natural,’ cognitive and anthropological, 8 approaches towards narrative. 5. Christina Rossetti’s “An End” (1862): Assessing a Poem’s Histoire 9 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Love, strong as Death, is dead. Come, let us make his bed Among the dying flowers: A green turf at his head; And a stone at his feet, Whereon we may sit In the quiet evening hours.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

He was born in the Spring, And died before the harvesting: On the last warm Summer day He left us; he would not stay For Autumn twilight cold and gray.

–––––––––––– 7 8

9

See Fludernik (1996, 2003). For narrative theory and the cognitive sciences see Herman (2003); for a cognitive approach to poetry see Tsur (1992) and Semino (1997); for an anthropological approach see Livingston (1995). Although there have been attempts at redefining central narratological concepts for their specific use in poetry (cf. Müller-Zettelmann 2000: chap. 3.1. et passim), for the sake of clarity, ‘histoire’ and ‘discours’ are used throughout.

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13. Sit we by his grave, and sing 14. He is gone away. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

To few chords and sad and low Sing we so: Be our eyes fixed on the grass Shadow-veiled as the years pass, While we think of all that was In the long ago. (Rossetti 2001 [1862]: 32; line numbers mine)

Rossetti’s “An End” is a post-love love-poem, a poem which focuses on a pair of lovers and their (possible) future life after the mutual feeling of love has died. This less than cheerful text displays all the characteristics of the lyric: Rossetti’s poem is short, it is uttered by a single, anonymous voice and it is highly wrought in its verbal organisation, most notably its imagery. At first glance, there is no action, very little dynamism, and not much circumstantial detail which would flesh out the fictional world and give it verisimilitude and illusionist credibility. The spatial and temporal coordinates of the utterance are not given; both the speaker and the addressee are almost exclusively defined by their communicative functions. Even that most basic trait of personal identity, their respective sex, is left indeterminate. Traditional poetry theory would probably set about analysing stanza form (irregular), metre (irregular) and rhyme scheme (irregular) and would trace the poem’s intricate pattern of images and its manifold implications. It would have no difficulty in determining the speaker’s identity (the author’s) and would be quick to establish a connection between the innerfictional persona’s lament and Rossetti’s unhappy love life. 6. Unearthing the Lyric Histoire Whilst the supra-segmental and semantic elements certainly have their place within a narratological reading of a poem, they are not given the same status they hold within traditional poetry analysis. A narratological reading views the textual stratum as a world-procuring and meaning- producing engine: the precise mechanism and function of this stratum can only be gauged by assessing the text’s interrelation with its projected inner-fictional world. While this insight may appear banal within the framework of a volume that sets out to review the latest in narratological and post-narratological research, it is the basic story-discourse divide and its operational value that poetry theory needs to acknowledge if it wants to escape the formalist and biographical impasse it has been trapped in for so long. Only if there is a strict analytical division between techniques which

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project and the contents of that textual projection can we ascertain what is special about lyric narrativity. In defence of poetry theory it must be added that contrary to narrative fiction, where recounting the story level is simply routine, reconstructing a poem’s histoire is far less straightforward. 7. Histoire-Trouble I: Brevity Paradoxically, it is poetry’s brevity which is responsible for much of the difficulty involved in recounting the lyric histoire. Less textual material means less information on the communicative constituents and less information on the syntagmatic and paradigmatic (i.e. kinetic and nonkinetic, or: figure- and ground-related) 10 elements that contribute to the fictional universe. The resulting vagueness and sparseness of the fictional world give lyric illusion a fundamentally different, more sketchy and less consistently immersive quality than the mimetic effect produced by the novel. This renders the reconstruction of the poem’s story level a matter of combining Spartan textual detail with cautious text-induced conjecture. Accessing the lyric histoire is further complicated by poetry’s heightened use of artifice: in order to make up for its horizontal constrictions and lack of epic breadth, poetry utilises language’s typographic and acoustic strata on its vertical axis to establish an enriched ‘space-saving’ code. Despite the poem’s self-imposed textual limitations, the reader can in most cases still make the leap from the lexical to the fictional level. This is due to the existence of cognitive units of semantic integration—of cognitive frames.11 Since the link between the single semantic unit and its contextualising real-life script does not need to take place at the textual level but can be supplied in the mind of the reader, it is possible, in principle, for a lyric text to create a complex fictional world, even within its quantitatively very restricted framework. In many cases, a single (prototypical) trigger will—and must—suffice to activate a network of related facts and associated ideas replete with kinaesthetic stimuli, emotion and evaluative assessment. What is primarily fragmented, therefore, is the textual surface, while this sparsity does not necessarily affect the reader’s imagined world to the same degree. 12 Still, the lyric’s typical reduction of world-constituting detail does essentially increase the quantity of Ingarden’s (1960) ‘Unbestimmtheitsstellen’ [elements of literary indeterminacy] and, in particular, Iser’s (1970) ‘Leer–––––––––––– 10 11 12

Cf. Müller-Zettelmann (2000: 81–83). For general frame theory see Schank/Abelson (1977); for the use of schema theory in literary discussion see Thorndyke (1975). For a more detailed account see Müller-Zettelmann (2000: chap. 3.2.1.2., 3.2.6.).

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stellen’ [semantic gaps] to an extent that requires particular activity from the reader in order to be able to relate the briefly sketched suggestions to a consistent and meaningful whole. Lyric brevity is therefore associated with an increased use of self-referential patterning and to heightened aesthetic complexity. There is also a direct causal link between the genre’s shortness, increased indeterminacy of meaning and a certain vagueness and sparseness of the projected world. The above-mentioned factors unite to significantly complicate the reconstruction of the lyric histoire. And that is not all. 8. Histoire-Trouble II: Metaphor In addition to the techniques mentioned, poetry tends to employ metaphor as a device to achieve maximum semantic density within minimal textual space. Viewed in terms of cognitive linguistics (see Langacker 1987 and 1991), metaphor creates an innovative conceptual space by blending a given frame with a second, alien frame. A certain amount of surface similarity invites the reader to conduct a more thorough-going comparison between the two frames and to become sensitive to an emergent space of non-conventionalised meaning. This ultimately leads to what the Russian Formalists describe as “poetic form and perception made difficult”: 13 a semantic modification which is initially effected on the linguistic level is extended to perceptual and ideological change. Yet whatever its epistemological implications, metaphor is yet another typical lyric device which makes piecing together a poem’s histoire a very tricky business. With a poem like Rossetti’s “An End,” where nearly the entire histoire is acted out on a metaphorical plane, reconstructing the story level is tantamount to conducting a first provisional naturalisation of the poem’s figurative structure. In order to determine a poem’s events, protagonists and spatio-temporal frame, a text’s innovative conceptual blends need to be submitted to a process of ‘de-innovation.’ The text’s original blends have to be relegated to more conventional conceptual spaces, or, put more simply, the metaphors’ vehicles have to be matched with simple, readymade tenors. Rossetti’s poem focuses on a pair of lovers whose love has recently come to an end. The speaker briefly looks back to the beginnings of that love, gives a reason for its termination and calls upon the addressee to spend the remaining years reminiscing about a happier past. –––––––––––– 13

Cf. Shklovsky (1988 [1917]: 21): “The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.” On the opposite effect of ‘familiarising poetry’ see Müller-Zettelmann (2004).

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In its function as a meaning-constituting device, the poem’s metaphor is part of the discourse. Yet the metaphor’s target and blend belong by rights to the poem’s story level. This analytical split between device and function, between surface meaning and deep semantics, implies a massive structural and procedural complication. While within narrative fiction assembling a text’s histoire is a non-interpretative act which in most cases is fairly straightforward and easy to perform, for the scholar of poetry the reconstruction of the lyric histoire requires a substantial hermeneutic effort. The frequent use of extended metaphor in poetry thus makes it necessary that interpretation precedes description. It is this upheaval of the timehallowed order of the exegetic sequence and the untimely onset of interpretation which have kept poetry theory from including the story/discourse dichotomy amongst its analytical tools. Likening the cessation of love to the death of a child is a way of giving meaning to the incomprehensible. By taking over the structures of another frame, by borrowing from its inherent dynamics, procedures, rites, and routines of cognitive and emotional response, the intangible and disorientating is placed in a ready-made semiotic-performative system. Thus the speaker is given interpretative and procedural guidelines to think and act upon. What existed as an elusive and transient feeling between two lovers is anthropomorphised, gendered and given agency: “He left us; he would not stay” (11). This grants love autonomy and makes it third party in a relationship whose duration paradoxically is ensured by the loss of its constituting element, by the passing away of what in this poem is still a bond—if only a bond of a shared past and a blighted future. Figurative language use and storytelling (and by extension the lyric and the narrative mode) are commonly viewed as opposing linguistic principles. Selection/substitution (i.e. metaphor) and combination/contexture (i.e. narrativity) are often understood to be mutually exclusive (cf. Jakobson 1990 [1956] and Lodge 1977). There are three facts which contest this assumption, however, all of which are to do with a narrative sequentiality of an opaque, more ‘lyric’ kind. This type of narrative kinesis can be found on the figurative level, on a text-induced cognitive level and on the level of the lyric persona’s linguistic and cognitive activities. Firstly, metaphors need not be pictorial or of a consistently static nature. Extended vehicles may contain a sequential structure and be inherently dynamic. Secondly, if we agree that a script is made up of kinetic and non-kinetic elements, and if we further agree that a single prototypical element representative of a script may be used to project that script, it follows that a poem’s dynamism may not necessarily show on the textual surface, and that there may in fact be implied dynamism—a fact which holds for a poem’s metaphoric script as much as it does for a non-

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figurative one. And thirdly, the lyric speaker’s venture of grafting one concept onto another is a (cognitive and linguistic) action in its own right. Applied to Rossetti’s poem, this means that the text uses the sequence entailed in its metaphoric source domain (i.e. the ‘death of a beloved child’-script) as its organising principle. The dynamism inherent in that script is triggered by a limited number of textual stimuli and actualised through supplementation by the reader. The text’s eventfulness also lies in its two acts of semantic redistribution and concomitant self-stabilisation performed by and given to a speaker in extremis. 9. Speaker’s Discourse, Plot Sequence and Point of Attack What should interest us from a narratological point of view is the poem’s point of attack. This is to ask at what moment does the narration ensue in the stereotypical sequence of events inherent in both the original and the adopted script, and to ask why this is the case. Viewed in terms of its dynamic script, Rossetti’s “An End” looks at the closing sequences of a conventional love story. The poem focuses on love’s peripeteia and dénouement and sets in at a stage long after tales of romantic love have drawn to a close. Harping back to notions of twilight, fading and decay, Rossetti’s post-love love poem is set in autumn and thus firmly places itself outside the anthropological matrix and seasonal “slot” provided by Northrop Frye’s famous account (1957). Clearly, the compelling force behind the speaker’s discourse is the recent mutual acknowledgment of the cessation of love; it is the enormity of the event and its unknown implications for the couple’s future which compel the subject to speak. The discourse sets in immediately after a decisive event and draws to a close before the consequences of this event make themselves felt. Following a terse statement of fact (“Love, strong as Death, is dead”, 1) and a brief flashback, the stereotypical sequence implied in the ‘death of a beloved child’-script (erecting a tomb, bemoaning the loss, sitting at the grave, thinking back to a happier past) is put forward as a potential future scenario. This might be described as a “possible world” in Marie-Laure Ryan’s (1991) sense of the term. What we have here, then, is not the recounting of a completed story after its conclusion which is the default format of a stereotypical narrative. Rather, this is a story in progress, a story whose gist is emphatically placed in the here and now. It is a story which is tried on as an experimental script by the lyric persona. The speaker-character tentatively ascribes this story to her situation to see whether its hypothetical quality can be made

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into an actuality, that is depending on the addressee’s consent. In other words: it is a story the telling of which is fundamental to its progression. 14 We never get to know how the story goes on; we never learn whether the couple decide to follow the speaker’s suggestion and spend the rest of their days in funereal harmony, yoked together by strange rites of mourning. As there is no way we can possibly find out if this is the case, it is safe to assume that we are not meant to. In other words, the “tellability” (Labov 1972) of this poem (and of other poems like it) must lie elsewhere. I want to argue that foregrounding that ‘elsewhere’ is crucial to lyric poetry. 10. ‘Narration’ and Meta-Cognition In many lyric poems, the act of telling, of finding words, of ascribing stories and attributing meaning is central to the poem’s histoire. In such poems, the aspect of ‘somebody says’ (or ‘somebody writes’) is rarely lost sight of. While in illusionist narrative fiction the act of mediation and transmission is invisible unless it is specifically focussed on, in poetry the act of articulation is key. Hence to create an adequate narratological approach to poetry and its special aesthetics, we need to go back to Genette’s triadic definition of narrative and revive the notion of ‘narration’ as the act of telling a story, of giving it words. Poetry, then, is the genre which has made ‘narration’ one of its prior foci of attention. It centres on the process of meaning production; it textualises a becoming rather than a result, and it concentrates on the struggle for, the pursuit of, and the inquiry into. This is why in poetry we so often find ourselves in medias res. Lyric poetry is the genre which places us, or rather the speaker, in the thick of things. In witnessing the speaker, we witness the fundamental human endeavour to use language and storytelling to make meaning. Viewed from the angle of cognitive science, linguistic creativity is merely a surface phenomenon which expresses more fundamental issues. What lies behind the struggle to find the right word, i.e. the innovative and liberating one, is an attempt to remodel experience on the cognitive level. Linguistic innovation is driven by conceptual change; new labels consequently force the reader to conceptualise things differently. Not only does poetry self-reflexively foreground linguistic texture and lyric artifice, but, even more importantly, it also concentrates on the phenomenon of cognitive mapping. Poetry thus foregrounds the human endeavour of mentally representing and conceptualising the world. In this view poetry is –––––––––––– 14

The effect is similar to that of interpolated storytelling, where a narration inserted into the sequence of events gives rise to a story produced by that very narration (cf. Genette 1972: 217f.).

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not only a meta-linguistic and meta-poetic, but also a prototypically metacognitive mode. In Rossetti’s poem, the very acts of discursivisation and projecting an alien frame onto the given lend stability and orientation to a subject who finds him- or herself in a radically altered situation. Adopting the death-ofa-child-script entails the subject’s bypassing a painful search for the reasons why love has failed. This is done by stylising love into a selfdetermined, possibly self-willed agent. The consoling effect of transferring responsibility and exteriorising blame is heightened by the poem’s suggestion that a causal link exists between love’s “decision to leave” and the natural decline of the dying year: “On the last warm summer day / He left us; he would not stay / For autumn twilight cold and grey” (10–12). Interestingly, the adopted sequence entailed in the poem’s overarching metaphor offers an alternative to the standard course of events triggered by the “death of love.” This occurrence is generally followed by a couple’s break-up and partners going their separate ways. While the future envisaged by the speaker is bleak and doleful, it is still a shared future in which the couple remain united by their strangely focussed attention on their erstwhile happiness. Even in Rossetti’s days, the end of love was often synonymous with a couple’s estrangement and separation. Yet in this poem, it is portrayed as “An End,” or as a natural event which foreshadows other equally natural, equally inescapable ends to come. To put this in more general terms, there is a certain affinity between a focus on narration, i.e. the act of articulation, and rhetoricity, i.e. the use of language for the purpose of persuasion—a fact which brings me to my next point. 11. Lyric Performativity Many short lyric poems are performative: they are texts in whose innerfictional communicative frameworks speakers do things with words. They persuade, woo, advertise, argue, challenge and compete; they textualise the struggle for power, recognition, love, identity and the hegemony of meaning. Performative poetry uses language as a mode of action. 15 It displays an utterance which has a specific aim and a specific addressee in mind. The focus on incompleteness, process, construction and change provides a link between the foregrounding of narration and textual performativity. As readers, we witness a story in the making; we witness someone who em–––––––––––– 15

For a perceptive study on performativity in (Shakespearean) poetry see Pfister (2005).

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ploys her verbal skills to fashion the world and influence the future course of her own story. Within performative poetry, the act of discursivisation and its particular take on what has passed and what is to come is not a neutral, disinterested post festum-account. Rather, it is a conscious attempt to influence the addressee’s perspective on the story in question. In the case of Rossetti’s “An End,” the speaker’s ponderings are placed alongside the poem’s central kernel. They discursivise a bifurcation in the poem’s possible plot, but do so not through a balanced weighing of alternatives. Rather, the speaker’s thoughts display a preference. In fact, the rejected option (i.e. the couple’s separation) remains a conspicuous ‘Leerstelle.’ By appropriating a script whose implicit elements are advantageous to her/his purposes, the speaker presents a wish-world as an obligatory world. A preferred future scenario is represented as a customary routine which is implied by the text-triggering event. The act of articulation thus takes a decisive role in the very story it articulates: the utterance is not only part of, but takes operative part in what it relates. Linguistic and conceptual manipulation in Rossetti’s “An End” is not confined to the choosing of an overarching metaphor whose inherent logic is in keeping with the speaker’s intention. In this poem many strategies unite to reinforce the poem’s illocutionary drift. “An End” begins with what reads like a cynical observation about the deceptive stability and actual frailty of love: “Love, strong as Death, is dead”: a feeling held to be as strong and immutable as death is found to be prone to decay. However, through the poem’s recourse to death as a source domain, what appears to be an embittered take on delusory protestations of love is shown to really be a subtly manipulative device which aims to suggest a ‘natural’ link between love, death and permanence. The poem’s opening phrase thus encapsulates the text’s rhetorical strategy: what within common knowledge and the conventional frame is viewed as an oxymoron (“Love, strong as Death, is dead”) is put forward in the poem as a viable way of dealing with the crisis. There is no agitation or turmoil in “An End.” The actions suggested in connection with the child’s (i.e. love’s) death are mostly of the calm, meditative kind: sitting and singing at the grave, “fix[ing one’s] eyes on the grass” (17) (i.e. concentrating on one’s grief and the cause thereof), thinking of days past and gone. The discourse slows these actions down even further by constantly harping back to the old before citing the new: stanza two repeats the notion of sitting at the grave introduced in line 6 before it introduces the notion of singing; stanza three takes up the singing before it brings in the looking and thinking. This principle of conservative recapitulation is imitated on the poem’s sound level, where within an irregular

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rhyme scheme the last line regularly refers backwards to take up a rhyme from the stanza’s earlier line (a,a,b,a,c,c,b – d,d,e,e,e,d,e – f,f,g,g,g,f). Indeed, the poem itself can be taken as a performance, as a putting into poetic practice, of its own explicit precepts: “To few chords and sad and low / Sing we so” (15–16). Executing the principle of retrospection on multiple layers of the text, Rossetti’s poem not only makes reference to, but also performs stability and inaction—a fact which makes the text’s illocution all the more compelling. 16 12. Lyric Bodies Performativity is next of kin to performance. It takes both brains and body, rhetoric and emphatic gesture, for an utterance to make an imprint. In performative poetry, the body emerges as an effect of performativity. Where there is direction, we assume a source and a goal; where there is a purpose of speech, we construct an agent who embraces that purpose; where there is language suggesting emotion, there is a body feeling and expressing that emotion. Deictic devices (such as shifters, interjection or non-declarative sentences) project a strong sense of a body immersed in a specific communicative situation 17—phrases like “Come, let us” (2); “Sit we […] and sing” (13); “Sing we so” (16); “Be our eyes fixed” (17) in Rossetti’s poem all express an impulse and a purpose. They are linguistic counterparts to a prompting wave of the hand, the raising of an eyebrow, or an added emphasis through hortative intonation. Poetry cannot in any way provide lengthy descriptions of somebody’s agitation or elaborate on the effect this has on his or her gesture, posture and physique. In poetry, meaning-making has to occur economically. What better way, then, to install the sense of a body than by drawing on a physicality that is already present. Poetry, after all, is the genre which has broadened its store of potential aesthetic elements to include the physis of signs, including their acoustic (and visual) properties. While I do not dispute the auto-referential dimension of phonetic, supra-segmental and typographical patterning, 18 I would still like to suggest that a poem’s mate–––––––––––– 16

17 18

The poem thus exhibits two types of performativity: 1) illocutionary language in Austin’s (1962) sense of ‘doing things with words’ and 2) language metapoetically ‘performing’ (putting into practice in the mode of showing) the text’s story level propositions. For ‘primary metapoetry’ of the second type see Müller-Zettelmann (2005). For deixis in poetry see Green (1992), Müller-Zettelmann (2000: chap. 3.2.5.), and Pfister (2005). Cf. Fludernik (1996: 310): “Where experientiality resolves into words and their music, narrativity also finds its ultimate horizon. Where language has become pure language, disembodied from speaker, context and reference, human experience and narrativization by

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riality can help to create a corporeal effect. 19 Stress patterns, sound clusters, and rhyme scheme can take on a quasi-iconic quality. This occurs through the uniqueness of their combination: they only exist in and through one single poem. Thus these sound elements imitate the specificity of the speaker’s body and its properties. 13. Lyric Experientiality While traditional narratology has excluded the lyric on the grounds of its alleged lack of eventfulness and mediation, more recent approaches have dismissed poetry as non-narrative because of its universality (cf. Ryan 1992: 386; Fludernik 1996: 355) and its alleged hypothetical or allegorical nature (cf. Fludernik 1996: 354–58; Rubik 2005). This, I have argued, is a misrepresentation. The evidence of this essay suggests the reverse: poetry is highly experiential. Especially in those lyric poems which centre on the act of narration and construct an illocutionary slant, the impression produced is one of subjectivity and uniqueness. Poetry has often been called the most personal and subjective of genres. Yet the theory of poetry fails to give a convincing account of why this should be the case. In performative lyric poetry, the impression of subjectivity is largely due to the illocutionary trajectory which, almost single-handedly, produces the impression of perspectivity, specificity, and embodiedness, and thus creates the quasimimetic evocation of real-life experience, of ‘experientiality.’ 20 In nonperformative poetry, i.e. poetry without an innerfictional communicative framework and addressee, the projected cognitive and emotional involvement of an explicit persona still manages to produce an experientialityeffect. Even in the absence of an interlocutor and specified temporal and spatial coordinates, the stylistic, perspectival and evaluative uniqueness implied in frame-breaking and figurative language use 21 and the uniqueness of a person’s language and body suggested by a poem’s physical strata, all combine in the creation of a credible anthropomorphic agent who is involved in and responding to a specific experience. –––––––––––– 19 20 21

means of human experience recede into the background. Such texts, instead, foreground thematic issues, images, sounds and rhythms beyond any possible mimetic context.” My argument of embodied patterning is a refutation of Hühn’s practice of dissociating a poem’s aesthetic strata from the speaker persona (cf. Hühn/Kiefer 2005: 9). For an alternative account of lyric subjectivity see Müller-Zettelmann (2002a). In this context see Fowler’s (1977: 133) coinage of “mind-style”: a range of distinctive linguistic features combine to cut the textually projected world to an idiosyncratic cognitive pattern.

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14. Conclusion A narratological approach to poetry has revealed lyric to be an intrinsically heterogeneous mode which lends itself readily to an application of both classical and modern narratological concepts. It has corroborated the notion of narrative’s exceptionally wide scope of validity. Simultaneously, a narratological approach corrodes the poetry-vs.-narrative dichotomy and undermines narrative’s position of unchallenged primacy within common models of generic taxonomy. Within a narratological context we need to concern ourselves less with the setting up of a rigid demarcation between poetry and narrative, than with the question of how narrative elements are transformed and adapted when used in a lyric text. Furthermore we need to ask what specific functions they are made to acquire. Future research will need to focus on poetry’s constitutive levels, modes of speaker presentation and types of lyric action. Other areas still awaiting analysis are poetry’s strategies of specificity and embodiment, its meta-cognitive modes and types of lyric performativity. Ultimately, a narratological approach to poetry as outlined in this essay may lead to a redefinition of the lyric and its position within a flexible, multi-levelled model of genre and discourse type (cf. Fludernik 2000). The possible feedback that a narratological study of poetry might bring to bear on the broader area of narratology is a further important area of investigation. No poetry paper given in Freiburg should conclude without making reference, however brief, to this city’s presiding spirit. For Martin Heidegger, the poetic constitutes the very essence of language. It allows truth to emerge or come into being. If we take this to refer to poetry’s ability to hint at what lies beyond the confines of ordinary language and thought, then Heidegger’s view is a hypostatisation of poetry’s ludic, self-referential and epistemological dimension. A narratological approach to poetry, in contrast, highlights poetry’s world-building potential. It is the simultaneous presence, the interaction and the—forever unresolved—conflict between these two antagonistic forces which lies at the root of poetry and its intricate aesthetic. References Austin 1962 Austin, John Langshaw: How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Bortolussi/Dixon 2003 Bortolussi, Marisa/Dixon, Peter: Psychonarratology (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press).

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Chatman 1990 Chatman, Seymour: Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Fludernik 1996 Fludernik, Monika: Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology (London: Routledge). Fludernik 2000 Fludernik, Monika: “Genres, Text Types, or Discourse Modes—Narrative Modalities and Generic Categorization,” in Style 34.2: 274–92. Fludernik 2003 Fludernik, Monika: “Natural Narratology and Cognitive Parameters,” in Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences, edited by David Herman, 243–67 (Stanford: CSLI). Fowler 1977 Fowler, Roger: Linguistics and the Novel (London: Methuen). Frye 1957 Frye, Northrop: Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Frye et al. 1985 Frye, Northrop et al. (eds.): The Harper Handbook to Literature (Cambridge/Philadelphia: Harper). Genette 1972 Genette, Gérard: Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, translated by Jane E. Lewin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). Green 1992 Green, Keith: “Deixis and the Poetic Persona,” in Language and Literature 1.2: 121–34. Greimas 1983 [1966, in French] Greimas, Algirdas Julien: Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method, translated by Daniele McDowell et al. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Heidegger 1975 Heidegger, Martin: Poetry, Language and Thought, translated by A. Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row). Herman 2003 Herman, David (ed.): Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences (Stanford: CSLI). Hühn 2005 Hühn, Peter: “Plotting the Lyric: Forms of Narration in Poetry,” in Theory into Poetry: New Approaches to the Lyric, edited by Eva Müller-Zettelmann and Margarete Rubik, 147–72 (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi). Hühn/Kiefer 2005 Hühn, Peter/Kiefer, Jens: The Narratological Analysis of Lyric Poetry (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Ingarden 1960 Ingarden, Roman: Das literarische Kunstwerk (Tübingen: Niemeyer). Iser 1970 Iser, Wolfgang: Die Appellstruktur der Texte: Unbestimmtheit als Wirkungsbedingung literarischer Prosa (Konstanz: Universitätsverlag). Jahn 1999 Jahn, Manfred: “‘Speak, friend, and enter’: Garden Paths, Artificial Intelligence, and Cognitive Narratology,” in Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative

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Analysis, edited by David Herman, 167–94 (Ohio: Ohio State University Press). Jahn 2008 Jahn, Manfred: Poems, Plays, and Prose: A Guide to the Theory of Literary Genres, English Department, University of Cologne. (03. February 2008). Jakobson 1990 [1956] Jakobson, Roman: “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances,” in Roman Jakobson: On Language, edited by Linda R. Waugh and Monique Monville-Burston, 115–33 (Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press). Labov 1972 Labov, William: Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press). Langacker 1987 Langacker, Ronald: Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Theoretical Prerequisites, Vol. 1 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Langacker 1991 Langacker, Ronald: Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Descriptive Application, Vol. 2 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Livingston 1995 Livingston, Eric: An Anthropology of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Lodge 1977 Lodge, David: The Modes of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy and the Typology of Modern Literature (London: Arnold). Müller-Zettelmann 2000 Müller-Zettelmann, Eva: Lyrik und Metalyrik: Theorie einer Gattung und ihrer Selbstbespiegelung anhand von Beispielen aus der englisch- und deutschsprachigen Dichtkunst (Heidelberg: Winter). Müller-Zettelmann 2002a Müller-Zettelmann, Eva: “Deconstructing the Self?—Late Twentieth-Century British Poetry and the Fiction of Authenticity,” in European Journal of English Studies 6.1: 69–84. Müller-Zettelmann 2002b Müller-Zettelmann, Eva: “Lyrik und Narratologie,” in Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär, edited by Vera Nünning and Ansgar Nünning, 129–53 (Trier: WVT). Müller-Zettelmann 2004 Müller-Zettelmann, Eva: “Genres as a Repository of Cultural Memory: Familiarising Poetry and the Canonisation of Englishness,” in Anglistentag 2003 Munich. Proceedings, edited by Christoph Bode, Sebastian Domsch and Hans Sauer, 397–409 (Trier: WVT). Müller-Zettelmann 2005 Müller-Zettelmann, Eva: “‘A Frenzied Oscillation’: Auto-Reflexivity in the Lyric,” in Theory into Poetry: New Approaches to the Lyric, edited by Eva MüllerZettelmann and Margarete Rubik, 125–45 (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi).

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Pfister 2005 Pfister, Manfred: “‘As an unperfect actor on the stage’: Notes Towards a Definition of Performance and Performativity in Shakespeare's Sonnets,” in Theory Into Poetry: New Approaches to the Lyric, edited by Eva Müller-Zettelmann and Margarete Rubik, 207–28 (Amsterdam: Rodopi). Pound 1954 [1923] Pound, Ezra: “How to Read,” in Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, introduction by T. S. Eliot, 15–40 (Norfolk, CN: New Directions). Rossetti 2001 Rossetti, Christina: “An End,” in The Complete Poems, edited by R. W. Crump, 32 (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Rubik 2005 Rubik, Margarete: “In Deep Waters. Or: What’s the Difference between Drowning in Poetry and in Prose?,” in Theory Into Poetry: New Approaches to the Lyric, edited by Eva Müller-Zettelmann and Margarete Rubik, 189–205 (Amsterdam: Rodopi). Ryan 1991 Ryan, Marie-Laure: Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Ryan 1992 Ryan, Marie-Laure: “The Modes of Narrativity and Their Visual Metaphors,” in Style 26.3: 368–87. Schank/Abelson 1977 Schank, Roger C./Robert P. Abelson: Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Semino 1997 Semino, Elena: Language and World Creation in Poems and Other Texts (London: Longman). Shklovsky 1988 [1917] Shklovsky, Victor: “Art as Technique,” in Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, edited by David Lodge, translated by Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, 16–30 (London: Longman). Stanzel 1979 Stanzel, Franz K.: Theorie des Erzählens, Serie Uni-Taschenbücher 904 (Munich: Fink). Thorndyke 1975 Thorndyke, Perry W.: Cognitive Structures in Human Story Comprehension and Memory (Santa Monica: Rand). Tsur 1992 Tsur, Reuven: Toward a Theory of Cognitive Poetics (Amsterdam: North-Holland). Turner 1996 Turner, Mark: The Literary Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Wainwright 2004 Wainwright, Jeffrey: Poetry: The Basics (London: Routledge). Wolf 2002 Wolf, Werner: “Das Problem der Narrativität in Literatur, bildender Kunst und Musik: Ein Beitrag zu einer intermedialen Erzähltheorie,” in Erzähltheorie

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transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär, edited by Vera Nünning and Ansgar Nünning, 23–104 (Trier: WVT).

IRMA TAAVITSAINEN (Helsinki)

Narratives as Literary Commonplaces in Late Medieval and Early Modern Medical Writings 1 As some Optick-glasses, if we look one way, increase the object; if the other, lessen the quantity. (Fletcher 1633: 3)

Abstract This essay assesses the ways in which narratives are used in early scientific writing, with focus on medical texts in English 1375–1700. A diversity of types and functions emerges. In the late medieval period, biblical narratives occur in texts for heterogeneous audiences, while case reports are found in more learned treatises. In Early Modern English the repertoire widens. Some texts are written in the narrative form and cross the border between fiction and non-fiction, some apply literary frames, and other types are found as well. My approach is linguistic and discourse analytic. I pay attention to the ways in which these narratives are constructed, to their linguistic realisations, and whether they include any interactive or interpersonal features of language use. The aim is to achieve a diachronic view of the development of narratives within the scientific and medical register. 1. Introduction A quotation from the prefatory materials of The Purple Island by Phineas Fletcher expresses an important insight: by employing old tools in a new way, we can gain new perspectives on objects of interest. As Fletcher points out, changing our point of view can be highly stimulating. This is the kind of cross-fertilisation or “triangulation” that this essay advocates and which literary and linguistic scholars might practice more widely in the future. Literary and linguistic studies have many points in common and can offer one another a great deal. At the interface of non-literary and –––––––––––– 1

Research for this paper was funded by the Academy of Finland (project number 1118478), and the Research Unit for Variation, Contacts and Change in English at the Department of English, University of Helsinki.

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literary writing we can learn to use the tool-kits of these disciplines in multiple ways. Linguistic analysis provides detailed evidence about the functions of various linguistic features and thus offers a more solid analytical basis for literary interpretations. Literary research in turn can give linguists insights into the meanings of larger contexts. Narratives are central to both literary and non-literary genres, and the two disciplines can interact in a fruitful way when analysing them. Following this aim, this essay assesses narratives in late medieval and early modern medical writing using literary and linguistic methods. It presents a diachronic overview of developments during these periods by illustrating how fiction and non-fiction intertwine in these medical texts. 2. The Interface of Fiction and Non-Fiction in Medical Writing Narratives occur fairly frequently in late medieval and early modern medical writings and can be divided into two main kinds. The first of these are non-literary case narratives which report on medical histories of illness. They were central in teaching and research in late medieval and early modern medicine (see Taavitsainen/Pahta 2000). The second kind of narratives in these historical texts clearly overlap with literature, and they are the focus of the present assessment. In late medieval medical literature, narratives can occasionally be encountered, but on the whole they are not very common. This material includes narratives that can be considered to be common literary motifs, as they belonged to a shared cultural heritage which was derived from classical antiquity or biblical sources (cf. Taavitsainen 2005). Besides case reports, we find classical anecdotes and religious stories in these texts. Such passages are embedded in medical writing and they provide another type of typical literary motif. Relevant materials increase in the early modern period: there are biblical narratives, mimetic dialogues with narrative elements, and teaching dialogues within literary frames. An overall stylistic shift can be noticed in scientific texts as the dialogue form becomes more common and stories become more varied and told in different ways. My main research questions deal with the functions that narratives serve in medical writing, and how the stories are constructed and transferred to the non-fictional mode. Differences between the two modes of writing cannot be described in the same way they would be today; the distinctions between them are far more blurred and the borderlines fuzzy. Classical anecdotes and biblical stories belong to the corner stones of Western civilisation and occupy a position at the interface of fiction and non-fiction. Thus they are of interest in this analysis. They are found in

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vernacular texts as early as in the fifteenth century. In the early modern period new kinds of narratives were introduced, and a fairly broad range of medical texts was created at the interface of literary and non-literary writing. Frequent visitations of the plague inspired a great deal of literature in this border area, where moral and social issues are addressed as well as medical matters, since disease was seen as God’s punishment (Wear 2000). 2 Besides strictly medical texts, there are social satires, allegorical works, poems, and various other kinds of mixed genres. Authors at the interface include medical doctors and surgeons such as William Bullein (c. 1515–1576) and Thomas Gale (1507–1587), whose medical works come close to the realm of fiction. Yet important literary figures such as Thomas Lodge (1558–1625), Thomas Dekker (1572–1632), and Phineas Fletcher (1582–1650) also contributed to medical writing in their own ways. 3 As extensions of medical literature, literary frame stories and allegories show that the overlap between literary and non-literary writing is considerable and multifaceted during the early modern period. 3. Material of this Study: The Corpus of Early English Medical Writing, 1375–1700 My examples come from the two parts of The Corpus of Early English Medical Writing: Middle English Medical Text (1375–1500, Taavitsainen, Pahta and Mäkinen 2005; MEMT hereafter) and a pilot version of Early Modern Medical Texts 1500–1700 (Taavitsainen et al., forthcoming; EMEMT hereafter). The pertinent passages were mostly found by using the “philological” method while these corpora were compiled over the years and during the final stages of polishing and preparing them for publication. In addition, I made some corpus-aided searches to ensure that the coverage was complete. 4 Scientific and medical writing changed greatly in the course of the three centuries from 1375 to 1700: the underlying styles of thought changed from scholasticism to empiricism, and important epistemological –––––––––––– 2

3 4

The worst epidemics of the Black Death occurred in 1348–49 and in 1665. The former is described as “a watershed in Western history” as it killed perhaps a third of the population (French 1998: 1). In the year 1665, the mortality rate of plague was huge, some 70,000 deaths (Wear 2000: 295). Some of these works are also included in EMEMT as an appendix “Medicine in Society.” Perhaps it will give an inspiration to some researchers to explore this area in more detail in the future. These corpora are not coded and it is not possible to detect narratives directly by searching e.g. past tense forms. My corpus-aided method of detecting narrative passages included lexical searches of biblical and classical names, and key phrases of narrative passages, such as “on a tyme,” “we read,” “once,” etc.

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and methodological developments occurred (see Taavitsainen/Pahta, forthcoming). Our corpora contain a full scale of medical writing, ranging from top academic texts such as spearheading essays in the first scientific journal in England, The Philosophical Transactions, to treatises aimed at heterogeneous lay audiences; the latter include materials that border on oral transmissions, such as prognostications and popular lore. These new and comprehensive materials enable observations to be made about a large array of medical subgenres and provide a more solid basis for general statements than do individual texts. The examples below reflect the overall trends in medical texts during the periods in focus. While not exhaustive, they can be considered to be representative. 4. Approach In the past historical literary texts first provided material for philological studies and, later, for historical linguistics, where problems with bad data were often complained about. For historical pragmaticians, however, this issue appears in a different light, because early written materials are interesting in their own right.5 Historical pragmatics studies language use in past contexts and examines how meaning is made; it is an empirical branch of linguistic study, with focus on authentic language use of the past (Taavitsainen/Fitzmaurice 2007: 13). In an attempt to determine the communicative functions of narratives and how they contributed to the meanings of texts, I shall pay particular attention to their structure, including the ways in which they are embedded in medical texts and medical texts are embedded in them. The assumption is that the stories are told in a simple way in accordance with the principles of natural narratives and with an iconic ordering of events; 6 moreover, it is assumed that they explicitly state what their point is and why it is worth telling. Written narratives of the late medieval and early modern periods follow similar principles: they are structured episodically and reflect on prototypical human experience (Fludernik 1996). Points of interest for the present study include generic developments in the register of medical writing, and how –––––––––––– 5

6

The “bad data” problem addresses the lack of authentic spoken language materials of the past and it has been extensively discussed in the literature. Historical pragmatics solves the problem by acknowledging written language of the past value in its own right (see Jucker 2000), but the constraints of the various genres have to be taken into account and overtly discussed. The research article where the structure of natural narratives was first described states: “The basic narrative units [...] are defined by the fact that they recapitulate experience in the same order as the original events” (Labov/Waletzky 1967: 20–21).

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prose and verse genres deal differently with narratives in the early periods (see Fludernik 2007). 5. Narratives Embedded in Medical Writing: Anecdotes and Classical Stories Classical stories can be found embedded in medical texts as forms of illustration or as frame stories. Such anecdotes circulated widely and evince a great deal of intertextuality. The same narratives were repeated and referred to over and over again. In example (1) Caxton (c. 1491) retells a story which is found in several versions in Secreta Secretum treatises from the fifteenth century. The opening “on a tyme” is a phrase that had already developed into a narrative marker which triggered “horizons of expectation” (Jauss 1979) in Middle English. 7 The narrative plotline lives on in many present-day jokes: rivals from three different countries have to solve a riddle or provide a solution to the task assigned to them. Caxton’s version is coherent in its linguistic realisation, but the vacillation between the rendering of indirect and direct speech quotations shows that the means of language were not fully established. (1) IT is in storyes of our elders, that on a tyme a myghty kyng brought to gyder thre of the best leches that myght be of Jnde of Mede & of Grece. And he commaunded hem that eche of theym sholde studye to assygne the best medycyne, whiche yf a man wolde vse, sholde profyte hym to helpe of bodye, and hym sholde nede none other medycyn. Truly the leche of Grece assygned and sayd; that euery daye a man to take twys his mouthe full of hote Water, sholde make a man soo hole that hym sholde nede none other medycyn. And the leche of Mede assigned and sayd; that it sholde profyte moch euery daye fastynge to take gromel seyd. And I saye, sayd Arystotle, yt he that slepeth so moche that he haue noo heuynes in his wombe of mete that he tok tofore, hym dare not drede of any grete sikenes, ne of the goute. Also who that eteth euery daye erly vij dragmes, that is to saye xxj peny weyght, of swete reisyns, he dare not drede of flewmy sikeness; and his mynde shall be amended, and his vnderstondyng shall be clere; and who that vseth it in tyme accordynge to his complexion may be sure and drede not of the Feuer quarteyn. (Caxton c. 1491: A1)

Short anecdotes are embedded in several longer texts. Example (2) comes from a herbal, the prose treatise of Rosemary, translated from Latin into –––––––––––– 7

Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse gave 165 matches in 40 records for the phrase, mostly in fiction, in Chaucer’s works, in romances and chronicles, but it is also found in John Arderne’s case narrative “[A] chanon was on a tyme seke, and when he bigan to wex hole þar was made a grete gedryng to-gidre of humours descend” (Treatises of fistula in ano: haemorrhoids, and clysters, Fistula in the limbs 13).

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English by Friar Henry Daniel 8 in the mid-fourteenth century. The function of the anecdote is clear: it tells about the protective power of the plant in accordance with the generic core function of virtues of herbs. (2) We redyn þat Tiberie þe Emperowre of rome dredde thonder no man soo and because þerof he dede maken a gardeyn all of lorer and eueri thonder þere he hydde hym Also þe flowris of rosemaryn kepyn clothis fro mowthes ঢif it be leyd þer among Also don his brawnchys & his lewys. þe same worty gawle Also his flowris & his lewys stampyd […]. (Daniel 2002 [14th century]: 319)

Example (3) is found in a learned text from 1599. The form of the anecdote shows that it had been in circulation for a long time and acquired a somewhat condensed rhetorical form over the course of time. After the main story, various authorities are cited and parallel examples given. (3) Galen writeth two histories of two franticke men, the one of which had his imagination troubled, and his reason sound, the other his reason troubled, and his imagination sounde. Wee see an infinite number which haue vtterly lost their memorie, and yet faile not to discourse very well. Thucidides mencioneth, that in that great plague which dispeopled almost al Greece, there were moe the~ a million, which forgot euery thing euen to their owne name, and yet notwithstanding did not thereupon become fooles. Messala Coruinus in his recouerie of a certaine sicknes, did not remember his own name. Trapezontius was very wise whilest he was young, but drawing neere vnto old age he quite forgot all. Seeing therefore that one of these faculties may be hurt without the other, we must beleeue that euery of them hath his particular place. (Laurentius 1599: 79–80)

The passage below (4) comes from another learned text. The author is James Hart (d. 1639), Doctor of Physic, and he writes about food and drink with “many pleasant practicall and historicall relations,” such as the anecdote below. The story has a purpose, as it serves as a warning against causing sudden death by accident. (4) Hippocrates maketh mention of a wrestler, who after violent motion and agitation of his whole body, and all covered with sweat, drinking a great draught of cold water, died suddenly and this was also the fatall end of the famous Physitian Valerius Cordus. Many more such histories are related by the learned Schenckius. And in France my body being then in the like case, and had almost bin made an addition to the former examples. For after a draught of cold water in the heat of Sommer, I was immediatly after surpized […]. (Hart 1633: 112)

A very different kind of example can be found in a text where a classical story provides the frame for a treatise on an antidote against poison (example 5), thus providing a statement about its efficacy. The anecdote accompanies the medical parts of the text explaining the origins, effects and –––––––––––– 8

Friar Henry Daniel was born c. 1315–1320. He studied medicine, and later joined the Dominican order. In addition to Rosemary, he translated Liber uricrisiarum quoted in example (6).

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virtues of the medicine. The opening passage gives the story in a nutshell, with the dramatic events given in the usual order. This accords with the features of natural narratives that begin with an abstract and a statement of orientation, followed by complicating actions and an evaluation section with explanations for why the story is interesting. 9 In addition, there is a transfer point (coda) to the medical treatise proper. In the course of the treatise, the anecdote is constantly referred to and its significance is discussed. Here, again, the opening phrase serves as an important trigger for audience expectations, but it also refers to the source of the narration, thus validating what is to ensue. From a contemporary point of view, the evaluation crosses a generic border when it turns into a form of early advertisement. (5) WEe doe read in ye Romaine histories, that Mithridates a Puisante king of Pontus & Bithinia, for causing all ye Romaines in Asia to bee slaine, and the Proconsul Oppius to bee cast in prison, was assaulted by Silla, discomfited by Lucullus, and lastly vtterly vanquished by Pompey the great: and when this valiaunte king perceiued himselfe to be ouercome, and that he was to be taken of his enemies: first he destroyde his wyfe & daughters with poyson, and then tooke the same poyson, desiring rather so to dye, then as a captiue to fal into ye hands of his enemyes: But hauing dronken much of the poyson, could not dye therewith, and then caused his seruant Bistocus a frenchman (as it is written) to kill him with a sword. Such was the magnanimity of this mighty king to escape the hands of the Romaines, yt he might not bee caried to Rome, and in captiue maner be shewed in triumph. For this noble king was not only valiante in warre, but also in phisicall matters very expert, had the knowledg of many hearbes, and making tryall of sundry simples that doe resist poyson in men condemned to dye, as Galen writeth in his first booke de Antidotis, and finding some to remedy ye poison of Spiders, some of Scorpions, some to doe good against the byting of Uipers, others of mad Dogs, many to remedy the poison of hearbes, and so sundry others to help the venime of sundry poisons: he endeuoured to make a mixture of diuerse simples, hoping thereby to haue a ready remedy against all kindes of poison, & the same was termed after his name Mithridatium: wherein he was nothing deceiued. […] But the profit of this medicine hath bene by his meanes imparted to ye whole world, & the co~mendation and praise for the same, is iustly to be yeelded from all the world in all ages and times: So that as all the world is greater then Rome, & all times more then one age, so doubtlesse more renowme is due vnto

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Toolan (1988: 148) gives a very useful chart by which the model of Labov and Waletzky (1967) can easily be applied to narrative texts as the sequences are reoccurring. He presents a sequence of questions to be posed in the analysis: Abstract: what, in a nutshell, is the story about? Orientation: who, when, where? Complicating action: What happened and then what happened? Evaluation: So what? How or why is this interesting? Result or resolution: What finally happened? Coda: That’s it. I’ve finished and I’m bridging back to the present situation.

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Pompey for diuulging of this medicine, then by the conquering of this king, or by the triumph for the same. (Bailey 1585: Aii)

In the above example the story is well integrated, but in other cases links are looser. For example, a reference to classical sources is found in another text by the author of the Rosemary treatise, Friar Henry Daniel, during the late medieval period (see above). He inserts a lengthy passage with classical references in his compendium Liber uricrisiarum which is a combination of both theoretical and practical aspects of medicine (example 6). The passage is inserted in the middle of recipes and is not associated in any conspicuous way with the surrounding text. It could be a space filler for an empty page rather than a functional part of a text. It shows how typical features of anecdotal material circulated in various forms, even in a simple and somewhat corrupt form in rhymed couplets. Its first-person singular narrative form functions as an interesting device for involving the audience. The function of the passage seems to be to distribute knowledge of classical heroes to a wide readership, to ignite the imagination, and to provide amusement. The simple verse form is significant here: (6) [}To mak grene gynger:}] ak gyn[{g{]er [{&{] pare it, & […] And þan sall it be gud & c[{lere{] […] I Julius Cesar, ঢour hegh emperour, / In fryth & in feld full faire wos my fame. Of Rome & of Romans I bare ay þe flour, / And þus capud mundi wos I called be name. I Alisaunder, conquerd to Paradys ঢete; / Save þe ile of women, all þe warld I it wan. In Achayer þai me sent a lauedy of state, / Wytnes of Arestotyll þat dwelt with me þan. I am Ector of Troy & duk of degre; / Mony hethyn have I hurlde & hedyde at anys. I conquerd þe Grekys to þe Grek See, / And emang þame I dyed, & þare lyes my bonys. For þe colyk tak a tyle stane & lay it in þe fyre to it be […]. (Daniel 1983 [14th century]: 41–42)

Sometimes more recent events are reported on. A very different type of a narrative is found at the opening of a learned special treatise from 1596 (example 7). It explains the emergence of a new kind of disease a hundred years beforehand, and much of it focuses on explaining how the disease received its name. In early medical writing definitions were often given in the form of multilingual glosses, explaining what the disease, the part of the body it affected, and the plant or medicine to treat it were called in various languages. The story continues with a coda, which is the type of conventional modesty formula often present in contemporary prefatory materials (see also example 10).

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(7) [}Of the beginning and spreading of Lues Venerea. Cap. I.}] This disease now vsually called Lues Venerea, did first appeere, as the learned Physitions Monardus and Montanus, and also that learned Surgeon Vigo, with others, do affirme, in the yeere of our Lord God, 1494. In the month of December, when the French King tooke his iorney to recouer the kingdom of Naples: at which time hapned amongst the soldiers and people, this disease to appeere: which was at that time termed by the French men, Morbus Neapolitanus: but they of Naples, called it Morbus Gallicus. Which name, hath so in common speech remained with vs vntill this day. I do not heere purpose to argue to the contrary, but onely I meane to deliuer vnto you plainly the whole order of the cure, according vnto those gifts and graces, which God of his great goodnes hath bestowed vpon me. (Clowes 1945 [1596]: 149)

6. Narratives Embedded in Medical Writing: Biblical Narratives Biblical stories are less common than classical anecdotes in the medical register but they are occasionally found in both late medieval and early modern medical writings. These narratives have several different functions. They occur both in texts for learned audiences and in treatises aimed at the broadest possible readership. Their functions are quite varied, and the audience parameter importantly explains differences between them. The function of the following narrative from the late medieval period seems to be to encourage the patient to be brave (example 8). This interpersonal function is included in a learned surgical text. The story below is told in direct quotations, and thus its narrative technique is different from that of natural narratives. The passage is a loan from homilies (“omely”) and contains affective language use which is in accordance with sermon style. Besides the Bible, Boethius is quoted: (8) Also in another place in an omely vpon the gospel of the soneঢ of Zebedee, wher þer moder askid seying, 'lord, sey þat my two sones sitte in thy kyngdome, þe tone on þi riঢt hand and the toþer on the left.' And Ihesus answeryng seide, 'ঢe wote neuer what ঢe aske'; þan seid he to the soneঢ of Zebedee, 'May ঢe drink þe chalice þat I am to drink?' Þai seid to him, 'We may'; as ঢif he seid to þam, 'ঢif ঢoure soule or mynd couaite þat deliteþ, drinke þe first þat soroweþ or akeþ.' And so by bitter drinkis of confeccion it is come to the ioyes of helþe." Ouer that hym ow to comforte þe pacient in monysshyng hym that in anguissheঢ he be of gret hert. ffor gret hert makeþ a man hardy and strong to suffre sharp þingis and greuous: And it is a gret vertue and an happy, ffor Boecius seiþ, De disciplina scolarium, 'He is noঢt worþi of þe poynt of swetnes that kan noঢt be lymed with greuyng of bitternes. ffor why; a strong medicyne answerith to a strong sekenes' […]. (Arderne 1910 [15th century]: 7)

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A very different type of usage is found with one of the most important commonplaces in Western literature, the canonical story of genesis and Adam and Eve. It is referred to in a verse encyclopaedia aimed at the broadest possible readership. Sidrak and Bokkus is a late medieval compilation in question and answer form. 10 It combines various literary and nonliterary genres: basically, it is a philosophical dialogue but it also includes elements of a saint’s legend, and a great deal of medical and scientific material (see Burton 1998). The text is written in rhyming couplets with common-stock rhyme words. The topics are varied, and the 362 scientific and medical questions alternate with other topics without any consistent pattern. Occasional biblical references are inserted to provide some common ground. The last phrase “as ঢe haue herd bifore” reveals the function of the reference: it brings the contents closer to the readership via religious associations. The biblical story below is given as an answer to the question: “Now wolde I wite wheþer wore / Soule or body made bifore.” This is basically a philosophical question. Yet the answer briefly explains the nature of the elements and humoral theory and combines this with the story of creation, including the temptation and the expulsion from paradise: this is all told in a few lines of rhyming couplets. The biblical reference assures the truth value of the text and promotes audience pleasure. (9) The body is first made clere and fair / Of fire and watir, erthe and air; In man of þise iiij þei were. / And whanne þe body was made also, God of his grace come þerto / And blewe in him a goost of lyf And sithen made of him a wyf, / And lord and sire made him to be Of al þat he in erthe might se; / But whan he þe appel ches, Clothing of grace he forlees: /And þat angrid him ful sore As ঢe haue herd bifore. (Burton 1998: 498)

A reference to the story of creation is used for other purposes in another text. The following example comes from the mid-sixteenth century. It argues that everything has its purpose for the benefit of man in the divine plan; the biblical story is used in an argumentative fashion to advocate this view. The issue is the mastery of man over nature according to the order of God. Several passages in medical texts of the early modern period support the same argument with reference to the Bible and creation (see Thomas 1980). (10) To the Right Honorable Lorde, the Lorde Russell, Erle of Bedforde, Willyam Warde wisheth healthe, longe life, with moche encrease of vertue and honour It is not vnknowen vnto you (righte honourable) that when God by his diuine power and might, created and made all thinges of nothinge, hauing nether

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It was translated from French to several vernaculars in the fifteenth century. It circulated widely in Europe in the late medieval period.

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frame nor moulde, nor materialle substaunce to fasshson his woorke by, but onely his woorde, wille, and etrnal prouidence, did not onely geue a beeynge and encrease vnto euery thyng, but also a nature and operation, for the commoditie and profite of manne, to whom he hath made all thinges subiect, constituting him ruler of his whole woorke: wherein, not onely growing on the face of the yearth, but also in the bowels of the same, he hath planted thynges, salutiferous and helthfull for man, as herbes trees, fruictes, stones, rootes, waters, Iron, tinne, leade, yea, and the dewe of the ayer, so that nothinge is vnprofitable, no not the very donge of beastes, and byrdes, but it hath some wholesome operation for mannes (ii verso) health. In all these thinges are certaine secrete vertues, whiche be manisfeste signes of goddes loue and fauoure towardes man: for he created them to thintent that men should vse them, glorifie him, and geue him thankes for them. (Ruscelli 1558: f. *.ii.)

7. Medical Texts Embedded in Narratives A different use of narratives is found in texts where the medical treatise is embedded in a narrative. This is the case in several mimetic dialogues from the sixteenth century. Some of these texts have been recognised for their literary merits: e.g., William Bullein’s works are included in literary histories. Some of his medical works have narrative plots that run throughout: e.g., the handbook The Gouernement of Health from 1558 contains the fictional characters John and Humphrey in the tradition of wisdom literature (see Taavitsainen 1999 and 2009a). They have a dialogue in which their lifestyles are confronted with one other. (11) Iohn. What? good sir, I require not your counsell [...] I will not charge you, you are very auncient and graue, and I am but young, wee be no matches. Hum. Good counsell is a treasure to wise men, but a verie trifle to a foole […] Iohn. What hast thou seene, that I haue not seene? Hum. I haue seene many notable and grieuous plagues […] Ioh. Mee thinke thou canst giue good counsell, thou seemest to be seene in phisicke. […] Hum. Sir, [...] I will tell you […]. (Bullein 1558: 1–2)

John agrees to listen to Humphrey’s advice, and the narrative continues with teaching scenes. The text is aimed at a heterogeneous readership, and the audience parameter is evident in the composition of the narrative. Passages like the one below (12) serve to make the didactic contents interesting; songs have an entertaining function in the docere et delectare tradition (Taavitsainen 2004). While the reader is invited to imagine the gestures and movements that accompany the words, the dialogue does not really grow into a coherent narrative.

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(12) Hum. Vpon my Lute some time, to recreate myselfe, I ioine with my simple harmonie, many plaine verses. Among all other one small song of the foure complections: wilt thou heare it? take that chaire and sit downe, and I will teach thee my song. Ioh. I thanke thee. Humfrey. The bodies where heat and moysture dwel […] Ioh. This is a good song, and I will learne it […] Now thou hast spoken […], I praie thee teach mee shortly, howe to knowe the elements […]. (Bullein 1558: 8)

Bullein’s Fever Pestilence makes use of an elaborate frame story that accords with the established literary tradition initiated by renowned literary figures such as Boccaccio and Chaucer. 11 People flee from town during a period of pestilence, and the countryside is full of movement. Individuals then come together to discuss these events in disparate episodes. A descriptive passage serves to illustrate the landscape of the story and foreground the vice of greed: (13) Ciuis. Goe thy waies to Antonius gates, For thether euen within this twoo howers I did see maister Tocrub solempnely ridyng vpon his mule, with a side goune, a greate chaine of gold about his necke, his Apothicarie Crispine, a neighboures childe borne hereby in Barbarie, and his little Lackey, a proper yong applesquire called Pandarus, whiche carrieth the keye of his Chamber with hym. These are all gone in at the gates to that noble Italian. His stewarde this daie, because his maister is verie sicke, applied the poore menne with the purse with muche deuotion for the tyme, beyng without hope of his maisters recouery. Mendicus. I praie God sende vs many sike praies, for it is merie with vs when ene mannes hurte doe turne to many mennes gaines. I will go thether; fare you well, gud maister. I will drawe nere, and herken what mayster doctor will say, if I might be in place. (Bullein 1578: 9–10)

Medical topics are occasionally present, but the medical section proper is embedded in a sequence of recipes with very few interactive features. On the whole, the book turns into a form of social satire set during the time of pestilence; it includes a skilful use of non-standard language and a cast of individuals who use the distress and death of others to enrich themselves (see Taavitsainen/Nevanlinna 1999). The borderline between fiction and non-fiction is transgressed in some other medical texts which are written in the form of dialogues and are aimed at professional audiences. For instance, in the dialogue below (example 14), the characters are named after real London surgeons. The literary frame is a common feature of medieval and early modern litera–––––––––––– 11

This was in accordance with what happened in the real world, too (see Wear 2000: 288– 89).

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ture: it foregrounds a beautiful spring morning, 12 perfect for roaming about the meadows and discussing various matters: (14) Iohn Yates. Phoebus who chasith awaye the darke and vnconfortable night: castinge his goldyne beames on my face, woulde not sofer me to take anye longer slepe: but said awake for shame,& beholde the handy worke of our sister Flora, how she […] in so muche that the old and wetheryd cote of wynter, is quite done away […] my hart quickened in me, and all desire of slepe was eftsones forgotten. Wherfore I am now cumme into this beautiful mydowe to recreate my selfe […] But let me see? me thinke I perceyue .ij. men walkinge […] I wyll aproche neerer vnto them, perchaunce they be of my acquaintaunce: Suerly I shoulde knowe them. I am deceyued yf the one be not my frende maister Gale, and the other maister Feilde. It is so in deade. Wherfore I will go and salute them. God that hath brought vs together in to this place, make this daye prosperous and fortunate vnto you both. Tho. Gale, Brother Yates the same we wishe vnto you, & you are welcome into our co~pany. Iohn Feilde. This faire and plesant mornynge, will not soffer maister Yates to kepe his bed: but leuynge the citye, he rometh the feildes, to espie oute some strange herbes, vnto hym yet vnknowen. Iohn Yates. I muste of force confesse, that you doe hitte the nayle on the heade […] I wolde leaue of my former determinyd purpose, and require you to enter into some talke of Chirurgerye […] knowledge, & experience, […] profite […] longe practise […]: you shoulde meruaylouslye pleasure me, and profit other. [...] vnto those that shall here after desire the knowledge | of Chirurgerye. Tho. Gale. Your request is honest, and reasonable: and therfore not to denyed. (Gale 1563: 2)

Another literary frame can be found in a treatise on anatomy by Robert Underwood from the year 1605. The narrator lies sleepless in his bed and –––––––––––– 12

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Prologue and Isaac Walton’s Complete Angler are both manifestations of the same frame in English literature. Walton’s treatise is a handbook, whereas Gale’s is a textbook of surgery, written a hundred years before Walton’s famous dialogue. For comparison, the beginning of Walton’s dialogue is given here: Piscator. You are wel overtaken, Sir; a good morning to you; I have stretch’d my legs up Totnem Hil to overtake you, hoping your businesse may occasion you towards Ware, this fine pleasant fresh May day in the Morning. Viator. Sir, I shall almost answer your hopes: for my purpose is to be at […] I will not say, before I drink; but before I break my fast: for I have appointed a friend or two to meet me there […]. And that made me so early up. And indeed, to walk so fast. Pisc. Sir, I know the thatcht house very well: I often make it my resting place, and taste a cup of Ale there […] and to that house I shall by your favour accompany you, and either abate my pace, or mend it, to enjoy such a companion as you seem to be, knowing that (as the Italians say) Good company makes the way seem the shorter. Viat. It may do so Sir, with the help of good discourse, which (me thinks) I may promise you, that both look and speak cheerfully. And to invite you to it, I do here promise you, that for my part, I will be as free and open-hearted, as discretion will warrant me to be with a stranger. Pisc. Sir. I am right glad of your answer; and in confidence […]. (Walton 1653: 1–2)

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has a vision in the tradition of the dream poetry genre, employed earlier by e.g. Chaucer and Langland: (15) Late in the night, not long agoe / as I lay in my bed, Musing alone of many things, / which then came in my hed: Were it by Reuelation, / by Vision, or by Dreame: Or yet as lying in a traunce, / or by some other meane, I knew not well: but yet mee thought, / as it were suddainly, One caught me vp into the Aire, / from whence I did discrie A cittie large, of bignes such, / as it the World had beene: A thousand thousand Houses there, / a man might well haue seene […]. (Underwood 1612: 1)

The poem continues as an allegory about the human body and soul and related issues; marginal references make these connections explicit. Astrological and moral topics are also dealt with both in the poem and its margins. The allegory form is developed even further a few decades later by Phineas Fletcher in The Purple Island or the Isle of Man (1633). It is written as a Cantos with rich marginal notes in plain medical prose which explain the allegory of human anatomy and the course of life. The following passage (example 16) contains a “geographical” description of the island with explanatory anatomical notes in the margin. The circulation of blood was a topic of currency during the seventeenth century. (16) fNor is there any part of all this land, But is a little Isle: for thousand brooks In azure chanels glide on silver sand; Their serpent windings, and deceiving crooks. Circling about, and wat’ring all the plain, Emptie themselves into th’all-drinking main; And creeping forward slide, but never turn again. […] h fThe whole body is as it were watered with great plenty of rivers veins, arteries and nerves. h A vein is a vessel long, round, hollow, rising from the liver, appointed to contein concoct, and distribute the bloud; It hath but one tunicle, and that thinne; the colour of this bloud is purple. (Fletcher 1633: 19)

The poem is descriptive, and the marginal notes are written in accordance with learned scholastic commentary tradition. The text contains references to classical tales, e.g. “Who ha’s not often read Troyes twice-sung fires […] Who ha’s not heard th’Arcadian shepherds quires […]” (1633: 4). At the beginning of the poem the classical influence of Ovid and Virgil is conspicuous, and Spencer is referred to as well.

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8. Functions of Narratives in Medical Writing The main functions of narratives inserted in medical literature during the late medieval and early modern periods vary widely. The most conspicuous example of a special function is found in Bailey’s Mithridatium from the mid-sixteenth century; here, a classical anecdote is used to prove the efficacy of the medicine. In another treatise an anecdote serves as a warning, but, in general, the function of these narratives is less specific. Classical stories convey cultural knowledge and serve to lend an aura of learning to the writings. Anecdotes about emperors, philosophers and medical authorities from classical antiquity are inserted in various layers of writing in texts ranging from learned treatises for medical practitioners to those aimed at more heterogeneous audiences. Yet even the latter derive from learned sources. Knowledge of medical matters was useful for everyone. With increasing literacy in the late medieval and early modern periods, the readership of practical literature widened to include the upper middle classes of society. Interestingly, classical references are rendered in simple rhyming couplets in the middle of a recipe collection; this occurs without any conspicuous motivation besides spreading cultural knowledge and providing entertainment. Biblical passages are not very common, though religious thinking was all-pervasive in the late medieval period. References to biblical stories and brief accounts of them are found in some texts, however, for example in a late-medieval encyclopaedia which was written in rhyming couplets and intended for heterogeneous audiences. This text provides perhaps the best evidence for the fact that medical and scientific instruction was aimed at a wide and heterogeneous audience. In it a short synopsis of three canonical Old Testament stories is given in order, first, to create a common ground of knowledge and, second, to lend authority to the secular teaching which needed boosting as it was new in the vernacular. Clearly, the entertainment function is also present. Biblical references provided the reader with pleasant opportunities to dwell on familiar stories during the course of reading information which was novel to the audience. In another text aimed at a more learned audience the same narrative is used to augment interpersonal aspects of the argumentation. Stylistically, the passage borrows from the form of a sermon: it thus demonstrates how various types of material were combined and used for various purposes even in this early period. Literary frames can be found in early modern medical texts as well. These devices demonstrate the delay between the transfer of literary motifs to non-literary modes, as the heyday of these devices occurs during the late medieval period. In early modern medical writing we have many

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echoes of Chaucer’s writings, including sleepless narrators, beautiful May mornings, and people roaming the countryside; such devices function as frames for even strictly professional texts. Their function must have been to create pleasant reading expectations and to render the texts more appealing to their audiences. Another transfer between the literary and the non-literary can be found in Bullein’s texts where the entertainment function of the frame, which is written in the form of wisdom literature, is emphasised; the text form is a mimetic dialogue, interspersed with songs in simple rhymes to make it more vivid and pleasant. In the most extreme case, we encounter social satire within the frame story which tells of people escaping the Black Death. In this case the affiliation with medical literature is simply due to a sequence of recipes for medicines which is offered as part of the treatise. Allegories are found at the literary end of the scale of medical writings but in a hybrid form: scholastic commentaries explicate the medical aspects of the text. The combination of such extremely different genres is exceptional but seems to have been an operable textual type, since we have two examples of it in the present material. 9. Conclusions The audience parameter provides an explanation for the uses of narratives in medical writing. In this context the issue of verse and prose is also relevant. As explained above, rhyming couplets were in keeping with the oral tradition: easy to memorise and to follow when read aloud, they provided the appropriate medium for the widest possible circulation. Prose texts do not employ biblical stories in this function. Yet they contain classical references which are in keeping with the origins of medical and scientific learning. In the early period most texts in this register derive from classical Greco-Roman sources; thus narratives from the same origin enhance that connection and brighten the aura of learning. A clear diachronic line of development can be discerned in the present material. Late medieval classical anecdotes provide evidence about the source of their knowledge being located in classical wisdom. They function in the same way as references to ancient authorities, medical doctors and philosophers. They emphasise that knowledge is inherited and learning is disseminated through hearsay and are in keeping with the scholastic style of thought. Narratives in late medieval and early modern medical writing, by contrast, show a broad range of functions, and the borderline between literary and non-literary writing is fuzzy and demonstrates that influences came from several sources. The timeline of development is not straight-forward either. A recent study has shown that the stylistic features

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associated with scholasticism continue much beyond the late medieval period, but the stylistic values changed, and a dynamic picture emerged (Taavitsainen 2009b). The present assessment confirms a dynamic picture of early modern medical writing and demonstrates the influences of literary traditions in non-literary writing. The approach proved fruitful: work at the interface with extensive unexplored materials can yield new insights into the development of medical writing and history of the scientific register. It would be fascinating to follow these developments beyond the early modern period and into the late modern one. In this way these hybrid forms could be explored more profoundly. Yet this research remains to be done in a future study. References Arderne 1910 [15th century] Arderne, John: Arderne’s Treatises on Surgery. Early English Text Society O.S 139 (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co). Bailey 1585 Bailey, Walter: A Discourse of the Medicine Called Mithridatium (London: H. Marsh). Bullein 1971 [1562] Bullein, William: Bulleins Bulwarke of defence againste all Sicknes, Sornes, and woundes, that dooe daily assaulte mankind. Facsimile (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum). Bullein 1578 Bullein, William: The Feaver Pestilence. Early English Text Society (London: Oxford University Press). Bullein 1595 Bullein, William: The Gouernement of Health (London: V. Sims). Burton 1998 Burton, Tom L. (ed.): Sidrak and Bokkus: A Parallel-Text edition from Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc.559 and British Library MS Lansdowne793, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Caxton 1858 [c. 1491] Caxton, William: The Gouernayle of Helthe: With the Medecyne of ye Stomacke, reprinted with introductory remarks and notes by William Blades (London: Blades, East, & Blades). Clowes 1945 [1596] Clowes, William: A Briefe and Necessary Treatise, Tovching the Cvre of the Disease now Usvally Called Lves Venereal (New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints). Daniel 2002 [14th century] Daniel, Henry: “Rosemary,” in Martti Mäkinen: “Henry Daniel’s Rosemary in MS X.90 of the Royal Library, Stockholm,” in Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 103.3: 316–20.

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Daniel 1983 [14th century] Daniel, Henry: “Liber uricrisiarum,” in A Critical Edition of the Middle English Liber Uricrisiarum in Wellcome MS 225, edited by J. Jasin, unpublished PhD diss., Tulane University. Fletcher 1633 Fletcher, Phineas: The Purple Island (Cambridge: Printers to the Universitie). Fludernik 2007 Fludernik, Monika: “Letter as Narrative: Narrative Patterns and Episode Structure in Early Letters, 1400 to 1650,” in Methods in Historical Pragamatics, edited by Susan Fitzmaurice and Irma Taavitsainen, 241–66 (Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter). Fludernik 1996 Fludernik, Monika: Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology (London: Routledge). French 1998 French, Roger: “Introduction: The ‘Long Fifteenth Century’ of Medical History,” in Medicine from the Black Death to the French Disease, edited by Roger French, Jon Arrizabalaga, Andrew Cunningham and Luis García-Ballester, 1–5 (Aldershot et al.: Ashgate). Gale 1563 Gale, Thomas: An Institution of a Chirugian (London: Rouland Hall). Hart 1633 Hart, Iames: Klinike, or The Diet of the Diseased (London: John Beale for Robert Allot). Jauss 1979 Jauss, Robert: “The Alterity and Modernity of Medieval Literature,” in New Literary History 10: 181–229. Jucker 2000 Jucker, Andreas H.: “English Historical Pragmatics: Problems of Data and Methodology,” in English Diachronic Pragmatics, edited by Gabriella di Martino and Maria Lima, 17–55 (Napoli: CUEN). Jucker/Fritz/Lebsanft 1999 Jucker, Andreas H./Fritz, Gerd/Lebsanft, Franz (eds.): Historical Dialogue Analysis (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins). Labov/Waletzky 1967 Labov, William/Waletzky, Joshua: “Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience,” in Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts: Proceedings of the 1966 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, edited by June Helm, 12–44 (Seattle: American Ethnological Society), reprinted in Journal of Narrative and Life History 7.1–4: 3–38. Laurentius 1599 Laurentius, M. Andreas: A Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight: of Melancholike Diseases; of Rheumes, and of Old Age, translated by Richard Surphlet (London: Felix Kyngston). Ruscelli 1558 Ruscelli, Girolamo: The Secretes of the Reuerende Maister Alexis of Piemount (London: Iohn Kingstone).

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Taavitsainen 1999 Taavitsainen, Irma: “Dialogues in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Medical Writing,” in Historical Dialogue Analysis, edited by Andreas H. Jucker, Gerd Fritz and Franz Lebsanft, 243–68 (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins). Taavitsainen 2004 Taavitsainen, Irma: “Genres of Secular Instruction: A Linguistic History of Useful Entertainment,” in Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies 29: 75– 94. Taavitsainen 2005 Taavitsainen, Irma: “Genres and the Appropriation of Science: Loci communes in English Literature in Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods,” in Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past, edited by Janne Skaffari, Matti Peikola, Ruth Carroll, Risto Hiltunen and Brita Wårvik, 179–96 (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins). Taavitsainen 2009a Taavitsainen, Irma: “Authority and Instruction in Two Sixteenth-Century Medical Dialogues,” in Instructional Writing in English: Studies in Honour of Risto Hiltunen, edited by Matti Peikola, Janne Skaffari and Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen, 105–24 (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins). Taavitsainen 2009b Taavitsainen, Irma: “The Pragmatics of Knowledge and Meaning: CorpusLinguistic Approaches to Changing Thought-Styles in Early Modern Medical Discourse,” in Corpora: Pragmatics and Discourse, edited by Andreas H. Jucker, Daniel Schreier and Marianne Hundt, 37–62 (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi). Taavitsainen/Fitzmaurice 2007 Taavitsainen, Irma/Fitzmaurice, S.: “Historical Pragmatics—What Is It and How We Do It?” in Methods in Historical Pragmatics, edited by S. Fitzmaurice and Irma Taavitsainen, 11–36 (Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter). Taavitsainen/Nevanlinna 1999 Taavitsainen, Irma/Nevanlinna, Saara: “Pills to Purge Melancholy— Nonstandard Elements in A Dialogue Against Fever Pestilence,” in Dimensions of Writing in Nonstandard English, edited by Irma Taavitsainen, Gunnel Melchers and Päivi Pahta, 151–69 (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins). Taavitsainen/Pahta 1998 Taavitsainen, Irma/Pahta, Päivi: “Vernacularisation of Medical Writing in English: A Corpus-based Study of Scholasticism,” in Early Science and Medicine, special issue, edited by W. Crossgrove, M. Schleissner and L. E. Voigts, 157– 85. Taavitsainen/Pahta 2000 Taavitsainen, Irma/Pahta, Päivi: “Conventions of Professional Writing: The Modern Medical Case Report in a Historical Perspective,” in Journal of English Linguistics 28: 60–76. Taavitsainen/Pahta [forthcoming] Taavitsainen, Irma/Pahta, Päivi (eds): Medical Writing in Early Modern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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Thomas 1980 Thomas, Keith: Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenthand Seventeenth-Century England (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books). Toolan 2001 [1988] Toolan, Michael: Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction (London: Routledge). Underwood 1612 Underwood, Robert: The Little World: Or, A liuely Description of all the Partes and Properties of Man (London: W. Jones). Walton 1653 Walton, Izaac: The Compleat Angler or The Contemplative Man’s Recreation (London: T. Macey). Wear 2000 Wear, Andrew: Knowledge & Practice in English Medicine, 1550–1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Corpora Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. A HyperBibliography. Middle English Compendium, University of Michigan. Early Modern English Medical Texts (EMEMT) CD-ROM, compiled by Irma Taavitsainen, Päivi Pahta, Turo Hiltunen, Ville Marttila, Martti Mäkinen, Maura Ratia, Carla Suhr & Jukka Tyrkkö, forthcoming. Middle English Medical Texts (MEMT) (2005), compiled by Irma Taavitsainen, Päivi Pahta and Martti Mäkinen (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins).

PART III LOCAL AND NATIONAL APPROACHES IN DIACHRONIC PERSPECTIVE: TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE NARRATOLOGY

WILHELM SCHERNUS (Hamburg)

Narratology in the Mirror of Codifying Texts* 1 Abstract The sophistication of a scientific discipline as well as its acceptance by the larger scientific community is probably nowhere more clearly expressed than in codifying writings such as introductions, manuals, textbooks, and encyclopedias. As codifying texts (or codifications), such publications are defined as those in which the substance of a discipline is laid down as more or less generally accepted in terms of its foundations, aims, methods, and results; thus a certain consent concerning the validity of the discipline is assumed. Narratology’s disciplinary status and scope remain precarious and subject to debate. This essay analyzes how and in what forms narratological skills and insights are being represented in codifying texts as systematic and free of the complexity and issues involved in disciplinary debate. 1. “What is Narratology?” Only ten years after Tzvetan Todorov (1969: 10) coined the term ‘narratology’ and demanded that a ‘science of narrative’ 2 be established, there –––––––––––– *

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Translated by Ingrid Laurien. My thanks go to Greta Olson for her friendly encouragement that I work on this topic. In particular, I wish to thank her for her thorough editing of this essay and the many suggestions which led to its improvement. First reflections on this subject go back to the research project entitled “How Narratology Has Been Adapted and Used to Mediate between Scholarly Cultures since the 1960s,” which was conducted by Jörg Schönert and financially supported by the German Research Foundation between 2001 and 2005. This was a sub-project of the Narratology Research Group at the University of Hamburg. In this context, the analysis of introductory texts in German Studies, English and American Studies, Romance Language Studies and Slavic Studies, formed the basis of a special research area. The basic research questions were how was narratology introduced in these publications, which theories and concepts were used to introduce narratology, and what developments could be observed. In cooperation with Jörg Schönert, Anja Cornils, and the author, Susanne Warda conducted comprehensive empirical investigations and documented the results in tables and graphs online: http://www.icn.uni-hamburg.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id= 7&Itemid=12. For a long time, the publication of Volume 8 of the journal Communications in 1966 was seen as the ‘hour of birth’ (Geburtsstunde) (Jahn 1995: 29). However, meanwhile it has been

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seemed to be an urgent need to take stock and to define its position. Consequently, the Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics 3 of the University of Tel Aviv organized the conference “Narrative Theory and Poetics of Fiction” from June 17th to 21st, 1979. Todorov aimed at nothing less than a new type of generalizing theory. With this, his universalistic claim came dangerously near to and competed with attempts to establish a new theory of literature that appeared under the label of ‘poetics’ and found its expression in publications and, above all, journals, using this term in their titles. 4 Some of the tension between narratology and poetics was mirrored in the title of the 1979 conference. More than 40 papers by internationally renowned scholars were presented and discussed at the conference which became known as “Synopsis 2.” Many of these papers were printed in several special issues of the newly launched journal Poetics Today; 5 others were published elsewhere. Ten years later, the Porter Institute organized a follow-up conference—this time, however, it was based on only written papers. The participants of Synopsis 2 as well as the new participants were asked to take a position on questions such as: Has narratology developed since 1979, or did it stagnate? What new research fields have emerged, if any? Has anything been resolved? Did any new issues come up? In general, where has narratology gone to in the past ten years? (McHale/Ronen 1990: 269–70)

Not all of the former participants in Synopsis 2 accepted this invitation. But at the end of the day, at least 20 contributions were sent in and were published in Poetics Today. 6 Although a number of these contributions soon “achieved a ‘classic’ status in the field of narratology,” (McHale/Ronen 1990: 269), their signi––––––––––––

3 4 5 6

shown that systematic research into problems of narratology goes much further back and has a broader scope (cf. the introduction of Monika Fludernik and Uri Margolin [2004] in the special issue of the journal Style, or Fludernik [2005]). The term ‘narratology’ was not initially accepted (Meister 2009: 331); later, there were attempts to avoid it and to suggest alternatives like narrative theory, narrative analysis, narrative research, narrative studies, etc. I generally retain it as a term that has in the meantime been “internationally accepted” (Fludernik 2009: 8) and is no longer subject to reservations due to its structuralist origin, well knowing that certain emphases are always connected with the choice of an alternative term. On differentiations and varieties cf. Cornils/Schernus (2003), Nünning (2003: 261). On the Porter Institute cf. McHale/Ron (2005), Mintz (1985), Segal (2008 and in this volume). For example: Poetica (1967), Poétique (1970), Poetics (1971), PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature (1976), Poetics Today (1979). Cf. “Narratology I: Poetics of Fiction,” in Poetics Today 1.3 (1980), “Narratology II: The Fictional Text and the Reader,” in Poetics Today 1.4 (1980), “Narratology III: Narrators and Voices in Fiction,” in Poetics Today 2.2 (1981). Cf. “Narratology Revisited I,” in Poetics Today 11.1 (1990), “Narratology Revisited II,” in Poetics Today 11.4 (1990), “Narratology Revisited III,” in Poetics Today 12.3 (1991).

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ficance to the further development of narratology has not yet been sufficiently recognized. 7 This could have something to do with the respective points in time of the two conferences. Namely, the first conference took place at a time when the first signs of disciplinary fatigue were being felt and some researchers had already declared ‘narratology’ to be a failed project: “In recent years the discipline of narratology has frequently been pronounced ‘dead’, irrelevant or ‘out,’” as Monika Fludernik observes about research in the 1980s (Fludernik 1993: 729). The second conference—as I will call it for sake of convenience—however, took place at a time when the renaissance of narratology 8 during the 1990s could not yet have been foreseen, and when, at the end of the decade, David Herman (2002) finally felt obliged to suggest that one should no longer speak of one narratology but only of ‘narratologies’ in the plural. Both conferences deserve more attention and provide interest from more than the viewpoint of the history of science. Particularly the conference in 1979 left open a question which still worries us in the present: “What is narratology?” In his introduction to the printed edition of the 1979 conference’s contributions, Benjamin Hrushovski 9 connects this question to others, thus demonstrating his own preferences: ‘[N]arratology’ and ‘narrative’ are recently fashionable terms which have overshadowed such older names as Epic Literature, Fiction, and Theory of Prose or Poetics of Prose. ‘Narratology’ has become as central to the study of literature as the concept of ‘Language of Poetry’ once was to an earlier generation. But what is narratology? Is it a logical division of Poetics? Does it constitute a clearly-defined discipline with a specific object of study? Or is it a methodology? (Hrushovski 1980: 6)

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8

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For a personal impression that the conference left with one of the participants cf. Bal (1990). It is striking that of the French narratologists, only the linguist Jean-Michel Adam was present, but not, for example, Gérard Genette. It would be interesting to find out if this was due to the organizers’ recognizable reservations about French Structuralism or Genette’s simply having been prevented from attending. One might also assume that Genette’s theoretical approach was already sufficiently well known through the publication of Rimmon’s 1976 survey of his work in the journal which preceded Poetics Today, and the conference’s focus was supposed to be on further developments. In the 1976 publication, Rimmon, for the first time, laid out the essential theoretical structure of, and in this manner communicated Genette’s theory to an English-speaking and international audience. On the reasons for this renaissance in which narratology “not only rose like a phoenix from the ashes but was also transformed into a forward-looking discipline by absorbing the concepts and methods of other literary and cultural theories” (Nünning/Nünning 2002: 1, original in German). Founder of the Porter Institute and editor of journals like Poetics Today, Hrushovski has called himself Harshav since he accepted a professorship in comparative literature and Hebrew Language and Literature at Yale: cf. Ben-Porat (2001) as well as the Festschrift Poetics Today 21.3 (2000) and 22.1 (2001).

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In any case, Hrushovski rejected the idea of an independent discipline called ‘narratology.’ His paper “Against Narratology,” 10 which was announced as contribution to the 1979 conference but was never published speaks for this. Hrushovski still aimed to integrate narratology into the framework of a general theory of literature as a ‘theory of prose’ or ‘poetics of prose.’ Yet some research presented at the first conference already went beyond the narrow area of literature studies. Roland Barthes had, in 1966, given an impulse with his “Introduction à l’analyse structurale des récits” which was published in Communications: here he claimed the universality of narrative and of narrations. Accordingly, stories were omnipresent; they were everywhere at all times and in all media of expression (cf. Barthes 1975 [1966]: esp. 237). Even if one is inclined to understand literary narration “as the prototypical kind of narrative” (Fludernik 2009: 1) and to concede a “privileged position” (Sommer 2004a: 81) to literary studies, it has become clear, at least since the so-called “narrativist turn” (Kreiswirth 1992, 2000), that narrative research is no longer confined to literary studies, but has gained great currency in many other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences, ranging from cultural and media studies to linguistics, to historical theory and historiography, to anthropology, philosophy, theology, psychology, pedagogy, political science, medicine, law and economics [...]. (Heinen 2009: 193)

Naturally, this kind of development cannot remain without consequences for narratological theory and its status as a discipline. 11 Thus the need to formulate an answer to the question of what narratology is appears to be all the more urgent. But “[w]hat makes the question ‘What is narratology?’ so pressing?” (Kindt/Müller 2003: V). 12 Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Müller believe that “the problem lies not in a lack of plausible answers to the question, –––––––––––– 10

11 12

More important is that such reflections did not fit into his concept of a science of literature (poetics), which he presented in 1968 for the first time. With the aid of this concept, he hoped to put literary studies on a scientific basis in the sense of a “Unified Theory of the Literary Text.” Cf. Hrushovski (1976). The contribution was first published in 1968 in Hebrew, in the journal Ha-Sifrut, which was edited by Hrushovski himself. Cf. now under the title “The Elusive Science of Literature: Remarks on the Fields and Responsibilities of the Study of Literature,” in Harshav (2007: 215–49). Of particular interest is especially the graph (2007: 229). Nilli Diengott resorts to Hrushovski’s concept in her controversies with Susan Lanser. These focus not only on the question of the conjunction of narratology and feminism but also on the status of narratology in general. Diengott clearly views narratology as part of theoretical poetics (Diengott 1988). In the present context, I do not elaborate on this subject further but refer to three essay collections in psychology and social sciences: Daiute/Lightfood (2004), Angus/McLeod (2004), and Atkinson/Delamont (2006). It was no coincidence that this question was the leading topic of the first colloquium of the Narratology Research Group at the University of Hamburg from May 23 to May 25, 2002 (cf. Kindt/Müller 2003).

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but in the abundance of such answers” (2003: V). In fact, there is no lack of suitable and useful definitions. Hardly a study does without a definition of narratology and its underlying theories, as well as an introduction of related terms. All attempts to react to the question “What is Narratology?” explicitly or implicitly, have “received quite different and even contradictory answers. There no longer seems to be a consensus either about the main aims and objectives of narratology or about the extension of its research domain” (Nünning 2009: 52). Definitions may range from the very short and general such as Prince’s “narratology is a theory of narrative” (Prince 1995: 110) or Bal’s “narratology is the theory of narrative texts” (Bal 1997 [1985]: 3; but see also the medial extension of narratology in Bal 1999 [1997]: 3) to narratology is “a heuristic tool” (Kindt/Müller 2003a: 211), or a “school of thought” (Fludernik 2000: 83). Further definitions include: “narratology is a humanistic discipline dedicated to the study of the logic, principles, and practices of narrative representation” (Meister 2009: 329) and “narratology is increasingly appealed to as a master discipline” (Fludernik 2005: 47). Because of all the contextual extensions of narratology during the last two decades and, consequently, because of all of those hyphenated narratologies and sub-disciplines, the question of narratology’s scope and disciplinary status has become even more complex. 13 Of course, definitions are not free of personal theoretical preferences or absent of their originators’ affinity for certain research objects; and science, in general, is not an evolutionary and cumulative process. On the contrary, a lively and dynamic discipline is marked by the fact that different theories, models, terminologies and methodological principles exist next to and compete with one another. This may explain some of the complexities involved in narratology’s development. Furthermore, theories and definitions are subject to historical change, new insights are won, and concepts are specified, extended and sometimes deemed obsolete. Nevertheless, the impression of a downright paradoxical situation regarding the current status of narratology cannot be easily pushed aside. On the one hand: “A definition of ‘narratology,’ which would be accepted by everyone, does—particularly in the wake of narratology’s many expansions […]—not even exist in literary studies” (Heinen 2009: 194). Even its basic terms seem to be questionable: “Despite a burst of ener–––––––––––– 13

For a revised edition of his overview over various approaches see Nünning (2003, 2009). In the first chapters of this publication, Nünning takes up Seymour Chatman’s question “What Can We Learn from Contextualist Narratology?”—and finds himself obliged to state almost immediately: “Anyone who tries to survey the field almost twenty years later will have to admit that we still do not really know. What is worse, we do not even know for sure what ‘contextualist narratology’ really is” (Nünning 2009: 48).

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getic and highly intelligent research over the last thirty years and the genuine progress that has been made, there is not yet a consensus on any of the key issues in the study of narrative” (Abbott 2002: xii). Of course, this situation has not escaped the attention of others. Meir Sternberg, for example, states: “For all its growing sophistication on matters in detail, narrative theory is still in its infancy because the disciplinary foundations have yet to be laid” (2001: 115). Sternberg demands that the following questions be clarified: “What is narrative and what becomes in it of the components shared with other discourse genres?” (115). Jan Christoph Meister (2003) agrees with this, albeit with a different emphasis. On the other hand, it does not seem controversial to state that since its first systematic beginnings more than 100 years ago, narratology has generated a coherent and consistent system of concepts. This system has rendered narratology adaptable to many research problems and given it an extraordinary status: The terminological clarity, well-defined categories and systematic argumentation of narratologically informed reading of literary texts have helped to establish narrative theory next to hermeneutics and semiotics as a transnational and interdisciplinary critical metalanguage. Its status as a ‘lingua franca’ of literary studies is based on narratology’s ability to bridge not only institutional gaps between various disciplines […] but also between disciplinary traditions. (Sommer 2004: 4)

The preceding preliminaries were necessary in order to provide a background on which to discuss this essay’s central questions: How, in the face of the situation described above, can narratological knowledge be secured in codifying texts; how can it be successfully communicated, and how can narratological skills be taught? Before answering these questions, however, I would like to attempt to briefly define the terms ‘codifying texts’ or ‘codifications.’ 2. Codifications Publications in which the acquired knowledge of a discipline is presented as generally accepted and valid are codifying texts (or, in short, codifications). Publications that can be counted as codifications have to fulfill at least three conditions: a) the contribution serves primarily to simply reproduce disciplinary knowledge; b) the publication deproblematizes disciplinary knowledge; c) the simplified and deproblematized presentation of disciplinary knowledge is essentially aimed at an intra-disciplinary space and audience. The first condition requires that a discipline’s substance be presented systematically in the form of a generally validated textbook with regard to

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the discipline’s foundations, objects of knowledge, methodologies, and results. The discipline’s substance is thus presented as empirically examinable knowledge (or a knowledge that claims such status). Within certain limits, textbooks aim to be uniform, complete and authoritative. They include contributions on sub-areas of the discipline as well as contributions on various disciplinary tendencies or schools, which are regarded as alternative research paradigms. The second condition narrows down the requirements of the first one and excludes ‘balancing’ kinds of texts such as bibliographies, research and literature reports. To “deproblematize” basically means to present specialized knowledge as validated knowledge to which a high degree of certainty is attributed within the context of the publication. On this level, deproblematization is initially concerned with specialized disciplinary knowledge. Specialized knowledge is simplified or limited to elementary or basic knowledge. Basic knowledge is abstracted from disciplinary complexity and it is relieved of any engagement with current scholarly debate and discussion. The degree of abstraction as well as the level of validation to which the knowledge which is presented has been made subject are determined by the respective historical context of the discipline. Furthermore, these features depend on the respective addressee of the publication and its claim to general validity. Consequently, the deproblematization of specialized knowledge in general introductions to the study of the discipline is of a far greater degree than in systematic summaries of insights made by particular research areas or schools. Summaries aim to reproduce, re-ascertain, and stabilize and secure knowledge in disciplinary terms. These summaries are not necessarily aimed (only) at first year students, but also at experts within the discipline itself. Furthermore, deproblematization entails the following: if a codifying contribution does problematize the field then its qualifications are nonetheless passed on as validated knowledge: only that which can claim validity and the status of secure knowledge is permissible . This is due to the fact that the information which is presented in this type of publication is presented as specialized knowledge concerning strategies of problem solving, including ways to formulate, adapt, and solve problems. This aspect of problematization also depends on the disciplinary context, particularly on its history of problems and the effective standards of problem adaptation. In a way, codifications raise ‘old’ questions and offer ‘old’ answers. They present specialized knowledge as ‘positive’ verified knowledge, as knowledge which has been validated using more or less approved patterns of investigation. Research contributions which question and problematize, by contrast, always communicate ‘negative’ or non verifiable, hypothetical knowledge.

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The third condition means that the codified knowledge is presented with the aim of securing it on a long term basis and communicating it through teaching and study. Yet it also serves the processes of disciplinary self-reproduction. This condition excludes publications which deproblematize the discipline but are intended for a non-academic function. In other words they are intended to be used in non-academic applications of specialized knowledge such as, for example, in school lessons or in presentations for the interested public. However, crossovers may be intended. Publications on specific literary texts which support school teachers and are intended to be used as materials in literary studies classrooms should not be mixed up with publications on subject-related didactics which deal specifically with methods of teaching literature. Thus, I have functionally defined codifications as contributions which are aimed at simply reproducing deproblematized specialized knowledge and which strive to present it—within certain limits—as complete, and/or unified and/or authoritative knowledge. Therefore, diverse types of publications may be counted among the text corpus ‘codifications.’ Codifications include text books, exercise books, reference books, encyclopedias, and introductions into certain academic disciplines (such as, for instance, literary studies, German studies, English and American studies, Romance studies, Slavic studies, etc.) or introductions to certain areas of knowledge such as narratology. The criteria for the deproblematization of a discipline’s body of knowledge is determined by several factors. The specific historical context of the publication affects how simplified the knowledge presented within it will be. Even more important is the horizon of specialized knowledge which is assumed as prerequisite by the contribution. Therefore, the delimitation of types of codifications is not always easy to determine. Firstly, not every systematically constructed presentation of supposedly validated knowledge regards itself as an introduction into a discipline. Rather, it may be explicitly addressed to the scientific community. Secondly, over the course of time, texts may change their status, at least partially. To name three examples, Eberhard Lämmert’s Bauformen des Erzählens (1955), Franz K. Stanzel’s Theorie des Erzählens (1979) and Gérard Genette’s Discours du récit (1972) were certainly not drafted as introductions into the theory of narration, but they can now be classified as codifications according to the criteria described above. Their original position within academic literature changed in the sense that they are no longer seen as single episodes within the scientific process—however important and meaningful. Instead, they

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have been assigned the status of canonical texts. 14 As such, they still have claims to authority; these texts often serve as starting points for research which is based on their approaches or as resources for terminology. Yet they can also now be read as introductions into specialized areas of research. Introductions into a certain subject are, however, much easier to classify. They fulfill all three conditions named above. In the project mentioned in note 1, numerous texts of this kind which were published since the late 1950s have been examined. Especially the genre Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft (Introduction to Literary Studies) is a type of publication which is typical of study programs in Germany and can hardly be compared to introductions in other countries. It is closely connected to the reform of study programs which began in the late 1960s and was completed in the 1970s. 15 This study limits itself to the German language area. It aims to examine the question of which research texts are being used in narrative theory to communicate basic knowledge. The aim of the research is, on the basis of selected publications, to collect a corpus that has had a special relevance to the reception and communication of narrative theory since the late 1950s and to demonstrate how the canon of these texts has changed over the course of time. In general it can be said that Erzähltheorie/narratology has only become present on large scale since the early 1980s in these publications. Up until this point in time, texts recurred almost exclusively to Germanspeaking theorists. Narrative theory and narratology are treated under key words like Romantheorie (theory of the novel) or Erzählkunst (the art of storytelling). The reception of the international discussion of narratology begins only during the late 1980s (cf., eg., Cornils/Schernus 2003). 3. Narratology in Codifications At least since the mid-1990s, the preoccupation with narrative theories and problems has become completely international, and this includes German-speaking areas and countries. Understandably, scholars also resort to older traditions or emphasize narratological clarifications which had already been achieved in earlier research. As Monika Fludernik has shown in several publications, the language barriers of mainly Anglophone –––––––––––– 14

15

On the canonization process of scientific works in the field of German-speaking Germanistik, cf. Bogdal (2002). On historical connections and backgrounds, cf. Schönert (2001); on the relevance of textbooks to the humanities in general, cf. Stüssel (1993).

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(but also Francophone) scholars have blocked or even prevented the adequate reception of theoretical approaches and conceptions that have been developed in the German language. The publication of codifying texts has increased rapidly. Particularly during the 2000s, numerous texts of this category came onto the market, in new or in revised or newly edited editions. In the words of Sabine Gross, who has discussed six of the codifications enumerated in the list of references: […] the significant number of introductions, handbooks, and reference works in the area of narratology that have appeared in recent years both document and make claims for the status of the field: they serve as evidence that the study of narratives has arrived not only in terms of scholarly credentials, but also as a presence in curricula and the dissemination of knowledge of students. (Gross 2008: 535)

The number, variety and popularity of these publications indicate more than an acute demand for this type of text. Rather, they, above all, express the maturity of the narratological discipline and its general acceptance. (I use the expression ‘discipline’ in an unproblematized fashion in this case which disregards the questions raised in the first paragraph about the status and function of narratology. I regard a discipline as the context of a work which is held together by its objects of study, problem constellations and methodologies.) This level of acceptance can be found in the publishing houses that edit these texts as individual publications or as special series as well as amongst these publications’ authors. The latter would only be prepared to handle such projects, individually or in co-operation with a multitude of colleagues, if they knew that they would enhance their reputations. In the following, I will examine more closely three types of publications: collections of texts, anthologies, and so-called readers; reference books, encyclopedias, or similar publications; introductions into narratology. By doing so, I necessarily confine my perspective to the narrower subject of the reception of narratology in literary studies, despite the fact that some of these texts transcend this area and make general claims of validity. 16 The list of references offers a selection of the most important works in these three categories. However, introductions into the basic knowledge or propaedeutics of a subject like Literaturwissenschaft (literary studies) are not considered here. On the one hand, this type of publication represents a form of presentation which is still only typical for academic studies in Germany. However ––––––––––––

16

Sometimes, disciplines beyond literary studies do have their own codifying texts on the analysis of narrative discourses. I have referred to three essay collections in note 11; more from other areas could be added.

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in the future, given the comprehensive introduction of bachelor and master programs in Europe, a certain equalization of the field can be expected. On the other hand, because of the manner in which they are conceived, these types of introductions do not offer many enlightening insights. While it is true that, as a rule, these texts offer some information about international narratology, the information presented in them is extremely limited and only the most important terms are introduced. Because of their predominantly traditional structure, these texts mostly treat narrative theory as an aspect of epic within the framework of the genre triad of epic, drama and poetry. Likewise, I will not consider entries concerning narratology or terms from narrative theory which are presented in general reference works. In most cases, these entries are short, informative and written by scholars in the designated area of narratology. Text Collections, Anthologies, Readers Texts in this category are the easiest to describe. Anthologies of seminal texts appear in a relatively late stage of the development of a discipline and generally only then when the discipline can already claim to command a broad basis of basic knowledge and enjoys general recognition. Such collections offer complete texts in the original or in translation or excerpts from longer papers which have been classified as ground-breaking work, which marked important stations in developments which have subsequently been agreed on as having been of a canonical nature. They represent the basic knowledge of a discipline, as sedimented in layers, and they contribute to the discipline’s self-legitimation and stabilization. Above all, they offer a ‘history’ of a discipline by creating a cohesive tradition for it and expressing its significance. Reference Books, Encyclopedias, etc. Texts of this kind may also be used by students of all levels during their studies or during their exam preparations. But primarily, this type of publication is addressed to an intra-, inter-, as well as an extra-disciplinary group of recipients. In this manner, these texts compile a discipline’s ‘current account balance.’ How this balance is defined depends essentially on the structure of the text in which it is presented and on the general organization of the material. Alphabetically organized encyclopedias aim at completeness—even if this aim is not explicit or even possible. They also tend to be normative due to the terminological definitions which are typically put at the beginning of an article, or the article itself being restricted to a definition. Yet

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the demand that the discipline be presented as a unified field plays very little role in such a text. This results in creating, at times, a very heterogeneous impression. As a rule, thematically organized codifications distinguish themselves by virtue of their containing much longer contributions. They do not intend to offer a complete picture; rather they intend to demonstrate either the unity or the generally accepted plurality of a discipline. A relative reliability with regard to their applicability and bindingness is achieved via clear definitions, explications, and a short history of the respective term or context of the problem. 17 These texts border on investigative research contributions. Insofar as they name desiderata and point at unsolved problems, they even transgress this border and indicate areas in which future research is needed. Regardless of whether they are alphabetically or thematically organized, these texts attempt to communicate information through describing body of knowledge which has more or less been broken down into terms. At the same time, they provide archives of a discipline’s knowledge, theoretical horizons, and the contexts of its disciplinary issues at a given point in time. They do so in a manner which structures knowledge economically and pragmatically according to specific points of inquiry rather than in a discursively expansive form. Introductions Introductions to narratology attempt the seemingly impossible. They try to be scientifically well founded but at the same time generally understandable; in any case, they are intended to be manageable. They attempt to introduce readers into a complex field without their having any prerequisite knowledge and to offer them orientation. They want to present applicable and adaptable knowledge and lay the foundations for a professional treatment of (literary) narratives. At the same time, they attempt to promote an understanding of further reaching theories and problem constellations. While attempting all this, they should be systematically well structured. Furthermore, their image depends on a number of various other factors. The influence of publishing houses on the conception and composition of the introduction should not be underestimated. Which questions should be taken into account and how intensely they should be discussed also depends on the authors’ theoretical preferences and methodological orientations as well as on the intended readers. ––––––––––––

17

For an example of a codifying text which is structured in this manner cf. the Handbook of Narratology (2009): Definition, Explication, History of the Concept and its Study, Topics for Further Investigation, Bibliography. (Listed under Introductions.)

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In principle, the precondition for an introduction is the existence of a secure body of knowledge in the discipline which is being introduced. Moreover, representatives of the discipline need to be in agreement about what belongs in the introduction, which subjects should be treated and which research results can be understood as valid. Yet it is always controversial to determine to what degree such an agreement does exist. Characteristically, most introductions point out in their prefaces that they do not rely on a single theory, method, school or concept. For instance, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan’s Narrative Fiction begins with the statement that “[…] the book is not structured according to ‘schools’ or individual theoreticians […]” (2002: 5). As a rule, introductions do not aim to offer their own theory, but to summarize existing ones, or to place “insights from various traditions” into a synthesis.18 Their main intention is to introduce the reader to essential knowledge in the field and to the requisite instrumental skills. Silke Lahn and Jan Christoph Meister’s introduction can be seen as typical in this respect: As an introduction to the analysis of narrative texts (Erzähltextanalyse), this volume intends to present a narratologically based conceptual and methodological instrumentarium which is required to systematically conduct a […] preinterpretative investigation into and description of a narrative text. (Lahn/Meister 2008: IX; original in German)

This may be cause for omissions and simplifications; a great deal cannot be mentioned but only sketched, as didactic considerations dominate. When controversial research debates are set aside, one has to fall back on a relatively stable basis of knowledge. On the other hand, this procedure also has its advantages. The introduction can be systematically structured; arguments can be based on simple, basic concepts which then lead into ever more complex issues. These issues can be illustrated, in turn, with examples and exercises. Which unit is chosen as a starting point depends decisively on the intended group of recipients and the introduction’s intended area of application. While some introductions limit themselves to communicating elementary knowledge in order to analyze literary texts, others are much more ambitious and broader in their conception. For instance, H. Porter Abbott regards narrative as “a human phenomenon” (2002: XI), but takes his central concepts from narratology and narratological research into literary texts.

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18

“Einsichten aus unterschiedlichen Traditionen” in a synthesis (Martinez/Scheffel 1999: 7, cf. also Rimmon-Kenan 2002: 5).

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4. Concluding Remarks The disciplinary status of narratology appears unclear or at least somewhat uncertain. The discipline has yet to find an institutional home within the academic system, for instance, in the form of a “Department of Narratology” (Schönert 2004: 136). Such a development can also hardly be expected to occur in the future. This is due less to the organizational form of the university than to narratology’s actual object of study: narration. Narratology’s aim to supply everything from answers to the most basic of narrative questions to methods which can be used to analyze any historic literary text renders it highly interesting for any number of diverse academic disciplines (as well as for other types of projects); through the study of narration, narratology attempts to provide orientation and to create meaning. The numerous attempts to define narratology are oriented towards the breadth of the benefits that various versions of the discipline claim to offer. While this survey of disciplinary developments might sound pessimistic, it should be noted that narratology has, particularly in the past two decades, created an excellent interdisciplinary and international network which is based on journals, book series, conferences, and research centers. This network helps to further research and organize the dissemination of narratological knowledge. In this manner narratology demonstrates all of the characteristics of a “flourishing discipline” (Fludernik 2000: 93). Codifications in the sense they are defined here range from elementary introductions to challenging handbooks. 19 These texts play a leading role in disciplinary developments in narratology. In the first case they reproduce narratological insights as valid and as generally accepted knowledge. Yet their functions extend beyond this. Depending on the kinds of reader they address, codifications assemble inventories of knowledge according to either systematic or didactic considerations. In this manner they create a sense of security about how to treat narratives of all kinds. It is primarily codifications which serve to solidify the discipline’s central kernel of theories, methods, and concepts at a given historical moment. Moreover, codifications function to rid the discipline of obsolete knowledge and they also deliver impulses for new research which is based on practice. Given strategically considerations, these codifications raise the profile of what oth–––––––––––– 19

Presently, the Hamburg Group is working on a project which is quite forward-looking in this regard. In cooperation with the publisher Walter de Gruyter and the Hamburg University Press, the Handbook of Narratology (2009) will not only be available online as Living Handbook of Narratology this year, but will also be constantly expanded and upgraded with further contributions; existing contributions can be continuously revised, supplemented and expanded. On this project cf. Gradmann/Hühn/Schönert (2006).

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erwise appears as an entirely heterodox “system of scientific practices” (Meister 2009: 329). Thus codifications work to increase both the general knowledge and acceptance of narratology. References The list of references is divided into four categories: works cited (verified in the text and in the footnotes with author’s name, year of publication and if required, page numbers); a selective bibliography of Introductions to Narratology; a selection of encyclopedias and thesauri; and a selection of anthologies comprised mainly of older foundational texts. Only newly edited works or works published after 1990s have been included. Works Cited Abbott 2002 Abbott, H. Porter: The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Angus/McLeod 2004 Angus, Lynne E./McLeod, John (eds.): The Handbook of Narrative and Psychotherapy: Practice, Theory, and Research (Thousand Oaks/London/New Delhi: Sage). Atkinson/Delamont 2006 Atkinson, Paul/Delamont, Sara (eds.): Narrative Methods, Sage Benchmarks in Social Research Methods, 4 vols. (London/ Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: Sage). Bal 1990 Bal, Mieke: “The Point of Narratology,” in Poetics Today 11.4: 727–53. Bal 1997 [1985] Bal, Mieke: Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, translated by Christine van Boheemen (Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press). Bal 1999 [1997] Bal, Mieke: Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 2nd ed. (Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press). Barthes 1975 [1966] Barthes, Roland: “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative,” in New Literary History 6: 237–72. Ben-Porat 2001 Ben-Porat, Ziva: “Benjamin Harshav (Hrushovski): A Personal Retrospect,” in Poetics Today 22.1: 245–51. Bogdal 2002 Bogdal, Klaus-Michael: “Wissenskanon und Kanonwissen,” in Literarische Kanonbildung, Text + Kritik IX/02, special issue, edited by Heinz Ludwig Arnold, 55–89 (München: edition text + kritik).

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Cornils/Schernus 2003 Cornils, Anja/Schernus, Wilhelm: “On the Relationship between the Theory of the Novel, Narrative Theory, and Narratology,” in What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory, edited by Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Müller, 137–74 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Daiute/Lightfoot 2004 Daiute, Colette/Lightfoot, Cynthia (eds.): Narrative Analysis: Studying the Development of Individuals in Society (Thousand Oaks/London/New Delhi: Sage). Diengott 1988 Diengott, Nilli: “Narratology and Feminism,” in Style 22.1: 42–51. Fludernik 1993 Fludernik, Monika: “Narratology in Context,” in Poetics Today 14: 729–61. Fludernik 2000 Fludernik, Monika: “Beyond Structuralism in Narratology: Recent Developments and New Horizons in Narrative Theory,” in Anglistik: Mitteilungen des Deutschen Anglistenverbandes 11.1: 83–96. Fludernik 2005 Fludernik, Monika: “Histories of Narrative Theory II: From Structuralism to the Present,” in A Companion to Narrative Theory, edited by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz, 36–59 (Malden/Oxford/Carleton: Blackwell). Fludernik 2009 Fludernik, Monika: An Introduction to Narratology, translated by Patricia HäuslerGreenfield and Monika Fludernik (London/New York: Routledge). Fludernik/Margolin 2004 Fludernik, Monika/Margolin, Uri: “Introduction,” in Style 38.2: 148–87. Gradmann/Hühn/Schönert 2006 Gradmann, Stefan/Hühn, Peter/Schönert, Jörg: “Ein netzgestütztes Living Handbook of Narratology im Open Access Modell,” in Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik 38.1: 109–14. Gross 2008 Gross, Sabine: “Surveying Narratology,” in Monatshefte 100.4: 534–55. Harshav 2007 Harshav, Benjamin: Explorations in Poetics (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Heinen 2009 Heinen, Sandra: “The Role of Narratology in Narrative Research across the Disciplines,” in Narratology in the Age of Cross-Disciplinary Research, edited by Sandra Heinen and Roy Sommer, 193–211 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Herman 2002 Herman, David (ed.): “Introduction: Narratologies,” in Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis, 1–30 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press) Hrushovski 1976 Hrushovski, Benjamin: “Poetics, Criticism, Science,” in PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 1: iii–xxxv. Hrushovski 1980 Hrushovski, Benjamin: “Theory of Narrative and Poetics of Fiction,” in Poetics Today 1.3: 5–6 and 208.

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Jahn 1995 Jahn, Manfred: “Narratologie: Methoden und Modelle der Erzähltheorie,” in Literaturwissenschaftliche Theorien, Modelle und Methoden, edited by Ansgar Nünning et al., 29–50 (Trier: WVT). Kindt/Müller 2003 Kindt, Tom/Müller, Hans-Harald (eds.): “Preface,” in What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory, V–VII (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Kindt/Müller 2003a Kindt, Tom/Müller, Hans-Harald (eds.): “Narrative Theory and/or/as Theory of Interpretation,” in What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory, 205–19 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Kreiswirth 1992 Kreiswirth, Martin: “Trusting the Tale: The Narrativist Turn in the Human Sciences,” in New Literary History 23: 629–57. Kreiswirth 2000 Kreiswirth, Martin: “Merely Telling Stories? Narrative and Knowledge in the Human Sciences,” in Poetics Today 21: 293–318. Lahn/Meister 2008 Lahn, Silke/Meister, Jan Christoph: Einführung in die Erzähltextanalyse (Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler). Martinez/Scheffel 1999 Martinez, Matias/Scheffel, Michael: Einführung in die Erzähltheorie (München: Beck). McHale/Ron 2005 McHale, Brian/Ron, Moshe: “Tel Aviv School of Poetics,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, edited by David Herman, Manfred Jahn and MarieLaure Ryan, 582–84 (London/New York: Routledge). McHale/Ronen 1990 McHale, Brian/Ronen, Ruth: “Narratology Revisited: Editor’s Note,” in Poetics Today 11.1: 269–70. Meister 2003 Meister, Jan Christoph: “Narratology as Discipline: A Case for Conceptual Fundamentalism,” in What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory, edited by Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Müller, 55–71 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Meister 2009 Meister, Jan Christoph: “Narratology,” in Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn, John Pier, Wolf Schmid and Jörg Schönert, 329–50 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Mintz 1985 Mintz, Alan: “On the Tel Aviv School of Poetics,” in Prooftexts 4: 215–35. Nünning 2003 Nünning, Ansgar: “Narratology or Narratologies? Taking Stock to Recent Developments, Critique and Modest Proposals for Future Usages of the Term,” in What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory, edited by Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Müller, 239–75 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter).

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Nünning 2009 Nünning, Ansgar: “Surveying Contextualist and Cultural Narratologies: Towards an Outline of Approaches, Concepts and Potentials,” in Narratology in the Age of Cross-Disciplinary Research, edited by Sandra Heinen and Roy Sommer, 48–70 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Nünning/Nünning 2002 Nünning, Ansgar/Nünning, Vera (eds.): “Von der strukturalistischen Narratologie zur ‘postklassischen’: Ein Überblick über neuere Ansätze und Entwicklungstendenzen,” in Neue Ansätze in der Erzähltheorie, 1–33 (Trier: WVT). Prince 1995 Prince, Gerald: “Narratology,” in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Volume VIII: From Formalism to Poststructuralism, edited by Raman Selden, 110–30 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Rimmon-Kenan 1976 Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith: “A Comprehensive Theory of Narrative: Genette’s Figures III and the Structuralist Study of Fiction,” in PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 1: 33–62. Rimmon-Kenan 2002 Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith: Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, 2nd ed. (London/New York: Routledge). Schönert 2001 Schönert, Jörg: “‘Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft’: Zur Geschichte eines Publikationstypus der letzten 50 Jahre,” in Jahrbuch der ungarischen Germanistik: 63–72. Schönert 2004 Schönert, Jörg: “Zum Status und zur disziplinären Reichweite von Narratologie,” in Geschichtsdarstellung: Medien—Methoden—Strategien, edited by Vittoria Borsò and Christoph Kann, 131–43 (Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau). Segal 2008 Segal, Eyal: “L’ ‘École de Tel Aviv’: Une approche rhétorico-fonctionnaliste du récit,” in Vox Poetica. Sternberg 2001 Sternberg, Meir: “How Narrativity Makes a Difference,” in Narrative 9.2: 115– 22. Sommer 2004 Sommer, Roy: “Beyond (Classical) Narratology: New Approaches to Narrative Theory,” in European Journal of English Studies 8.1: 3–11. Sommer 2004a Sommer, Roy: “‘Cross the Border—Close the Gap’: Towards an Intermedial Narratology,” in European Journal of English Studies 8.1: 81–103. Stüssel 1993 Stüssel, Kerstin: “Zwischen Kompendium und ‘Einführung’: Zur Rolle der Lehrbücher in den Geisteswissenschaften,” in Geist, Geld und Wissenschaft. Arbeits- und Darstellungsformen von Literaturwissenschaft, edited by Peter J. Brenner, 203–30 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp). Todorov 1969 Todorov, Tzvetan: Grammaire du Décameron (The Hague: Mouton).

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Introductions (Selection) Abbott 2002 Abbott, H. Porter: The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, reprinted 2003, 2004; 2nd ed. 2008, reprinted 2009 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Bal 1997 Bal, Mieke: Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 2nd ed., reprinted 1999, 2002; 3rd ed. 2009; 1st 1985, reprinted 1988, 1992, 1994, 1999 (Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press) Cobley 2001 Cobley, Paul: Narrative, reprinted 2003, 2008 (London/New York: Routledge). Fludernik 2006 Fludernik, Monika: Einführung in die Erzähltheorie, 2nd ed. 2008 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft). Fludernik 2009 Fludernik, Monika: An Introduction to Narratology, translated by Patricia HäuslerGreenfield and Monika Fludernik (London/New York: Routledge). Herman 2009 Herman, David: Basic Elements of Narrative (Malden/Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell). Herman/Vervaeck 2001 Herman, Luc/Vervaeck, Bart: Vertelduivels: Handboek verhaalanalyse, 2nd ed. 2002 (Brussel: Vubpress; Nijmegen: Vantilt). Herman/Vervaeck 2005 Herman, Luc/Vervaeck, Bart: Handbook of Narrative Analysis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Keen 2003 Keen, Suzanne: Narrative Form (Houndmills/New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Lahn/Meister 2008 Lahn, Silke/Meister, Jan Christoph: Einführung in die Erzähltextanalyse (Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler). Mahne 2007 Mahne, Nicole: Transmediale Erzähltheorie: Eine Einführung (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht). Martinez/Scheffel 1999 Martinez, Matias/Scheffel, Michael: Einführung in die Erzähltheorie, reprinted 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009 (München: Beck). Neumann/Nünning 2008 Neumann, Birgit/Nünning, Ansgar: An Introduction to the Study of Narrative Fiction (Stuttgart: Klett). Rimmon-Kenan 1983 Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith: Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, reprinted five times (London: Methuen); 1989, reprinted 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2001; 2nd ed. 2002, reprinted 2003, 2004, 2005 (London/New York: Routledge). Till (in press) Till, Dietmar: Narratologie: Eine Einführung (Berlin: de Gruyter). Wenzel 2004 Wenzel, Peter (ed.): Einführung in die Erzähltextanalyse: Kategorien, Modell, Probleme (Trier: WVT).

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Dictionaries, Encyclopedia, Handbooks (Selection) Herman 2007 Herman, David: The Cambridge Companion to Narrative (Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press). Herman/Jahn/Ryan 2005 Herman, David/Jahn, Manfred/Ryan, Marie-Laure (eds.): Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (London/New York: Routledge). Hühn/Pier/Schmid/Schönert 2009 Hühn, Peter/Pier, John/Schmid, Wolf/Schönert, Jörg: Handbook of Narratology (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Nünning/Nünning (in press) Nünning, Vera/Nünning, Ansgar: Narrative Theory (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Phelan/Rabinowitz 2005 Phelan, James/Rabinowitz, Peter J.: A Companion to Narrative Theory (Malden/Oxford/Carlton: Blackwell). Prince 1987 Prince, Gerlad: Dictionary of Narratology, revised edition 2003 (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press).

Reader (Selection) Bal 2004 Bal, Mieke (ed.): Narrative Theory: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies, 4 vols. (London/New York: Routledge). McQuillan 2000 McQuillan, Martin: The Narrative Reader (London/New York: Routledge). Onega/García Landa 1996 Onega, Susan/García Landa, José Ángel (eds.): Narratology: An Introduction, 2nd ed. 1999 (London/New York: Longman). Roberts 2001 Roberts, Geoffrey (ed.): The History and Narrative Reader (London/New York: Routledge). Wagner 2002 Wagner, Karl (ed.): Moderne Erzähltheorie: Grundlagentexte von Henry James bis zur Gegenwart (Wien: Vacultas).

EYAL SEGAL (Tel Aviv)

The “Tel Aviv School”: A Rhetorical-Functional Approach to Narrative Abstract This essay offers a survey of a distinctive approach within the study of narrative, which is manifested in the work of several narrative theorists from Israel, all associated with the Department of Poetics and Comparative Literature at Tel Aviv University. The cornerstone of this approach is the conception of narrative first and foremost as a communicative act, taking account of both the reader, for whom the text is constructed, as well as the (implied) author, who fashions the text in order to achieve his/her communicative goals. This rhetorical orientation goes hand in hand with a functionalist one, aiming at the exploration of the goals or motivations of narrative forms, instead of merely describing and classifying them. As concrete demonstrations of this approach, the essay provides overviews of Tamar Yacobi’s work on unreliable narration, Meir Sternberg’s work on narrativity, and Eyal Segal’s work on narrative closure, which applies Sternberg’s concept of narrativity to the study of closure. 1. Introduction In this essay I will offer a short survey of an important approach within the study of narrative, which is manifested in the work of several narrative theorists from Israel, all associated with the Department of Poetics and Comparative Literature at Tel Aviv University. The department was founded by Benjamin Hrushovski in the mid-1960s, and began to have an international impact on narratology and literary studies at large from the mid-70s onwards. 1 Let me begin by formulating some of the basic principles guiding the “Tel Aviv approach” to narrative and to the study of literature in general. –––––––––––– 1

A central role in this development was played by the founding of the Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics in 1975, as well as by the launching of two English-language journals: the short-lived PTL (Poetics and Theory of Literature), and its successor Poetics Today. For a more detailed historical survey, see McHale/Ron (2005).

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Its cornerstone, I would maintain, is the conception of narrative first and foremost as a communicative act. In its early stages of development, namely, the 1960s and the early 1970s, this approach obviously intersected both with Wayne Booth’s influential Rhetoric of Fiction (1961) and with the so-called “reader response” criticism. The latter orientation emerged almost simultaneously in several places: some of its varied manifestations are the early writings of Stanley Fish (1980), Roland Barthes’s S/Z (1974 [1970]), and “The Death of the Author” (1977 [1968]) which supposedly leads to the “birth of the reader,” and the “Constance School” (cf. Iser 1974; Jauss 1982 [1977]). I would even describe Jonathan Culler’s influential Structuralist Poetics (1975) as a reinterpretation of structuralism from a reader-oriented perspective, centered on the concept of “literary competence.” However, my main concern here is less with the historical details than with a broad principled comparison. Like all of these approaches, the studies produced by members of the Tel Aviv school foregrounded the reader’s activity and, more distinctively, the dynamics of the reading process. However, I would also maintain that compared to most of the other reader-oriented approaches, the Tel Aviv school takes a more balanced view of the communicative act, one that accounts for both of its participants: the reader, for whom the text is constructed, as well as the (implied) author, who fashions the text in order to achieve his/her communicative goals. Or, to put it a bit differently, it examines both how the reader constructs meaning from the text and the text’s resources for guiding or manipulating this construction. A clear example of this balanced approach in practice can be found in one of the school’s seminal essays, “The King through Ironic Eyes” (1986, originally published in Hebrew in 1968), which was written jointly by Menakhem Perry and Meir Sternberg. The essay performs a close reading of the biblical story of David, Uriah and Bathsheva in the book of Samuel, and includes an extensive discussion of the gaps created by the text and the reader’s gap-filling activity. The biblical story dramatizes the nature of this active sense-making performed by the reader especially well, since its highly laconic style leaves a lot of room for the reconstruction of implicit meanings. However, alongside the emphasis Sternberg and Perry put on the reader’s role in this context, they also consistently point out the various ways in which the text controls and directs the reading process. 2 In this regard, the work done by Tel Aviv Narratology—and especially by Meir Sternberg—might be said to follow, to a large extent, a rhetorical orientation such as that demonstrated by Wayne Booth. However, 1F

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In this context, see also the telling subtitle of Perry (1979): “How the Order of the Text Creates Its Meaning.”

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Booth’s near-obsession with matters of ethical judgment leads to his dealing with “point of view” to the exclusion of almost any other issue. By contrast, the Tel Aviv notion of “rhetoric” is far more wide-ranging. It includes, in principle, everything communicated by the text and influencing (or being perceived by) the reader. This rhetorical orientation goes hand in hand with a functionalist one. Instead of merely describing and classifying forms, Tel Aviv narratology explores their goals or motivations. In doing so, it is guided by the “Proteus Principle” as formulated by Meir Sternberg. According to this principle, there are no package deals in narrative—or in communication in general, for that matter—least of all between surface forms or features and their effects, or functions. In different contexts, the same form may fulfill different functions, and a similar function can be fulfilled (or a similar effect created) by different forms. In the rest of this essay, I would like to present a sample of the work done by Tel Aviv Narratology, so as to provide some concrete demonstrations of what I have been outlining so far, in relation to a variety of topics. I will begin with Tamar Yacobi’s work on what is usually considered a “point of view” topic—unreliable narration—and then move on to Meir Sternberg’s work on what is usually considered a “plot” topic—the definition of narrative and “narrativity.” Finally, I will briefly present the basics of my own study of narrative closure. This may be considered as an application of Sternberg’s concept of narrativity to the issue of closure. Therefore, it represents an example of the productivity of this approach and how it can be extended. 2. A Theory of Unreliable Narration Tamar Yacobi’s (1981, 1987, 2001, 2005) conception of unreliable narration primarily differs from most other conceptions of that phenomenon (beginning with that of Wayne Booth) in viewing it not as a fixed character trait attached to the portrait of a narrator, but rather as a reading hypothesis formulated by the reader, in order to resolve all sorts of textual problems. As such, unreliability is never a “given” and its postulation is always an interpretive, hypothetical move. By making this move, we (as readers) set in motion an integration mechanism which brings discordant elements into a coherent pattern by attributing them to the peculiarities of the speaker or observer through whom the world is mediated. We then go on to explain how this mediator’s deficiencies—e.g. incompetence, untruthfulness, unawareness, misjudgment—are manipulated for a variety of reasons: rhetorical (notably irony of some kind), psychological, thematic,

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etc. Through making a reverse hypothesis of congruity, we can, moreover, deduce and explain reliable narration. This perspectival integration mechanism is, in fact, just one of a set of five possible—and competing—types of mechanisms, or logics of resolution, which can be activated by the reader. Let me briefly outline the other four, in order to clarify their diversity: – The genetic mechanism, which relegates fictive oddities and inconsistencies to the production of the text and its circumstances; to put it bluntly, it “blames the author.” This mechanism is actually, at times, quite similar to the perspectival one, in that it, too, explains textual oddities at the expense of someone who is perceived as responsible for the story as told. There is a difference in the identity of the responsible party, however. A genetic explanation often imputes some loss of control over the text to the author, while to hypothesize a fallible narrator is to assume the ironic mastery of an author in full control, operating as a communicator behind the scenes. – The generic mechanism, which appeals to a certain model (or simplification, one might say) of reality, encoded within generic conventions, such as the causal freedoms of comedy, vis-à-vis the stricter causal logic typical of the tragic plot. – The functional mechanism, which imposes order on the deviant in terms of the ends requiring or justifying that deviance. Whatever looks odd is motivated in terms of the work’s purpose—local or overall, literary or otherwise. – The existential mechanism, which refers incongruities to the “objective” level of the fictive world and its inner logic—notably to canons of probability that deviate from those of reality. This contrasts with the “subjective” nature of the perspectival mechanism which, as already noted, refers incongruities to the mediation of the fictional world by a narrator or an observer. Let me now suggest some of the benefits of Yacobi’s approach. First of all, in the spirit of breaking automatic linkages between form and function which I have mentioned earlier, this approach dissolves some of the unjustified package deals which are still prevalent with regard to the characterization of narrators. Among them, especially prevalent is the automatic linkage of unreliability with “first-person” or “homodiegetic” narration, on the one hand, and of reliability with “third-person” or “heterodiegetic” narration, on the other hand (this issue is elaborated in Yacobi 2001). In addition, Yacobi’s approach places the issue of unreliability within a more comprehensive context than is typical for other accounts of this phenomenon. This enables us, among other things, to map and correlate

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diverse interpretive positions regarding the same text under the umbrella of one theory of interpretation, wide-ranging yet specifically narrativeoriented. One can find a large-scale example of such a (meta-) critical undertaking in Yacobi (2005), which is a case study in the reception of Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata, a text which has generated a lot of controversy with regard to the question of its narrator’s reliability. 3 Let me demonstrate the point more briefly with regard to the famous interpretive controversy over Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. This controversy focuses on the question of whether the ghosts that appear in the story told by the governess are real or a product of her neurotic imagination. In terms of Yacobi’s model, this is clearly a case of a clash between the perspectival integration mechanism, which explains (or, for the pro-apparitionists, explains away) the ghosts as a product of unreliable narration, and the existential mechanism, which attributes an objective existence to the ghosts within the represented world of the text. (The latter mechanism is supported, in this case, by the generic mechanism of a “ghost story,” and its specific canons of probability.) However, this is not the end of the story, since at a certain stage of the reception history of James’s novella another hypothesis acquired a rather dominant status, which, I believe, it still enjoys today. This hypothesis—or meta-hypothesis—maintains that the text is systematically ambiguous, and that the ongoing debate between the contrasting interpretations I have mentioned is, in fact, a reflection of this ambiguous structure, or principle of organization. The problematic status of the ghosts is thus explained by yet another integration mechanism—namely, the functional one, which posits ambiguity as the work’s purpose. 2F

3. A Theory of Narrativity I would like now to turn our attention to Meir Sternberg’s approach to the definition and understanding of narrative, and especially of “narrativity”— –––––––––––– 3

It should be noted that Yacobi does not consider all possible integration mechanisms, or the interpretive hypotheses generated by them, as necessarily valid or equally probable in each concrete case. Thus, in addition to mapping different interpretive approaches to the Kreutzer Sonata according to the coordinates of her model, Yacobi also argues in her abovementioned essay at some length for the greater likelihood of a certain interpretation among them. According to this interpretation, the narrator is the author’s reliable spokesman, and therefore “there are no significant inner tensions in the telling as such, and those that still remain should be integrated between the existential mechanism (his [the narrator’s] problems represent a human condition) and the functional principle (apparent discordances are effective in context)” (2005: 112).

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as what constitutes the essence of narrative. (This approach is elaborated in Sternberg 1978, 1990, 1992, 2001.) Unlike most narratological approaches, Sternberg’s defines this essence of narrative not in the mimetic terms of represented or narrated action, but rather in the rhetoricalcommunicative terms of narrative interest. This interest is aroused in the reader by the creation of informational gaps regarding any aspect of the represented world of the story—be it an event, a motive for action, a character-trait, a relationship, a viewpoint, a picture of society, or even an entire reality-model. Most basically, such gaps result from the interplay between two temporalities: that of the lifelike sequence of represented events, and that of its artful disclosure along the telling/reading sequence; or, in short, the mimetic and the textual. 4 Sternberg differentiates among three fundamental types of narrative interest, according to a combination of two basic criteria [see table]. First, does the information withheld from the reader belong to the narrative past or future (both measured relative to what is perceived at any given point along the textual sequence as the narrative’s “present”)? And second, is the reader aware that information is being withheld from him/her? (In other words, does s/he know that s/he doesn’t know?) An awareness of not knowing would create an expectation concerning the missing information. This would result either in suspense—if it relates to the narrative future, 5 or in curiosity—if it bears on the narrative past. 6 However, if the reader is unaware that an informational gap exists, that gap will become perceptible and effective only if it is unexpectedly disclosed, thereby creating surprise.7 Note that only three out of the four 3F

4F

5F

6F

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5

6 7

The emphasis on the interplay between those two temporalities is not unique, in itself, to Sternberg. In various versions, it is actually quite common in narrative studies since the Russian Formalists formulated the distinction between “fabula” and “syuzhet.” Sternberg’s approach, however, is distinguished in this context by its consistent rhetorical-functional perspective; see his detailed discussions of this point in Sternberg (1990, 1992), as well as my own comparison below of his approach with Genette’s influential taxonomic-atomistic orientation. “Will Hamlet act, Tom Jones hang, Raskolnikov confess, Emma Bovary ruin herself, Isabel Archer learn her lesson, Joe Christmas find peace, Dowell gain self-knowledge, the Ramsays visit the lighthouse, Charles Smithson track down the French lieutenant’s woman? Will love prevail, the detective solve the crime; will the victory fall to the hero or the villain, to the individual or to society?” (Sternberg 1992: 527). “Who killed old Karamazov? Why does Iago victimize Othello? How has Odysseus fared since leaving Troy? Are the ghosts real or hallucinatory? What are we to make of the conflicting Rashomon versions?” (Sternberg 1992: 525). “Jonah refuses to announce Nineveh’s doom, not out of pity, it transpires, but from fear for his prophetic image […] the metamorphosis of the Golden Dustman in Our Mutual Friend from paragon into miser and back again […] a show of love turning out to be a cover for hate and/or the reverse, Dostoyevsky-style […] the initial contrast between the boardinghouse and the beau monde in Père Goriot veers round into correspondence […] the

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boxes in the table below are filled; this indicates that there is a basic asymmetry between past and future. Naturally, one cannot be surprised about something which has not yet happened. 4. The Three Master Types of Narrative Interest Future Suspense (Prospection)

X

Past Curiosity (Retrospection)

Expectation (awareness of informational gaps)

Surprise (Recognition)

Lack of Expectation (lack of awareness of informational gaps)

In this context, it may be useful to draw a further distinction between two types of surprise. When the existence of a gap in what was earlier considered as a fully revealed past is discovered, the gap itself may on the one hand be filled-in at the same time. On the other hand, such a gap may also remain open (or at least not unambiguously closed) after its existence is revealed, thereby creating curiosity. For example, a sudden discovery of the existence of a dark secret that lies in a character’s past may occur during the revelation of the secret itself, or leave the nature of that secret unknown. In both cases there would be a surprise, but only in the latter would it leave or generate a “trace” of curiosity. In sum, the three master types of narrative interest account for what distinguishes narrativity from all other discursive forces, and a text in which they are dominant (in isolation or combined) would be defined as a narrative. Moreover, these basic forces of narrativity assimilate everything else in a narrative text to their dynamics.8 7F

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bursting of the supernatural, as in the grotesque or the ghost story, upon a frame of existence previously remarkable for its naturalism” (Sternberg 1992: 523). See Sternberg’s (2001: 119–21) demonstration of how such an assimilation may operate even with regard to discursive components like descriptive phrases and equivalent patterns, which supposedly gravitate toward the anti-narrative pole because of their static or “spatial” nature.

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Allow me to briefly demonstrate the difference between such a rhetorical-functional approach to narrative, which places a crucial emphasis on the workings of narrative interest, and another—very influential— narratological approach: Gérard Genette’s, which is essentially nonfunctional and focuses on taxonomy of forms. In this context, I would like to concentrate on the phenomenon of what is termed by Genette “prolepsis.” At an early stage of his chapter on “Order” in Narrative Discourse (1980 [1972]), he defines it as “narrating or evoking in advance an event that will take place later” (40). When discussing this phenomenon in detail, he analyzes cases where events belonging to the narrative future are told in advance of their “natural” place in the chronological order of the narration, whether in detail or as short “advance notices.” He subdivides and classifies them according to criteria which he also uses to examine other types of chronological order-breaking, such as whether they are “external” or “internal” to the story, what is their “reach” (how far they reach into the future), or their “extent” (how long is the story duration which they cover). On the face of it, this is a very natural and non-problematic procedure of analysis. However, when one starts to think about “prolepsis” in functional terms rather than in terms of a specific textual form or operation (such as an explicit “advance notice”), the picture radically changes; the focus shifts to the proleptic function of revealing parts of the narrative future to the reader. It then becomes clear that the “proleptic” phenomenon Genette deals with constitutes only a part—and not necessarily the most important one—of a much wider spectrum of means, all having in common the end of channeling the reader’s expectations toward the narrative future by imparting some information about it. For example, this is the basic way in which the reader’s familiarity with generic conventions operates, sometimes very strongly indeed (think of the highly elaborate and codified system of future-directed conventions operating in the classical detective story), without having to be explicitly mentioned in the text at all. To give another example, related to a more specific poetics—that of biblical narrative—this is the way in which what Sternberg terms the “proleptic epithet” operates. As he demonstrates in The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (1985), no formal epithet denoting a trait which is attributed to a character at the beginning of a biblical story remains redundant or even static in relation to the story’s development. Rather, it always bursts into action and plays an important part in the plot, thus acquiring an implicitly proleptic function. From a complementary perspective, let us note that the same textual feature of an explicit “advance notice” can fulfill different functions with regard to the manipulation of the reader’s narrative interest. Most ob-

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viously, it can be used to neutralize the reader’s interest in a certain future development by offering a full advance disclosure, or to reinforce interest in such a development by imparting only scant and suggestive information about it. Thus the reader’s narrative appetite is whetted rather than satisfied. This type of quest for functional correlations extends beyond the scope of Genette’s approach. Thus, at the end of Narrative Discourse, Genette declares that he intentionally avoids “a final ‘synthesis’ in which all the characteristic features of Proustian narrative will meet and justify themselves to each other” (1980: 266). It appears, however, that the atomistic nature of his narratology simply does not let him perform such a grand synthesis, at least so long as his analysis remains within its boundaries. 5. A Theory of Narrative Closure Finally, I would like to present the basics of my own study of narrative closure (Segal 2007a, 2007b). This study aims at a synthesis of the general conception of closure as presented by Barbara Herrnstein Smith in her classical study Poetic Closure (1968) and Sternberg’s model of narrativity. Let me begin by clarifying what I mean by “closure” via a differentiation from the term “ending.” When we say that a narrative (text) has “ended,” we may simply mean that the tale has reached its termination point, in which case we are referring to an unavoidable (and hence one might say “obvious”) phenomenon, since every narrative text has to end somewhere. On the other hand, we might be referring to the sense of an ending, as in the title of Frank Kermode’s (1967) well-known book. In this case we are dealing not with the textual termination-point itself, but rather with a certain effect, or perceptual quality, created by the text: one of stable conclusiveness, finality, or “clinch,” to use Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s formulation. In such a case, what we are talking about would better be termed “closure.” This is certainly not an unavoidable phenomenon, but rather one of the creations which may demand the use of quite complex and sophisticated textual strategies. Some texts may fail to create or intentionally refrain from creating it, and in this case we would be referring to “openness”—a concept which still belongs to the same metaphor or semantic field. One of the main advantages Sternberg’s model has for the understanding of narrative closure are the communicative-rhetorical terms in which his concept of narrativity is defined, since those are the same kind of terms in which the concept of closure is defined, at least according to

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Smith’s approach. Therefore, the connection between the two can be made quite readily. To bring this out, let me quote a key paragraph from Smith’s study, in which she defines closure in relation to the dynamic structure of the text as a whole: It will be useful to regard the structure of a poem as consisting of the principles by which it is generated or according to which one element follows another. The description of a poem’s structure, then, becomes the answer to the question, “What keeps it going?” […] It allows the possibility of a corollary question, namely, “What stops it from going?” and immediately suggests the close relationship between poetic structure and closure. (Smith 1968: 4)

If the key question one needs to answer in order to describe a text’s structure is “what keeps it going?,” then Sternberg’s concept of narrativity may be said to supply the fundamental answer with regard to a narrative text. Namely, narrative interest, in its three master types, is what keeps narrative going. The complementary question posed by Smith—“what stops it from going?”—directs us to an understanding of how closure is created (or not). In terms of Sternberg’s model, the natural answer to this question is: the cessation, or termination, of narrative interest. To give a simple example, the dominant type of narrative interest in a classical detective story is curiosity. It derives from the mystery surrounding the crime which was committed prior to the beginning of the investigation (and hence is part of the narrative past). Curiosity is, however, combined with the sense of suspense regarding the outcome of the investigation, which concerns the narrative future. The successful termination of the investigation by the solution of the crime mystery typically resolves (or ends) simultaneously, on a global scale, both curiosity and suspense. Conversely, narrative “openness” results from significant gaps relating to the represented world that remain open—or at least not definitely closed, even at the end of a text; in other words, it results from permanent gaps. These can be both suspense gaps, relating to the narrative future, and curiosity gaps, relating to the narrative past. Out of the three basic kinds of narrative interest, openness can be described only in terms of suspense and curiosity, since it entails the reader’s awareness that relevant information is lacking. Narrative openness, therefore, cannot manifest itself in surprise per se, though it can certainly be caused by it, or follow it. This happens when we have to do with the sort of surprise that reveals a gap’s existence without filling it in, thus leaving or generating a “trace” of expectation for further information. Strictly speaking, what I have been defining is not the (non-)closure of narrative but rather that of narrativity. That is, I do not claim that an explanation in terms of (non-)termination of narrative interest should exhaustively elucidate everything that happens within a narrative text in

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terms of (non-)closure. For example, the text may use all sorts of linguistic/stylistic devices, which in themselves are not specific to narrative. However, inasmuch as narrativity is dominant within the text, an explanation of closure in terms of manipulations of narrative interest will always be crucially important. It would also allow us to understand better how the essential narrative elements interact with other significant discursive forces working for—or against—the cessation of narrative dynamics. This definition of the conditions for narrative closure or openness demonstrates that the distinction between a “closed” and an “open” ending is actually very crude in its most basic form, and should not be regarded as (or reduced to) a simple dichotomy. Rather, the distinction should be refined into a finely gradated (and multidimensional) scale, which takes into account the varied aspects of narrativity. This includes different lines of narrative interest developed in a text, their interrelations and relative hierarchies, the extent to which each of them reaches closure, and the combined effect of all these factors. Following the presentation of the theoretical model outlined above, my study goes on to examine in detail the structures of narrative interest typical of three different corpora, which illustrate issues of closure particularly well: first, the detective genre as a paradigm of strong closure; next, the picaresque novel; and, finally, the works of Franz Kafka. These last two are analyzed as cases where the basic structure of narrative interest causes fundamental problems with regard to the creation of closure. In order to give a concrete demonstration of how the model I have outlined might work, let me briefly elaborate on the detective and picaresque genres, since they provide us with a clear and instructive contrast. As has already been noted above, the typical closural mechanism of a detective story—at least in its classical form—depends on the investigation successfully terminating in the solution of the crime mystery. This resolves simultaneously, on a global scale, both the major curiosity gaps (relating to the past mystery) and the major suspense gaps (relating to how the investigation would end). Why, then, does the closure produced thereby tend to be perceived as especially strong? First of all, this is related to the extremely “single-minded,” goal-oriented nature of the detective plot. The interest of the reader is very much focused on a single issue (the crime mystery) throughout—so that when this issue is finally resolved by the solution of the mystery, the reader’s sense of “relief” is especially powerful. Next, turning to examine the nature of the main gaps in the detective plot, which typically revolve around the criminal’s identity and the whole complex of the circumstances of the crime, we may note two complementary aspects in which they contribute to the closural force of the detective

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plot’s end. On the one hand, the information required to fill-in these gaps is usually of a very simple, well-defined and specific nature. Because of this high degree of specificity, general frames of knowledge (whether relating to literature itself or to extra-textual reality) can only be of relatively little help to the reader in his gap-filling activity, so that the range of uncertainty regarding these gaps remains relatively wide, correspondingly intensifying the craving for additional information. On the other hand, because of the rather simple and direct nature of the gaps, they can be very straightforwardly and unambiguously resolved by some highly concrete and well-defined pieces of information, once the appropriate moment arrives (however twisted is the route leading toward this resolution). Yet another group of factors which contribute to the strength of closure in the detective story is related to the special density of retrospective patterning typically operating at its end. Firstly, the solution to the mystery is, as a rule, not spread along lengthy and/or non-continuous sections of the text, but rather packed into a relatively short section at its very end. Secondly, according to generic conventions the solution should also be highly surprising, thus supplying the reader with some crucial information that was not only concealed from him/her, but that its very concealment was concealed until that point. But in this context, there again seems to be a complementary factor operating. Surprising as the solution to the mystery is, according to classical “fair-play” conventions it should also be prepared in advance by various clues planted throughout the sequence. Such clues are seemingly meant to help the reader in solving the mystery—but in fact, when the practice of major authors in the genre is carefully examined, it turns out that the stricter those authors were with regard to planting clues in their narratives, the more inventive they became in developing methods of misdirection. Those methods are aimed at preventing the reader from making actual use of such clues to solve the mystery, so as not to compromise the final effect of surprise. As Dorothy Sayers has put it from a practitioner’s point of view: “Supposing… he [the reader] interprets all the clues accurately on his own account, what becomes of the surprise? How can we at the same time show the reader everything and yet legitimately obfuscate him as to its meaning?” (Sayers 1946 [1928]: 97). Therefore, a case can be made to the effect that the main function of the clues is retrospective, and that their real rhetorical purpose is to lend after-the-fact credibility or probability to the solution. This also enhances the force of closure, since as the clues are revealed they provide connections not having been made by the reader before (often while exposing connections that have been made as erroneous), thus lending a greater degree of coherence to the plot sequence and intensifying retrospective patterning.

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The picaresque genre, which is characterized by a radically episodic plot, exemplifies a type of plot structure—and narrative interest—which stands at the opposite pole to that exemplified by the detective genre. Episodic plot is defined, as a rule, in mimetic terms—those of weak, or non-existent, causal linkages between units of represented action; but it can also be described in rhetorical terms of an emphasis on short-term narrative interest, with each discriminated “episode” possessing a high degree of autonomy in this regard, at the expense of the whole. Thus, instead of the single, long-term focus of narrative interest which dominates the detective plot, the picaresque plot is typified by a highly “dispersed” type of narrative interest, which reflects the erratic and chaotic nature of the protagonist’s (the pícaro’s) existence. Unlike the strong closure typical of the detective narrative, the picaresque novel is notorious for its tendency to openness, or weak closure. The short-term structure of narrative interest as described above may be said to endow the typical picaresque plot with “inherent” openness, in the sense that it results from the very choice of the basic plot type, without depending on further manipulations by the author. 9 The main reason for this inherent openness seems to lie, somewhat paradoxically, in the multiplicity of “minor” closures generated throughout the text, due to the relatively strong termination of narrative interest in each episode. The basic problem which the author faces in such a case, if s/he desires to fashion a strong closure for the text as a whole, is not how to generate closure for the last episode per se; rather, it is how to turn this closure into a global one, thereby “justifying” the cessation of the story of the pícaro’s life at this specific point rather than at any other. From the genre’s beginnings at the 16th century onwards, picaresque novels have employed various devices in order to counteract this tendency to openness and provide a strong and non-arbitrary closure in the novel’s end, but rarely without causing some problematic compositional, as well as thematic, repercussions in the process. 8F

6. Postscript To end on a personal note: at the beginning of my essay I mentioned “The King through Ironic Eyes,” which is the earliest published item in ––––––––––––

9

A detective story may also feature narrative openness, even of a radical nature, if the crime mystery which is investigated throughout remains unsolved. In such a case, however, the openness would usually be perceived as resulting from the author’s intentional—and provocative—avoidance of employing the closural resources built into the detective plot.

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my bibliography. Reading this article in high school played an important part in my decision to study literature, so being now able to place beside it a bibliographical item of my own is very significant for me. I hope it would not be too presumptuous to say that it also points to the vitality of the approach to narrative (and literature in general) which it has been my goal to present here. References Barthes 1974 [1970] Barthes, Roland: S/Z, translated by Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang). Barthes 1977 [1968] Barthes, Roland: “The Death of the Author,” in Image, Music, Text, translated by Stephen Heath, 142–48 (New York : Hill and Wang). Booth 1961 Booth, Wayne C.: The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Culler 1975 Culler, Jonathan: Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). Fish 1980 Fish, Stanley E.: Is There a Text in this Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Genette 1980 [1972] Genette, Gérard: Narrative Discourse, translated by Jane E. Lewin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). Iser 1974 Iser, Wolfgang: The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press). Jauss 1982 [1977] Jauss, Hans R.: Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics, translated by Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Kermode 1967 Kermode, Frank: The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (London: Oxford University Press). McHale/Ron 2005 McHale, Brian/Ron, Moshe: “Tel Aviv School of Narrative Poetics,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, edited by David Herman, Manfred Jahn and Marie-Laure Ryan, 582–84 (London: Routledge). Perry 1979 Perry, Menakhem: “Literary Dynamics: How the Order of the Text Creates Its Meaning [with an Analysis of Faulkner’s ‘A Rose for Emily’],” in Poetics Today 1.1–2: 35–64, 311–61. Perry/Sternberg 1986 [1968] Perry, Menakhem/Sternberg, Meir: “The King through Ironic Eyes: Biblical Narrative and the Literary Reading Process,” in Poetics Today 7.2: 275–322.

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Sayers 1946 [1928] Sayers, Dorothy: “Foreword to The Omnibus of Crime,” in The Art of the Mystery Story, edited by Howard Haycraft, 71–109 (New York: Grosset & Dunlap). Segal 2007a Segal, Eyal: The Problem of Narrative Closure: How Stories Are (Not) Finished. PhD diss., Tel Aviv University [in Hebrew]. Segal 2007b Segal, Eyal: “Narrativity and the Closure of Event Sequences,” in Amsterdam International Electronic Journal for Cultural Narratology 4. Smith 1968 Smith, Barbara H.: Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (Chicago: Chicago University Press). Sternberg 1978 Sternberg, Meir: Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press). Sternberg 1985 Sternberg, Meir: The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Sternberg 1990 Sternberg, Meir: “Telling in Time (I): Chronology and Narrative Theory,” in Poetics Today 11.4: 901–48. Sternberg 1992 Sternberg, Meir: “Telling in Time (II): Chronology, Teleology, Narrativity,” in Poetics Today 13.3: 463–541. Sternberg 2001 Sternberg, Meir: “How Narrativity Makes a Difference,” in Narrative 9.2: 115– 22. Yacobi 1981 Yacobi, Tamar: “Fictional Reliability as a Communicative Problem,” in Poetics Today 2.2: 113–26. Yacobi 1987 Yacobi, Tamar: “Narrative and Normative Pattern: On Interpreting Fiction,” in Journal of Literary Studies 3: 18–41. Yacobi 2001 Yacobi, Tamar: “Package-Deals in Fictional Narrative: The Case of the Narrator’s (Un)Reliability,” in Narrative 9.2: 223–29. Yacobi 2005 Yacobi, Tamar: “Authorial Rhetoric, Narratorial (Un)Reliability, Divergent Readings: Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata,” in A Companion to Narrative Theory, edited by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz, 108–23 (Malden, MA: Blackwell).

SYLVIE PATRON (University of Paris 7-Denis Diderot)

Enunciative Narratology: A French Speciality 1 Abstract This essay is intended as an introduction to “French enunciative narratology” or the theory thus termed on the basis of a certain number of criteria presented in the introduction: the fact that it is produced by linguists; the fact that it aims to remedy the shortcomings of Genettian narratology in the domain of linguistics; the fact that it refers to the work of enunciative linguistics, applied to the corpus of fictional narratives. The first section of the essay concerns the historical and methodological relations, or lack of relations, between enunciative linguistics and narratology (in Genette’s sense). The second section examines the contributions made by enunciative narratology to narratology or narrative theory. This section looks, successively, at Laurent Danon-Boileau’s definition of an enunciative schema, Alain Rabatel’s linguistic (enunciative and textual) approach to point of view and the broad outlines of Rivara’s enunciative narratology. The third section focuses on the limits of enunciative narratology and argues that it relies on an erroneous or ambiguous concept of the narrator, which is inherited from narratology. This section concludes with several suggestions for moving beyond the limits of enunciative narratology by pushing linguistic-enunciative analysis even further and casting off the more debatable legacies of narratology once and for all. 1. Introduction The term “enunciative narratology” is taken from René Rivara, author of La Langue du récit: Introduction à la narratologie énonciative (Rivara 2000: 13). 2 It refers to a study of the form or certain aspects of the form of fictional narratives (narrator, point of view, reported speech, etc.) with reference to contemporary enunciative linguistics. Indeed, Rivara remarks that narra–––––––––––– 1 2

Translated from the French by Anne Marsella. See also Rivara (2000: 46–47 and passim, 2004: 87–88). See also the title of De Mattia and Joly (2001). Due to length constraints, I have opted to reduce footnotes to a minimum (sources or clarifications deemed necessary by the editors). An extended version of this article can be found in Patron (2009: 263–83).

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tology has borrowed almost nothing from the methods and concepts of structural linguistics and generative grammar. 3 Perhaps to the surprise of narratologists used to speaking about “structuralist narratology,” this view is largely shared by the community of linguists (see, for example, Rabatel or Maingueneau 2004: 25). 4 Rivara then postulates that enunciative linguistics, as represented by the work of Antoine Culioli and his school of thought, is narratology’s indispensable auxiliary: [...] enunciative type linguistics which considers human discourse as an activity (the construction of meaning by a speaker to the benefit of an interlocutor) can, by treating literary narrative as a specific type of enunciation, allow for the elaboration or the clarification of properly narratological concepts (such as “interior monologue”) and explain several fundamental properties of narrative. (Rivara 2000: 50) 5

Alain Rabatel, author of Une histoire du point de vue (1997), La Construction textuelle du point de vue (1998) and numerous other works on point of view (referred to as POV in quotes) that build upon each other, never uses the term enunciative narratology when referring to his own work, yet clearly subscribes to the same scientific research programme. Rabatel states: In many ways, our propositions for a linguistic problematization of POV [...] break with the Genettian “tradition.” It seems to us that Genette’s epigones remained imprisoned within a narratological system whose presuppositions they did not question [...], and yet they too often put up with a lack of linguistic indications likely to found a scientific theory of POV: it is this linguistic deficit for which we are trying to compensate, as far as possible and within the limits of this work. (Rabatel 1997: 14)

The enunciative model to which Rabatel refers is that of Oswald Ducrot. Essentially, this model makes a theoretical separation between the speaker (locuteur), responsible for the utterance, and the utterer or enunciator (énonciateur), responsible for a point of view or a position taken within the utterance of which he/she is not the speaker. Rabatel also builds on the work of Ann Banfield, without addressing the possible incompatibility of these two theoretical conceptions. 6 Preceding the articles and works just mentioned, Laurent DanonBoileau’s Produire le fictif: Linguistique et écriture romanesque (1982) can be seen as the first attempt to set the framework for enunciative narratology. In his introduction, Danon-Boileau uses the example of the idea of point of view to introduce this framework: “Properly speaking, this metaphor lacks an object. Indeed, a text only offers up letters to be seen. Moreover, it –––––––––––– 3

4 5 6

Two types of “non-enunciative” linguistics which precede the principal developments of enunciative linguistics in France. Where not otherwise stated, all translations from the French are by the author. On interior monologue, see also Rivara (2000). See namely Banfield (1991), which constitutes a response to the criticism of Ducrot (1984).

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gives them to be seen by the reader, not by the character” (1982: 12–13). Nevertheless, he remarks that the notion of point of view or focalization can be tied in with linguistic concepts such as “levels of discourse” and “modality supports.” 7 He concludes with the following generalization: “This is the direction in which I am trying to work, bringing together interpretive intuition and linguistic explanation” (1982: 13). A little later in the text, Danon-Boileau specifies that “[t]he linguistic theory which will herein be practiced is that of Antoine Culioli, for it alone defines, not a ‘linguistics of states’ but a ‘linguistics of operations’” (1982: 13). 8 Therefore, I will use the term enunciative narratology to designate a scientific research programme which is characterized by a set of methods, concepts and conclusions. To designate the particular form that Rivara gave this programme, I will use the expression Rivara’s enunciative narratology. One last remark concerning the title of this essay needs to be made: by presenting enunciative narratology as a French speciality, I do not wish to ignore the fact that works written outside of France have made scientific contributions to this programme (see, for example, Fleischman 1990, although Fleischman uses the term pragmatics rather than enunciative linguistics). However, I believe it is important to point out that Danon-Boileau’s, Rabatel’s and Rivara’s theoretical sources are all French (except Banfield). The issue of speech acts, which gave rise to the development of pragmatics in England and the United States, is given only cursory mention in Rivara’s work and is totally absent in the other texts mentioned above. 2. Enunciative Linguistics and Narratology This section contains a brief overview of the relationship between variations of enunciative linguistics and narratology. Linguistic works on enunciation are so diverse that it seems questionable to group them all under one heading. Émile Benveniste defines enunciation (énonciation) as “putting language to work through an individual act of utilization” (Benveniste 1974 [1970]: 80). The enunciated (énoncé) can accordingly be defined as the linguistic object which results from this utilization (it is worth noticing that these defi–––––––––––– 7

8

The idea of levels of discourse relates to what is usually called “reported speech”; that of modality, to the opinion of the author of a judgment on that judgment; and that of modality support, to the author of the judgment in question (for example, Oedipus in “Oedipus said that his mother was beautiful”). The French term “support” which occurs frequently in Danon-Boileau’s text, may also be translated by the English “source.” The opposition between a “linguistic of states” and a “linguistic of operations” is borrowed from Culioli (1999 [1973]: 48).

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nitions undergo notable variations according to different enunciative theories). It is generally agreed that in all uses of language, an utterer, a situation in which an utterance takes place, and a definable relationship between the utterer and the addressee (called “co-enunciator” [“coénonciateur”] in Culioli’s theory) come into play. Enunciative theories differ according to whether they have a narrow or expansive conception of enunciative categories and operations. The enunciative categories may include formal categories, such as person or tense, or notional ones, such as the utterer’s “responsibility” for the utterance; enunciative operations may encompass all the various operations which constitute the utterance (this is the case in Culioli’s theory). Narratology, understood here in the sense of Genettian narratology, developed over the same period as the increasing importance of the enunciative problematic in linguistics. Accordingly, Genette writes in Narrative Discourse: We know that linguistics has taken its time in addressing the task of accounting for what Benveniste has called subjectivity in language, that is, in passing from analysis of statements to analysis of relations between these statements and their generating instance – what today we call their enunciating. It seems that poetics is experiencing a comparable difficulty in approaching the generating instance of narrative discourse, an instance for which we have reserved the parallel term narrating. (Genette 1980 [1972]: 213) 9

In Narrative Discourse and in Narrative Discourse Revisited, we also find an entire vocabulary and a whole set of utterances directly borrowed from theories of enunciation. The vocabulary includes, for example, the “subject of the enunciating,” the “subject of the statement,” “situation,” “instance,” the “trace of the enunciating” (Genette 1980 [1972]: 28, 31–32 and passim); the utterances from this set include “any statement is the product of an act of enunciating,” “the narrator can be in his narrative (like every subject of an enunciating in his enunciated statement) only in the ‘first person,’” “every utterance is in itself a trace of enunciation,” “any statement is itself a trace of the enunciating” (Genette 1980 [1972]: 26, 244, and 1988 [1983]: 99). All this does not justify claiming that enunciative linguistics and narratology share a common methodology. Firstly because, as Rivara writes: “Genette always considers, whether explicitly or not, the grammatical facts as secondary” (Rivara 2000: 12). This is particularly the case in the passage where Genette criticizes the traditional opposition between first and third––––––––––––

9

The American translator of Genette translates “énonciation” as “enunciating” and “énoncé” as “statement” or “enunciated statement.” On the issue of “subjectivity in language,” see Benveniste (1971b [1966b]: 223–30).

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person narratives and favors “narrative analysis” over “grammar.” 10 Secondly, because Genette is not a specialist in linguistics (as is shown, for example, by his sketchy analysis of verb tenses in narrative, which boils down to a few erratic remarks) 11 and therefore does not approach or formulate problems in linguistic terms. Genette also neglects the fact that the phenomena he divides into the categories of “Mood” (“Focalizations”) and “Voice” are all enunciative phenomena which call into play the same enunciative categories: deixis, modalities, etc. Two more points are of interest in the context of this section, which I will mention with a minimum of commentary. The first one is Genette’s revision of the opposition between history (histoire) and discourse (discours) posited by Benveniste (1971a [1966a]: 205–15). According to Genette, history, now named the “narrative” (récit), and discourse should not be opposed to each other; rather, the narrative should be seen as a “particular mode” of discourse, “defined by a certain number of exceptions and restrictive conditions” (Genette 1982 [1966]: 141); or again, as he wrote in Nouveau discours du récit, narrative is “only a form of discourse in which the marks of the enunciating [are] never more than provisionally and precariously suspended [...]” (1988 [1983]: 99). The result is that there is no longer any room, within the theory of narrative that Genette is putting into place, for the mode of enunciation which Benveniste designated using the term “history.” Paradoxically, the works which enunciative linguistics has devoted to narrative enunciation, that is, to historical or fictional narrative enunciation, have had the least impact of all on narratology. 12 The second point is the correspondence established by Ducrot between his own distinction of the speaker (locuteur) and the utterer or enunciator (énonciateur) and the Genettian distinction of the narrator and the focal character. This highlights the “polyphonic” character of Genette’s narratology.13 Nevertheless, it should be noted that Ducrot conceives of history similarly to Benveniste (and not like Benveniste revised by Genette), and his notion of the speaker-narrator of the narrative is closer to that of Benveniste than to Genette (cf. Ducrot 1984: 195, 209).

–––––––––––– 10 11 12 13

See Genette (1980 [1972]: 244). See Genette (1980 [1972]: 122, 131–32, 145–47,151, 212, 219, and 1988 [1983]: 79–83). For fuller treatment of this issue, see Patron (2010). Polyphony is a central concept in Ducrot’s enunciative theory, which describes enunciation “as a sort of crystallized dialogue, where several different voices collide” (Ducrot 1984: 9). Even if Genettian narratology only uses the term voice for the narrator, it is still polyphonic to the extent that it is based on a multiple enunciative instances.

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3. The Contributions of Enunciative Narratology This section of my essay addresses the contributions enunciative narratology has made to narratology and narrative theory. I am not in a position to evaluate what enunciative narratology has contributed to enunciative linguistics. Nor do I believe that any “pure” (non-narratologist) linguists have expressed opinions on the subject. An Enunciative Schema Laurent Danon-Boileau’s Produire le fictif: Linguistique et écriture romanesque centers around the relationship between enunciation and referenciation (référenciation), i.e. the construction of the referent in texts of narrative fiction. The first chapter contains a critique of the “textualism” which was emblematic of the work produced by Tel Quel. I am essentially interested in chapter 2, which concerns the question of narrative voices and focalizations. Danon-Boileau begins by distinguishing between primary utterance and enunciation (énoncé et énonciation primaires), on the one hand, and reported utterance and enunciation (énoncé et énonciation rapportés), on the other. This distinction forms the basis for the opposition between primary narrators and reported narrators. There are two types of primary narrators, according to Danon-Boileau: the anonymous narrator and the explicit narrator. 1. The anonymous narrator: he/she is the source (support) that we ascribe to primary utterances which do not contain first-person pronouns; for example, “La marquise sortit à cinq heures” (“The marquise left at five o’clock”). The anonymous narrator “constitutes the support for qualifiers and the basis for locating his utterance without having a referential identity. We do not know who he is: he does not refer to himself as ‘I’; he is not designated by any name [...]; this is what the notion of “anonymous” imperfectly translates” (Danon-Boileau 1982: 38).14 2. The explicit narrator: this narrator is the support for modalities (le support des modalités) and the basis for locations (l’origine des repérages) for primary utterances containing first-person pronouns. Examples include “Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure” (Proust 1987: 3 [“For a long time I used to go to bed early”]) but also “we hope, therefore, a judicious reader will give himself some pains to observe what we have so greatly laboured to describe […]” from Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1960: 32; cited in Danon-Boileau 1982: 156, n. 15). The explicit narrator has a referential –––––––––––– 14

The notion of location (repérage) is borrowed from Culioli’s theory (see, for example, Culioli 2000 [1989]: 180 and passim). Danon-Boileau uses the term to refer to one of Culioli’s three levels of location, that of enunciative location (see Danon-Boileau 1982: 154, n. 5).

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identity: in other words, he/she functions not only as a source (support) but as the subject of the utterance (sujet de l’énoncé). He/she can potentially describe him or herself, which is to say that he/she can claim certain qualities. Danon-Boileau writes, then, of a represented narrator (1982: 39). Danon-Boileau also specifies that the explicit narrator can be effaced from certain utterances, even from the totality of utterances that make up a novel: “It is perhaps in this category [the effaced narrator] that a novel like Robbe-Grillet’s La Jalousie should be classified” (1982: 40). 3. The reported narrator, also called the character-narrator: this narrator functions as the source for the modalities of all reported utterances, whether they be made in direct, indirect or free indirect speech. DanonBoileau points out that, contrary to the primary explicit narrator, the reference coupled with the reported narrator can be defined twice, once in the primary utterance (thanks to the name being mentioned), and again in the reported utterance (thanks to the presence of a first-person pronoun); this is the case, for example, in “Lesable balbutia: ‘Je ne comprends pas. À quoi n’ai-je pas réussi?’” [“Lesable stammered: ‘I don’t understand. At what did I fail to succeed?’”] from Maupassant’s “L’héritage” (1979: 40; cited by Danon-Boileau 1982: 41). In addition to these different kinds of narrators as sources of utterances in the text, Danon-Boileau discusses two other possible sources of the enunciated and their role in linguistic and narratological analysis: 4. The author: he/she is the real, biographical person behind the text. He/she is of as little interest to linguistic analysis as he/she is to narratology. 5. The writer: “[...] for us, states Danon-Boileau, the writer constitutes the mechanism of production which results in the totality of the book’s utterances. In this light—it is what distinguishes him from the different types of narrators—he is never a ‘support for utterances,’ nor a basis for locations” (1982: 42; the quotation marks are Danon-Boileau’s). For instance: (1) Il faisait un froid de canard. “J’ai la chair de poule”, soupira Pierre. (Example coined by Danon-Boileau 1982: 43) It was freezing cold [literally, it was good weather for duck hunting]. “I’ve got goose bumps,” sighed Pierre.

In this example, the text creates a comic effect produced by the link between “froid de canard” and “chair de poule.” The problem is to determine who is responsible for this link. According to Danon-Boileau, it cannot be attributed to the anonymous narrator, since he/she is not responsible for the content of direct discourse. Nor can the link be attributed to Pierre, since he is only responsible for the content of the direct discourse. It is here that the notion of writer appears necessary, if we do not want to

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believe that the link between the two metaphors is simply a random one: “The notion of writer is thus dictated by a finalistic representation of texts and by noticing that the means they put to work to obtain their desired effects go beyond the search for the support for utterances” (DanonBoileau 1982: 43). A comparison needs to be made between Genette’s non-linguistic schema and Danon-Boileau’s model which takes linguistic mechanisms into account. Firstly, nowhere in Danon-Boileau can a distinction be found which corresponds to Genette’s differentiation between the “homodiegetic” narrator (who is present as a character in the story he/she tells) and the “heterodiegetic” narrator (who is absent). For DanonBoileau the pertinent distinction is the linguistic one, between a narrator who refers to him or herself as “I,” and a narrator who does not refer to him or herself as “I.” In other words, where there is no reference to “I,” there is no referential identity; from here it is only a small step to say that there is no narrator whatsoever (see Danon-Boileau 1982: 38; on the same page, Danon-Boileau cites S.-Y. Kuroda and Ann Banfield). Secondly, the conception of the effaced narrator proposed by Danon-Boileau is more workable than Genette’s effaced narrator. For example, Genette’s conception does not allow for a differentiation between the narrator of Flaubert’s L’Éducation sentimentale and that of La Jalousie. Finally, the idea of the writer allows us to put an end to the permanent ambiguity in Genette between the narrator, as the creator of the text’s style and organization, and the narrator who is created by the author and fictionally recounts events. It is worth noticing that Danon-Boileau makes the writer accountable for “play in relation to ‘referential time’ (prolepses, analepses, ellipses) and the choice between ‘scene’ and ‘summary’” (1982: 43). However, Danon-Boileau’s enunciative schema also poses a certain number of problems, particularly concerning terminology. Danon-Boileau is well aware of this: the term anonymous narrator does not allow us to distinguish between a narrator who has no referential identity, for example, the narrator of L’Éducation sentimentale, and a narrator endowed with a referential identity whose name is kept hidden from the reader. An example of this would be the narrator of À la recherche du temps perdu, who is frequently referred to in critical works as an “anonymous narrator.” Another terminological problem crops up with the reported narrator. The narrator is said to be reported because he/she is the source (support) for one or several reported utterances. However, not all reported utterances are narrative utterances. Here, Danon-Boileau confuses the “reported narrator” with the “reported utterer.” Indeed, the terms “author” and “writer” do not stand in a biunivocal relationship to their definitions according, for example, to Rivara (2000: 25).

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Danon-Boileau’s enunciative schema also raises theoretical problems concerning the anonymous narrator. The anonymous narrator is defined as the basis for the utterances’ locating (for the moment, I shall leave aside the question of qualifications). Danon-Boileau mentions the following example: “Hier, la marquise sortit à cinq heures” (“Yesterday, the marquise left at five o’clock”), and analyzes it as follows: “‘hier’ only has reference in the event that the anonymous narrator speaks from a situation to which he implicitly gives the value of ‘aujourd’hui’” (1982: 38). However, in the rest of the chapter, the anonymous narrator is associated with anaphoric locations: The categories of the anonymous narrator and the explicit narrator are a realistic version (therefore convenient but fallacious) of a fundamental enunciative distinction. There are always two ways to tell a story: either you locate what you speak about (place, time, first or third person etc.) in relation to the situation you are in as an utterer [...], or you operate without taking into account this situation (you must then locate the text on its own terms). [...] The anonymous narrator [...] locates the objects of his discourse by calling on the text’s internal locations (anaphoric ones [...]). (Danon-Boileau 1982: 40–41)

This analysis disqualifies the choice of the example “Hier, la marquise sortit à cinq heures” as an illustration of the locating system proper to the anonymous narrator. Moreover, if the anonymous narrator is responsible for anaphoric location, it is difficult to make out what distinguishes him or her from the writer. Towards the end of chapter 3, Danon-Boileau writes that anaphoric location is the silence of all voices, aphonia; or rather with it, it is the fiction of voice that becomes specious. The notion of voice goes back to the source of a set of locations, but this source comes from the mouth of an utterer and from the situation of utterance. With the anaphora it is no longer the voice that locates; to borrow a Tel Quel style expression, by deviating it from its object, “it is the text that signs.” (1982: 62)

A Linguistic (Enunciative and Textual) Approach to Point of View Alain Rabatel’s early works were devoted to the history of point of view and its linguistic theorization. The choice of the term “point of view” rather than “focalization” can be understood in one of two ways: firstly, it marks a break with the Genettian tradition and its tripartite division of focalizations; secondly, this choice evinces Rabatel’s attempt to achieve notional clarification. “Focalisation” in linguistics, also called “emphase” or “mise en focus,” has nothing to do with “focalisation” in narratology. In his early works, Rabatel also uses the expression “point of view-effect”; this represents a reformulation of the question of point of view in terms of a

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constructed representation (by the author) contrived to create a certain effect (on the reader). In his books and in most of his articles, Rabatel limits himself to the investigation of point of view in third-person narratives characterized by an anonymous narrator, to use Danon-Boileau’s term. Point of view is first defined by Rabatel as “the expression of a perception, whose process, qualifications and modalizations are co-referential to the perceiving subject and express in a certain way the subjectivity of this perception” (Rabatel 1998: 13). The enunciative paradox contained in this definition compares point of view in Rabatel’s sense to free indirect discourse or “represented speech and thought,” as Banfield puts it. Moreover, Banfield has a concept of “represented perceptions” (see 1982: 199ff, 269). Curiously enough, Rabatel never alludes to the no-narrator hypothesis, which is a key hypothesis in Banfield and is indissociable from her view of represented speech, thought and perceptions. Rabatel then goes on to refine his initial definition of point of view (the first chapter in Rabatel 1998 contains six definitions in all). The idea of perception, associated with that of thought, remains central to his definitions and renders a purely linguistic definition of point of view impossible. See for example definition no. 3: “POV corresponds to the expression of a perception which always more or less links perceptive processes and mental processes; this intrication being one of the specific marks of POV’s subjectivity” (Rabatel 1998: 23). Compare also definition no. 6: The linguistic basis for the expression of POV hinges on the expression of represented perceptions and/or thoughts. These perceptions and these thoughts are syntactically dependant on a subject and a process of perception mentioned in the foreground and/or semantically dependant on an agent or a process that the text does not mention explicitly and that the reader reconstructs by inference. (Rabatel 1998: 58)

The whole interest of Rabatel’s work lies in his identification of linguistic markers for point of view, some of which stem less from enunciative linguistics than from textual linguistics. 15 Rabatel identifies four different groups of markers of point of view: 1. The development of parts and properties of a theme-title or of a selected element through thematization. This development is called “aspectualization” (“aspectualisation”; see Apotheloz 1998: 18–24) in the textual analysis of description.

–––––––––––– 15

In Weinrich’s sense (1973 [1964]), Combettes (1992), Adam (1991) and (2004).

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2. An opposition between the foreground (premier plan) and background (second plan) of the text. 16 Only the text’s background allows for the expression of point of view. 3. Consequently, verb tenses expressing the secant aspect are present, notably the imperfect (l’imparfait). 4. On the semantic level, a relationship developing out of associative anaphoras between represented perceptions in the background and the predicated perception of the foreground. While presented in great brevity, these considerations allow us to become aware of the passages highlighted in example (2) below. This example is not quoted by Rabatel, but it has a privileged status in narratology: (2a) Fabrice n’avait pas fait cinq cents pas que sa rosse s’arrêta tout court: c’était un cadavre, posé en travers du sentier, qui faisait horreur au cheval et au cavalier. La figure de Fabrice, très pâle naturellement, prit une teinte verte fort prononcée; la cantinière, après avoir regardé le mort, dit, comme se parlant à elle-même: ce n’est pas de notre division. Puis, levant les yeux sur notre héros, elle éclata de rire. – Ha! ha! mon petit! s’écria-t-elle, en voilà du nanan! Fabrice restait glacé. Ce qui le frappait surtout, c’était la saleté des pieds de ce cadavre qui déjà était dépouillé de ses souliers, et auquel on n’avait laissé qu’un mauvais pantalon tout souillé de sang. (2b) – Approche, lui dit la cantinière ; descends de cheval ; il faut que tu t’y accoutumes ; tiens, s’écria-t-elle, il en a eu par la tête. Une balle, entrée à côté du nez, était sortie par la tempe opposée, et défigurait ce cadavre d’une façon hideuse ; il était resté avec un œil ouvert. (Stendhal 1948: 59; italics mine) 17 Fabrice had taken no more than five hundred steps when his nag stopped dead in its tracks; there was a cadaver, lying across the trail, which horrified the horse and the horseman. Fabrice’s face, naturally very pale, took on a very pronounced green tint; the canteen woman, after having looked at the dead body, said, as if speaking to herself; it’s not from our division. Then, looking up at our hero, she broke out in laughter. – Ha! ha! my dear! she cried out, now there’s a lovely sight! Fabrice remained frozen. What was disturbing him most strongly were this cadaver’s filthy feet, which were already stripped of their shoes; he was only left with a bloody, ragged pair of pants. – Come on, the canteen woman says to him; get off your horse; you have to get used to it; come on, she shouts, he got hit in the head.

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17

The concepts of foreground and background stem from Weinrich (1973 [1964]: 114–30) and were revised by Combettes (1992: 7–48). “According to Combettes, we consider the foreground, in a very restricted sense, as the succession of chronological propositions (in the simple past [passé simple]) the order of which reflects extralinguistic chronology; as such, it […] determines the objective ground according to which the POV can be situated in the various backgrounds” (Rabatel 1998: 30–31). The highlighted passage (2b) is cited as an example of “perfect internal focalization” in Genette (1980 [1972]: 192). See also Danon-Boileau (1982: 46–47) and Rivara (2000: 265).

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A bullet, entered next to his nose, had gone out the opposite temple and disfigured this cadaver hideously; he had been lying there with one eye open.

The reader intuitively perceives that the narration is told from Fabrice’s point of view. The highlighted passage in (2a) makes the fact that this is Fabrice’s point of view explicit by the expression “Ce qui le frappait surtout”; the highlighted passage in (2b) can be read as: “il réalisa qu’une balle, entrée à côté du nez, était sortie par la tempe opposée,” etc. (“he realized that a bullet had gone in through the side of his nose and come out his opposite temple,” etc.). These perceptions and thoughts are represented, in Rabatel’s sense; in other words they are developed and detailed (a process called “aspectualization”). They are expressed in the background of the text which contrasts with the “objective” foreground of the text. However, this extract does not contain predicated perceptions in the foreground (for example: “Fabrice regarda le mort. Ce qui le frappait surtout...,” “Fabrice looked at the dead man. What was disturbing him most strongly...”). Any manipulation of the fore- and background of the text (by replacing the imperfect tense with the passé simple) brings about the disappearance of point of view. This can be verified by comparing (2a) and (2b) with (3a) and (3b): (3a) Ce qui le frappa surtout, ce fut la saleté des pieds de ce cadavre qui déjà était dépouillé de ses souliers, et auquel on n’avait laissé qu’un mauvais pantalon tout souillé de sang. What disturbed him most strongly were this cadaver’s filthy feet which were already stripped of their shoes; he was only left with a bloody, ragged pair of pants. (3b) Une balle, entrée à côté du nez, sortit par la tempe opposée, et défigura ce cadavre d’une façon hideuse; il resta avec un œil ouvert. A bullet, entered next to his nose, went out the opposite temple and disfigured this cadaver hideously; he lay there with one eye open.

There is no longer any point of view represented in passages 3a) and (3b). I should add that the acceptability of passage (3b) is questionable to the French reader. In the highlighted passages (2a) and (2b), we can also verify the presence of anaphoric relationships (“ce cadavre,” “ses souliers,” “ce cadavre”) and associative anaphoras (“du nez,” “la tempe,” “un œil”). The point of vieweffect is all the more pronounced, because the passages abound with convergent subjective terms (subjectivèmes): “la saleté des pieds,” “dépouillé de ses souliers,” “mauvais pantalon,” “tout souillé de sang,” “d’une façon hideuse.” However, Rabatel insists that subjective terms are not the decisive factor in determining point of view. We can see that, indeed, point of view-effects are not dependent on the use of subjective terms in examples (4) or (5). Here,

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no subjective terminology is employed, yet, Rabatel’s linguistic markers clearly identify this as Fabrice’s point of view: (4) Une balle, entrée à côté du nez, était sortie par la tempe opposée; il était resté avec un œil ouvert. A bullet, entered next to his nose, had gone out the opposite temple and disfigured this cadaver hideously; he had been lying there with one eye open. (5) La tête était tournée sur le côté. His head was turned on its side.

Rabatel’s approach to identifying point of view by an analysis of linguistic markers is interesting for several reasons. First, it is much more precise and workable than the narratological approach founded on the question of “who sees?” As Rabatel writes, [t]hat which seems determinant, is no longer ‘who’ sees or ‘who’ knows, but the concrete analysis of the referentialization of what is focalized and, from here, locating the utterer responsible for the choices of referentialization. (1998: 58–59; référentialisation is the term used by Rabatel for “referenciation” or “construction of the referent”)

Secondly, Rabatel’s approach to point of view can address problems that narratalogy recognizes but falls short in solving. As an example, let us look at the following extract (6): (6) Elle le regarda boire et se troubla brusquement à cause de la bouche qui pressait les bords du verre. Mais il se sentait si fatigué qu’il refusa de participer à ce trouble, et il ne fit que serrer un peu les doigts blancs, les ongles rouges qui lui reprenaient le gobelet vide. (Colette 2005: 48–49) She watched him drink and was suddenly confused by the mouth that pressed against the cup’s edges. But he felt so tired that he refused to take part in this troubling confusion, and only squeezed the white fingers, the red nails that took away the empty cup.

Up until “ce trouble,” this extract illustrates what Mieke Bal calls “second degree focalization” (1977a: 122, 1977b: 41) or “embedded focalization” (1981: 204). For Genette, on the other hand, this passage contains an “embedding of looks, if one wishes [...], but not of focalizations” (1988 [1983]: 76–77). Yet he claims that he himself is incapable of demonstrating this phenomenon. The question, therefore, is: Is there a point of vieweffect in this extract? According to Rabatel’s approach, the answer would be no; this answer can be justified on the basis of there being no aspectualization (no development of parts and properties) of focalized objects, no changes in foreground or background in the second sentence, and no subjective imperfect tenses. In this extract there is only one mention of perception or predicated perception—“Elle le regarda boire”—and descrip-

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tive or explanatory segments ascribed to the narrator, in accordance with Rabatel. In the light of the analytic precision of Rabatel’s four types of linguistic markers of point of view, it seems to me that nothing is gained by moving on, as Rabatel does in his subsequent work, to an “extended conception of viewpoint” (2001: 151). Rabatel extends his conception of point of view by differentiating between two complementary modalities called “recounted point of view” and “asserted point of view” which are adjacent to the modality of “represented point of view” (see Rabatel 2000a and 2001: 151–52). “When POV indicates a report of perception developed in the background,” then, Rabatel states, [...] we shall speak of “represented” POV […]; when perceptive POV is limited to traces in the foreground [...], we shall speak of “embryonic” POV […]. When it is mixed with the expression of words or thoughts, POV can be referred to as “assertive” and tie in with conventional forms of reported discourse […]. (Rabatel 2003a)

In this quote, we notice the semantic dilution of the term point of view as well as the decreased importance accorded to the relationship between point of view and the text’s background. Rivara’s Enunciative Narratology An entire article could be dedicated to the work of René Rivara alone. 18 In Introduction à la narratologie énonciative, Rivara envisions enunciative narratology as a discipline that employs concepts from both narratology and enunciative linguistics: The act of narration is an act of enunciation whose specificity must be defined, but which arises no less from the general theory of language and enunciation. Enunciative narratology uses narratological concepts and linguistic concepts to fulfill this double task. (Rivara 2000: 310)

Rivara draws up a list of six general “categories” (to use his own term), which seem to him to be the most applicable to all narratives; all of these, he claims, have an “enunciative correlate”: 1. The relationship of the narrative to the reader: for Rivara, all narratives constitute an act of communication. They therefore involve establishing a relationship with the addressee, or the reader in the case of the literary narrative. Rivara distinguishes two levels of communication: the level of the author-audience relationship and that of the narrator-reader relationship. Note that Rivara does not use the term “narratee,” but his –––––––––––– 18

See Patron (2006), where I analyze this work.

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concept of the reader includes both Umberto Eco’s “model reader” and narratology’s extradiegetic narratee. 2. The separation of the real world from the fictive world: this corresponds to the opposition between real utterances (literally, “utterances in the real mood”) and fictive utterances (“utterances in the fictive mood” [Rivara 2000: 312]). This separation can be transgressed as in Tristram Shandy or Jacques le Fataliste, for example. 3. The selection of one of two types of narrators, called the anonymous narrator and the autobiographic narrator respectively. 4. The treatment of tense: a succession of aoristic verbs (passé simple in French, preterite in English) occurs within the narrative which creates the impression of a succession of recounted events. 5. The relationship between the narrator and the characters, or relationship of “consonance” and “dissonance,” to use the terms that Rivara borrowed from Cohn (1978: 26 and passim): this refers to the relationship between primary utterances and reported utterances. Rivara—to be brief—presents the narrator as a super-enunciator (surénonciateur) in relation to the characters. 6. Point of view: this is defined as a contact between two “levels of enunciation.” This contact occurs between the narrator’s enunciation and the expression of an appreciative modality whose source (support) is a character in utterances that are not reported utterances.19 It is worth pointing out that the article entitled “A Plea for a NarratorCentered Narratology” (2004) sets out to explore further the relationship between categories 3 and 6. The main contribution of Rivara’s enunciative narratology, as compared with narratology, on one hand, and other forms of enunciative narratology, on the other, resides, it seems to me, in its analysis of verbal tenses in narrative. Rivara uses Culioli’s reflection on the aoristic to explain the contribution of verbal tenses to the temporal sequence on which all narrative is based. He points out that the aoristic (passé simple in French, preterite in English) possesses two characteristics. In relation to aspect, it refers back to a “limited-closed” process (whose final boundary is closed, for example “La marquise sortit à cinq heures” vs. “La marquise sortait”). In terms of location, it is the object of a “disconnected” location (un repérage “par rupture”); for example, “La marquise sortit à cinq heures” vs. “Hier, la marquise est sortie à cinq heures.” 20 According to Rivara, –––––––––––– 19 20

This analysis of point of view closely resembles Danon-Boileau’s description of internal focalization. Note that Rabatel’s works are not mentioned in Rivara’s work. The presentation of disconnected location by Rivara corresponds exactly to DanonBoileau’s description of anaphoric location (“disconnected,” i.e. from the moment of enunciation).

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[t]he aoristic, limited-closed and disconnected from the present, leaves in its wake a temporal void, in which other processes with analogous properties can take place. We know that series of verbs in the passé simple are common and suffice to create a fragment of narrative. (2000: 80)

For example: (7) Il prit son chapeau, ouvrit la porte et quitta la maison. (Example coined by Rivara 2000: 80) He took up his hat, opened the door and left the house. (8) Joseph était occupé dans une petite pièce noire à ranger du linge sale. Il dit à Germinie de venir l’aider. Elle entra, cria, tomba, pleura, supplia, lutta, appela désespérément... La maison vide resta sourde. (Goncourt/Goncourt 1990: 86) Joseph was busy in a dark little room, putting away dirty laundry. He told Germinie to come and help him. She entered, screamed, fell, cried, begged, fought, called out desperately… The empty house remained deaf.

Rivara’s work also contains an interesting analysis of L’Étranger by Camus, which shows how the author manages to reconcile the absence of aoristic verbal forms with the need to indicate a succession of events. For Rivara, the fundamental distinction of enunciative narratology as he perceives it is its distinction between two types of narrator: the anonymous narrator and the autobiographic narrator. Taking up the term anonymous narrator from Danon-Boileau, he asserts: Danon-Boileau “says ‘explicit’ where we say ‘autobiographic’” (Rivara 2000: 22, n. 5). However, it is not difficult to show that the types of primary narrators distinguished by Rivara and Danon-Boileau do not match up. On the one hand, Rivara’s anonymous narrator does not usually refer to him or herself as “I,” but he/she has the potential to do so. In Danon-Boileau, the narrator who refers to himself/herself as “I” is not an anonymous narrator, but an explicit narrator. Moreover, Rivara’s anonymous narrator is compared to a fictional historian: “he has, in the story he recounts, a narratological status similar to that of the historian in the narrative of real facts,” etc. (Rivara 2000: 26), which does not mesh with Danon-Boileau’s view either. In general, Rivara’s anonymous narrator is much closer to Genette’s heterodiegetic narrator than Danon-Boileau’s anonymous one. As for Rivara’s autobiographic narrator, its name reflects the fact that he/she is supposed to tell a story in which he took part and which can even be presented as his own story. He/she corresponds exactly to Genette’s homodiegetic narrator. I wish to add that Rivara’s description of the powers and constraints of the anonymous narrator is not a linguistic description. Here, I am obliged to quote him at length: The powers possessed by the anonymous narrator are of two types. Firstly, they concern the total mobility he enjoys, mobility in time and space, which certain authors use more than others. [...] admitting that the narrator does not need to have

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heard something said in order to report speech and that, apart from characters’ quotes, he is the sole manager of the narrative and the only utterer. He seems endowed with a power that is totally inaccessible to a human speaker: situating himself as he likes in time and space, at whatever distance, often variable, from the scene he recounts. Secondly, he possesses the power to grant us access, if he so pleases, to the minds of his characters: according to different modalities, among which figure in particular the three types of reported speech, he can tell us what is happening in the minds of the people who inhabit his fictive universe [...]. These powers of the anonymous narrator, which largely surpass those that are put into play in the daily use of language, have nevertheless a flip side: the narrator submits to certain constraints due in part to his impersonal nature. The first of these constraints is that he normally cannot refer to himself by the first person pronoun, and even more so, he cannot give himself a proper name [...]. Added to this impossibility to name himself that limits the anonymous narrator is another constraint: having the power to move around freely in the fictive universe and to decide on everything that happens, even in the minds and in the past of the characters, he does not have the right to express ignorance or any uncertainty. (Rivara 2000: 150–53; Rivara’s emphasis)

The description of the anonymous narrator finds its counterpart in that of the autobiographic narrator: The autobiographic narrator does not possess the powers and constraints that characterize the anonymous narrator. From the moment he presents himself as an individualized utterer, authorized to refer to himself in the first person, he can also name himself, describe himself, talk about himself. His narrative gives us access to his inner thoughts straight away, and when he cites or reports what others say, it means he has heard them. (Rivara 2000: 156)

Concerning the omniscient narrator, which Rivara brings back as the anonymous narrator, it is important to keep S.-Y. Kuroda’s judgment in mind, according to which the omniscient narrator cannot be identified by a linguistic mechanism whose existence we can establish independently of the assumption of his existence in the way the autobiographic narrator can. The omniscient narrator has no linguistic basis in the way the autobiographic narrator does. 21 4. The Limits of Enunciative Narratology The objective of this section is to contest—and if possible to replace—a foundational postulate of narratology, one which is also found in enunciative narratology. This postulate is that of the narrator-in-all-narratives. Narratology takes for granted that there is a narrator, separate from the ––––––––––––

21

See Kuroda (1973: 389).

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author, in all narratives and excludes the author from its field of investigation. In a sweeping gesture, Genettian narratology endowed the narrator of all narratives with properties traditionally attributed to the narratorcharacter of first-person fictional narratives. 22 These properties include the narrator’s being designated with a first-person pronoun, the fictivity (or fictionality, a term that increasingly replaced the former one), and the narrator’s distinction from the author as a real, biographical person. In Genette, the homodiegetic narrator and the heterodiegetic narrator possess the same properties; they perform the same function: the narrating, which is also allegedly fictional. Moreover, it is noticeable that Genette confuses the author as a real, biographical person—in other words, the author “in the biographical sense”—and the author “in the poetic sense.”23 If it is legitimate to exclude the author in the biographical sense, or, at least to refuse to make him or her the principal explanatory principle in the work, there is no reason to exclude the author in the poetic sense. This would be like studying the discourse of characters in a play without studying how this discourse constructs the identity of the characters, or the way in which they connect with one another. Moreover, as Ducrot writes: [...] we do not ascribe to the character in a play all the materiality of the text written by the author and spoken by the actors. If, for example, in Les Femmes Savantes, Molière and the actors express themselves in verse, it is clear that the characters represented normally speak in prose. (Ducrot 1984: 205; to be understood as “the characters represented speak fictionally in prose”)

The same holds true, mutatis mutandis, in the case of novelistic narratives. Therefore, in the term “narrator” Genette joins two narrative instances that I would call incompatible. These are the actual instance of the production of a narrative—this is the author in the poetic sense, from now on simply “the author”—and the fictive or fictional representation which can be given of this instance of the production in the narrative itself (for example the narrator of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu). Enunciative narratology is founded upon the same erroneous or ambiguous concept of the narrator. Of the three authors mentioned, the one who compromises himself the least in his use of this concept is DanonBoileau. His theory of the anonymous narrator is a theory of the absence of the narrator in a non-radicalized form. It is Rivara who compromises himself the most in his use of this concept. As for Rabatel, he offers a –––––––––––– 22 23

For a detailed analysis of this move, see Patron (2009: 33–42). I borrow this opposition from Dällenbach (1989 [1977]: 198, n. 5). The American translator of Dällenbach translates “au sens poétique” as “in the theoretical sense.” I prefer “in the poetic sense.”

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conceptualization of the character’s point of view which is not at all affected by the use of this concept; one only has to replace the term “narrator” with “narrative” in the quotations given here to obtain acceptable formulations. However, Rabatel also suggests a concept of the “point of view of the narrator” which borrows both from Danon-Boileau’s definition of the anonymous narrator and from narratology’s definition of the narrator. This concept raises certain problems, also on an intuitive level. Yet the best arguments against the idea of the anonymous or omniscient narrator can be found in the passages where Rabatel criticizes Genette’s concept of external focalization: [...] there is nothing other than a problem with the management of narrative information; [...] In other words the external vision of the narrator is explained by a communicational intention being at the source of narrative planning, and not by the supposed ignorance of an imaginary witness which is utterly devoid of linguistic reality” (Rabatel 1997: 259).

Similarly, the omniscience that the texts display is explained by a communicational intention being at the source of narrative planning, and not by the supposedly exceptional cognitive capabilities of an imaginary narrator which is utterly devoid of linguistic reality. In the following paragraphs I wish to make several suggestions for moving beyond the limits of enunciative narratology. This involves making the author the arch-enunciator, as in theatre, or more simply the narrative’s real subject of enunciation. Rethinking the enunciative analysis of narratives from the position of the author would allow us: – To reflect on the author’s enunciative dis-inscription (désinscription énonciative) in fictional narratives. In these narratives, as in other written linguistic productions, personal and spatial-temporal markers no longer, or, only very rarely, refer to their context of production. 24 – To think consequently about the author’s inscription of a fictive or fictional narrator in certain narratives. This inscription is made through the use of the personal pronoun “I” to refer to a character, whether this character be active in the story he/she tells or not. Literary history has favored the former case, for understandable reasons, and it has often been described in terms of formal mimesis (see Glowinski 1977: 106). But the latter case of the in-active character is both theoretically and practically conceivable. – To also think about the vocation of certain narratives or certain passages of narratives so as to suspend the question of the enunciative ––––––––––––

24

I have borrowed the term “enunciative dis-inscription” from Philippe (2002: 31), quoted by Rabatel (2003b: 40). However, neither Philippe nor Rabatel show interest in this aspect of the enunciative dis-inscription of the author in fictional narrative.

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source, namely the question of “who speaks (fictionally)?” In certain narratives or certain passages of narratives, the question is not raised; it is irrelevant. This re-analysis would also allow us then: – To pay attention to the context-sensitivity of the appreciative markers (Danon-Boileau’s “qualifications,” Rabatel’s “qualifications and modalizations,” Rivara’s “appreciative modality”). In the work of one narratologist, namely Gerald Prince, we find the best answer to the debate concerning the presence of qualifications and modalizations in third-person narrative. While lengthy, this response nevertheless merits being cited in extenso: Note that some narratologists would consider the slightest “evaluative” adjective or adverb or the most discreet logical connection between events to be intrusions. Given (24) John walked elegantly and (25) Bill was happy because he had just seen Robert for example, they would regard “elegantly” and “because” as intrusive elements. Yet this is not a very convincing position; for there is nothing in (24) and (25) which indicates that perhaps John did not walk elegantly and perhaps Bill’s happiness was not the result of his having seen Robert; that is, there is nothing which indicates that the evaluation and the logical connection are the result of the narrator’s interpretation, the consequence of his special knowledge, the mere product of his subjectivity rather than well-established facts in the world of the narrated. Indeed, the elegance of John’s walk and the cause of Bill’s happiness are given as incontrovertible and we take them as such when we read. (Prince 1982: 11–12) 25

The re-analysis I am proposing would further enable us to perform the following tasks: – To reexamine the question of the author’s or narrator’s intrusions by not treating them as markers of enunciative continuity. This contradicts the very idea of intrusion. Instead, such intrusions would be treated from a “discontinuist” perspective. A great deal of work needs to be done on the demarcation of intrusions, that is to say, on the markers at the beginning and end of the intervention of the “I” in third-person fictional narratives containing “intrusions.” – To think, more generally, about montage or the narrative’s local, rather than global, enunciative coherence.

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25

On “the slightest ‘evaluative’ adjective,” etc., see Genette (1982 [1966]: 141–42).

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5. Conclusion It is clear that the type of analysis which I am proposing entails abandoning the framework that enunciative linguistics established for the study of oral communication. To say, as Rabatel does, “the co-enunciator (or the reader)” (Rabatel 2000b: 63, see also 52, 54, 58) is too cursory and does not allow us to reflect upon the role of the reader in this very particular form of communication: fictional narrative. This analysis also implies reestablishing properly enunciative markers as the basis for analytical work. For if everything is enunciative, then it is just as true that nothing is: the idea of the enunciative or of enunciation is thereby emptied of conceptual content. Respecting the specific characteristics of fictional narrative and casting off the postulate of the narrator-in-all-narratives in works of fiction, I believe that the future lies in this double reorientation for enunciative narratology—or rather the enunciative analysis of narratives. References Adam 1991 Adam, Jean-Michel: Éléments de linguistique textuelle (Liège: Mardaga). Adam 2004 Adam, Jean-Michel: Linguistique textuelle: Des genres de discours aux textes (Paris: Nathan). Apothéloz 1998 Apothéloz, Denis: “Éléments pour une logique de la description et du raisonnement spatial,” in La Description: Théories, recherches, formation, enseignement, edited by Yves Reuter, 15–31 (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion). Bal 1977a Bal, Mieke: “Narration et focalisation: Pour une théorie des instances du récit,” in Poétique 29: 107–27. Bal 1977b Bal, Mieke: Narratologie: Essai sur la signification narrative dans quatre romans contemporains (Paris: Klincksieck). Bal 1981 Bal, Mieke: “Notes on Narrative Embedding,” in Poetics Today 2.2: 41–59. Banfield 1982 Banfield, Ann: Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Banfield 1991 Banfield, Ann: “L’écriture et le non-dit,” in Diacritics 21.4: 21–31.

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Benveniste 1971a [1966a] Benveniste, Émile: “Relationships of Person in the Verb,” in Problems in General Linguistics, translated by Mary E. Meek, 195–215 (Coral Gables: Miami University Press). Benveniste 1971b [1966b] Benveniste, Émile: “Subjectivity in Language,” in Problems in General Linguistics, translated by Mary E. Meek, 223–30 (Coral Gables: Miami University Press). Benveniste 1974 [1970] Benveniste, Émile: “L’appareil formel de l’énonciation,” in Problèmes de linguistique générale, vol. 2, 79–88 (Paris: Gallimard). Cohn 1978 Cohn, Dorrit: Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Colette 2005 Colette: La Chatte (Paris: Librairie générale française, Le Livre de Poche). Combettes 1992 Combettes, Bernard: L’Organisation du texte (Metz: Presses Universitaires de Metz). Culioli 1999 [1973] Culioli, Antoine: “Sur quelques contradictions en linguistique,” in Pour une linguistique de l’énonciation, vol. 2, Formalisation et opérations de repérage, 43–52 (Gap, Paris: Ophrys). Culioli 2000 [1989] Culioli, Antoine: “Representation, Referential Processes, and Regulation: Language Activity as Form Production and Recognition,” in Pour une linguistique de l’énonciation, vol. 1, Opérations et représentations, 177–213 (Gap, Paris: Ophrys). Danon-Boileau 1982 Danon-Boileau, Laurent: Produire le fictif: Linguistique et écriture romanesque (Paris: Klincksieck). Dällenbach 1989 [1977] Dällenbach, Lucien: The Mirror in the Text, translated by Jeremy Whiteley and Emma Hughes (Chicago: Chicago University Press). De Mattia/Joly 2001 De Mattia, Monique/Joly, André (eds.): De la syntaxe à la narratologie énonciative: Textes recueillis par Monique De Mattia et André Joly en hommage à René Rivara (Gap, Paris: Ophrys). Ducrot 1984 Ducrot, Oswald: Le Dire et le dit (Paris: Minuit). Fielding 1960 Fielding, Henry: The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams (New York: A Signet Classic). Fleischman 1990 Fleischman, Suzanne: Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction (Austin: Texas University Press). Genette 1982 [1966] Genette, Gérard: “Frontiers of Narrative,” in Figures of Literary Discourse, translated by Alan Sheridan, 127–44 (New York: Columbia University Press).

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Genette 1980 [1972] Genette, Gérard: Narrative Discourse, translated by Jane E. Lewin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press; reprint Oxford: Basil Blackwell). Genette 1988 [1983] Genette, Gérard: Narrative Discourse Revisited, translated by Jane E. Lewin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). Glowinski 1977 Glowinski, Michal: “On the First-Person Novel,” in New Literary History 9: 103–14. Goncourt/Goncourt 1990 Goncourt, Edmond de/Goncourt, Jules de: Germinie Lacerteux (Paris: Flammarion, GF). Kuroda 1973 Kuroda, S.-Y.: “Where Epistemology, Style and Grammar Meet: a Case Study from Japanese,” in Festschrift for Morris Halle, edited by Stephen R. Anderson and Paul Kiparsky, 377–91 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston). Maingueneau 2004 Maingueneau, Dominique: Le Discours littéraire: Paratopie et scène d’énonciation (Paris: Armand Colin). Maupassant 1979 Maupassant, Guy de: “L’héritage,” in Contes et nouvelles, vol. 2, 3–69 (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade). Patron 2006 Patron, Sylvie: “On the Epistemology of Narrative Theory: Narratology and Other Theories of Fictional Narrative,” translated by Anne Marsella, in COLLeGIUM: Studies across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences, vol. 1, The Traveling Concept of Narrative, edited by Matti Hyvärinen, Anu Korhonen and Juri Mykkänen. Patron 2009 Patron, Sylvie: Le Narrateur: Un problème de théorie narrative (Paris: Armand Colin). Patron 2010 Patron, Sylvie: “Homonymie chez Genette ou la réception de l’opposition histoire/discours dans les théories du récit de fiction”, in Relire Benveniste. Actualité des recherches sur l’énonciation, edited by Émilie Brunet and Rudolf Mahrer (Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia-Bruylant). Philippe 2002 Philippe, Gilles: “L’appareil formel de l’effacement énonciatif et la pragmatique des textes sans locuteur,” in Pragmatique et analyse des textes, edited by Ruth Amossy, 17–34 (Tel-Aviv: University of Tel-Aviv). Prince 1982 Prince, Gerald: Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative (Berlin/New York/Amsterdam: Mouton Publishers). Proust 1987 Proust, Marcel: Du côté de chez Swann, À la recherche du temps perdu, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade).

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Rabatel 1997 Rabatel, Alain: Une histoire du point de vue (Metz: Presses Universitaires de Metz; Paris: Klincksieck). Rabatel 1998 Rabatel, Alain: La Construction textuelle du point de vue (Lausanne/Paris: Delachaux and Niestlé). Rabatel 2000a Rabatel, Alain: “Un, deux, trois points de vue? Pour une approche unifiante des points de vue narratif et discursif,” in La Lecture littéraire 4: 195–254. Rabatel 2000b Rabatel, Alain: “Valeurs représentative et énonciative du ‘présentatif’ c’est et marquage du point de vue,” in Langue française 128: 52–73. Rabatel 2001 Rabatel, Alain: “Fondus enchaînés énonciatifs: Scénographie énonciative et point de vue,” in Poétique 126: 151–73. Rabatel 2003a Rabatel, Alain: “Pour une narratologie énonciative ou pour une approche énonciative de la narration?,” in Vox Poetica. Rabatel 2003b Rabatel, Alain: “L’effacement énonciatif dans les discours représentés et ses effets pragmatiques de sous- et de sur-énonciation,” in Estudios de Lengua y Literatura francesas 14: 33–61. Rivara 1998 Rivara, René: “Pour une approche énonciative du monologue intérieur,” in Du percevoir au dire: Hommage à André Joly, edited by Annie Boone and Danielle Leeman, 399–410 (Paris: L’Harmattan). Rivara 2000 Rivara, René: La Langue du récit: Introduction à la narratologie énonciative (Paris: L’Harmattan). Rivara 2004 Rivara, René: “A Plea for Narrator-Centered Narratology,” in The Dynamics of Narrative Form: Studies in Anglo-American Narratology, edited by John Pier, 83-113 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Stendhal 1948 Stendhal: La Chartreuse de Parme, Romans et nouvelles, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade). Weinrich 1973 [1964] Weinrich, Harald: Le Temps: Le Récit et le commentaire, translated by Michèle Lacoste (Paris: Seuil).

JOHN PIER (Tours and Paris)

Is There a French Postclassical Narratology? Abstract This brief historiographic study shows that French narratology does not divide into a “classical” narratology and “postclassical narratologies” in the way spoken of by David Herman or into the hyphenated “narratologies” identified by Ansgar Nünning. The principal players (Barthes, Todorov, Genette) turned to other pursuits, and Ricœur’s watershed Time and Narrative opposed “semiotic rationality” to “narrative intelligence” of a hermeneutic type while the disappearance of structuralist linguistics as a “pilot science” was not succeeded in France by the “renaissance” of narratology that occurred in other countries starting in the early 1990s. Theoretically oriented research on narrative continued, but not always under the label of narratology, some of it in non-literary fields. French discourse analysis appears to offer a conceptual and methodological framework for addressing the concerns of postclassical narratology. 1. Introduction Narratology came into existence under the banner of a science of literature. To justify its status as a principled set of postulates and analytic and descriptive procedures, it, along with other disciplines adhering to the structuralist model, adopted structural linguistics as a “pilot-science.” Such credentials, it was thought, provided narrative theory with a reliable paradigm for working out a theoretical model common to all narratives, both existent and possible. Inspired by Saussure, the focus on a narrative langue underlying all narratives as opposed to the narrative parole of individual narratives was widely embraced, as was the attendant emphasis on description over interpretation. However, when one looks more closely at the systems actually adopted by narrative theorists, the intended role of structural linguistics—to act as a unifying paradigm—appears far less reassuring. Hence, Claude Lévi-Strauss’s (1967 [1955]) (pre)narratological analysis of myths remodels Propp’s “functions” into “mythemes” following the example of the refinement of the Saussurean phoneme by Trubetskoj and Jakobson; A. J. Greimas’s (1983 [1966]) semantic theory, including its semiotic square and model of actantial roles, owes much to

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Hjelmslev’s rereading of Saussure and to Tesnière’s syntactic analysis of the noun phrase; in positing “a homological relation between sentence and discourse” (Barthes 1977 [1966]: 83), Roland Barthes’s “translinguistics” beckons toward a theory and practice of discourse analysis that did not yet exist (cf. Herman 2001, 2005b: 574); Tzvetan Todorov’s (1969) three-level model of narrative grammar (semantic, syntactic, verbal) is inspired by the Medieval Modists’ universal grammar and proposes to equate character with the noun and action with the verb; finally, Gérard Genette’s recourse to “a kind of linguistic metaphor” making it possible “to organize, or at any rate to formulate, the problems of analyzing narrative discourse according to categories borrowed from the grammar of the verb” (Genette 1980 [1972]: 30) evokes traditional sentence grammar more than it does linguistic theory. The early narratologists saw individual narratives as bearing a “narrative message” rendered through the identifiable constituents and combinatory principles of a common semiotic system which was susceptible to linguistically inspired description (story vs. discourse and its various derivatives). Yet the diverse postulates, methodologies, and goals adopted for proceeding with this analysis increasingly cast doubt on any appeal to structural linguistics as a pilot-science for a theory of narrative. From the perspective of one French linguist as recently as 2000: “Narratology, despite a number of rather metaphorical terminological borrowings (‘narrative proposition,’ ‘mode,’ etc.) has experienced a development that owes little to linguistics” (Mainguenau 2000: 10). 1 2. From Classical to Postclassical Narratology From the perspective of “postclassical” narratology, these divergences may be surprising. Proposed by David Herman in 1997 and explicated more fully in 1999, this term designates the re-emergence and transformation of narratology starting in the late 1980s, several years after the decline of “classical” narratology. 2 As Herman makes clear, if postclassical narratology is more inclusive and open-ended than its predecessor, both are committed to perfecting models for the description and explanation of narrative seen as a complex structure of levels that lends itself to analysis in ways that the linguistic turn has durably conferred on narrative theory (cf. Herman 1999). And indeed, it has been suggested by Monika Fludernik that: –––––––––––– 1 2

All translations from French sources are my own. Herman (1999: 4), referring to a statement by Mieke Bal, places “the high-water mark of classical theorizing about narrative” in 1979 at the time of the conference “Synopsis 2: Narrative Theory and Poetics of Fiction” held at Tel Aviv University.

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One way to map the history of narratology is […] to see it as adopting linguistic paradigms one by one as they arose in the twentieth century—structuralism (classical narratology); generative linguistics (text grammars); semantics and pragmatics (speech act theory, politeness issues, etc.); text linguistics (conversation analysis and critical discourse analysis); and now cognitive linguistics (cognitivist narratology). (Fludernik 2005: 48)

She further points out that the failure of classical narratology to provide adequate evidence to back up the empirical relevance of its linguistic categories has now been largely compensated for by the move of linguistics into cognitive concerns (to which discourse analysis and pragmatic linguistics might also be added), thus providing narratologists with invigorated linguistic models (Fludernik 2005: 50). In retrospect, then, divergences between the various models of classical narratology such as those pointed out above can be regarded as a harbinger not only of the crisis that was to seize the initial theories and models, but also of the dynamics of discovery characteristic of narratological research over the past twenty years. This being the case, it is important to bear in mind that poststructuralist narratology is not to be conflated with postclassical narratology, of which it is but one variety. Before inquiring into whether and in what sense a properly French postclassical narratology exists, it must be noted that the notion itself has been generated in a context marked largely by English-language scholarship; few Francophone narrative theorists think of their work in these terms. The expansion and multiplication of paradigms characteristic of postclassical narratology result from developments that are not wholly indigenous to French researchers or that are approached from a different angle. Thus, to avoid facile and potentially misleading assimilations, a few words on the key features of postclassical narratology are in order. The single most decisive factor in the rise of the new paradigms for the study of narrative is the integration of context into narrative theory and analysis. This is reflected not only in the evolution of linguistic theories mentioned above, but also by four major domains of investigation. The contextualization of narratology has produced—to mention only one example—feminist narratology, one of whose endeavors has been to question the formal neutrality of narrative categories by pointing to the genderization of voice, plot structure, etc. A text may provide cues to such genderization which in turn elicit in the reader an interpretive strategy and moves that were bracketed out by the early narratologists. As a result of these factors being taken into account, the context of reception (ideological, social, psychological, ethical, etc.) is integrated into the description and analysis of texts, as is the impact of reading on the processing of stories (also examined by psycho-narratology). A second domain is associated with the so-called “narrative turn” that gathered speed during the 1990s

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(but that was already evident in the celebrated issue of Communications published in 1966): this consists of an expansion of the corpus beyond literary fiction to include a wide variety of narratives such as conversational storytelling, narrative in law, medicine, psychoanalysis, etc. In turn, the increased variety of narratives studied by postclassical narratology has opened up yet another dimension of investigation: the narrative elements contained in poetry and drama (transgeneric narratology) and non-verbal forms of narrating in the plastic arts and music as well as, more recently, in the digital media (intermedial narratology). Finally, the expansion of classical narratology to include narratives beyond the literary corpus has gone hand-in-hand with a new interdisciplinarity brought to bear on the object of study and has resulted in a cross-fertilization of insights into narrative gained from disciplines and methodologies that formerly developed in isolation from one another: Fludernik’s (1996) “natural” narratology, for example, integrates research in the field of conversational storytelling; and cognitive narratology, as practiced by David Herman or Manfred Jahn, draws heavily on research conducted in the cognitive sciences. These various developments have ushered in a more synthetic and integrative approach to narrative than the earlier text-centered approach (cf. Herman 1999: 11): narrative categories are no longer seen “as ‘features’ or ‘properties’ of narrative texts, but as implied reading potentials informing the interaction between reader and text, between interpretive communities and texts, between a culture’s encoded ideology and a reader’s compliant or resistant decoding” (Rimmon-Kenan 2002 [1983]: 145). In sum, “narratology,” says Herman, once “a subfield of structuralist literary theory, […] can now be used to refer to any principled approach to the study of narratively organized discourse, literary, historiographical, conversational, filmic, or other” (1999: 27, n. 1). Postclassical narratology is not a unified undertaking, but rather groups together a variety of more or less overlapping paradigms and models and sometimes even incompatible theoretical premises, methodologies, and goals. For this reason it is just as frequently referred to as “narratologies.” In an article that forms an essential sequel to Herman’s landmark introductory text, Ansgar Nünning provides a survey which maps out the bewildering maze of “hyphenated and compound narratologies” that have sprung up over the years (cf. Nünning 2003: 258). 3 He includes a useful (though admittedly oversimplified) list contrasting the characteristics of the “text-centered” structural narratology with those of the “contextoriented” newer narratologies. Nünning also points out the tension between the “science of narrative” (Todorov) and “self-styled narratologies,” –––––––––––– 3

This article has also appeared in French in Pier/Berthelot (2010).

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noting that the latter are in some cases representative of other forms of literary theory and in others interpretive practices lacking in a theoretical foundation which is the hallmark of narratology—a state of affairs he attributes to what Jackson G. Barry (1990) has described as “Narratology’s Centrifugal Force” (Nünning 2003: 240–48). Nevertheless, he has undertaken the daunting task of proposing an informal and tentative classification of no fewer than twenty-five narratologies into eight broad and somewhat heterogeneous categories in addition to some twenty applications, approaches, and contributions of varying narratological relevance (Nünning 2003: 249–51). Nünning further suggests that these theories can be located along a scale ranging from an “undertheorized” pole (New Historical Narratologies) to an “overtheorized” pole (Narratological Semantics based on possible worlds theory), with Feminist Narratology occupying a medium point (Nünning 2003: 256). Without enquiring into how either of these two configurations might be foreshadowed by classical narratology, he also observes, significantly, that structuralist narrative theory was not as “monolithic” as is often thought, as it breaks down into at least four “branches” or “variants”: 1) Semantic Narratology/Narrative Semantics; 2) Story (oriented) Narratology (Syntactic Narrative Theory); 3) Discourse (oriented) Narratology; 4) Rhetorical/Pragmatic Narratology (cf. Nünning 2003: 246). Nünning welcomes the broadening scope of narratological research. Yet for fear of undermining the very concepts and goals that are the defining features of narratology, he also cautions against the wholesale inclusion of ever-proliferating narrative theories under the blanket term “postclassical narratology.” To maintain its status as a discipline and avoid the pitfalls of overextending and diluting its concepts and terminology, he therefore finds it desirable to draw a number of distinctions (cf. Nünning 2003: 257–62). First, narratology should not be considered synonymous with “narrative studies,” a broad generic term covering various disciplines, approaches, and forms of criticism extending from theoretical issues, on the one hand, to practical criticism, on the other. Instead, it represents a particular form of narrative theory. Next, despite the interdisciplinary nature of their undertaking, the various narrative theories that have come into existence since the 1980s would best be subsumed under “narrative theory” as the study of the forms and functions of narrative. Thus historiographical, psychological, and linguistic narrative theories, for instance, each develop a set of methodological tools and research goals for examining the forms and functions of narrative that remain distinct from those of narratology. Moreover, narratology, whether classical or postclassical, is not to be confused with what Gerald Prince (1995) has termed “narratological criticism”: a distinction between the two must be maintained even

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though the theory adopted by the critic will influence his interpretations and even though the narratologist’s findings must ultimately undergo the examination of individual texts. Finally, Nünning questions whether all postclassical approaches can be said to constitute true extensions of narratological principles and methodologies. For instance, he contends that postcolonial narratology or deconstructive narratology are either mere applications of the narratological toolkit or theories of interpretation that have little in common with the theory of narrative. The expansion of narratological concerns in fact harkens back to one of the founding texts, Barthes’s “Introduction.” This essay begins by affirming that narratives are countless, universal, transhistorical, and transcultural, that they can be conveyed by various media, that they are open to examination from different perspectives (historical, psychological, sociological, ethnological, esthetic, etc.), and that thanks to their universality they are open to description by reference to a “common model” for which Saussure’s langue serves as a model (cf. Barthes 1977 [1966]: 79). The new narratologies, born out of methodologies and perspectives inspired from developments in discourse analysis, pragmatics and speech act theory, possible worlds logic, the cognitive sciences, etc., make no claim for a centralizing model such as that proposed by Barthes. Instead, as Nünning’s argument shows, the new developments call for a rearticulation of the narratological program in response to the proliferation of theories and approaches as well as a redefinition of the place of narratology with regard to narrative studies, narrative theory, and criticism. As welcome as these distinctions are, there still remains a certain tension between the positions outlined by Barthes and Nünning. If, as Barthes suggests, the domain of narrative analysis is all narratives, then in principle narrative theory—and in particular narratology whose defining characteristic, in line with the Russian Formalists’ attempt to “uncouple theories of narration from theories of the novel” (Herman 2005a: 24), is the focus on narrative “as an autonomous object of study” (Ryan 2005: 344) independent of disciplines, media or genre—does indeed extend as far as narrative studies. This is so be it for no other purpose than to determine what is a narrative and what is not. 4 Moreover, as the title of a book by Gerald Prince (1982) reminds us, the task of narratology is to specify the forms and functions of narrative. But are anthropological, philosophical or linguistic theories of narrative, allowing for the particularities of their respective disciplines and methodologies, not also concerned with the forms and functions of narrative? The fact that narratologically inspired –––––––––––– 4

Herman (1999: 27, n. 1) implicitly acknowledges as much when he states that narratology is “more or less interchangeable with narrative studies” and then proceeds to narrow it down “to refer to any principled approach to the study of narratively organized discourse […].”

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studies have since come to be viewed in a context-based framework (cf. Herman 1999: 8–9) 5 reflects a greater degree of interdisciplinary input from fields such as conversational storytelling analysis, for instance, which came into existence independently of narratology, and thus less emphasis on the elaboration of an overarching narrative model, but not on distinguishing narrative from other forms of cultural representation. As to the delicate question of the relations between narratology and interpretation, the double-entry narratologies seem to have exposed a raw nerve. Where do systematic theoretical work end and the interpretation of individual works begin? And when does the interpretation of narratively organized discourse begin to reverberate within theory itself? Although there is no happy medium here and no generally valid rule for deciding where to draw the line, such questions, as shown by Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Müller (2003), can be approached from four angles: 1) autonomist (structural narratology); 2) contextualist (postclassical narratology); 3) foundationalist (use of narratological concepts to monitor and evaluate interpretations); 4) heuristic (a narratology built up in such a way as to be neutral with regard to the type of interpretation of a text one might undertake but that remains grounded in poetics and rhetoric). All in all, then, it would seem that the move from classical to postclassical narratology is less a revolution than an evolution (cf. Prince 2003b). Furthermore, the diversity of inspirations (linguistics, anthropology, rhetoric, psychoanalysis, philosophy) and divergences of approach and focus evidenced in the early formulations in fact served to lay the groundwork and point the way to subsequent developments that were to carry the debate forward, providing narratology with a new arsenal of paradigms and methodologies. 3. Francophone Narrative Theory If Ansgar Nünning’s attempt to chart out a road map for Englishlanguage postclassical narratology or narratologies was facilitated, in part, by the multiplicity of approaches to narrative study claiming (even abusively) the status of narratology, the same cannot be said of Francophone narratology. It would generally be recognized in France today that two narratologies exist, reflecting the distinction between histoire and discours: one thematic in the broad sense (analysis of the story or narrative content), the other formal or, rather, modal (analysis of narrative as a mode of ‘representation’

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Note that contextual considerations were already foreshadowed by Prince in his observations on narrativity and point, even within his formalistic frame of reference (1982: chap. 5).

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of stories, in contrast to the nonnarrative modes like the dramatic and, no doubt, some others outside literature. (Genette 1988 [1983]: 16) 6

In fact, there are few if any French practitioners of feminist, postcolonial or cultural studies operating under the banner of narratology. This is not to say, however, that narratological concepts are not, in some cases, included among the resources resorted to by specialists in these fields. Nor is it to say that Francophone narratology, even though still loosely associated with the structuralist movement by many, has not evolved since Genette’s Nouveau discours du récit in 1983—a publication which, arguably, marks the cutoff date of classical narratology as practiced in France for close to two decades. Rather, it is a sign that French literary scholars did not by and large take part in the “renaissance” of narratology beginning in the late 1980s. The principal players had already adopted a different set of pursuits, and work carried on in narrative theory until early in the present decade and even beyond (aside from the codified methods intended for scholastic purposes) did not follow lines of development that can readily be assimilated to those described in the first part of this paper. Indeed, Marielle Abrioux’s fine synthetic overview of international research in the field, published in 1995, makes no reference to the new developments, lest it be in the concluding remark where she draws attention to the unjustly neglected question, to date, […] of the difference between written narrative and oral narrative which, obviously, is to be confused neither with the distinction literary/non-literary nor with the distinction fictional/non-fictional. (Abrioux 1995: 200)

On the other hand, it is also notable that Abrioux’s article appeared only one year after the German translation of Genette’s Discours du récit: essai de méthode (1972)—fourteen years after the English translation… So what is true of “Anglo-American and French structuralist approaches to narrative,” namely that they “underwent a kind of staggered development following parallel evolutionary trajectories at nonsynchronous rates of change” (Herman 2005a: 26), seems to hold for the development of narratology on a much wider scale, both classical and postclassical, and indeed for the multiple though occasionally intersecting paths followed by narrative theory since the end of the nineteenth century. The year 1983 is also significant in that it saw the first tome of Paul Ricœur’s three-volume Time and Narrative (1983–85). Through the perspective of phenomenological hermeneutics, Ricœur’s work reintroduced into –––––––––––– 6

Berthelot (2005a, 2010) demonstrates the pertinence of these two narratologies in his study of “transfictions”; examining a broad corpus of novels, he breaks transfictions down into narratives that transgress the order of the world and those that transgress the laws of narrative. For a presentation of the subject in English, see Berthelot (2005b). Cf. also Ilias Yocaris’ seminar “Les récits transfictionnels” (University of Nice, 2011 and 2012).

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narrative theory an array of questions that narratologists, either by choice or as a result of methodology, had not addressed or had considered only marginally up to that time. Among the many issues debated in this major work, mention should be made in the present context of the three forms of mimesis that structure Ricœur’s overall argument. 7 Mimesis I corresponds to a “pre-comprehension of the world of action” in which any narrative plot is necessarily embedded. It is characterized not only by symbolic and temporal dimensions but also by a “conceptual network,” making it possible to distinguish between action (consisting of goals, motivations, and agents) and physical movement. Within this conceptual network, a relation of presupposition and transformation is set up between “practical understanding” and “narrative understanding”: as Ricœur points out, this has the consequence that the structural analysis of narrative 8 implicitly or explicitly includes a phenomenology of “doing” (faire). Such a phenomenology prefigures and shares some traits with “storyworlds” as mental constructs in cognitive narratology. Mimesis II is the locus of semiotic mediation from which a science of the text can be derived. It is here that the operation of “configuration” takes place through “emplotment” (mise en intrigue), a notion derived from Aristotle’s muthos and peripateia and from Augustine’s philosophy of time. Not only does Ricœur discuss plot with reference to narratological models—a principle absent from classical narratology (cf. Pier 2008: 118–19)—but it is also at this level that the opposition fictional narrative/historical narrative appears, a distinction not drawn by classical narratologists. Finally, Mimesis III marks the intersection between the text world and the world of the addressee. This means, among other things, that the act of reading operates as a vector of the plot’s ability to model experience and also that communication in narrative contexts raises a host of referential issues that were the bête noire of classical narratology and of structuralism in general. 9 By situating narrative within these three forms of mimesis, Ricœur opened up enquiries which, at the time, lay upstream or downstream of the narratological models that had been developed under the aegis of structuralism. One of the key notions to emerge from this contribution, with many ramifications, is that of “narrative intelligence.” It is distinct from the semiotic rationality that guides narratological theories which –––––––––––– 7 8

9

The following summary is based on Ricœur (1984 [1983]: chap. 3). By structural analysis of narrative, the work of Propp or Greimas is meant, although Bremond and other researchers working on the formal structure of narrative content could also be mentioned in this context. Regarding the widely employed notion of “referential illusion,” cf. Pavel (1986: 6). From the perspective of analytic philosophy and a possible worlds approach to literature, he denounces structuralism’s “moratorium on representational topics.” For a general critique of the use of linguistics by French structuralists, see Pavel (1989 [1988]).

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“dechronologize” narrative through attempts to model a narrative “logic.” Such theories fail to account for time as a “temporality” which is experienced phenomenologically, a temporality whose vehicle in narrative, both fictional and factual, is emplotment. The shift of parameters in the investigation of theoretical issues brought about by Ricœur’s hermeneutic study of narrative is in fact part of a more general trend in French scholarship toward the development of non-narratological approaches as well as a reflection on narrative outside the literary disciplines. These developments cannot be meaningfully taken up here. Yet mention can be made, on an indicative basis, of a few contributions in the fields of philosophy, historiography, and anthropology. Among philosophers, Time and Narrative has given rise to debates over such matters as the status of the theory of action in relation to plot, the problem of the narrative identity of the subject, the “intertwining” (entrecroisement) of fictional and historiographic writing through temporality, and the problematic articulation of narrative intelligence with hermeneutics, ethics, and poetics (cf. Bouchindhomme/Rochlitz 1990). In the theory of fiction, Jean-Marie Schaeffer (1999) has insisted on maintaining a distinction between fiction and narrative, terms that are far too often employed synonymously by literary critics. Fiction, he argues, is a universal ontogenetic competence essential for cognitive and affective development (children learn by adopting imaginary roles, etc.), while from a phylogenetic perspective it is a social activity which becomes a cultural institution once it takes the form of artistic representation. Schaeffer’s theory of fiction integrates Plato’s notion of mimesis as an “illusion” or an “as if” and mimesis in Aristotle which is understood as a cognitive modeling of actions according to necessity, verisimilitude or possibility. 10 Being a form of mimetic modeling implemented by various means, its effects are reactivated through fictional immersion, a pre-attentional simulation triggered by mimetic “baits” through which the addressee enters a mentally projected world. 11 In contrast to Schaeffer’s pragmatic approach is the semanticallyoriented possible worlds literary theory. Due to the previous lack of translations of the major contributions into French, this area of research is hardly known in France. This situation has been remedied by the recent publication of a collection of articles by some of the leading possible worlds literary theorists. 12 –––––––––––– 10 11 12

See also Schaeffer (2009: 103–4). Schaeffer’s book has stimulated further research and debate; see in particular Flahault/Heinich (2005). On fictional immersion, see Schaeffer/Vultur (2005). This publication followed out of a seminar directed by Françoise Lavocat at the University of Paris 7 – Denis Diderot in 2005–06 (cf. Lavocat 2010).

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As for historiography, reference can be made to the writings of Hayden White, inspired in part by Ricœur, which focus on the literary form and narrative strategies adopted in the writing of history. Regarding the epistemology of historiography in the more specifically French context, Paul Veyne (1984 [1971]) critiqued both structuralist and Marxist theories as well as history as scientific explanation, and in doing so he defended the role of plot in the writing of history. The notion of “truth programs” is also put forth by Veyne (1988 [1983]). These are systems of belief that allowed the Greeks to accept myths as historically truthful, for instance, or other societies to treat stories of the sacred and of the profane according to differing standards of historical truth. In a historical case study, Louis Marin (1978, 1981) examined narrative as a form of political rhetoric or argumentation in the specific historical context of seventeenth-century France. The perspective is not one of the theoretical status of narrative or its constitutive features: rather, the writing of history, but also of fables, memoirs, travel narratives, etc., and the image of the monarch are seen as interdependent, forming a “trap” born out of a mutual exchange between the narrative of power and the power of narrative. In the field of social anthropology, Marc Augé (1997) has studied “ethno-fictions,” the circulation of fictions in society and their appearance at particular historical moments. Taking as a base situation the roles of narrator-agents and witness-narratees and the status of events in narratives of dreams as opposed to narratives of possession by shaman-like forces in African and Amerindian societies, Augé demonstrated, inter alia, that the narrator of dreams experiences the enigma of presence of a second self marked by alterity; by contrast, in narratives of possession by outside forces, the narrator is faced with the enigma of absence, a second self characterized by identity. In modern societies, faced with the confusion of reality and models (Baudrillard, Virilio) and with the end of the grands récits (Lyotard), these discursive positions have reappeared; however, they have merged with fictions in such a way as to combine the imaginary and memory in a wide gamut of collective and individual forms. Studying ancient Greek texts, Claude Calame (2005, 2009 [2006]) has combined cultural and social (rather than structural) anthropology with a discourse analysis that places particular emphasis on the pragmatics of enunciation. Taking exception to Ricœur’s Heideggerian conception of temporality, which seeks to resolve the aporias of the phenomenology of vulgar or objective time into “lived time,” Calame proposes to restore non-phenomenological calendar time to the organization of social space. He recenters Ricœur’s triple mimesis so as to complement emplotment with “putting into discourse” (mise en discours) at the level of configuration (Mimesis II), thus introducing a “linguistic time” distinct from calendar

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time, yet entertaining with it a complex set of relations. This textual system, together with an anthropological perspective, is applied to a corpus remote from modern literatures, and the implications of Calame’s close analyses for a number of recent and current critical paradigms (structuralism, gender studies, philosophical idealism, neo-mysticism) are discussed. 13 Focusing on a novel present-day phenomenon, Christian Salmon (2007) has investigated the social uses of narrative that have emerged with the spectacular growth of “storytelling” in the field of marketing. Beginning in the 1980s, the use of storytelling then passed on, thanks in part to the new technologies, to management techniques in the form of standardized human resources scenarios, multi-media simulations produced by Hollywood for the “virtual” training of combat soldiers, the “spin doctors” enlisted for electoral campaigns, and the engineering of political information. This form of “applied narratology,” so to speak, comes on the heels of the “narrative turn.” In a way, Ricœur’s Time and Narrative and the other narrative research programs summarized above can be seen as a variety of responses to structuralist narratology’s failure to achieve its original aim, namely to develop a science of literature inspired by Saussure’s similar ambition for semiology as a future science of signs. It is well known that shortly after his 1966 “Introduction,” Barthes began to distance himself from this kind of project, precisely on the grounds of its “scientism.” A number of his writings during this period bear witness to this change of heart (“L’effet de réel” [1968], “La mort de l’auteur” [1968], S/Z [1970], “De l’œuvre au texte” [1972], etc.). This new orientation is summed up in his programmatic “Texte (théorie du)” (1973) which outlines a negative hermeneutics drawing on certain positions adopted by Derrida, Kristeva, and the Tel Quel group. With the formulation of a certain number of postulates, Barthes outlines an approach whose effect is to undermine the very premises on which structural narrative analysis is based: the “crisis” of the sign resulting in the subversion of signification; the idea that every “metalanguage” is a language and that text “deconstructs” the language of communication; the principle that the act of enunciation (and thus of narration) produces not a meaning but a “significance” which cannot be studied in terms of the categories of communication, representation or expression or in those of linguistics and rhetoric. Moreover, Barthes turns his attention to the process of structuring (structuration) rather than structure, and he conceives of text as an intertextual tissue of past quotations rather than an empirical entity; referring to Kristeva, he opposes “phenotext” as the object of semiological or structural analysis to “geno-text,” a –––––––––––– 13

Regarding this critique, see esp. Calame (2009 [2006]).

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set of operations occurring in the subconscious which is formative of the human subject; a new form of analysis is proposed called “semanalysis” which conducts its investigations on the interface between linguistics and psychoanalysis; finally, the notion of écriture is presented as a textual strategy aimed at redefining the relation between sender and receiver, liberated from the formal constraints of genres and the language sciences. A text theory reflecting these principles is illustrated in a well-known micro-analysis of Balzac’s story, “Sarrasine.” Here, Barthes, working the signifier from within so as to trace its “productivity” through the plurality of its five codes, points out that “for the plural text, there cannot be a narrative structure, a narrative grammar or a narrative logic” (Barthes 1970: 12). It is no less striking than significant that Francophone research, contrary to English-language scholarship, has devoted no effort to reformulating these notions into theories claiming the status of narratology, either poststructuralist (e.g., Gibson 1996) or postmodern (e.g., CornisPope 1990). For all of Barthes’s attempts to radically demarcate textual theory from his earlier theory of narrative, it is noteworthy that he continued to restrict linguistic analysis to the sentence, asserting that proposals to create a “linguistics of discourse” rely either on a rhetoric that is “outmoded,” a stylistics that is “very limited” or a metalanguage that examines the utterance (énoncé) from the outside rather than enter into the textual space of enunciation (Barthes 1973: 1016). In fact, Barthes chose not to follow up on developments in transformational grammar, text linguistics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, pragmatics, and the philosophy of language that had already begun to supersede structural linguistics. Rather, he took a new angle on structuralist principles which stemmed from Derrida’s deconstructionism and which has been described by François Dosse as “ultra-structuralism”: it consists of dismantling logocentrism through the radicalization of structural logic, a decentering that results in an infinite play of differences and deferral (cf. Dosse 1992: 30–47). For Francophone structuralism, and in particular for the narrative theories that followed out of it, the result was to orient narrative research in directions different from those which these theories might otherwise have taken. Nonetheless, as it has since become more evident, the legacy of the early narratology is to have “reconfigure[d] the relationship between critico-theoretical and linguistic analysis” (Herman 2001: § 6). From this perspective, classical narratology can be seen as laying the groundwork for a narrative theory rooted in a “textual science” or “sciences of the text.” Such a textual science is not a sub-discipline of the natural sciences—the “scientism” shied away from by Barthes and his followers—but is closer to the German idea of a Textwissenschaft, that is, an

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organized body of concepts and of analytical and evaluative procedures brought to bear on discourse in its manifold forms, of which narrative is one variety. 14 However much Saussurean-inspired linguistic models can be credited with contributing to the growth of methodologically sophisticated theories of narrative, it remains ill-suited to discourse-analytical paradigms extending beyond the sentence. 15 In sum, classical narratology did not have at its disposal a sufficiently elaborated conceptual and methodological apparatus to carry through on the insights gained from the initial program. 4. A French Postclassical Narratology? French Discourse Analysis With this brief overview of the principal lines along which postclassical narratology has developed and a few suggestions as to why Francophone narrative theory did not actively or directly participate in the “renaissance” of narratology, it is now possible to address the question of a properly French postclassical narratology. To the extent that French-speaking narratologists have not pursued the various “narratologies” cultivated in other countries, the answer to the question as to whether there exists a French postclassical narratology is “no.” To date, the thematic and interpretive narratologies identified by Nünning have not taken root on French soil; where “applications” of narratological principles do exist (e.g., in explication de texte), they are often carried out in a piecemeal fashion and tend to be restricted to descriptive purposes serving ends that lose sight of the concepts, methods, and aims of narratological research. However, viewed in the singular, rather than the plural, there is a body of research within the Francophone sphere that can be qualified as postclassical narratology. Broadly speaking, this research is carried on by theoreticians who have taken a critical stance with regard to the various concepts and analytical procedures focused on by classical narratology, although not with the aim of contesting or undermining the principled study of narrative in its numerous dimensions. Rather, in the spirit of the opening page of Barthes’s 1966 essay, the project consists of thinking these concepts and analytical procedures through on the basis of paradigms that to various degrees have succeeded those of structuralism. The –––––––––––– 14

15

Such a program has been outlined by Rastier (2001) who calls for a re-articulation of linguistics, semiotics, computer philology, “material” hermeneutics, rhetoric, stylistics, thematics, and general poetics within the framework of a semiotics of cultures. The ambiguous “homological relation” between sentence and discourse postulated by Barthes (1977 [1966]: 83) was looked at in a different light by van Dijk (1972), for example, who spoke of textual microstructures and macrostructures.

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result, while not a “unified” narrative theory, can be described as coming within the scope of a textual science forming a branch of analyse du discours. This analyse du discours, or “discourse analysis,” has developed along lines that are not wholly assimilable to the discourse analysis practiced in English-language scholarship, even though both are born out of the recognition of the need to study language beyond the limit of the sentence and to take account of the contextual and pragmatic features of discourse.16 It reflects a fundamental and multifaceted mutation that took place starting in the late sixties with the eclipsing of structural linguistics and the rise of the autonomy of the text with its “codes” by factoring in the contextuality of meaning and of advances in text linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, the theory of argumentation, conversation analysis, stylistics, etc. As regards French discourse analysis employed in the theory of narrative, divergences of approach and emphasis do of course exist, but they cannot be said to have ramified into an array of narratologies tailored to the needs of specific themes, interpretive schools, disciplines, or objects of analysis. For the sake of economy, my comments on French discourse analysis and its relevance to narrative theory will draw mainly on a number of publications by Jean-Michel Adam which situate narrative within a general theory of discourse that neither restricts narrative to text or to structure (structuralism), dissolves it into textualism (poststructuralism), nor assimilates all forms of discourse into narrative paradigms (the question of “narrative ubiquity”). 17 Developing in a consistent manner from the mid–––––––––––– 16

17

“The term ‘discourse analysis’ has come to be used with a wide range of meanings […] to describe activities at the intersection of disciplines as diverse as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, philosophical linguistics and computational linguistics” (Brown/Yule 1983: viii). For these authors, discourse analysis includes “transactional language” (“factual or propositional information”) and “interactional language” (“use of language to establish and maintain social relationships”) (Brown/Yule 1983: 1–3). Van Dijk (1985) traces the emergence of discourse analysis (which he likens to Textwissenschaft) during the early 1970s to the refutation of formal, context-free transformational grammar as well as to speech act theory, text grammar, the link between research on artificial intelligence and the psychology of memory, conversation analysis, and the ethnography of communication. De Beaugrande (1985) points out that text linguistics and discourse analysis have developed in “a diverse and occasionally contrapuntal pattern” and calls for a research plan that will cover both text and discourse (1985: 41). More recently, in the “General Introduction” to a fourvolume anthology, Critical Discourse Analysis, Toolan states: “Because CDA always sees language as discourse, as construing and construed by social interests (‘thought’ or ideology, control, gender, class, race, politics), one of the first things to be noted is that it subscribes to a non-autonomous theory of language: languages are not studied as autonomous, homogeneous, structured objects, standing apart from the users and societies which sponsor and renew them” (Toolan 2002: xxiii). On the ubiquity of narrative, see The Travelling Concept of Narrative (Hyvärinen/Korhonen/ Mykkänen 2006). This interesting sequel to Nünning (2003) contains several contributions devoted to an examination of the “narrative turn”: e.g., Rimmon-Kenan (2006) points out that from the beginning, the concept narratology has borne the potential for broad expan-

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1970s to the present, Adam’s research has integrated a wide variety of sources in the language sciences and literary theory. Like the work carried on by other specialists in the field, Adam’s project suggests that discourse analysis, in a radical departure from structural linguistics as the “pilotscience” invoked by classical narratology, lies at the crossroads of the human sciences, notably linguistics, sociology, and psychology. 5. Text and Discourse One basic conceptual factor to be taken into account is that where most narratological systems explicitly or implicitly adopt one version or another of the story/discourse pair,18 discourse analysis approaches its object of study from the broader perspective of text and discourse. 19 Text can be viewed in two ways: 1) as the abstract object of text linguistics governed by texture, or cohesion (grammatical and stylistic dependencies at the microlinguistic level), and structure (a hierarchical relational network with a relatively autonomous internal organization at the macrolinguistic level) or; 2) as an utterance (énoncé), i.e., the singular empirical object resulting from an act of enunciation (énonciation) which forms the object of analysis of individual texts and takes into account the context of verbal interaction as well as intentionality (producer’s attitude) and acceptability (receiver’s attitude) (cf. Adam 2001 [1992]: 15; 1999: 40; 2005: 28–29; Charaudeau/Maingueneau 2002: 570–72; de Beaugrande/Dressler 1981). It will be noted that the emphasis here is on text and texts in general, and not any specific type of text, as terminologically presupposed by the story/discourse pair. As for discourse, the term can refer to units of language beyond the sentence and thus to text (as in English usage). However, discourse also has other meanings, one of them included in Émile Benveniste’s modes of utterance histoire/discours (cf. 1990 [1966]: 225–57)—an important source of the mainstream narratological distinction.20 From a different perspec––––––––––––

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sion into areas that have little to do with narrative, and she thus argues in favor of a reflection on the differentia specifica of narrative. Hyvärinen (2006) sees a divergence between narratological theories, which tend to debate the criteria of narrative, and narrative-turn theories that have radically expanded the range of narratives into the social sciences. Phelan (2005) has cautioned against the perils of “narrative imperialism.” I will not dwell on these polysemic and variously interpreted terms, but only refer the reader to the definitions of story and discourse in Prince (2003a [1987]: 21, 93). For a commentary, see Pier (2003: 78–83). Note that Prince (2003a [1987]) includes no entry for “Text.” Briefly stated, histoire consists in third-person utterances that exclude “autobiographical” forms while discours, in the first and third persons, includes “all enunciations which assume

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tive, however, discourse in French linguistics is viewed as language put into context in the course of interpersonal or intersubjective transaction, and it is thus socio-historically situated. Moreover, discourse results from various restrictions imposed on language as a system (langue): a set of utterances within a given “discursive formation” (Foucault); type (e.g., political discourse), consisting of an open-ended variety of genres (televised debate, tract, etc.); the status of interlocutors (employer, employee, etc.); function (polemical, pedagogical, etc.) (cf. Charaudeau/Maingueneau 2002: 186, 592; Marnette 2005: 7). A particular aspect of French discourse analysis, and one with farreaching consequences, is that it adopts a dual perspective on linguistic units beyond the sentence. As a verbal sequence with boundaries marked by a change of speakers, the linguistic unit is, on the one hand, an utterance (and not the sentence, i.e., a grammatical unit); as the trace of a socio-historically (and cognitively) determined act of communication, it is, on the other hand, discourse. A similar relation holds between a text understood as a linguistic unit produced by an act of enunciation and discourse. In this case, the same text is analyzed as a socio-discursive interaction: it takes the form of an oriented action between interlocutors subject to certain norms such as the grammatical rules of a given language and speech genres;21 furthermore, this oriented action occurs within a universe of other discourses. 22 More specifically, text, according to Adam (cf. 1990: 23; 1999: 36–41; 2005: 19–20, 24, 31), is included within discourse, rather than the other way around. This marks a clear turn away from the structuralist notion of textual immanence and, a fortiori, from story and discourse in the standard narratological models. It reflects a more pragmatic conception of discursive practices and strategies of communication in that it highlights the context of conditions of textual production, reception, and interpretation. As a result, the analysis of individual discourses, which incorporates text linguistics as a sub-field, devotes particular attention to the complex interplay between textual determinations, which operate in a –––––––––––– 21 22

a speaker and a hearer, the first intending to influence the other in some way” (Benveniste 1990 [1966]: 242); my emphasis. The Baxtinian notion of speech genres will be taken up below. Adam (1999: 85) likens interdiscursivity to Genette’s (1997 [1982]: 1) “transtextuality”: “all that sets a text in a relationship, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts.” For the pre-eminence of interdiscourse over discourse, see Maingueneau (1987: 81–93) and Charaudeau/Maingueneau (2002: 324–26). Since the 1980s, Foucault’s “discursive formations” have been largely relativized by interdiscourse, considered more neutral with regard to corpuses of a non-doctrinal nature and better adapted for analysis of the semiotic functioning of discourse (cf. Charaudeau/Maingueneau 2002: 269–72). For a critique of early French discourse analysis and its links with Althusserian dialectical materialism, see Rastier (2001: 243–46). On the relations between textuality and intertextuality, see Heidmann/Adam (2010).

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“bottom-up” fashion, and discursive determinations, the “top-down” regulation of utterances through social interaction and speech genres.23 6. Discourse between Compositional Structure and Speech Genres Analysis of a discourse is predicated on the premise that textual units are subject to two types of textualization. The first, focused on by text linguistics, is revealed by the discontinuous segmentation of a text into texture (sentence grammar and relations beyond the sentence), compositional structure, semantics, enunciation (situational anchoring), and illocutionary orientation. The second, which is discourse-analytical, involves a process of “linkage” (liage) of units. Here, the basic unit is not the sentence (nor, for the narrative text, the function, motif, or move), but the “propositionutterance” (proposition-énoncé). This integrated discourse-oriented category consists of a syntactic micro-unit and a micro-unit of sense produced by an act of enunciation, and it includes a referential or propositional content and an argumentative orientation with an illocutionary force. Propositionutterances occur within both a linear succession (connectivity) and a hierarchical structure (sequentiality). They are bound together, first, by such devices as co-reference, anaphor, isotopy, and connectors and, second, are joined into rhythmic and lexico-morphological periods and macrosemantic sequences; these periods and sequences, in turn, are integrated into compositional and configurational units (cf. Adam 2001 [1992]: 40– 43; 1999: 43–80; 2005: 65–192). As already noted, a key feature of Adam’s formulation of discourse analysis is that it situates narrative within a broader theory of discourse. One important consequence of this critical decision is that the analysis of texts neither yields a typology of texts nor is predicated on the existence of such a typology. In fact, Adam specifically rejects such a typology, and in referring to work on this subject by (among others) Gülich, Werlich, Isenberg, and Longacre, he questions the notion of text types itself. Maintaining that texts are too complex and heterogeneous to be satisfactorily pigeonholed into typologies, he proposes as an alternative an open-ended ––––––––––––

23

Cf. Charaudeau/Maingueneau (2002: 185–90, 221–23) and Marnette (2005: 8). In an analogous development but with emphasis on the pragmatics of enunciation, Calame (e.g., 2000 [1986], 2005) distinguishes between “intra-”/“extra-textual” and “intra-”/“extradiscursive,” concepts derived from Benveniste, Jakobson, Bühler, and Greimas. Intradiscursive operations include assertion (marked by third-person “enuncive” shifters) and the assuming of these assertions by an instance of enunciation (marked by first- and second-person “enunciative” shifters). The point of origin of an enunciation results from a spatially and temporally situated “uttered enunciation” located between the utterances themselves and extra-discursive reality.

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system that conjoins the compositional structuring of sequence types with a theory of speech genres which serves to link the singular text to a Wittgensteinian “family of texts.” Compositional structure breaks down in Adam’s model into five types of sequence: narrative; descriptive; argumentative; explanatory; dialogical. These sequences correspond not to text types but rather to prototypes, a notion which can be informally defined as cognitively based patterns of categorization that operate in a “more-or-less” fashion instead of in the categorial “either-or” manner. On this basis, a robin is perceived as more prototypically a “bird” than is an emus (centrality gradience) while the characterization of a man as “tall” shades off into neighboring categories of height (membership gradience). Applying this principle to discourse, it is clear that the singular text rarely if ever incarnates a single prototype— Adam insists on the compositional heterogeneity of texts—but instead implements combinations and dosages of the various prototypes either into heterogeneous sequential structures or into hybrid forms displaying a narrative dominant, a descriptive dominant, etc., according to the configuration peculiar to that text. Seen in this light, narrative is liberated from the monological unity ascribed to it by classical narratology. No longer is it the task of narratology (as in some of its earlier formulations) to formalize the “deep structure” of narrative out of which individual narratives are generated or, in abstracting from the sjuzhet, to determine the fabula that underlies or structures the singular text. Adam’s discourse-based prototypical approach to text theory and analysis allows for a more plural conception of narrative. Prototypically, narrative is modeled after the narrative sequence (cf. Adam 1999: esp. chap. 2). The coherence-building criteria of the sequence, drawn mainly from Bremond (1966), include: 1) succession of events; 2) thematic unity; 3) transformation of predicates; 4) integration of units into a same action; and 5) causality. The sequence itself is built up out of proposition-utterances grouped into five macro-propositions (initial situation, complication, actions, resolution, final situation), and it is given an overall configurational sense thanks to an evaluative macro-proposition which is either implicit or explicit (a “moral”). What sets the prototypical model of the narrative sequence off from its structuralist predecessor stems in large part from the evaluative macro-proposition, a feature taken by Adam from Labov and Waletzky’s pathbreaking contribution to the analysis of conversational storytelling, and in particular from Labov’s notion of “point,” also referred to by narratologists as “tellability.” 24 The importance of this aspect of Adam’s theory is borne out, first of all, by the –––––––––––– 24

For a recent overview of tellability, see Baroni (2009).

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configurational influence that strategies of evaluation exert on narrative discourse, sequence thus being integrated into Ricœur’s Mimesis II, the locus of configuration and emplotment (see above); and secondly, it both underlies and underscores a textual pragmatics, initiated notably by Eco, 25 but also with roots in Baxtin’s sociolinguistics, that remained only latent in the classical models due to an overriding interest in identifying the constants of narrative structure and neglect of non-literary oral narration. 26 In the analysis of discourses, the compositional structure of sequences is described essentially in terms of text linguistics. The pragmatic dimension, however, while textually discernible, also extends beyond strictly linguistic matters, coming within the broader scope of social interaction and socio-discursive context and thus opening a gap between linguistically describable features and these broader social and contextual considerations. As an interface between these two dimensions, Adam introduces Baxtin’s notion of speech genres (Baxtin 1986 [1952–53]). 27 According to Baxtin, the units of langue (language as an abstract system) do not combine directly or freely into units of parole (the individual act of enunciation). Between them lies a vast and varied assembly of “relatively stable forms,” or speech genres, conditioned according to various social spheres (e.g., within the religious sphere, speech genres include the prayer, the sermon, etc.). Both prescriptive and normative, speech genres serve as a type of social codification without which communication would be impossible. They exist in primary (simple) forms (e.g., the unmediated verbal exchanges of everyday speech) and in secondary (complex) forms (literary texts, scientific reports, etc.) into which primary forms, which operate prototypically, are assimilated. A second feature of speech genres is that the “complete utterance” taken as a whole, marked by the change of speakers rather than by the grammatical sentence, consists not merely of a proposition but is inseparable from what one hopes to achieve in choosing one utterance or another. Adam’s proposition-utterance (see above) together with the compositional structure of texts represents a translation of this principle into a discourse-analytical concept. Finally, faced with the heterogeneity of texts, Adam, skeptical of typologies of texts and opting instead for the prototypical typology of sequences discussed above, sees linguistic competence as governed by: 1) discursive constraints, i.e., histor–––––––––––– 25 26

27

See Eco (1979) in particular. By adopting prototypes in place of text types, it may be the case that Adam has not so much rejected text types as provided them with a basis, in cognitive and sociolinguistic terms, for their reformulation. In this sense, Herman’s (2009: esp. chap. 4) discussion of text types in a cognitive context represents an interesting sequel to Adam’s prototypical narrative sequence. More generally, Adam’s discourse analysis shares a number of common though heretofore little discussed concerns with Herman’s cognitive narratology. Cf. Adam (1999: 11–16; 2001 [1992]: 16–18, 60); Adam/Heidmann (2004).

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ical and social factors that influence the formation of speech genres (rather than text types); 2) textual constraints determining compositional structure; and 3) local constraints analyzed in accordance with the standard linguistic categories. “A [speech] genre,” he states, “links what textual analysis describes linguistically to what the analysis of discursive practices seeks to apprehend socio-discursively” (Adam 1999: 83; emphasis in the original). What counts in the end, however, is not genre per se, which is a classificatory concept, but genericity: Genericity is a socio-cognitive necessity that links all texts to the interdiscourse of a social formation. A text in itself does not belong to a genre. Rather, at the time of production and at that of reception-interpretation, it is put into relation with one or more genres. (Adam/Heidmann 2004: 62)

Or again: it is less a matter of examining the generic membership of a text than of bringing to light the generic tensions that inform it. This displacement from genre to genericity suspends all typological concerns [and] makes it possible to bypass the pitfalls of essentialism. (Dion/Fortier/Hagueraert 2001: 17; quoted in Adam/Heidmann 2004: 63)

7. Discourse: The Ongoing Issues The discourse analysis developed by Adam is not a specifically narrative theory but a theory that includes narrative as one of its objects. As is the case of discourse analysis generally speaking, it draws heavily on linguistics but at the same time seeks to bring within its scope a variety of discursive and socio-discursive phenomena that require either an expansion of linguistic paradigms or the adaptation of non-linguistic disciplines to the conditions and processes of discourse. At the risk of oversimplifying, it can be said that French narrative theory since the classical phase of narratology has generally followed two paths: either it has addressed questions raised by narratology but without necessarily claiming, or in some cases even refusing, the title of narratology, thus casting the new approach to narrative theory in a different light (the assimilation of narratological categories into a phenomenological hermeneutics by Ricœur in his Time and Narrative being the most consequential example); or it has evolved within the various frameworks offered by theories of discourse that got underway shortly after the birth of narratology and for which narratology was one source of momentum. Roughly speaking, theories of discourse as they have been developed in Francophone scholarship over the past few decades can be divided into three groups (cf. Petitjean 1989).

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Communicational theories, whose reference point is Jakobson’s (1960) influential five-function model of verbal communication. Employed, often in revised form, in the analysis of numerous types of discourse, Jakobson’s model has also played a role in the development of sender-receiver theories of narrative communication which include embedded levels beginning with the author-reader and extending through the implied author-implied reader, the narrator-narratee, and character-character exchanges. Among these theories is Genette’s “modal” narratology with its concentration on analysis of the discourse level. Enunciative theories, developing out of Benveniste’s (1991 [1970]) definition of enunciation as the functioning of language implemented by the individual act of use. This orientation has resulted in enunciative linguistics, which has produced a large and diverse body of research in France, and it has also given rise to an enunciative narratology. 28 The basic postulate of such a narratology, according to René Rivara, is to consider literary narration as a specific type of enunciation, making it possible to work out or elucidate properly narratological concepts (such as ‘interior monologue’) and to explain several fundamental properties of narrative. (Rivara 2000: 50)

Enunciatively inspired narrative theory, critical of Genette’s position on focalization and speech representation, has re-examined these issues backed up with a more rigorous linguistic methodology. On this basis, Rivara (2000, 2004) has advocated a “narrator-centered” enunciative narratology which correlates viewpoints with first-person and third-person narration; in contrast, Alain Rabatel (1998, 2008, 2010) has applied enunciative analysis to narrative phenomena (particularly viewpoints) by linking linguistic expression to perceptions, but without claiming for this analysis the status of a comprehensive theory of narrative. In her recent monograph on the narrator, Sylvie Patron (2009) has taken a critical stance with regard to the enunciativists’ thesis of a “narrator-in-all-narratives” and, with reference to Hamburger, Kuroda, and Banfield, has called into question communication-based narrative theories. Discourse analysis theories, classifying discourses according to situational or socio-historic criteria or, more recently, viewing discourse as the conjunction of “bottom-up” text linguistic determinations and “top-down” contextual and pragmatic factors. These theories, which bring narrative under a general theory of discourse, situate individual discourses in a universe of discourses (interdiscourse) and are thus characterized by a dialogical dimension. In reviewing Adam’s work in this field, it has been shown how the compositional structure of narrative, for instance, when con–––––––––––– 28

For a more detailed account, see Sylvie Patron’s contribution to this volume. The French version of this article is included as an appendix in Patron (2009).

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fronted with a prototypical model of the narrative sequence and speech genres, combines textual analysis with socio-discursive analysis. These three orientations in theories of discourse are not exclusive of one another, but, in some respects, have resulted from overlapping concerns.29 Nor do these theories stake out the full range of present-day French narrative theory, Ricœur’s influential work, for example, being a hermeneutic rather than a discourse-analytical approach. Even so, based on the premise that one essential common thread running through Francophone research in this area since the time of the initial narratological studies is that narrative is above all a form of discourse, I have attempted to show that narratology as currently practiced in French-speaking countries is postclassical to the extent that it builds critically on past work, but not in the sense that it can be declined into a plurality of narratologies. In this way, narratology conceived according to the postulates, goals, and methodologies of discourse analysis, even if the various approaches may diverge, is not one narratology among others; on the contrary, it provides a general conceptual framework for discourse within which the manifold aspects of narrative in all of its forms can be addressed. This being the case, the following points (at a minimum) can be made: 1) Narrative examined within a discourse-analytical paradigm such as the one proposed by Adam in which discourses are seen as the product of interaction between compositional structure, the configuration of prototypes, and speech genres pre-empts any over-expansion of categorizations derived from story/discourse theories: a theory that accommodates the heterogeneity of texts relativizes any assumption as to the primacy of narrative discourse or the idea, implicit or explicit, that discourse in general is structured according to the criteria of narrative. 30 2) Because it includes corpuses from all speech genres, French discourse analysis does not need to export categories, paradigms, and methodologies—narrative or otherwise—when examining discourses that are not predominantly of one kind or another; by the same token, a narratology rooted in discourse analysis does not need to propose different narratologies in order to accommodate different corpuses or analyze various aspects of narrative, but only adapt its focus accordingly. ––––––––––––

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Thus enunciative narratology, for example, was formulated partly in response to categories first set out by Genette; moreover, Marnette (2005: 13 passim) has examined speech and thought presentation within the context of Adam’s sequence types and speech genres. Rabatel’s (2008) important two-volume study of dialogism and polyphony in narrative merits particular attention with regard to enunciative and interactional issues. Cf. Herrnstein Smith (1981: 228): “Almost any verbal utterance will be laced with more or less minimal narratives, ranging from fragmentary reports and abortive anecdotes to those more distinctly framed and conventionally marked tellings that we are inclined to call ‘tales’ or ‘stories.’”

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3) Contrary to story/discourse theories, a discourse-analytical approach to narrative results in the inclusion of text within discourse. The ensuing move away from text typologies toward prototypes (or toward a prototypical conception of texts) is consistent with the general trend in the field of literary theory and criticism toward the contextual structuring of discourse in the process of reception. The last point in particular leads to the question of how and to what degree a discourse-analytical narratology might tally with Nünning’s “context-oriented” narratologies. Without further theoretical work and the examination of appropriate corpuses, this question must of course remain open. Yet it does seem clear that, on the matter of the contextualization of narrative categories, Francophone discourse-analytical theories differ significantly from the current postclassical position. Thus the discourseanalytical approach does not rule out, for instance, the genderization of narrative: it sees nothing in compositional structure which is inherently gendered (pronouns, plot structure, etc.) but seeks, rather, to account for this feature in accordance with socio-discursive factors. Moreover, expansion of the corpus is viewed by this approach not so much as a response to the ubiquity of narrative but as a correlate of the heterogeneity of forms of discourse. Among the broader implications of Francophone narratology as presented in this paper, two in particular appear to call for some comment. First, the pertinent locus of narrative structuring is to be found neither in text nor in context, but in the interface between the two. This can be attributed in large part to the prototypical dimension of discourse-analytical narrative theory, and in particular to the idea that narrative sequences are more or less pronounced according to the pragmatic and contextual criteria to which they are subject, as opposed to the “deep structure” of earlier theories out of which narratives are purportedly generated. Second, a narratology rooted in discourse analysis may well offer an alternative to the “centrifugal force” (Barry 1990) that has contributed to the proliferation of narratologies. This tendency stems from the need to overcome the constraints imposed by “text-centered” classical narratology through the introduction of a more open array of “context-oriented” postclassical narratologies. It is a consequence of the division of narrative into story and discourse, itself a lingering heritage of Saussurean langue and parole. By contrast, the inclusion of speech genres and genericity in Francophone discourse-analytical narratology, by focusing on the tensions that prevail in individual discourses, offers a possible solution to the alternative between textualism and contextualism that has marked so much of narratology throughout its development.

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Such then are some of the issues that place the discourse-analytical approach within the scope of postclassical narratology. By questioning and reordering the premises of narratology in relation to forms of discourse other than narrative, Francophone discourse-analytical narratology positions itself within the broader question of a semiotics of cultural representation rather than as one narratology among others. 31 References Abrioux 1995 Abrioux, Marielle: “Narratologie,” in Nouveau dictionnaire des sciences du langage, edited by Oswald Ducrot and Jean-Marie Schaeffer, 191–201 (Paris: Seuil). Adam 1994 [1985] Adam, Jean-Michel: Le texte narratif: précis d’analyse textuelle, (Paris: Nathan). Adam 1990 Adam, Jean-Michel: ͆léments de linguistique textuelle (Brussels/Liège: Mardaga). Adam 2001 [1992] Adam, Jean-Michel: Les textes: Types et prototypes, 4th ed. (Paris: Nathan). Adam 1999 Adam, Jean-Michel: Linguistique textuelle: Des genres de discours aux textes (Paris: Nathan). Adam 2005 Adam, Jean-Michel: La linguistique textuelle: Introduction à l’analyse textuelle des discours (Paris: A. Colin). Adam/Heidmann 2004 Adam, Jean-Michel/Heidmann, Ute: “Des genres à la généricité: L’exemple des contes (Perrault et les Grimm),” in Langages 153: 62–72. Augé 1997 Augé, Marc: La guerre des rêves: Exercices d’ethno-fiction (Paris: Seuil). Baroni 2009 Baroni, Raphaël: “Tellability,” in Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn, John Pier, Wolf Schmid and Jörg Schönert, 447–54 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter). Barry 1990 Barry, Jackson G.: “Narratology’s Centrifugal Force: A Literary Perspective on the Extensions of Narrative Theory,” in Poetics Today 11.2: 727–53. Barthes 1977 [1966] Barthes, Roland: “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives,” in Image, Music, Text, translated by Stephen Heath, 79–124 (New York: Hill and Wang). Barthes 1970 Barthes, Roland: S/Z (Paris: Seuil).

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I wish to thank Philippe Roussin for his insightful reading of this article and valuable suggestions as well as Greta Olson and Birte Christ for their exceptional editorial feedback.

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