Handbook of Narratology [2nd edition, fully revised and expanded] 9783110316469, 9783110316346

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Handbook of Narratology Volume 1 De Gruyter Handbook

Handbook of Narratology 2nd edition, fully revised and expanded Edited by Peter Hühn · Jan Christoph Meister John Pier · Wolf Schmid Volume 1

De Gruyter

ISBN 978-3-11-031634-6 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-031646-9 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-038207-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. 쑔 2014 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: Hubert & Co. GmbH und Co. KG, Göttingen 앝 Printed on acid-free paper 앪 Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Table of Contents Volume 1 Preface .......................................................................................

XI

Author ........................................................................................ Jörg Schönert

1

Autobiography ........................................................................... Helga Schwalm

14

Character .................................................................................... Fotis Jannidis

30

Cognitive Narratology ............................................................... David Herman

46

Coherence .................................................................................. Michael Toolan

65

Computational Narratology ....................................................... Inderjeet Mani

84

Conversational Narration – Oral Narration ............................... Monika Fludernik

93

Corporate Storytelling ............................................................... Birgitte Norlyk, Marianne Wolff Lundholt & Per Krogh Hansen

105

Diachronic Narratology (The Example of Ancient Greek Narrative) ............................... Irene J. F. de Jong Dialogism ................................................................................... David Shepherd

115 123

VI

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Diegesis – Mimesis .................................................................... Stephen Halliwell

129

Dreaming and Narration ............................................................ Richard Walsh

138

Experientiality ........................................................................... Marco Caracciolo

149

Event and Eventfulness .............................................................. Peter Hühn

159

Fictional vs. Factual Narration Jean-Marie Schaeffer

..................................................

179

Focalization ............................................................................... Burkhard Niederhoff

197

Gender and Narrative ................................................................. Susan S. Lanser

206

Heteroglossia ............................................................................. Valerij Tjupa

219

Historiographic Narration .......................................................... Daniel Fulda

227

Identity and Narration ................................................................ Michael Bamberg

241

Ideology and Narrative Fiction .................................................. Luc Herman & Bart Vervaeck

253

Illusion (Aesthetic) .................................................................... Werner Wolf

270

Implied Author ........................................................................... Wolf Schmid

288

Implied Reader ........................................................................... Wolf Schmid

301

Table of Contents

VII

Mediacy and Narrative Mediation ............................................. Jan Alber & Monika Fludernik

310

Metalepsis .................................................................................. John Pier

326

Metanarration and Metafiction .................................................. Birgit Neumann & Ansgar Nünning

344

Multiperspectivity ...................................................................... Marcus Hartner

353

Narratee ...................................................................................... Wolf Schmid

364

Narration and Narrative in Legal Discourse .............................. Greta Olson

371

Narration in Film ....................................................................... Markus Kuhn & Johann N. Schmidt

384

Narration in Medicine ................................................................ Rishi Goyal

406

Narration in Poetry and Drama .................................................. Peter Hühn & Roy Sommer

419

Narration in Religious Discourse (The Example of Christianity) ................................................... Sönke Finnern

435

Narration in Various Disciplines ............................................... Norbert Meuter

447

Narration in Various Media ....................................................... Marie-Laure Ryan

468

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Volume 2 Narrative Acquisition in Education Research and Didactics ..... Mechthild Dehn, Daniela Merklinger & Lis Schüler

489

Narrative Constitution ............................................................... Michael Scheffel

507

Narrative Empathy ..................................................................... Suzanne Keen

521

Narrative Ethics ......................................................................... James Phelan

531

Narrative Levels ......................................................................... John Pier

547

Narrative Strategies ................................................................... Valerij Tjupa

564

Narratives in Rhetorical Discourse ............................................ Stefan Iversen

575

Narrativity .................................................................................. H. Porter Abbott

587

Narrativity of Computer Games ................................................ Britta Neizel

608

Narratology ................................................................................ Jan Christoph Meister

623

Narrator ...................................................................................... Uri Margolin

646

Non-temporal Linking in Narration ........................................... Wolf Schmid

667

Performativity ............................................................................ Ute Berns

677

Table of Contents

IX

Perspective – Point of View ...................................................... Burkhard Niederhoff

692

Plot ............................................................................................. Karin Kukkonen

706

Poetic or Ornamental Prose ....................................................... Wolf Schmid

720

Possible Worlds ......................................................................... Marie-Laure Ryan

726

Reader ........................................................................................ Gerald Prince

743

Schemata .................................................................................... Catherine Emmott & Marc Alexander

756

Sequentiality .............................................................................. Herbert Grabes

765

Simultaneity in Narrative ........................................................... Uri Margolin

777

Skaz ........................................................................................... Wolf Schmid

787

Space .......................................................................................... Marie-Laure Ryan

796

Speech Representation ............................................................... Brian McHale

812

Story Generator Algorithms ...................................................... Pablo Gervás

825

Tellability ................................................................................... Raphaël Baroni

836

Telling vs. Showing ................................................................... Tobias Klauk & Tilmann Köppe

846

X

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Text Types ................................................................................. Matthias Aumüller

854

Time ........................................................................................... Michael Scheffel, Antonius Weixler & Lukas Werner

868

Unnatural Narrative ................................................................... Jan Alber

887

Unreliability ............................................................................... Dan Shen

896

Index ..........................................................................................

911

Preface Over the last few decades, the field of narrative studies has been vastly expanded by a wide spectrum of innovations in the philologies and other disciplines including linguistics, history, theology, art history, psychology, media studies, medicine, law, education and more, and it has also seen a growing number of attempts to survey, order, and summarize the results of such studies in collections of essays, encyclopedias, companions, dictionaries, etc. Against this background, the present Handbook of Narratology, now published in a considerably expanded second edition, offers a new type of systematic and comprehensive in-depth overview of recent and older research, taking account of the role played by the various disciplinary and national traditions in narrative studies. The 67 entries present international research devoted to the key terms, categories, and concepts of narratology in the form of full-length original articles structured in a parallel manner: each entry starts with a concise definition (1) followed by a more detailed explication of the term in question (2) and then proceeds, in its main part, to provide a differentiated description and critical discussion of the various approaches, positions, and controversies in their historical development (3), concluding with topics for further research (4) and a select bibliography (5). Where relevant, all entries are cross-referenced. They vary in length in accordance with the complexity of the respective concepts. The entries devoted to the central categories and dimensions of narratology testify to the advanced state of narratological theory and to a high level of terminological and analytical precision. Such is not yet the case of topics dealt with in entries applying narratological concepts to disciplines and fields of study beyond literature. The authors of these articles thus seek to stake out the current state of nascent narrative research in these fields in a heuristic and explorative way, pointing to relevant features and issues rather than attempting to resolve basic questions. Nevertheless, these entries are of a particular interest and value, for they demonstrate the pervasiveness of narration in human culture and point to the fruitfulness of narratology for the description and analysis of narration in its prolific forms.

XII

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The Handbook of Narratology was first published by Walter de Gruyter in 2009 and was subsequently made available as an openaccess Living Handbook of Narratology on the Internet. The original 32 articles of the first edition have been updated and 35 new articles have been added, first in the online version and now in the second print edition. This handbook grew out of the work of the Narratology Research Group at Hamburg University (2001−2007) and the Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology (founded in 2007). We wish to thank Wilhelm Schernus for his expert subediting of the individual articles. Hamburg and Paris July 2014

Peter Hühn Jan Christoph Meister John Pier Wolf Schmid

Author Jörg Schönert

1 Definition The author (real or empirical) can be defined in a narrow sense as the intellectual creator of a text written for communicative purposes. In written texts in particular, the real author is distinguished from the mediating instances internal to the text (cf. 2.1; Schmid → Implied Author, Schmid → Implied Reader; further Alber & Fludernik → Mediacy and Narrative Mediation). Beyond linguistically created works, the term author is also used for works in other media such as music and the visual arts as well as for comics, photography, film, radio and television programs, and computer games. A broader understanding of the term author is used in the following contexts, among others: as conveyor of action in a socio-cultural context (cf. 2.3); in the sense of specific cultural-historically relevant conceptions of authorship; as a unifying instance in the interrelation of works (œuvre); as a reference for classification in terms of epoch and canon; and as an important point of reference for the meanings ascribed to works through which the recipient can determine the author’s intention and/or author-related contexts relevant to understanding a work (cf. 2.2).

2 Explication During the 20th century, a broad spectrum of how the author is understood was developed in scholarly circles: for framing concrete contexts (e.g. “producer of cultural goods”); for abstract author functions (e.g. causa efficiens); for concepts of the author relevant for understanding such as the implied author (Schmid → Implied Author). Unlike the dominant tendencies in the intensive discussions conducted since 1990 on the status and understanding of the author, this analysis will focus on the author’s narratological relevance.

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2.1 Communicative Instances in Narrative Representations As in other domains, it holds for narratological analysis that the real author is held responsible for the communicative intention and form of a narratively organized work (on the roles of the author in literary communication, see Okopień-Sławińska [1971] 1975; Fieguth 1975). In the case of narrative fictions, it has proved useful to assume that mediacy is transferred to text-internal instances (“voice”) including the narrator (Margolin → Narrator) to various degrees of explicitness and, possibly, characters (Jannidis → Character) in the storyworld. To these there correspond addressee instances such as the narratee (Schmid → Narratee; further Prince → Reader) or figured addressees, respectively. The arrangements of autofiction (within literary autobiography, e.g.) constitute a special case. 2.2 Authorship and Reception of the Work Authorship is to be seen as a status attributed to a work with culturally differing author constructs bound up with authorial self-reflection and self-presentation in a spectrum ranging from self-assurance to skepticism as to the validity and scope of claims to authorship. In the sphere of (fictional) literature, constructs such as the author as vates, poeta doctus, creative genius or “writer” can be found. Independent of such typologizing expressions, particular author constructs also hold good for the reception of works in specific periods (e.g. the image of Milton during the Romantic period). These types of construction can refer to the totality of an author’s work (cf. œuvre author or career author— Booth 1977: 11) or to representative individual works. Since the 18th century, there has been a culturally significant need to fall back on the author for interpretative processes and value judgments of an artistic work based on the creative act, authenticity, individuality, originality, unity of the work and its depth of meaning. From this perspective, the definition of “authoralism” in Benedetti’s sense ([1999] 2995: 8–12) is based on the experience that in the modern era it is “impossible for a work of art to exist except as a product of an author” (10)—as “being authored” (74–78). A culturally (and legally) important result of this is that the authenticity of a work is attested with reference to the real author as its originator, which is significant, for instance, in the editing of texts (cf. Bohnenkamp 2002). An author-related reception focuses on the intention, attributed to the author, to convey a particular understanding of his work. In this sense, the work can also be seen as an expression of the author’s per-

Author

3

sonality (including his feelings, opinions, knowledge and values). In particular, differing conceptions of author and authorship determine, alongside the concerns of historiographic, classificatory and editorial practices, ascription of meaning to literary texts within scholarly (cf. Spoerhase 2007) and non-scholarly circles as a result of biographical reference to the author, e.g., or with reference to the author’s intention, reconstructed in a largely hermeneutic manner. In practical criticism, inclusion of the author as a category for textual interpretation is accepted (cf. Jannidis et al., eds. 1999: 22–24), this approach often being adopted in the “author-critical” problematics of literary theory and methodology (Jannidis 2000: 8; Winko 2002). An alternative concept is marked by the term “author function”: the author as an individual person is held to be external to his work—as is maintained by Foucault, for example—so that in the reception of the work, he can be ignored as a reference point for the ascription of meaning. In a way that varies historically and culturally, the author is integrated into (discursively ordered) functional contexts, such as proprietary or legal concerns, or into classifications of cultural communication. The resulting author functions are thus not to be related to concrete individuals, but rather assigned, for example, to discourses or to intertextual constellations. 2.3 Author as a Social Role Creatorship gives rise to certain consequences in a social context such as legal implications regarding a claim to intellectual property (copyright) or the author’s legal responsibility for the effects of his work. These and other aspects (e.g. origin, education, patronage, market and media dependency, author-publisher relationships, royalties and honors, author groups and interest groups) are the concerns of the social history of the author, broken down into subsections such as the history of producers and distributors (cf. Jäger 1992; Haynes 2005; Parr 2008). 2.3.1 Collaborative as well as Anonymous, Pseudonymous and Fictitious Authorship Author collectives (with at least two partners) can be found in various combinations of media (cf. Detering ed. 2002: 258–309; for belles lettres, cf. Plachta ed. 2001, for artistic collaborations, cf. Bacharach & Tollefsen 2010). During Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, e.g., texts were produced, over and above those created by an author through transcriptions, additions, commentaries and compilations which were at-

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tributable to more than one author. Since the late 18th century, popular prose fiction has often been written by anonymous or pseudonymous groups of authors and highbrow literature by authors in cooperation, usually declared. New possibilities have arisen thanks to electronically stored, collectively produced hypertexts published on CD-ROM and/or online (cf. Landow ed. 1994; Simanowski 2001; Ryan 2006; Hartling 2009). Collective authorship specific to the medium is the rule in musical theater, cinema (cf. Kamp 1996) and television. Numerous historical and cultural variants can be found for anonymous, pseudonymous and fictitious authorship (cf. Schaff 2002); until well into the 20th century, these practices were often resorted to in literary publications by women authors.

3 History of the Concept and its Study The following (European) overview focuses on the author as the creator of literary texts, and in particular of narrative fiction. Since Antiquity, terminological ambiguity in the concept of author and competing concepts of author and authorship have been apparent (cf. Burke ed. 1995; Jannidis et al., eds. 1999: 4–11), as witnessed, e.g., in the variously defined conceptions of the heteronomy and autonomy of the author. The underlying tendency from Antiquity to the modern era can be described as a shift from an instrumental-performative understanding of authorship to personalization characterized by creative individuality (cf. Wetzel 2000: 480). Author as a neutral term alongside scriptor/writer first began to dominate after the end of the 18th century in the context of an economic and legal situation specific to the period and as a neutralizing claim set up to counter the emphatic understanding of “poet.” The word “author” has developed into an umbrella term and now denotes all forms of creatorship for a work in the context of public communication. 3.1 Antiquity Author in the literal sense is of Roman origin (auctor), and has no Greek equivalent. However, Plato had already devised for poetic productivity the concept of a speech guided by “enthusiasm” (literally “possessed by God”), to which the later model of the poet pleading for (divine) inspiration as well as the poeta vates can be assigned. Alongside the dominant idea of the production of poetic works by means of inspiration, a further author model was formulated in the poietes

Author

5

(“maker”; Lat. poeta faber) favored in Aristotle’s Poetics: poetic works are created out of techne, i.e. craftsmanship and technical skill (Lat. ars) (cf. Kleinschmidt 1998: 14–34). New ways of conceiving of the production of poetic works arose as a result of the complex of meanings surrounding the term auctor in the ancient Roman legal system: an auctor is the bearer of auctoritas (cf. Heinze 1925) who enjoys particular rights and/or who can transfer (and thus authorize) these rights in order to promote something or achieve some goal. This “authority” was founded on, and confirmed by, the special knowledge available to the auctor. In this respect, the author model of the poeta faber was upgraded to the poeta eruditus or poeta doctus. 3.2 Middle Ages Use of the Latin term auctor (Eng. author; Ital. autore; Fr. auteur; Span. autor; Ger. Autor) was extended to cover the creatorship of factual and fictional texts. In general, it was only from the late 15th century onwards that scholars and occasionally poets were referred to as auctores, a practice that continued up to the early decades of the 18th century. Viewed from a cultural-historical perspective, the classical model of the poeta vates was re-interpreted as an extension into the sphere of knowledge of the promises and teachings of Christianity so that where this commitment was supplemented by poetological knowledge, the result was to link up the author model with the poeta doctus. In contrast to scientific texts, literary texts in the broader sense (as in epics or in the Minnesang) were often handed down without the creator being named, so that individual or collective anonymity prevailed. Little distinction was made between the creators, copyists, editors, commentators and compilers of texts in favor of “original” creatorship in need of protection (cf. Minnis 1984), with far more emphasis being placed on group identity: e.g.—depending on the type of text—in the imitatio veterum (supported by the canon that provided a model) or— when mediacy-oriented—in the case of collective manuscripts. 3.3 Early Modern Period With the invention of the printing press, a public sphere based on written language was established for which, both in the dominant scholarly literature and in the diversified sphere of belles lettres, the individuality of the author as well as the authenticity of the single work and reliable copies (guaranteed by printing) gained progressively in importance. In

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literature, the author model of the poeta eruditus and the poeta doctus dominated starting from the time of Humanism. For these texts, “interpretation” was not the appropriate form of analysis, but “commentary,” relating the text to previous sources backed up with “authority” (cf. Scholz 1999: 347–350). Also revived was the model of the poet moved by inspiration, sometimes in the sense of an alter deus (cf. Scholz 1999). Initially, creatorship remained legally undefined. It was not until the turn of the 18th century that the first contractual arrangements between publishers and authors were devised concerning royalties, etc. 3.4 Early 18th Century until the Mid-20th Century As a result of varying national cultural developments in Europe, the author developed into a legal instance in the course of the 18th century, acquiring material entitlements vis-à-vis publishers, requiring protection against unauthorized reprints and plagiarism, and bearing personal responsibility for the content of his publications (e.g. Bosse 1981; Hesse 1991; Jaszi & Woodmansee eds. 1994). With the development of the objective conditions linked to creating factual and fictional texts for market-led public communication, the term author became a value-free collective name to which professional designations such as writer (Skribent, Schriftsteller, écrivain, etc.) as well as evaluative classifications such as poet/Dichter could be assigned. A broad spectrum of patterns of individual and collective authorship developed (cf. Haynes 2005: 302–310) for the social roles that arose from these concrete author models, and they were often accompanied by the authors’ reflections on their self-perception (cf. Selbmann 1994). Additional criteria for artistic production regarding creativity and originality (genius) became important for the understanding of the author as poet/Dichter from the final third of the 18th century onwards. Thus, the author could be defined legally, materially and intellectually (cf. Haynes 2005: 310–313). In emphatic formulations such as “art as religion,” the life experiences, conceptions of style and work of the (godlike) poet were bound together into a whole and endowed with a special aura (cf. Bénichou [1973] 1999). In this process, narrative prose was enhanced with a literary status in the course of the 18th century and was put on an equal footing with the “classical” genres of drama, epic, and verse as a poetic art. New facets of the concept of author emerged from scholarly engagement with works of the poetic art, their theory and history which got underway after 1820 (cf. Jannidis et al., eds. 1999: 9–11). The author together with the story of his life and work became a reference

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point for expert textual analysis (biographical criticism), scholarly editions, literary- historical (re)constructions and evaluations for establishing the canon with practical cultural consequences, particularly for education and teaching. Toward the end of the 19th century, methodological debates emerged which, in different ways, fell back on the author as an interpretative norm for ascribing meaning, above all in the scholarly handling of texts. In this process, plausibility was legitimized in a variety of ways on the basis for example of: (a) the author’s ascertainable intention (cf. Hirsch 1967); (b) extensions of the intentional aspect through a critique of psychoanalytical or ideological assumptions to meanings of literary texts beyond the author’s intention: “to understand the author better than he understood himself” (Strube 1999); (c) the author-oriented selection of relevant contexts. Approaches to ascribing meaning to texts in scholarly circles were developed in competition with these concepts from the early 20th century onwards, based on the assumption that all information relevant to meaning could be drawn from the text in question alone (cf. close reading, New Criticism, werkimmanente Interpretation, explication de texte, formalist, structuralist and text-semiotic approaches). In support of such approaches, criticism remained wary of the “intentional fallacy” (cf. Wimsatt & Beardsley [1946] 1954), emphasizing the irrelevance of the real author’s intention for scholarly interpretation. It was in this context that categorial distinctions between the real author and speaker instances internal to the text (cf. narrator, lyrical I), advocated since the beginning of the 20th century (cf. Friedemann [1910] 1965; Susman 1910) and accepted in the 1950s, gained in importance. As a textual instance located above other instances and differentiated from the real author (also as a reference point for text immanent interpretations of works), the “implied author” was brought into the discussion by Booth in [1961] 1983 even though, in the following decades, it was often called into question as “not absolutely necessary” (cf. Kindt & Müller 2006); complementary to the “implied author” is the “implied reader.” 3.5 Since the Mid-20th Century In this phase, both author-centric and author-critical approaches to textual interpretation have been further clarified in scholarly debates on literary theory, and the resulting competition between them was intensified. Hence, the intentio operis or the intentio lectoris (Eco 1990), e.g., was placed in opposition to the interpretative norm of the intentio auctoris. For ascribing meaning to a text put at a remove from the author’s

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creative process as a result of publication, decisive emphasis is placed on the activity of the “implied reader” constructed during the reading process, or the real reader. This position is taken up in various ways in the concepts developed by empirical literary criticism (cf. Schmidt 1982) and by cognitive narratology (Herman → Cognitive Narratology). The concept of écriture automatique, developed by the French Surrealists during the 1920s, was then added to the critique of the assumption that a work is authentic and autonomous, the author being understood merely as the executing instance (cf. Barthes [1968] 1977) of the autonomously productive literary language. In a further step, the boundaries of the author-oriented work were cancelled out in intertextual constellations (cf. Kristeva [1969] 1980) and in “discourse” (cf. Foucault [1969] 1979), and the author function superseded the person of the author (author as “intertextual construction,” as “discourse function”): with a Nietzschean gesture, Barthes and Foucault announced the “death of the author” (cf. Burke ed. 1995). The debate on the curtailed potency of authorship was carried on through the concepts of poststructuralism and the New Philology. The broader the medial spectrum for communication with text and with representations analogous to text grew during the second half of the 20th century, the greater the interest in the contribution of the material conditions of production and communication to the ascription of meaning became: authorship is now often conceived of as arrangement, montage, bricolage and remix (Wetzel 2000: 486, 491–492). Complex constructions of authorship are assigned to cinematic works (cf. Chatman 1990), while specific author concepts for the theory and reception of the products of the so-called new media, such as in hypertexts and cybertexts, are still being disputed (cf. Winko 1999). In contrast to these positions, a multi-faceted debate, extending beyond the methodological problems of textual interpretation, got underway in around 1990 in which restitution of various aspects of the author was advocated (e.g. Biriotti & Miller eds. 1993; Jaszi & Woodmansee eds. 1994; Couturier 1995; Ingold & Wunderlich eds. 1992; Jannidis et al., eds. 1999; Detering ed. 2002). The debate took place with reference to the problematic relevance of origin, biography and types of experience to the processes of writing and forms of expression in concepts of gender studies (e.g. Walker 1990; Hahn 1991; Lanser 1992; Haynes 2005: 299–302) and those of postcolonial studies. Interest in the circumstances of authorial creativity and its scholarly investigation has intensified (cf. Ingold 1992); and still unabated is the commitment, developed since the 1920s by the sociology of literature and, since the

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1970s, by the social history of literature as well as by cultural materialism, to investigation of the social role of the author and of the social institutions and processes that affect his work (cf. Wolf 2002: 395–399; Haynes 2005: 291). From the perspective of cultural history authorship has been conceptualized as “cultural performance” within a “cultural topography,” in connection with social contexts, technological developments, medial configurations “and other cultural developments” (cf. Berensmeyer et al. 2012). Entering an “overlapping area of biopoetics, pragma-linguistics, and cognitive poetics” (cf. Eibl 2013: 207) Eibl argues that the development of interpersonal communication (and ultimately also of meaning construction through literary narration) has brought about the basic assumption and social practice of ascribing what is communicated to an originator: in fictional texts this role is taken by the narrator’s voice initiating and guiding the reader’s imagination and understanding (cf. Eibl 2013: 229).

4 Topics for Further Investigation Questions to be pursued from a narratological perspective concern primarily the interpretation of literary texts (cf. Jannidis 2000): is the ascription of meaning with reference to aspects of the real author theoretically legitimate and fruitful practically speaking? Which of the six empirically determined author-oriented interpretative strategies proposed by Winko (2002) are absolutely necessary, and to what extent can they be hierarchically ordered? At the same time, are references to the real author conceivable other than in the orientation of ascribed meanings toward the author’s intention, such as the author-oriented selection of relevant contexts for textual interpretation? Must reference to the author’s intention represent an alternative to the implied author, or can author’s intention and implied author complement one another in the ascription of meaning (cf. Kindt & Müller 2006)? Should reference to the real and/or implied author in any way constrain the randomness of meaning/significances ascribed through reader activity? In the ascription of meaning to texts, which characteristic relations can be identified for the reader’s construction of the real author, the implied author and the narrative instance (cf. narrator)? Is the implied author a meaningful analytical category only for literary texts, or also for journalistic and historiographical texts? (Translated by Alexander Starritt)

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5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Bacharach, Sondra & Tollefsen, Deborah (2010). “We Did it: From Mere Contributors to Coauthors.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68, 23–32. Barthes, Roland ([1968] 1977). “The Death of the Author.” R. Barthes. Image Music Text. London: Fontana, 142–148. Benedetti, Carla ([1999] 2005). The Empty Cage: Inquiry into the Mysterious Disappearance of the Author. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Bénichou, Paul ([1973] 1999). The Consecration of the Writer, 1750–1830. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Berensmeyer, Ingo et al. (2012). Authorship as Cultural Performance. New Perspectives in Authorship Studies. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 60.1, 5–29. Biriotti, Maurice & Nicola Miller, eds. (1993). What is an Author? Manchester: Manchester UP. Bohnenkamp, Anne (2002). “Autorschaft und Textgenese.” H. Detering (ed.). Autorschaft. Positionen und Revisionen. Stuttgart: Metzler, 62–79. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P. – (1977). “For the Authors.” Novel 10, 5–19 (“In Defense of Authors and Readers,” ed. by E. Bloom, 5–24). Bosse, Heinrich (1981). Autorschaft ist Werkherrschaft. Über die Entstehung des Urheberrechts aus dem Geist der Goethezeit. Paderborn: Schöningh. Burke, Seán, ed. (1995). Authorship. From Plato to the Postmodern. Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Chatman, Seymour (1990). Coming to Terms. The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Couturier, Maurice (1995). La figure de l’auteur. Paris: Seuil. Detering, Heinrich, ed. (2002). Autorschaft. Positionen und Revisionen. Stuttgart: Metzler. Eco, Umberto (1990). The Limits of Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Eibl, Karl (2013). “‘Wer hat das gesagt?’ Zur Anthropologie der Autorposition.” Scientia Poetica 17, 207–229. Fieguth, Rolf (1975). “Einleitung.” R. Fieguth (ed.). Literarische Kommunikation. Kronberg/Ts.: Scriptor, 9–22. Foucault, Michel ([1969] 1979). “What Is an Author?” J. V. Harari (ed.). Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 141–160. Friedemann, Käte ([1910] 1965). Die Rolle des Erzählers in der Epik. Darmstadt: WBG. Hahn, Barbara (1991). Unter falschem Namen. Von der schwierigen Autorschaft der Frauen. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Hartling, Florian (2009). Der digitale Autor. Autorschaft im Zeitalter des Internets. Bielefeld: Transcript. Haynes, Christine (2005). “Reassessing ‘Genius’ in Studies of Authorship.” Book History 8, 287–320.

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Hesse, Carla (1991). Publishing and Cultural Politics in Revolutionary Paris, 1789– 1810. Berkeley: U of California P. Heinze, Richard (1925). “Auctoritas.” Hermes 60, 348–366. Hirsch, Eric D. (1967). Validity in Interpretation. New Haven: Yale UP. Ingold, Felix Philipp (1992). Der Autor am Werk. Versuche über literarische Kreativität. München: Hanser. Ingold, Felix Philipp & Werner Wunderlich, eds. (1992). Fragen nach dem Autor. Positionen und Perspektiven. Konstanz: Universitäts-Verlag. Jäger, Georg (1992). “Autor.” V. Meid (ed.). Literaturlexikon. Begriffe, Realien, Methoden. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 66–72. Jannidis, Fotis (2000). “Autor und Interpretation. Einleitung.” F. Jannidis et al. (eds.). Texte zur Theorie der Autorschaft. Stuttgart: Reclam, 7–29. – et al., eds. (1999). Rückkehr des Autors. Zur Erneuerung eines umstrittenen Begriffs. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Jaszi, Peter & Martha Woodmansee, eds. (1994). The Construction of Authorship. Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature. Durham: Duke UP. Kamp, Werner (1996). Autorenkonzepte und Filminterpretation. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang. Kindt, Tom & Hans-Harald Müller (2006). The Implied Author. Concept and Controversy. Berlin: de Gruyter. Kleinschmidt, Erich (1998). Autorschaft. Konzepte einer Theorie. Tübingen: Francke. Kristeva, Julia ([1969] 1980). “Word, Dialogue, and Novel.” J. Kristeva. Desire in Language. A Semiotic Approach to Liteature and Art. New York: Columbia UP, 64–91. Landow, George P., ed. (1994). Hyper/Text/Theory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Lanser, Susan (1992). Fictions of Authority. Women Writers and Narrative Voice. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Minnis, Alastair J. (1984). Medieval Theory of Authorship. Scholastic Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages. London: Scholar Press. Okopień-Sławińska, Alexandra ([1971] 1975). “Die personalen Relationen in der literarischen Kommunikation.” R. Fieguth (ed.). Literarische Kommunikation. Kronberg/Ts.: Scriptor, 127–147. Parr, Rolf (2008). Autorschaft. Eine kurze Sozialgeschichte der literarischen Intelligenz in Deutschland zwischen 1860 und 1930. Heidelberg: Synchron Publ. Plachta, Bodo, ed. (2001). Literarische Zusammenarbeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2006). Avatars of Story. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Schaff, Barbara (2002). “Der Autor als Simulant authentischer Erfahrung. Vier Fallbeispiele fingierter Autorschaft.” H. Detering (ed.). Autorschaft. Positionen und Revisionen. Stuttgart: Metzler, 426–443. Schmidt, Siegfried J. (1982). Foundations for the Empirical Study of Literature. The Components of a Basic Theory. Hamburg: Buske. Scholz, Bernhard F. (1999). “Alciato als emblematum pater et princeps. Zur Rekonstruktion des frühmodernen Autorbegriffs.” F. Jannidis et al. (eds.). Rückkehr des Autors. Zur Erneuerung eines umstrittenen Begriffs. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 321– 351. Selbmann, Rolf (1994). Dichterberuf. Zum Selbstverständnis des Schriftstellers von der Aufklärung bis zur Gegenwart. Darmstadt: WBG.

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Simanowski, Roberto (2001). “Autorschaften in digitalen Medien. Eine Einführung.” Text & Kritik, No. 152, 3–21. Spoerhase, Carlos (2007). Autorschaft und Interpretation. Methodische Grundlegungen einer philologischen Hermeneutik. Berlin: de Gruyter. Strube, Werner (1999). “Über verschiedene Arten, den Autor besser zu verstehen, als er sich selbst verstanden hat.” F. Jannidis et al. (eds.). Rückkehr des Autors. Zur Erneuerung eines umstrittenen Begriffs. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 136–155. Susman, Margarete (1910). Das Wesen der modernen deutschen Lyrik. Stuttgart: Strecker & Schröder. Walker, Cheryl (1990). “Feminist Literary Criticism and the Author.” Critical Inquiry 16, 551–571. Wetzel, Michael (2000). “Autor/Künstler.” K. Barck et al. (eds). Ästhetische Grundbegriffe. Stuttgart: Metzler, vol. 1, 480–544. Wimsatt, William K. & Monroe C. Beardsley ([1946] 1954). “The Intentional Fallacy.” W. K. Wimsatt & M. C. Beardsley (eds.). The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. Louisville: U of Kentucky P, 3–18. Winko, Simone (1999). “Lost in hypertext? Autorkonzepte und neue Medien.” F. Jannidis et al. (eds.). Rückkehr des Autors. Zur Erneuerung eines umstrittenen Begriffs. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 511–533. – (2002). “Autor-Funktionen. Zur argumentativen Verwendung von Autorkonzepten in der gegenwärtigen literaturwissenschaftlichen Interpretationspraxis.” H. Detering (ed.). Autorschaft. Positionen und Revisionen. Stuttgart: Metzler, 334– 354. Wolf, Norbert Christian (2002). “Wieviele Leben hat der Autor? Zur Wiederkehr des empirischen Autor- und des Werkbegriffs in der neueren Literaturtheorie.” H. Detering (ed.). Autorschaft. Positionen und Revisionen. Stuttgart: Metzler, 390– 405.

5.2 Further Reading “Der Autor” (1981). Special Issue of LiLi: Zeitschrift für Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft 11, No. 42. Andersen, Elizabeth et al., eds. (1998). Autor und Autorschaft im Mittelalter. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Bennet, Andrew (2005). The Author. London: Routledge. Burke, Seán (1992). The Death and Return of the Author. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Chartier, Roger ([1992] 1994). “Figures of the Author.” R. Chartier. The Order of Books. Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford: Stanford UP, 25–60. Cramer, Thomas (1986). “‘Solus creator est deus.’ Der Autor auf dem Weg zum Schöpfertum.” Daphnis 15, 261–276. Dorleijn, Gillis J. et.al., eds. (2010). Authorship Revisited. Conceptions of Authorship Around 1900 and 2000. Leuven: Peeters. Frank, Susi et al., eds. (2001). Mystifikation—Autorschaft—Original. Tübingen: Narr. Genette, Gérard ([1987] 1997). Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

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Gölz, Christine (2009). “Autortheorien des slavischen Funktionalismus.” W. Schmid (ed.). Slavische Erzähltheorie. Russische und tschechische Ansätze. Berlin: de Gruyter, 187–237. Haug, Walter & Burghart Wachinger, eds. (1991). Autorentypen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Herman, David, James Phelan, Peter J. Rabinowitz, Brian Richardson & Robyn Warhol (2012).“Authors, Narrators, Narration.” D. Herman et al. Narrative Theory. Core Concepts and Critical Debates. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 207–229. Hoffmann, Torsten & Daniela Langer (2007). “Autor.” Th. Anz (ed.). Handbuch Literaturwissenschaft. Stuttgart: Metzler, vol. 1, 131–170. Holmes, David I. (1994). “Authorship Attribution.” Computer and the Humanities 28, 87–106. Howard, Rebecca Moore (1999). Standing in the Shadows of Giants. Plagiarists, Authors, Collaborators. Stanford: Ablex Publ. Ingold, Felix Philipp & Werner Wunderlich, eds. (1995). Der Autor im Dialog. Beiträge zu Autorität und Autorschaft. St. Gallen: UVK. Irwin, William, ed. (2002). The Death and Resurrection of the Author. Westport: Greenwood P. Kamouf, Peggy (1988). Signature Pieces. On the Institution of Authorship. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Lamarque, Peter (1990). “The Death of the Author: An Analytical Autopsy.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 30, 319–331. Moers, Ellen (1985). Literary Women. New York: Oxford UP. Nelles, William (1993). “Historical and Implied Authors and Readers.” Comparative Literature 45, 22–46. Nesbit, Molly (1987). “What Was An Author?” Yale French Studies No. 73, 229–257. Peschel-Rentsch, Dietmar (1991). Gott, Autor, ich. Skizzen zur Genese von Autorbewußtsein und Erzählerfigur im Mittelalter. Erlangen: Palm & Enke. Rose, Mark (1993). Authors and Owners. The Invention of Copyright. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Sherman, Brad & Alain Strowel, eds. (1994). Of Authors and Origins. Essays on Copyright Law. Oxford: Clarendon P. Simion, Eugen (1996). The Return of the Author. Evanston: Northwestern UP. Stecker, Robert (1987). “Apparent, Implied and Postulated Authors.” Philosophy and Literature 11, 258–271. Sussloff, Catherine (1997). The Absolute Artist: The Historiography of a Concept. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Uidhir, Christy Mag (2011) : “Minimal Authorship (of Sorts).” Philosophical Studies 154, 373–387. Viala, Alain (1985). Naissance de l’écrivain. Sociologie de la littérature à l’âge classique. Paris: Minuit. Vogel, Martin (1978). “Deutsche Urheber- und Verlagsrechtsgeschichte zwischen 1450 und 1850.” Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 19, Sp. 1–190. Woodmansee, Martha (1994). The Author, Art, and the Market: Rereading the History of Aesthetics. New York: Columbia UP.

Autobiography Helga Schwalm

1 Definition Notoriously difficult to define, autobiography in the broader sense of the word is used almost synonymously with “life writing” and denotes all modes and genres of telling one’s own life. More specifically, autobiography as a literary genre signifies a retrospective narrative that undertakes to tell the author’s own life, or a substantial part of it, seeking (at least in its classic version) to reconstruct his/her personal development within a given historical, social and cultural framework. While autobiography on the one hand claims to be non-fictional (factual) in that it proposes to tell the story of a ‘real’ person, it is inevitably constructive, or imaginative, in nature and as a form of textual ‘self-fashioning’ ultimately resists a clear distinction from its fictional relatives (autofiction, autobiographical novel), leaving the generic borderlines blurred.

2 Explication Emerging from the European Enlightenment, with precursors in antiquity, autobiography in its ‘classic’ shape is characterized by autodiegetic, i.e. 1st-person subsequent narration told from the point of view of the present. Comprehensive and continuous retrospection, based on memory, makes up its governing structural and semantic principle. Oscillating between the struggle for truthfulness and creativity, between oblivion, concealment, hypocrisy, self-deception and selfconscious fictionalizing, autobiography renders a story of personality formation, a Bildungsgeschichte. As such, it was epitomized by Rousseau ([1782–89] 1957); Goethe ([1808–31] 1932) and continued throughout the 19th century and beyond (Chateaubriand [1848/50] 2002; Mill [1873]1989, with examples of autobiographical fiction in Moritz ([1785–86] 2006), Dickens ([1850] 2008), Keller ([1854–55] 1981; a second, autodiegetic version [1879–80] 1985) and Proust ([1913–27] 1988). While frequently disclaiming to follow generic

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norms, its hallmark is a focus on psychological introspection and a sense of historicity, frequently implying, in the instance of a writer’s autobiography, a close link between the author’s life and literary work. Although 1st-person narrative continues to be the dominant form in autobiography, there are examples of autobiographical writing told in the 3rd person (e.g. Stein 1933; Wolf 1976), in epistolary form (e.g. Plato’s Seventh Letter ca. 353 B.C. [1966]) and in verse (Wordsworth [1799, 1805, 1850] 1979). However, with its ‘grand narrative’ of identity, the classic 1st-person form of autobiography has continued to provide the generic model around which new autobiographical forms of writing and new conceptions of autobiographical selves have taken shape. At the heart of its narrative logic lies the duality of the autobiographical person, divided into ‘narrating I’ and ‘narrated I’, marking the distance between the experiencing and the narrating subject. Whereas the ‘narrated I’ features as the protagonist, the ‘narrating I’, i.e. the 1stperson narrator, ultimately personifies the agent of focalization, the overall position from which the story is rendered, although the autobiographical narrator may temporarily step back to adopt an earlier perspective. A pseudo-static present point of narration as the ultimate end of autobiographical writing is thus implied, rendering the trajectory of autobiographical narrative circular, as it were: the present is both the end and the condition of its narration. However, this apparent circularity is frequently destabilized by the dynamics of the narrative present, as the autobiographer continues to live while composing his/her narrative, thus leaving the perspective open to change unless the position of ‘quasi death’ is adopted, as in Hume’s notoriously stoic presentation of himself as a person of the past (Hume 1778). At the other end of the spectrum of self-positionings as autobiographical narrator, Wordsworth testifies to the impossibility of autobiographical closure in his verse autobiography ([1799, 1805, 1850] 1979). Again and again, he rewrites the same time span of his life. As his life continues to progress, his subject—the “growth of a poet’s mind” ([1850, subtitle] 1979)—perpetually appears to him in a new light, requiring continual revision even though the ‘duration’ (the time span covered) in fact remains the same, thus reflecting the instability of the autobiographical subject as narrator. Accordingly, the later narrative versions bear the mark of the different stages of writing. The narrative present, then, can only ever be a temporary point of view, affording an “interim balance” (de Bruyn [1992] 1994) at best, leaving the final vantage point an autobiographical illusion. With its dual structural core, the autobiographical 1st-person pronoun may be said to reflect the precarious intersections and balances of

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the “idem” and “ipse” dimensions of personal identity pertaining to spatio-temporal sameness and selfhood as agency (Ricœur 1991). In alternative theoretical terms, it may be related to “three identity dilemmas”: “sameness […] across time,” being “unique” in the face of others; and “agency” (Bamberg 2011: 6–8; Bamberg → Identity and Narration). In a more radical, deconstructive twist of theorizing autobiographical narrative in relation to the issue of identity, the 1st-person dualism inherent in autobiography appears as a ‘writing the self’ by another, as a mode of “ghostwriting” (Volkening 2006: 7). Beyond this pivotal feature of 1st-person duality, further facets of the 1st-person pronoun of autobiography come into play. Behind the narrator, the empirical writing subject, the “Real” or “Historical I” is located, not always in tune with the ‘narrating’ and ‘experiencing I’s’, but considered the ‘real author’ and the external subject of reference. The concept of the “ideological I” suggested by Smith and Watson (eds. 2001) is a more precarious one. It is conceived as an abstract category which, unlike its narrative siblings, is not manifest on the textual level, but in ‘covert operation’ only. According to Smith and Watson, it signifies “the concept of personhood culturally available to the narrator when he tells the story” (eds. 2001: 59–61) and thus reflects the social (and intertextual) embedding of any autobiographical narrative. Reconsidered from the viewpoint of social sciences and cognitive narratology alike, the ‘ideological I’ derives from culturally available generic and institutional genres, structures and institutions of self-representation. Depending on the diverse (inter-)disciplinary approaches to the social nature of the autobiographical self, these are variously termed “master narrative,” “patterns of emplotment,” “schema,” “frame,” cognitive “script” (e.g. Neumann et al., eds., 2008), or even “biography generator” (Biographiegeneratoren, Hahn 1987: 12). What ties this heterogeneous terminology together is the basic assumption that only through an engagement with such socially/culturally prefigured models, their reinscription, can individuals represent themselves as subjects. The social dimension of autobiography also comes into play on an intratextual level in so far as any act of autobiographical communication addresses another—explicitly so in terms of constructing a narratee, who may be part of the self, a “Nobody,” an individual person, the public, or God as supreme Judge. At the same time, autobiography stages the self in relation to others on the level of narrative. Apart from personal models or important figures in one’s life story, autobiographies may be centred on a relationship of self and other to an extent that effectively erases the boundaries between auto- and heterobiography (e.g. Gosse [1907] 2004; Steedman

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1987). In such cases, the (auto)biographical “routing of a self known through its relational others” is openly displayed, undermining the model “of life narrative as a bounded story of the unique, individuated narrating subject” (Smith & Watson eds. 2001: 67). With its several dimensions of social ‘relatedness’, then, autobiographical writing is never an autonomous act of self-reflection, as sociological theorists of (auto-)biography have long argued (e.g. Kohli 1981: 505–516). From a sociological angle, it may be considered a form of social action making sense of personal experience in terms of general relevance (Sloterdijk 1978: 21). Autobiographical patterns of relevance are culturally specific, diverse and subject to historical change, as the history of autobiography with its multitude of forms and writing practices demonstrates.

3 History 3.1 Autobiography in Historical Perspective Whereas its origins ultimately date back to antiquity (Roesler 2005), with Augustine’s Confessions ([398–398] 1961) as a prominent ancient landmark, the history of autobiography as a (factual) literary genre and critical term is a much shorter one. In German, the term Selbstbiographie first featured in the collective volume Selbstbiographien berühmter Männer (1796) [Self-Biographies by Famous Men], its editor Seybold claiming Herder as source. Jean Paul called his unfinished and unpublished autobiography Selberlebensbeschreibung [‘description of one’s life by oneself’] ([1818–19] 1987: 16). In English, D’Israeli spoke of “self-biography” in 1796 (95–110), while his critic Taylor suggested “auto-biography” (Nussbaum 1989: 1). These neologisms reflect a concern with a mode of writing only just considered to be a distinct species of (factual) literature at the time; not until the mid-18th century did autobiography separate from historiography as well as from a general notion of biography. The latter, variously coined ‘life’, ‘memoir’ or ‘history’, had not distinguished between what Johnson then seminally parted as “telling his own story” as opposed to “recounting the life of another” ([1750] 1969 and [1759] 1963). The emergence of autobiography as a literary genre and critical term thus coincides with what has frequently been called the emergence of the modern subject around 1800. It evolved as a genre of non-fictional, yet ‘constructed’ autodiegetic narration wherein a self-reflective subject enquires into his/her identity and its developmental trajectory. The autobiographer looks back to tell the story of his/her life from the begin-

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ning to the present, tracing the story of its own making—in Nietzsche’s words, “How One Bec[ame] What One Is” ([1908] 1992). As it tends to focus on the autobiographical subject as singular individual, autobiography in the modern sense is thus marked by the secularization and the “temporalization (Historisierung) of experience” (Burke 2011: 13). In contrast, pre-modern spiritual autobiography, which followed the tradition of Augustine’s Confessions and continued well into the 19th century, constructed its subject as exemplum, i.e. as a typical story to be learnt from. Little emphasis was put on life-world particularities (although these tended to acquire their own popular dynamics as in crime confessions). Dividing life into clear-cut phases centred round the moment of conversion, the spiritual autobiographer tells the story of self-renunciation and surrenders to providence and grace (e.g. Bunyan [1666] 1962). Its narrative becomes possible only after the key experience of conversion, yielding up a ‘new self’. Accordingly, Augustine commented on his former self with great detachment: “But this was the man I was” ([387–398] 1961: 105). While on the level of story, then, the division in spiritual autobiographies is one of ‘before’ and ‘after’, the level of narrative being ruled by the perspective of ‘after’ almost exclusively: only after and governed by the experience of conversion to Christian belief can the story be told at all. The moment of anagnōrisis and narrative present do not coincide. The narrative mode of modern autobiography as a literary genre, firmly linked to the notion of the individual, evolved to some extent by propelling the moment of self-recognition towards the narrative present: only at the end of one’s story can it be unfurled from the beginning as a singular life course, staging the autobiographer as subject. The secular self accounts for itself as autonomous agent, (ideally) in charge of itself. This is the narrative logic of autobiography in its ‘classic shape’ that also informed the autobiographical novel. By 1800, the task of autobiography was to represent a unique individual, as claimed by Rousseau for himself: “I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not like any of those who are in existence” ([1782] 1957: 1). Most prominently, Goethe explicitly writes of himself as a singular individual embedded in and interacting with the specific constellations of his time ([1808–31] 1932). Autobiography thus focuses on the life of a singular individual within its specific historical context, retracing the “genetic personality development founded in the awareness of a complex interplay between I-and-my-world” (Weintraub 1982: 13). In this sense, it may be seen to represent the “full convergence of all the factors constituting this modern view of the self” (XV).

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Its central figure is that of a Romantic self-constitution, grounded in memory. As memory informs autobiography, self-consciously reflected upon since Augustine (Book XX, Confessions), the boundaries between fact and fiction are inevitably straddled, as Goethe’s title Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth) ([1808–31] 1932) aptly suggests. In the face of the inevitable subjectivity (or fallibility) of autobiographical recollection, the creative dimension of memory, and thus autobiography’s quality as verbal/aesthetic fabrication, has come to the fore. In this respect, the history of autobiography as a literary genre is closely interrelated with corresponding forms of autofiction/the autobiographical novel, with no clear dividing lines, even though autobiographical fiction tends to leave “signposts” of its fictionality to be picked up by the reader (Cohn 1999). In any case, autobiography’s temporal linearity and narrative coherence has frequently proved prone to deliberate anachronisms and disruptions—programmatically so in Nabokov (1966). Indeed, by the early 20th century there was an increasing scepticism about the possibility of a cohesive self emerging through autobiographical memory. Modernist writers experimented with fragmentation, subverting chronology and splitting the subject (Woolf 1985, published posthumously; Stein 1933), foregrounding visual and scenic /topographical components, highlighting the role of language (Sartre [1964] 2002), conflating auto- and heterobiography or transforming lives into fiction (e.g. Proust [1913–27] 1988). 3.2 Critical Paradigms in Historical Perspective From its critical beginnings, then, autobiography has been inextricably linked to the critical history of subjectivity. In his monumental study of 1907, Misch explicitly surveyed the history of autobiography as a reflection of the trajectory of forms of subjective consciousness ([1907] 1950: 4). He thus acknowledged the historical specificity of forms of autobiographical self-reflection. With his concept of autobiography as “a special genre in literature” and at the same time “an original interpretation of experience” (3–4), Misch aligned with the hermeneutics of Dilthey, who considered autobiography the supreme form of the “understanding of life.” Such understanding involves selection as the autobiographical self takes from the infinite moments of experience those elements that, in retrospect, appear relevant with respect to the entire life course. The past is endowed with meaning in the light of the present. Understanding, according to Dilthey, also involves fitting the individual parts into a whole, ascribing interconnection and causality

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([1910] 2002: 221–222). Autobiography thus constructs an individual life course as a coherent, meaningful whole. Even if autobiography’s aspect of re-living experience, of rendering incidents as they were experienced at the time, is taken into account, the superior ‘interpreting’ position of the narrative present remains paramount, turning past events into a meaningful plot, making sense (Sinn) of contingency. Hermeneutics continued to dominate the theory of autobiography, lagging behind its poetic practices. Gusdorf defined autobiography as “a kind of apologetics or theodicy of the individual being” (1980: 39), yet shifted the emphasis somewhat by prioritizing its literary over its historical function. Anglo-American theories of autobiography similarly tended to focus on such a poetical norm of autobiography as a literary work devoted to “inner truth” (Pascal 1960), with Rousseau’s /Goethe’s autobiography as the recognizable generic model. “Any autobiography that resembles modern autobiographies in structure and content is the modern kind of autobiography”; these are “works like those that modern readers instinctively expect to find when they see Autobiography, My Life, or Memoirs printed across the back of a volume” (Shumaker 1954: 5). Whether hermeneutics- or New Criticism-inspired, the history of autobiography as “art” (Niggl 1988: 6) is seen to culminate around 1800, while its more immediate forerunners are often located in the Renaissance or earlier (e.g. Petrarch [1326] 2005; Cellini [1558–66] 1995). With regard to the primary role of the autobiographer as subject of his work, Starobinski argued that his/her singularity was articulated by way of idiosyncratic style (1970, [1970] 1983). Only in the wake of the various social, cultural and linguistic turns of literary and cultural theory since the 1970s did autobiography lose this normative frame. Relying on Freud and Riesman, Neumann established a social psychology-based typology of autobiographical forms. Aligning different modes of narrative with different conceptions of identity, he distinguished between the external orientation of res gestae and memoir, representing the individual as social type, on the one hand, as opposed to autobiography with its focus on memory and identity (1970: esp. 25), on the other hand. Only autobiography aims at personal identity whereas the memoir is concerned with affirming the autobiographer’s place in the world. More recent research has elaborated on the issue of autobiographical narrative and identity in psychological terms (Bruner 1993) as well as from interdisciplinary angles, probing the inevitability of narrative as constitutive of personal identity (e.g. Eakin 2008) in the wake of “the twin crisis of identity and narrative in the twentieth century” (Klepper 2013: 2) and exploring forms of non-linearity, intermediality or life

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writing in the new media (Dünne & Moser 2008). The field of life writing as narratives of self—or of various forms of self—has thus become significantly broader, transcending the classic model of autobiographical identity qua coherent retrospective narrative. Yet whatever its theoretical remodelling and practical rewritings, even if frequently subverted in practice, the close nexus between narrative, self/identity, and the genre/practice of autobiography continues to be considered paramount. The underlying assumption concerning autobiography is that of a close, even inextricable connection between narrative and identity, with autobiography the prime generic site of enactment. Moreover, life narrative has even been promoted in modernity to a “general cultural pattern of knowledge” (Braun & Stiegler eds. 2012: 13). (While these approaches tend to address autobiographical writing practices claiming to be or considered non-fictional, their relevance extends to autofictional forms.) Next to narrative and identity, the role of memory in (autobiographical) self-constructions has been addressed (Olney 1998), in particular adopting cognitivist (e.g. Erll et al., eds. 2003) and psychoanalytical (Pietzcker 2005) angles as well as elaborating the neurobiological foundations of autobiographical memory (Markowitsch & Welzer 2005). From the perspective of ‘natural’ narratology, the experiential aspect of autobiography, its dimension of re-living and reconstructing experience, has been emphasized (Löschnigg 2010: 259). With memory being both a constitutive faculty and a creative liability, the nature of the autobiographical subject has also been revised in terms of psychoanalytical, (socio-) psychological or even deconstructive categories (e.g. Holdenried 1991; Volkening 2006). ‘Classic autobiography’ has turned out to be a limited historical phenomenon whose foundations and principles have been increasingly challenged and subverted with respect to poetic practice, poetological reflection and genre theory alike. Even within a less radical theoretical frame, chronological linearity, retrospective narrative closure and coherence as mandatory generic markers have been disqualified, or at least re-conceptualized as structural tools (e.g. Kronsbein 1984). Autobiography’s generic scope now includes such forms as the diary/journal as “serial autobiography” (Fothergill 1974: 152), the “Literary Self-Portrait” as a more heterogeneous and complex literary type (Beaujour [1980] 1991) and the essay (e.g. Hof & Rohr eds. 2008). While autobiography has thus gained in formal and thematic diversity, autobiographical identity appears a transitory phenomenon at best. In its most radical deconstructive twist, autobiography is reconceptionalized as a rhetorical figure—“prosopopeia”—that ultimately produces “the illusion of reference” (de Man

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1984: 81). De Man thus challenges the very foundations of autobiography in that it is said to create its subject by means of rhetorical language rather than represent the subject. Autobiography operates in complicity with metaphysical notions of self-consciousness, intentionality and language as a means of representation. Whereas de Man’s deconstruction of autobiography turned out to be of little lasting impact, Lejeune’s theory of the “autobiographical pact” has proven seminal. It rethinks autobiography as an institutionalized communicative act where author and reader enter into a particular ‘contract’—the “autobiographical pact”—sealed by the triple reference of the same proper name. “Autobiography (narrative recounting the life of the author) supposes that there is identity of name between the author (such as s/he figures, by name, on the cover), the narrator of the story and the character who is being talked about” ([1987] 1988: 12; see Genette [1991] 1993). The author’s proper name refers to a singular autobiographical identity, identifying author, narrator and protagonist as one, and thus ensures the reading as autobiography. “The autobiographical pact is the affirmation in the text of this identity, referring back in the final analysis to the name of the author on the cover” (14). The tagging of the generic status operates by way of paratextual pronouncements or by identity of names; in contrast, nominal differentiation or content clues might point to fiction as worked out by Cohn (1999). While Lejeune’s approach reduces the issue of fiction vs non-fiction to a simple matter of pragmatics, he acknowledges its own historical limitations set by the “author function” (Foucault [1969] 1979) along with its inextricable ties to the middle-class subject. As an ideal type, Lejeune’s autobiographical pact depends on the emergence of the modern author in the long 18th century as proprietor of his or her own text, guaranteed by modern copyright and marked by the title page/the imprint. In this sense, the history of modern autobiography as literary genre is closely connected to the history of authorship and the modern subject and vice versa, much as the scholarship on autobiography has emerged contemporaneously with the emergence of the modern author (Schönert → Author). In various ways, then, autobiography has proved prone to be to “slip[ping] away altogether,” failing to be identifiable by “its own proper form, terminology, and observances” (Olney ed. 1980: 4). Some critics have even pondered the “end of autobiography” (e.g. Finck 1999: 11). With critical hindsight, the classic paradigm of autobiography, with its tenets of coherence, circular closure, interiority, etc., is exposed as a historically limited, gendered and socially exclusive phe-

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nomenon (and certainly one that erases any clear dividing line between factual and fictional self-writings). As its classic markers were rendered historically obsolete or ideologically suspicious (Nussbaum 1989), the pivotal role of class (Sloterdijk 1978), and especially gender, as intersectional identity markers within specific historical contexts came to be highlighted, opening innovative critical perspectives on strategies of subject formation in ‘canonical’ texts as well as broadening the field of autobiography studies. While ‘gender sensitive’ studies initially sought to reconstruct a specific female canon, they addressed the issue of a distinct female voice of/in autobiography as more “multidimensional, fragmented” (Jelinek ed. 1986: viii), or subsequently undertook to explore autobiographical selves in terms of discursive self-positionings instead (Nussbaum 1989; Finck 1999: esp. 291–293), tying in with discourse analytical redefinitions of autobiography as a discursive regime of (self) discipline and regulation that evolved out of changes in communication media and technologies of memory during the 17th and 18th centuries (Schneider 1986). Subsequently, issues of publication, canonization and the historical nexus of gender and (autobiographical) genre became subjects of investigation, bringing into view historical notions of gender and the specific conditions and practices of communication within their generic and pragmatic contexts (e.g. Hof & Rohr eds. 2008). The history of autobiography has come to be more diverse and multi-facetted: thus alternative ‘horizontal’ modes of self, where identity is based on its contextual embedding by way of diarial modes, have come to the fore. With respect to texts by 17th-century autobiographers, the notion of “heterologous subjectivity”—self-writing via writing about another or others—has been suggested (Kormann 2004: 5–6). If gender studies exposed autobiography’s individualist self as a phenomenon of male self-fashioning, postcolonial theory further challenged its universal validity. While autobiography was long considered an exclusively Western genre, postcolonial approaches to autobiography/ life writing have significantly expanded the corpus of autobiographical writings and provided a perspective which is critical of both the eurocentrism of autobiography genre theory and the concepts of selfhood in operation (e.g. Lionett 1991). In this context, too, the question has arisen as to how autobiography is possible for those who have no voice of their own, who cannot speak for themselves (see Spivak’s ‘subaltern’). Such ‘Writing ordinary lives’, usually aiming at collective identities, poses specific problems: sociological, ethical and even aesthetic (see Pandian 2008).

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Following the spatial turn, the concept of ‘eco-autobiography’ also carries potentially wider theoretical significance. By “mapping the self” (Regard ed. 2003), eco-biography designates a specific mode of autobiography that constructs a “relationship between the natural setting and the self,” often aiming at “discover[ing] ‘a new self in nature’” (Perreten 2003), with Wordsworth or Thoreau ([1854] 1948) as frequently cited paradigms. Phrased in less Romantic terms, it locates life courses and self-representations in specific places. In a wider sense, eco- or topographical autobiographies undertake to place the autobiographical subject in terms of spatial or topographical figurations, bringing into play space/topography as a pivotal moment of biographical identity and thus potentially disturbing autobiography’s anchorage in time. In any case, the prioritizing of space over time seems to question, if not to reverse, the dominance of temporality in autobiography and beyond since 1800. Whatever the markers of difference and semantic foci explored, the notion of autobiography has shifted from literary genre to a broad range of cultural practices that draw on and incorporate a multitude of textual modes and genres. By 2001, Smith and Watson (eds. 2001) were able to list fifty-two “Genres of Life Narrative” by combining formal and semantic features. Among them are narratives of migration, immigration or exile, narratives engaging with ethnic identity and community, prison narratives, illness, trauma and coming-out narratives as much as celebrity memoirs, graphic life writing and forms of Internet selfpresentation. These multiple forms and practices produce, or allow critics to freshly address, new ‘subject formations’ within specific historical and cultural localities. Finally, scholars have engaged with the role of aesthetic practices that “turn ‘life itself’ into a work of art,” developing “zoegraphy as a radically post-anthropocentric approach to life narrative” (van den Hengel 2012: 1), part of a larger attempt to explore auto/biographical figures in relation to concepts of “posthumanism.”

4 Related Terms Whereas autobiography, as a term almost synonymous with life writing, signifies a broad range of ‘practices of writing the self’ including premodern forms and epistolary or diarial modes, ‘classic’ autobiography hinges upon the notion of the formation of individual identity by means of narrative. With its historical, psychological and philosophical dimensions, it differs from related forms such as memoirs and res gestae. Memoirs locate a self in the world, suggesting a certain belonging to, or

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contemporaneity with, and being in tune with the world (Neumann 1970). However, all these forms imply a certain claim to nonfictionality which, to a certain degree only, sets them off from autobiographical fiction/the autobiographical novel, with highly blurred boundaries and intense generic interaction (Müller 1976; Löschnigg 2006). Biography is used today both as a term synonymous with “life writing” (hence the journal Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 1978ff.) as well as denoting heterobiography, i.e. the narrative of the life of another. (The term “life writing“ also includes heterobiography.) While in narratological terms experimental forms of autobiography may collapse the conventional 1st- vs 3rd-person boundary (§ 2), viewing the self as other, heterobiography has generated its own distinct poetics and theory, extending from an agenda of resemblance as “the impossible horizon of biography” (“In biography, it is resemblance that must ground identity”; Lejeune [1987] 1988: 24) to specific considerations of modes of representing the biographical subject, of biographical understanding, or knowledge, and the ethics of heterobiography (Eakin ed. 2004; Phelan → Narrative Ethics).

5 Topics for Further Investigation The intersections of hetero- and autobiography remain to be further explored. Significantly, ‘natural’ narratology’s theorizing of vicarious narration and the evolution of FID (Fludernik 1996) makes the limits of non-fictional heterodiegetic narration discernible: in its conventional form and refraining from speculative empathy, it must ultimately fail to render “experientiality” or resort to fiction, while autobiography’s experiential dimension invites further investigation (Löschnigg 2010). Additional study of the experimental interactions of life writing with no clear dividing lines between auto- and hetero-biography might yield results with interdisciplinary repercussions. Finally, the field of self-representation and life writing in the new media calls for more research from an interdisciplinary angle.

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6 Bibliography 6.1 Primary Sources Augustine ([397–98] 1961). Confessions. R. S. Pine-Coffin (ed.). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bruyn, Günter de ([1992] 1994). Zwischenbilanz: Eine Jugend in Berlin. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer. Bunyan, John ([1666] 1962). Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. Oxford: Clarendon. Chateaubriand, François-René ([1848/50] 2002). Mémoires d’outre-tombe. Paris: Hachette. Cellini, Benvenuto ([1558–66] 1995). The Life of Benvenuto Cellini; written by himself. J. A. Symonds (trans.). London: Phaidon. Dickens, Charles ([1850] 2008). David Copperfield. Oxford: Oxford UP. D’Israeli, Isaac (1796). “Some Observations on Diaries, Self-Biography, and SelfCharacters.” Miscellanies; or, Literary Recreations. London: Thomas Cadell. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von ([1808–31] 1932). Truth and Poetry: From my Own Life. J. Oxenford (trans.). London: Alston Rivers. Gosse, Edmund ([1907] 2004). Father and Son. Oxford: Oxford UP. Hume, David (1778). The History of England, etc. New edition corrected; with the author’s last corrections and improvements. To which is prefixed a short account of his life, written by himself. London: Thomas Cadell. Jean Paul ([1818–19] 1987). Sämtliche Werke. N. Miller (ed.). München: Hanser. Johnson, Samuel. ([1750] 1969). The Rambler. The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 3. W. J. Bate & A. B. Strauss (eds.). New Haven: Yale UP. – ([1759] 1963). Idler and Adventurer. The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 2. W. J. Bate (ed.). New Haven: Yale UP. Keller, Gottfried ([1854–55] 1981). Der Grüne Heinrich. Hanser: München. – (1879–80] 1995). Der Grüne Heinrich. Zweite Fassung. Düsseldorf: Artemis & Winkler. Mill, John Stuart ([1873] 1989). Autobiography. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Moritz, Karl Philipp ([1785–86] 2006). Anton Reiser. Düsseldorf: Artemis & Winkler. Nabokov, Vladimir (1966). Speak, Memory. An Autobiography Revisited. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Nietzsche, Friedrich ([1908] 1992). Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is. R. J. Hollingdale (trans.). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Petrarch, Francesco ([1326] 2005). “To posterity, an account of his background, conduct, and the development of his character and studies.” Letters on Old Age. A. S. Bernardo et al (trans.). New York: Italica P, 672–680. Plato’s Seventh Letter (1966). L. Edelstein (ed.). Amsterdam: Brill. Proust, Marcel ([1913–27] 1988). À la recherche du temps perdu. Paris: Gallimard. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques ([1782–89] 1957). The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. L. G. Crocker (ed.). New York: Pocket Books. Sartre, Jean-Paul ([1964] 2002). Les Mots. Paris: Hatier.

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Seybold, David Christoph (1796). Selbstbiographien berühmter Männer. Wintherthur: Steiner. Steedman, Carolyn (1987). Landscape for a Good Woman. London: Virago. Stein, Gertrude (1933). The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. London: Arrow Books. Thoreau, Henry David ([1854] 1948). Walden: Or Life in the Woods. New York: Rinehart. Wolf, Christa (1976). Kindheitsmuster. Berlin: Aufbau. Woolf, Virginia (1985). Moments of Being. J. Schulkind (ed.). London: Pimlico. Wordsworth, William ([1799, 1805, 1850] 1979). The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850. M. H. Abrams & S. Gill (eds.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

6.2 Works Cited Bamberg, Michael (2011). “Who am I? Narration and its contribution to self and identity.” Theory & Psychology 21.1, 3–24. Beaujour, Michel ([1980] 1991). Poetics of the Literary Self-Portrait. New York: New York UP. Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly (1978ff.). Honolulu: U of Hawaii P. Braun, Peter & Bernd Stiegler, eds. (2012). Literatur als Lebensgeschichte. Biographisches Erzählen von der Moderne bis zur Gegenwart. Bielefeld: Transcript. Bruner, Jerome (1993). “The Autobiographical Process.” R. Folkenflik (ed.). The Culture of Autobiography: Constructions of Self-Representations. Stanford: Stanford UP, 28–56. Burke, Peter (2011). “Historicizing the Self, 1770–1830.” A. Baggerman et al (eds.). Controlling Time and Shaping the Self: Developments in Autobiographical Writing since the Sixteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 13–32. Cohn, Dorrit (1999). The Distinction of Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. de Man, Paul (1984). “Autobiography as De-facement.” The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York: Columbia UP, 67–81. Dilthey, Wilhelm ([1910] 2002). “The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences.” R. A. Makreel & F. Rodi (eds.). Selected Works, Vol. III. Princeton: Princeton UP, 101–175. Dünne, Jörg & Christian Moser (2008). Automedialität: Subjektkonstitution in Schrift, Bild und neuen Medien. München: Fink. Eakin, Paul J. (2008). Living Autobiographically. How We Create Identity in Narrative. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – ed. (2004). The Ethics of Life Writing. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Erll, Astrid et al., eds. (2003). Literatur – Erinnerung – Identität. Theoriekonzeptionen und Fallstudien. Trier: WVT. Finck, Almut (1999). Autobiographisches Schreiben nach dem Ende der Autobiographie. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. Fothergill, Robert A. (1974). Private Chronicles: A Study of English Diaries. Oxford: Oxford UP. Foucault, Michel ([1969] 1979). “What Is an Author?” J. V. Harari (ed.). Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 141–160.

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Genette, Gérard ([1991] 1993). “Fictional Narrative, Factual Narrative.” G. Genette. Fiction and Diction. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Gusdorf, Georges (1980). “Conditions and Limits of Autobiography.” J. Olney (ed.) Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical. Princeton: Princeton UP, 28–48. Hahn, Alois (1987). “Identität und Selbstthematisierung.” A. Hahn & V. Kapp (eds.). Selbstthematisierung und Selbstzeugnis: Bekennnis und Geständnis. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 7–24. Hengel, Louis van den (2012). “Zoegraphy: Per/forming Posthuman Lives.” Biography 35, 1–20. Hof, Renate & Susanne Rohr, eds. (2008). Inszenierte Erfahrung: Gender und Genre in Tagebuch, Autobiographie, Essay. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Holdenried, Michaela (1991). Im Spiegel ein Anderer: Erfahrungskrise und Subjektdiskurs im modernen autobiographischen Roman. Heidelberg: Winter. Jelinek, Estelle C., ed. (1986). Women’s Autobiography. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Klepper, Martin (2013). “Rethinking narrative identity.” M. Klepper & C. Holler (eds.). Rethinking Narrative Identity. Persona and Perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1–31. Kohli, Martin (1981). “Zur Theorie der biographischen Selbst- und Fremdthematisierung.” J. Matthes (ed.). Lebenswelt und soziale Probleme. Soziologentag Bremen 1980. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 502–520. Kormann, Eva (2004). Ich, Welt und Gott: Autobiographik im 17. Jahrhundert. Köln: Böhlau. Kronsbein, Joachim (1984). Autobiographisches Erzählen: Die narrativen Strukturen der Autobiographie. München: Minerva. Lejeune, Philippe ([1987] 1988). On Autobiography. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Lionett, Françoise (1991). Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Löschnigg, Martin (2006). Die englische fiktionale Autobiographie: Erzähltheoretische Grundlagen und historische Prägnanzformen von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Trier: WVT. – (2010). “Postclassical Narratology and the Theory of Autobiography.” J. Alber & M. Fludernik (eds.). Postclassical Narratology. Approaches and Analyses. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 255–274. Markowitsch, Hans & Harald Welzer (2005). Das autobiographische Gedächtnis. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Misch, Georg ([1907] 1950). A History of Autobiography in Antiquity. Vol. I. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Müller, Klaus-Detlef (1976). Autobiographie und Roman: Studien zur literarischen Autobiographie der Goethezeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Neumann, Bernd (1970). Identität und Rollenzwang. Zur Theorie der Autobiographie. Frankfurt a. M.: Athenäum. Neumann, Birgit et al., eds. (2008). Narrative and Identity: Theoretical Approaches and Critical Analyses. Trier: WVT. Niggl, Günter (1988). Die Autobiographie: Zur Form und Geschichte einer literarischen Gattung. Darmstadt: WBG.

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Nussbaum, Felicity (1989). The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century England. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Olney, James, ed. (1980). Autobiography. Essays Theoretical and Critical. Princeton: Princeton UP. – (1998). Memory & Narrative. The Weave of Life-Writing. Chicago: Chicago UP. Pandian, M. S. S. (2008). “Writing Ordinary Lives.” Economic and Political Weekly. 43.38, 34–40. Pascal, Roy (1960). Design and Truth in Autobiography. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Perreten, Peter (2003). “Eco-Autobiography: Portrait of Place/Self-Portrait.” Autobiography Studies 18, 1–22. Pietzcker, Carl (2005). “Die Autobiographie aus psychoanalytischer Sicht.” M. Reichel (ed.). Antike Autobiographien. Werke – Epochen – Gattungen. Köln: Böhlau, 15– 27. Regard, Frédéric, ed. (2003). Mapping the Self: Space, Identity, Discourse in British Auto/biography. Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne. Ricœur, Paul (1991). “Narrative Identity.” Philosophy Today 35.1, 73–81. Roesler, Wolfgang (2005). “Ansätze von Autobiographie in früher griechischer Dichtung.” Antike Autobiographien. Werke – Epochen – Gattungen. M. Reichel (ed.). Köln: Böhlau, 29–43. Schneider, Manfred (1986). Die erkaltete Herzensschrift: Der autobiographische Text im 20. Jahrhundert. München: Hanser. Shumaker, Wayne (1954). English Autobiography. Its Emergence, Materials and Form. Berkeley: U of California P. Sloterdijk, Peter (1978). Literatur und Organisation von Lebenserfahrung. Autobiographien der Zwanziger Jahre. München: Hanser. Smith, Sidonie A. & Julia Watson, eds. (2001). Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Starobinski, Jean (1970). “Le style de l’autobiographie.” Poétique 3, 255–265. – ([1970] 1983). “The Style of Autobiography.” J. Olney (ed.). Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical. Princeton: Princeton UP, 73–83. Volkening, Heide (2006). Am Rand der Autobiographie: Ghostwriting, Signatur, Geschlecht. Bielefeld: Transcript. Weintraub, Karl J. (1982). The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography. Chicago: Chicago UP.

6.3 Further Reading Jolly, Margaretta, ed. (2001). Encyclopaedia of Life Writing. London: Fitzroy Dearborn. Schwalm, Helga (2014). “Autobiography/Autofiction.” M. Wagner-Egelhaaf (ed.). Handbook Autobiography/Autofiction. Berlin: de Gruyter, forthcoming. Wagner-Egelhaaf, Martina (2000). Autobiographie. Stuttgart: Metzler.

Character Fotis Jannidis

1 Definition Character is a text- or media-based figure in a storyworld, usually human or human-like.

2 Explication The term “character” is used to refer to participants in storyworlds created by various media (Ryan → Narration in Various Media) in contrast to “persons” as individuals in the real world. The status of characters is a matter of long-standing debate: can characters be treated solely as an effect created by recurrent elements in the discourse (Weinsheimer 1979), or are they to be seen as entities created by words but distinguishable from them and calling for knowledge about human beings (3.1)? Answering the latter question involves determining what kinds of knowledge are required, but also to what extent such knowledge is employed in understanding characters. Three forms of knowledge in particular are relevant for the narratological analysis of character: (a) the basic type, which provides a very fundamental structure for those entities which are seen as sentient beings; (b) character models or types such as the femme fatale or the hard-boiled detective; (c) encyclopedic knowledge of human beings underlying inferences which contribute to the process of characterization, i.e. a store of information ranging from everyday knowledge to genre-specific competence. Most theoretical approaches to character seek to circumscribe reliance on real-world knowledge in some way and treat characters as entities in a storyworld subject to specific rules (3.2). One important line of thought in the antirealistic treatment of character is the functional view. In this perspective, first established by Aristotle, characters are subordinate to or determined by the narrative action; in the 20th century, there have been attempts to describe characters in terms of a deep structure based on their roles in the plot common to all narratives (3.3).

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At the discourse level, the presentation of characters shares many features with the presentation of other kinds of fictional entities. However, because of the importance of character in telling stories, these features have been discussed mainly in terms of character presentation. Among these features are the naming of characters, studied from the perspective of the function and meaning of names, and other ways of referring to characters, which contribute to the overall structural coherence of the text (3.4). Equally if not more important, however, is the process of ascribing properties to names which results in agents having these properties in the storyworld, a process known as characterization. Characterization may be direct, as when a trait is ascribed explicitly to a character, or indirect, when it is the result of inferences drawn from the text based partly on world knowledge and especially the different forms of character knowledge mentioned above. The term “characterization” can be used to refer to the ascription of a property to a character, but also for the overall process and result of attributing traits to a given character. The process of characterization can have different forms: e.g. a character is attributed specific traits at the beginning of a narrative, but other traits are subsequently added that may not conform to the original characterization, such subverting the first conception of this character (3.5). Viewing characters as entities of a storyworld does not imply that they are self-contained. On the contrary, the storyworld is constructed during the process of narrative communication, and characters thus form a part of the signifying structures which motivate and determine the narrative communication. Characters also play a role in thematic, symbolic or other constellations of the text and of the storyworld (3.6). For most readers, characters are one of the most important aspects of a narrative. How readers relate to a character is a matter of empirical analysis, but it is important to bear in mind that the way the text presents a character is highly influential on the relation between character and reader. Three factors in particular are relevant in this regard: (a) the transfer of perspective; (b) the reader’s affective predisposition toward the character―itself influenced by: (i) the character’s emotions, whether explicitly described or implicitly conveyed; (ii) the reader’s reaction to her mental simulation of the character’s position; (iii) the expression of emotions in the presentation―and (c) evaluation of characters in the text (3.7). There has always been a need to categorize characters in order to facilitate description and analysis. However, most proposals seem to be either too complex or theoretically unsatisfying, so that Forster’s classification into flat vs. round characters continues to be widely used (3.8).

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3 History of the Concept and its Study Until recently, there was nothing like a coherent field of research for the concept of character, but only a loose set of notions related to it touching on such issues as the ontological status of characters, the kind of knowledge necessary to understand characters, the relation between character and action, the naming of characters, characterization as process and result, the relation of the reader to a character centering around the notions of identification and empathy, etc. (Keen → Narrative Empathy). The situation has changed over the past ten or fifteen years thanks to a series of monographs on character by Culpeper (2001), Eder (2008), Jannidis (2004), Koch (1992), Palmer (2004), and Schneider (2001), all of which are indebted to the ground- breaking work done by Margolin in the 1980s and 1990s. Most of these studies draw on the cognitive sciences and their models of text processing and perception of persons (Herman → Cognitive Narratology). However, even though there is now a consensus on some aspects of character in narrative, many other aspects continue to be treated disparately. 3.1 People or Words Characters have long been regarded as fictive people. To understand characters, readers tend to resort to their knowledge about real people. In this framework, an anthropological, biological or psychological theory of persons can also be used in character analysis, as in Freud’s analysis of Hamlet where he claims “I have here translated into consciousness what had to remain unconscious in the mind of the hero” (Freud [1900] 1950: 164). Another school of thought pictured character as mere words or a paradigm of traits described by words. A well-known example of this approach is Barthes’s S/Z ([1970] 1974) in which one of the codes, “voices,” substitutes for person, understood as the web of semes attached to a proper name. In this view, a character is not to be taken for anything like a person, yet on closer examination these semes correspond to traditional character traits. Although he differs from Barthes in many regards, Lotman ([1970] 1977), in a similar vein, describes character as a sum of all binary oppositions to the other characters in a text which, together, constitute a paradigm. A character thus forms part of a constellation of characters who either share a set of common traits (parallels) or represent opposing traits (contrasts). This was not the first attack against a mimetic understanding of character during the last century, a comparable approach to character

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having already been advocated by the New Criticism. Wellek and Warren (1949) claimed that a character consists only of the words by which it is described or into whose mouth they are put by the author. Knights ([1933] 1973) had earlier ridiculed the tendency in British criticism to treat character presentations like the representations of people with the question “How many Children had Lady Macbeth?” Despite this criticism, the reduction of characters to words was not convincing, for it posed many practical problems in literary criticism and also seemed to some critics unsatisfactory for theoretical reasons. Hochman (1985), for example, defended the idea of character as human-like against structuralist and post-structuralist conceptions with moral and aesthetic arguments. Given this situation, the series of essays by Margolin, by combining elements of structuralism, reception theory and the theory of fictional worlds, proved to be a breakthrough. For Margolin (1983), characters are first and foremost elements of the constructed narrative world: “character,” he claims, “is a general semiotic element, independent of any particular verbal expression and ontologically different from it” (7). He further points out that characters can have various modes of existence in storyworlds: they can be factual, counterfactual, hypothetical, conditional, or purely subjective (1995: 375). Also taken up are questions such as how characters come into existence and what constitutes their identity (Bamberg → Identity and Narration), especially in storyworlds as a transtextual concept. Philosophers, especially those with roots in analytical philosophy, have discussed the special ontological status of character under the label of incompleteness of characters. Unlike persons who exist in the real world and are complete, we can speak meaningfully only about those aspects of characters which have been described in the text or which are implied by it. Consequently, descriptions of characters have gaps, and often the missing information cannot be inferred from the given information. In contrast to the description of real persons in which a gap may appear even though it is assumed that the person is complete, characters have gaps if the description does not supply the necessary information (Eaton 1976; Crittenden 1982; Lamarque 2003). Even though there is currently a broad consensus that character can best be described as an entity forming part of the storyworld, the ontological status of this world and its entities remains unclear. Narratological theory presently offers three approaches to addressing this problem: (a) drawing on the theory of possible worlds, the storyworld is seen as an independent realm created by the text (Margolin 1990); (b) from the perspective of cognitive theories of the reading process, character is

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seen as a mental model created by an empirical reader (Schneider 2001); (c) from the perspective of the neo-hermeneutical theory of literary communication, the text is an intentional object and character is a mental model created by an hypothetical historical model reader. This approach incorporates a number of insights into text processing, but focuses on the text (Jannidis 2004). The main differences between these approaches lie in how the presentation of character is described and in the use of principles borrowed from the cognitive sciences. 3.2 Character Knowledge Even some of those who have claimed that character is a paradigm of traits assume that there exists a cultural code making it possible to perceive these traits as a meaningful whole (Lotman [1970] 1977), or Gestalt. This code is also resorted to in the perception of people in everyday life such that there is an interaction between the formation of (narrative) characters and the perception of people not only because the perception of people determines how plausible a character is, but also because the way characters are presented in narratives can may change the way people are perceived. At the same time, this cultural code contains information that is not applied to people but only to characters, especially stock characters and genre-based character types. Even so, the notion of a cultural code is probably too vague, since it encompasses different aspects or levels which should be distinguished: the basis type; character models; character schemas. The concept of basis type adopts recent insights from developmental psychology. From early on, humans distinguish between objects and sentient beings. They apply to the perception of the latter a theory of mind which ascribes to them mental states such as intentions, wishes, and beliefs. Once an entity in the storyworld is identified as a character, this framework is applied to that entity, the basis type thus providing the basic outline of a character: there is an invisible “inside” which is the source of all intentions, wishes, etc., and a visible “outside” which can be perceived. All aspects of a basis type can be negated for a specific character, but either this is done explicitly or it results from genre conventions (Jannidis 2004: 185–195; Zunshine 2006: 22–27). On another, more concrete level, knowledge about time- and culture-specific types contributes to the perception of characters. Some are “stock characters” such as the rich miser, the femme fatale, or the mad scientist, while others draw upon general habitus knowledge in a society like the formal and laborious accountant, the old-maid teacher or the 19thcentury laborer (Frevert & Haupt ed. 2004). Such figures serve as char-

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acter models. Character models are often associated with standardized “character constellations” such as cuckold, wife, and lover. In popular culture, characterization frequently depends on character models, and the creative variation of these models is highly appreciated, while in high culture there is a strong tendency to avoid character models (3.8; Lotman [1970] 1977: 239–260). It is important to note that basis type and character models do not exhaust the relevant knowledge forms for characters. In many instances of character description, encyclopedic knowledge—from both the real world and fictional worlds—comes into play, combining two or more items of character- (or person-)related information (e.g. “too much alcohol makes people drunk” or “vampires can be killed by a wooden stake driven into their heart”). In many cases, texts offer the reader only a fragment of information, prompting the reader to fill in the missing parts based on the appropriate knowledge. In text analysis, this kind of character encyclopedia is relevant more often than the other two, and differences in the interpretation of characters are frequently based on the fact that different entries from the character encyclopedia are resorted to. 3.3 Character and Action One of the oldest theoretical statements on character reflects on the relation of character and action: “for tragedy is not a representation of men but of a piece of action […]. Moreover, you could not have a tragedy without action, but you can have one without character-study” (Aristotle [1927] 1932: 1450a). What Aristotle said in relation to tragedy became the origin of a school of thought which claims that in order to understand a character in a fictional text, one need only to analyze its role in the action. This approach was put on a new foundation by Propp ([1928] 1984) in a ground-breaking corpus study of the Russian folktale. In analyzing a hundred Russian fairy tales, he constructed a sequence of 31 functions which he attributed to seven areas of action or types of character: opponent; donor; helper; princess and her father; dispatcher; hero; false hero. Greimas ([1966] 1983) generalized this approach with his actant model in which all narrative characters are regarded as expressions of an underlying narrative grammar composed of six actants ordered into pairs: the hero (also sujet) and his search for an object; the sender and the receiver; the hero’s helper and the opponent. Each actant is not necessarily realized in one single character, since one character may perform more than one role, and one role may be distributed among several characters. Schank’s concept of story

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skeletons also starts from the idea that stories have an underlying structure, but in his model there are many such structures and therefore many different roles for actors, e.g. the story of a divorce using the story skeleton “betrayal” with the two actors: the betrayer and the betrayed (Schank 1995: chap. 6). Campbell ([1949] 1990) described in an influential work what he called, using a term coined by James Joyce, the “monomyth,” which is an abstraction of numerous mythological and religious stories marking the stages of the hero’s way: separation/departure; the trials and victories of initiation; return and reintegration into society (Campbell [1949] 1990: 36). According to Campbell, who bases his argument on Freud’s and especially on Jung’s form of psychoanalysis, the monomyth is universal and can be found in stories, myths, and legends all over the world. In contrast to these generalized model-oriented approaches, traditional approaches tend to employ a genre- and period-specific vocabulary for action roles such as confidant and intriguer in traditional drama, or villain, sidekick, and henchman in the popular media of the 20th century. Most of the common labels for character in use refer to the role a character has in action. “Protagonist,” in use since Greek antiquity, refers to the main character of a narrative or a play, and “antagonist” to its main opponent. In contrast to these neutral labels, the term “hero” refers to a positive figure, usually in some kind of representative story. In modern high-culture narratives, there is more often an anti-hero or no single protagonist at all, but a constellation of characters (Tröhler 2007). 3.4 Referring to Characters Referring to characters in texts occurs with the use of proper names, definite descriptions and personal pronouns (Margolin 1995: 374). In addition to these direct references, indirect evocations can be found: the untagged rendering of direct speech, the description of actions (e.g. “a hand grabbed”) or use of the passive voice (“the window was opened”). The role of names in interpreting characters has been treated repeatedly, resulting in different ways of classifying name usage (e.g. Lamping 1983; Birus 1987). Narratives can be viewed as a succession of scenes or situative frames, only one of which is active at any given moment. An active situative frame may contain numerous characters, but only some of them will be focused on by being explicitly referred to in the corresponding stretch of text. The first active frame in which a character oc-

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curs and is explicitly referred to constitutes its “introduction.” After being introduced, a character may drop out of sight, not be referred to for several succeeding active frames, and then reappear. In general, whenever a character is encountered in an active frame, it is to be determined whether this is its first occurrence or whether it has already been introduced in an earlier active frame and is reappearing at a particular point. Determining that a character in the current active scene has already appeared in an earlier one is termed “identification.” A distinction is to be made between normal, false, impeded, and deferred identifications. A “false identification” occurs when a previously mentioned character is identified but it then becomes clear later that some other character was in fact being referred to. An “impeded identification” does not refer unequivocally to any specific character, and a clear reference to the character or characters is never given in the text, while in the case of “deferred identification” the reader is ultimately able to establish the identity of an equivocally presented character. Deferred identification can further be broken down into an overt form in which the reader knows that he is kept in the dark and a covert form (Jannidis 2004: chap. 4 & 6, based on Emmott 1997). 3.5 Characterization Characterization can be described as ascribing information to an agent in the text so as to provide a character in the storyworld with a certain property or properties, a process often referred to as ascribing a property to a character. In the 19th century, critics spoke of the difference between direct and indirect characterization and of the preference of contemporary writers and readers for the latter (Scherer [1888] 1977: 156– 157). Until recently, characterization was understood as the text ascribing psychological or social traits to a character (e.g. Chatman 1978), but in fact texts ascribe all manner of properties to characters, including physiological and locative (space-time location) properties. Yet some textually explicit ascriptions of properties to a character may turn out to be invalid, as when this information is attributable to an unreliable narrator or to a fellow-character (Margolin → Narrator). Moreover, a textual ascription may turn out to be hypothetical or purely subjective. There are also texts and styles of writing (e.g. the psychological novel) which tend to avoid any explicit statements of characterization. The crucial issue in the process of characterization is thus what information, especially of a psychological nature, a reader is able to associate with any character as a member of the storyworld and where this information comes from. There are at least three sources of such information: (a)

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textually explicit ascription of properties to a character; (b) inferences that can be drawn from textual cues (e.g. “she smiled nervously”); (c) inferences based on information which is not associated with the character by the text itself but through reference to historically and culturally variable real-world conventions (e.g. the appearance of a room reveals something about the person living there or the weather expresses the feelings of the protagonist). A systematic description of such inferences employed in characterization is given by Margolin (1983). Inferences can be understood in terms of abductions (Keller 1998: chap. 9, based on Peirce), so that the fundamental role of character models and of the character encyclopedia becomes obvious: the information derived from them is not included in the text, but is presupposed to a greater or lesser degree by it. Another key problem concerns the limits and underlying rules of such inferences when they are applied to fictional beings. Ryan (1980), noting that readers tend to assume that a storyworld resembles the real world unless explicitly stated otherwise, adopts the philosopher David Lewis’s “principle of minimal departure.” In a thorough criticism of this and similar hypotheses, Walton points out that this would make an infinite number of inferences possible, and he comes to the conclusion: “There is no particular reason why anyone’s beliefs about the real world should come into play. As far as implications are concerned, simple conventions to the effect that whenever such and such is fictional, so and so is as well, serve nicely […]” (Walton 1990: 166). This approach, in turn, increases the number of conventions without necessity and without providing any convincing argument as to how readers go about accessing these conventions, aside from drawing on their realworld knowledge, despite the fact that many conventions apply only to fictional worlds. Even so, this does not invalidate Walton’s criticism, which can probably be refuted only by including another element: the fact that characters are part of storyworlds which are not self-contained, but communicated. Readers’ assumptions about what is relevant in the process of communication determine the scope and validity of inferences (Sperber & Wilson [1986] 1995). The presentation of characters is a dynamic process, just as is the construction of characters in the reader’s mind. A powerful model for describing the psychological or cognitive dynamics coming into play here, based on the “top-down” and “bottom-up” processes observed during empirical studies on reading comprehension, has been proposed by Schneider (2001) building on concepts developed by Gerrig & Allbritton (1990). A top-down process occurs in the application of a category to a character, integrating the information given by the text into

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this category, while a bottom-up process results from the text information integrating a character into a type or building up an individualized representation. At the beginning of a character presentation, textual cues may trigger various types of categorization: social types (“the teacher,” “the widow”); literary types (the hero in a Bildungsroman); text-specific types (characters that do not change throughout the story). In contrast to the top-down processing that takes place in these forms of categorization is bottom-up processing. This occurs when the reader is unable to integrate the given information into an existing category, resulting in personalization of the character (Prince → Reader). Personalized characters can also be members of a category, but this is not the focus of their description. Reading a text involves building up either categorized or personalized characters, but information subsequently encountered in the text may change their status and possibly decategorize or depersonalize those characters. 3.6 Character and Meaning Characters can be seen as entities in a storyworld. However, this should not be understood to mean that characters are self-contained. On the contrary: they are at the same time devices in the communication of meaning and serve purposes other than the communication of the facts of the storyworld as well. This matter was discussed above in the relation between character and action. In many forms of narrative, however, action is not the organizing principle, but a theme or an idea, and the characters in these texts are determined by that theme or idea. An extreme example is personification, i.e. the representation of an abstract principle such as freedom or justice as a character, as found in allegorical literature. Another example is certain dialogue novels, where the characters’ role is to propound philosophical ideas. On the other hand, even the most life-like characters in a realistic novel can often also be described in light of their place in a thematic progression. Thus, Phelan (1987) has proposed to describe character as participation in a mimetic sphere (due to the character’s traits), a thematic sphere (as a representative of an idea or of a class of people), and a synthetic sphere (the material out of which the character is made). In his heuristic of film characters, Eder (2007, 2008) adopts a similar breakdown, but adds a fourth dimension relating to communication between the film and the audience: (a) the character as an artifact (how is it made?); (b) the character as a fictional being (what features describe the character?); (c) the character as a symbol (what meaning is communicated through the character?); and (d) the character as a symptom (why is the character as it is

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and what is the effect?). The difference between characters as part of storyworlds and the meaning of character cannot be aligned with the difference between (narratological) description and interpretation because elements of a character or the description of a character are often motivated by their role in thematic, symbolic, aesthetic and other networks. 3.7 Relation of the Reader to the Character Characters may induce strong feelings in readers, a fact often discussed under the label “identification.” Identification is a psychological process and as such lies outside of the scope of narrative analysis. On the other hand, it is widely recognized that to some extent identification results from and is controlled by various textual cues and devices. A first problem is the concept of identification itself, since it involves a variety of aspects: sympathy with a character who is similar to the reader; empathy for a character who is in a particular situation; attraction to a character who is a role model for the reader. To date, there is no means of integrating all of these factors into a satisfactory theory of identification. There are older, mostly outdated models of identification, based on Freud or Lacan, and newer models, some of which are based on empirical studies (e.g. Oatley & Gholamain 1997), while others seek to integrate empirical findings and media analysis (e.g. Eder 2008, part VII). Another problem is historical variation: much literature before 1800 aims more at creating an attitude of admiration for the protagonist than it does at immersing the reader in the situation of the character (Jauss 1974; Schön 1999). Provisionally, the problem of identification with the character in narrative can be broken down into the following three aspects: (a) “transfer of perspective” works on different levels: perception (the reader “experiences” the sensory input of a character); intention (the reader is made aware of a character’s goals); beliefs (the reader is introduced into the character’s worldview). In narrative texts, such transfer occurs in part through the devices of focalization (Niederhoff → Focalization) and speech representation (McHale → Speech Representation); (b) the “affective relation” to the character is a complex phenomenon resulting from various factors. First is the information gleaned from the text bearing on the character’s emotions projected against the backdrop of general, historical, and cultural schemas applicable to particular situations and the emotions “appropriate” for these situations. Second is mental simulation of the depicted events, which creates an empathetic reaction involving the reader’s disposition to respond to the emotion

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experienced by the character (a display of sadness creates pity), but may also activate similar emotions (a display of sadness generates a similar feeling in the reader). To what extent such simulations actually occur has been discussed extensively: proponents see support for their position in the discovery of mirror neurons (Lauer 2007), while opponents point out that this aspect plays a limited role if any at all (e.g. Mellmann [2006], who models the reader’s response on the basis of evolutionary psychology). Such responsive dispositions may be socially induced, but they may also exist in other forms, such as sadistic or voyeuristic arousal. In any case, reaction to simulated events is not constrained to characters, but includes events of all types. These reactions to events not directly related to characters can be used to “externalize” the character’s affects (e.g. a description of a storm which reflects the agitated state of mind of the protagonist watching the storm). The third factor in the affective relation is the expressive use of language or the presentation of emotions in texts using phonetic, rhythmic, metrical, syntactical, lexical, figurative, rhetorical, and narrative devices including free indirect discourse and similar strategies (Winko 2003); (c) “evaluation of characters” is based on historically and culturally variable measures of value. Evaluation can be explicit thanks to the use of evaluative vocabulary, or implicit due to behavior that implies evaluation according common social standards. This includes implicit comparison between the reader or spectator and the protagonist, already described by Aristotle. An evaluative stance toward a character creates such emotional responses as admiration, sympathy or repulsion, at the same time coloring the reader’s affective relation to the character. 3.8 Categories of Character The most widely known proposal on how to categorize character is still Forster’s opposition between flat and round characters: “Flat characters [...] are constructed round a single idea or quality” ([1927] 1985: 67) while round characters are “more highly organized” (75) and “are capable of surprising in a convincing way” (78). Critics have long accepted this categorization as plausible, relating it to the way real people are perceived. However, the criteria Forster based it on are vague, especially the notion of development to explain the impression of a round character (e.g. Scholes et al. [1966] 2006: chap. 5). A significant problem in this discussion results from the fact that all we know about a specific character is based on what can be learned from a text or another medium. Therefore, it is often not easy to distinguish between the character and the way it is presented, as can be seen, for example, with Rimmon-

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Kenan, who proposes three dimensions to categorize characters: “complexity, development, penetration into the ‘inner life’” ([1983] 2002: 41), thus mixing aspects of the character as an entity of the storyworld with those of its presentation. Similarly, Hochman (1985) proposes eight dimensions as a basis of categorization without distinguishing between these two aspects. To name but three of them: stylization— naturalism; complexity—simplicity; dynamism—stati-cism. One of the earliest attempts to distinguish clearly between these aspects in categorizing characters comes from Fishelov (1990), who combines the opposition between presentation and storyworld with the distinction between flat and round characters. Another problematic aspect of this approach is the fact that it is almost always combined with an evaluative stance valorizing the complex and devaluating the simple regardless of the requirements of different genres (as Forster already deplored), or deprecating those genres. Stereotypes are often regarded as the prototypical flat character. With Dyer (1993), however, a distinction can be drawn between the social type and the stereotype. Social types are known because they belong to a society with which the reader is familiar, while stereotypes are ready-made images of the unknown. In fiction they differ, according to Dyer, to the extent that social types can appear in almost any kind of plot, while stereotypes carry with them an implicit narrative.

4 Topics for Further Investigation All of the aspects outlined above deserve further investigation, but three problems are of particular interest in the current state of research. (a) Recent decades have seen a growing interest in the social construction of identities—national identities, gender identities, etc. Analysis of character presentation and formation plays an important part in any interpretation interested in identity construction in literature, but up to now those engaged in identity analysis have neglected narratological research on character; at the same time, narrative analysis has mostly ignored the historical case studies carried out on identity construction by specialists of cultural studies. (b) Evaluation in literary texts has been and is still a neglected field of research. There are many ways a text can influence or predetermine the evaluative stance of the reader, and much systematic and historical work in this area remains to be done. (c) The question of how a reader relates to a character can only be answered by an interdisciplinary research bringing together textual analysis and the cognitive sciences.

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5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Aristotle ([1927] 1932). Aristotle in 23 Volumes. Vol. 23: The Poetics. Tr. W. H. Fyfe. London: Heinemann. Barthes, Roland ([1970] 1974). S/Z. New York: Hill & Wang. Birus, Hendrik (1987). “Vorschlag zu einer Typologie literarischer Namen.” LiLi: Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 17, No. 67, 38–51. Campbell, Joseph ([1949] 1990). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Harper & Row. Chatman, Seymour (1978). “Existents.” S. Chatman. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 96–145. Crittenden, Charles (1982). “Fictional Characters and Logical Completeness.” Poetics 11, 331–344. Culpeper, Jonathan (2001). Language and Characterisation. People in Plays and other Texts. Harlow: Longman. Dyer, Richard (1993). “The Role of Stereotypes.” R. Dyer. The Matter of Images: Essays on Representations. New York: Routledge, 11–18. Eaton, Marcia M. (1976). “On Being a Character.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 16, 24–31. Eder, Jens (2007). “Filmfiguren: Rezeption und Analyse.” T. Schick & T. Ebbrecht (eds.). Emotion―Empathie―Figur: Spiel-Formen der Filmwahrnehmung. Berlin: Vistas, 131–150. – (2008). Die Figur im Film. Grundlage der Figurenanalyse. Marburg: Schüren. Emmott, Catherine (1997). Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon P. Fishelov, David (1990). “Types of Character, Characteristics of Types.” Style 24, 422– 439. Forster, Edward M. ([1927] 1985). Aspects of the Novel. San Diego: Harcourt. Freud, Sigmund ([1900] 1950). The Interpretation of Dreams. New York: The Modern Library. Frevert, Ute & Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, ed. (2004). Der Mensch des 19. Jahrhunderts. Essen: Magnus. Gerrig, Richard J. & David W. Allbritton (1990). “The Construction of Literary Character: A View from Cognitive Psychology.” Style 24, 380–391. Greimas, Algirdas Julien ([1966] 1983). Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Hochman, Baruch (1985). Character in Literature. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Jannidis, Fotis (2004). Figur und Person. Beitrag zu einer historischen Narratologie. Berlin: de Gruyter. Jauss, Hans Robert (1974). “Levels of Identification of Hero and Audience.” New Literary History 5, 283–317. Keller, Rudi (1998). A Theory of Linguistic Signs. Oxford: Oxford UP.

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Knights, Lionel C. ([1933] 1973). How many Children had Lady Macbeth? An Essay in the Theory and Practice of Shakespeare Criticism. New York: Haskell House. Koch, Thomas (1992). Literarische Menschendarstellung: Studien zu ihrer Theorie und Praxis. Tübingen: Stauffenberg. Lamarque, Peter (2003). “How to Create a Fictional Character.” B. Gaut & P. Linvingston (eds.). The Creation of Art. New Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 33–51. Lamping, Dieter (1983). Der Name in der Erzählung. Zur Poetik des Personennamens. Bonn: Bouvier. Lauer, Gerhard (2007). “Spiegelneuronen: Über den Grund des Wohlgefallens an der Nachahmung.” K. Eibl et al. (eds.). Im Rücken der Kulturen. Paderborn: Mentis, 137–163. Lotman, Jurij M. ([1970] 1977). “The Composition of the Verbal Work of Art.” Ju. Lotman. The Structure of the Artistic Text. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 239–50. Margolin, Uri (1983). “Characterisation in Narrative: Some Theoretical Prolegomena.” Neophilologus 67, 1–14. – (1990). “Individuals in Narrative Worlds: An Ontological Perspective.” Poetics Today 11, 843–871. – (1995). “Characters in Literary Narrative: Representation and Signification.” Semiotica 106, 373–392. Mellmann, Katja (2006). Emotionalisierung. Von der Nebenstundenpoesie zum Buch als Freund: Eine emotionspsychologische Analyse der Literatur der Aufklärungsepoche. Paderborn: Mentis. Oatley, Keith & Mitra Gholamain (1997). “Emotions and Identification: Connections between Readers and Fiction.” M. Hjort & S. Laver (eds.). Emotion and the Arts. New York: Oxford UP, 263–281. Palmer, Alan (2004). Fictional Minds. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Phelan, James (1987). “Character, Progression, and the Mimetic-Didactic Distinction.” Modern Philology 84, 282–299. Propp, Vladimir ([1928] 1984). Theory and History of Folklore. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith ([1983] 2002). Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Routledge. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1980). “Fiction, Non-Factuals, and Minimal Departure.” Poetics 8, 403–422. Schank, Roger C. (1995). Tell me a Story. Narrative and Intelligence. Evanston: Northwestern UP. Scherer, Wilhelm ([1888] 1977). Poetik. Tübingen: Niemeyer, dtv. Schneider, Ralf (2001). “Toward a Cognitive Theory of Literary Character: The Dynamics of Mental-Model Construction.” Style 35, 607–639. Schön, Erich (1999). “Geschichte des Lesens.” B. Franzmann et al. (eds.). Handbuch Lesen. München: Saur, 1–85. Scholes, Robert et al. ([1966] 2006). The Nature of Narrative. Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: Oxford UP. Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson ([1986] 1995). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.

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Tröhler, Margrit (2007). Offene Welten ohne Helden. Plurale Figurenkonstellationen im Film. Marburg: Schüren. Walton, Kendall (1990). Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of Representational Arts. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Weinsheimer, Joel (1979). “Theory of Character: Emma.” Poetics Today 1, 185–211. Wellek, René & Austin Warren (1949). Theory of Literature. London: J. Cape. Winko, Simone (2003). Kodierte Gefühle: Zu einer Poetik der Emotionen in lyrischen und poetologischen Texten um 1900. Berlin: Schmidt. Zunshine, Lisa (2006). Why We Read Fiction. Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP.

5.2 Further Reading Jouve, Vincent (1992). L’effet-personnage dans le roman. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Knapp, John V., ed. (1990). “Interdisciplinary Approaches to Literary Character.” Special Issue of Style 24.3. Margolin, Uri (1992). “Fictional Individuals and their Counterparts.” J. Andrew (ed.). Poetics of the Text: Essays to celebrate 20 Years of the Neo-Formalist Circle. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 43–56. – (2007). “Character.” D. Hermann (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 66–79.

Cognitive Narratology David Herman

1 Definition Approaches to narrative study that fall under the heading of cognitive narratology share a focus on the mental states, capacities, and dispositions that provide grounds for—or, conversely, are grounded in— narrative experiences. This definition highlights two broad questions as centrally relevant for research on the nexus of narrative and mind: (1) How do stories across media interlock with interpreters’ mental states and processes, thus giving rise to narrative experiences?; (2) How (to what extent, in what specific ways) does narrative scaffold efforts to make sense of experience itself? The first question bears on stories viewed as a target of interpretation; it concerns ways in which interpreters use various kinds of semiotic affordances to engage with narrative worlds (or “storyworlds”). The second question concerns how narrative constitutes a resource for interpretation, providing a basis for understanding and characterizing the intentions, goals, emotions, and conduct of self and other. Thus, research on the mind-narrative nexus encompasses not only how stories can be used to build worlds but also how such acts of narrative worldmaking are themselves mind-enabling and mind-extending.

2 Explication Still an emergent trend within the broader domain of narratology, research on the mind-narrative nexus encompasses multiple methods of analysis and diverse corpora. Relevant corpora include fictional and nonfictional print narratives; computer-mediated narratives such as interactive fictions, e-mail novels, and blogs; comics and graphic novels; cinematic narratives; storytelling in face-to-face interaction; and other instantiations of the narrative text type. By the same token, theorists working in this area have adapted descriptive and explanatory tools from a variety of fields—in part because of the cross-disciplinary nature of research on the mind-brain itself. Source disciplines include, in addition to narratology, linguistics, semiotics, computer science, philosophy, psychology, and other domains. Making matters still more complicated, narrative scholars working on issues that fall within this

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area do not necessarily identify their work as cognitive-narratological, and might even resist being aligned with this rubric. It should therefore not be surprising that, given the range of artifacts and media falling under its purview, the many disciplines it involves, and the multiplicity of projects relevant for if not directly associated with it, research at the intersection of narrative theory and the sciences of mind at present constitutes more a set of loosely confederated heuristic schemes than a global framework for inquiry. Nonetheless, a number of key concerns cut across the various approaches to the mind-narrative nexus; these concerns can be linked to the two broad lines of inquiry mentioned above, i.e. (1) research on narrative as a target of interpretation and (2) scholarship on stories as a resource for sense making. On the one hand, what mental states and processes support narrative understanding, allowing readers, viewers, or listeners to navigate storyworlds to the extent required for their purposes in engaging with a given narrative (Herman 2013a: chaps. 1, 3)? How do they use medium-specific cues to build on the basis of the discourse an interpretation of what happened when, or in what order; a broader temporal and spatial environment for those events, as well as an inventory of the characters involved; and a working model of what it was like for these characters to experience the more or less disruptive or non-canonical events that constitute a core feature of narrative representations (Herman 2009: chap. 5)? On the other hand, insofar as narrative constitutes a way of structuring and understanding situations and events, still other questions suggest themselves for researchers working in this area. To what domains are stories especially suited as instruments of mind (Herman 2013a: chaps. 2, 6)? Is it the case that, unlike other such instruments (stress equations, deductive arguments, graphs and scatterplots, etc.), narrative is tailor-made for gauging the felt quality of lived experiences (Fludernik 1996; Herman 2009: chap. 6; 2013a: chaps. 2, 7)? Arguably, questions such as these could not have been formulated, let alone addressed, within classical frameworks for narrative study (but cf. Barthes [1966] 1977 and Culler 1975 for early anticipations). The mind-narrative nexus can thus be thought of as a problem space that opened up when earlier, structuralist models were brought into dialogue with disciplines falling under the umbrella field of the cognitive sciences.

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3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 A Partial Genealogy of the Term “Cognitive Narratology” The field of inquiry that has come to be called cognitive narratology can be characterized as a subdomain within “postclassical” narratology (Herman 1999; Alber & Fludernik 2010). At issue are frameworks for narrative study that incorporate the ideas of classical, structuralist narratologists but supplement their work with concepts and methods that were unavailable to story analysts such as Barthes, Genette, Greimas, and Todorov during the heyday of the structuralist revolution. In the case of scholarship exploring the nexus of narrative and mind, analysts have worked to enrich the original stock of structuralist concepts with research on human intelligence either ignored by or inaccessible to the classical narratologists; they have thus built new foundations for the study of basic and general principles of mind vis-à-vis various dimensions of narrative structure, as well as the various uses to which stories can be put. That said, the term “cognitive narratology” itself carries connotations that it might be better to avoid by using other descriptors for this area of inquiry. In particular, it is important to avoid any conflation of research on the mind-narrative nexus with what some scholars have characterized as “cognitivism,” or the view that the mind can be reduced to disembodied mental representations that are disattached from particular environments for acting and interacting (Noë 2004, 2009; Varela, Thompson & Rosch 1991; Thompson 2007). As argued in Herman et al. (2012) and Herman (2013a), a focus on the way the mind works with and through stories need not entail a cognitivist separation between mental representations and the social and material environments that help shape—indeed, partly constitute—the mind itself. Instead, research on storytelling and the mind can investigate how a culture’s narrative practices are geared on to humans’ always-situated mental states, capacities, and proclivities. However it is conceptualized and defined, the term cognitive narratology has been in use for only about fifteen years. As Eder (2003: 283 n.10) notes, the term appears to have been first used by Jahn (1997). Yet the questions and concerns encompassed by the term can be traced back to earlier research. In the domain of literary studies, and in parallel with a broader turn toward issues of reception and reader response (Iser [1972] 1974; Jauß [1977] 1982; Tompkins ed. 1980), studies by Sternberg (1978) and Perry (1979) highlighted processing strategies (e.g. the “primacy” and “recency” effects) that arise from the situation of a given

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event vis-à-vis the two temporal continua of story and discourse, or fabula and sujet. Events that happen early in story-time can be encountered late in discourse-time, or vice versa, producing different reading experiences from those set into play when there is greater isomorphism between the time of the told and the time of the telling. A still earlier precedent in this connection is Ingarden’s ([1931] 1973) account of literary texts as heteronomous vs. autonomous objects, i.e. as schematic structures the concretization of whose meaning potential requires the cognitive activity of readers. Meanwhile, in the fields of cognitive psychology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) research, analysts began developing their own hypotheses about cognitive structures underlying the production and understanding of narrative. Psychologists such as Mandler (1984) postulated the existence of cognitively based story grammars or narrative rule systems. Such grammars were cast as formal representations of the cognitive mechanisms used to parse stories into sets of units (e.g. settings and episodes) and principles for sequencing and embedding those units (cf. Herman 2002: 10–13). Roughly contemporaneously with the advent of story grammars, research in AI also began to focus on the cognitive basis for creating and understanding stories. Schank and Abelson’s (1977) foundational work explored how stereotypical knowledge reduces the complexity and duration of many processing tasks, including the interpretation of narrative. Indeed, the concepts of script and frame, or types of knowledge representations that allow an expected sequence of events or an activity setting to be stored in the memory (cf. Bartlett [1932] 1995; Goffman 1974), suggested how people are able to build up complex interpretations of stories on the basis of very few textual or discourse cues. Although subsequent research on knowledge representations suggests its limits as well as its possibilities (Sternberg 2003 provides a critical review), this early work shaped research on storytelling and the mind from the start, informing the study of how particular features of narrative discourse enable particular kinds of processing strategies. Thus, theorists have explored how experiential repertoires, stored in the form of scripts, enable interpreters of stories to “fill in the blanks” and assume that if a narrator mentions a masked character running out of a bank with a satchel of money, then that character has in all likelihood robbed the bank in question. For his part, Palmer (2004) discusses how readers’ world-knowledge allows them to build inferences about fictional minds by bringing such knowledge to bear on various textual indicators, including thought reports, speech representations, and descriptions of behaviors that span the continuum linking mental with

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physical actions. Other analysts have explored how literary narratives, by presenting atypical, norm-challenging, or physically impossible fictional scenarios, intermix processes of script recruitment, disruption, and refreshment (Alber 2009; Herman 2002: 85–113; Stockwell 2002: 75–89). Jahn (1997) and Emmott (1997) likewise employ the frame concept but in effect shift the focus from issues of semantic memory to issues of episodic memory. Jahn’s (1997) foundational essay draws on Minsky’s (1975) account of frames (among other relevant research) to redescribe from a cognitive perspective key aspects of Stanzel’s ([1979] 1984) theory of narrative. In Jahn’s proposal, higher-order knowledge representations or frames enable interpreters of stories to disambiguate pronominal references, decide whether a given sentence serves a descriptive or a thought-reporting function (e.g. depending on context, “the train was late” might either be a thought mulled over by a character or part of the narrator’s own account of the narrated world), and, more generally, adopt a top-down as well as a bottom-up approach to narrative processing. A frame guides interpretation until such time as textual affordances allow for a modification or substitution of that frame. In a similar vein, drawing on ideas from cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, and text-processing research, Emmott investigates how what she calls contexts, or spatiotemporal nodes inhabited by configurations of individuals and entities, constrain pronoun interpretation. Information about contexts attaches itself to mental representations that Emmott terms “contextual frames.” An action performed by (or on) a given configuration of participants is necessarily indexed to a particular context and must be viewed within that context, even if the context is never fully reactivated (after its initial mention) linguistically. For example, if a character in a short story begins walking along a wooded path, then even if elements of the setting are not mentioned again, readers can assume that subsequent actions performed by the character continue to take place in that same locale—until such time as linguistic signals facilitate a frame-switch (e.g. “Several days later […]”). To extrapolate: although some of the work just described post-dates the period at issue, a cluster of publications appearing in the 1990s added impetus to the “cognitive turn” in narrative studies that had been prepared for by research conducted in the 1970s and 1980s and heralded by Turner (1991) in a book subtitled “The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science.” Fludernik’s richly synthetic account of natural narratology, appearing in 1996, integrates ideas from literary narratology, the history of English language and literature, research on natural-language narratives told in face-to-face communication, and

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cognitive linguistics to isolate “experientiality,” or the felt, subjective awareness of an experiencing mind, as a core property of narrativity. Turner’s (1996) own extrapolation from cognitive-linguistic models of metaphor to account for human intelligence in terms of parabolic projections, or the mapping of source stories onto target stories to make sense of the world, was also published in 1996. The year before, the influential volume Deixis in Narrative had appeared (Duchan et al., eds. 1995); contributions to this volume characterize narrative comprehension in terms of deictic shifts, whereby interpreters shift from the spatiotemporal coordinates of the here-and-now to various cognitive vantage-points they are able to take up because of textual signals distributed in narrative discourse (see also Werth 1999). In addition, although the studies just mentioned fall within the first broad strand of inquiry into the mind-narrative nexus—i.e. the strand concerned with stories viewed as a target of interpretation—during the same period researchers in fields such as sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and social psychology were building on the insights of Labov (1972) to contribute to the second broad strand of inquiry, investigating how narrative constitutes a resource for sense making across a variety of communicative settings and activity types (Bamberg ed. 1997; Bruner 1991; Linde 1993; Ochs et al. 1992). This spate of publications helps explain why the inaugural 2000 issue of the online journal Image & Narrative focused on cognitive narratology. It also helps account for the organization, just after the turn of the century, of a number of edited volumes, special journal issues, and conferences exploring intersections among cognition, literature, and culture as well as approaches to the mind-narrative nexus in particular (e.g. Abbott ed. 2001; Richardson & Steen eds. 2002; Herman ed. 2003; Richardson & Spolsky eds. 2004). At the same time, theorists formulated pertinent objections to (or at least reservations about) what Richardson and Steen termed a “cognitive revolution” in the study of literature and culture (Jackson 2005; Sternberg 2003). Specifically, scholars who remained skeptical about cognitive approaches to literature and culture in general, and about research on narrative and mind specifically, questioned the degree to which work of this kind represents true cross-disciplinary or rather “transdisciplinary” convergence—as opposed to the selective and sometimes haphazard borrowing of ideas and methods tailored to problem domains in other areas of study (see section 4 below).

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3.2 Focal Areas for Research Approaches to narrative and mind continue to emerge, evolve, and cross-pollinate, and it is difficult to predict which of these approaches will be the most generative going forward, let alone what impact they will ultimately have on the broader field of narratology. Spanning research on narrative viewed as a target of interpretation as well as scholarship on stories taken as an instrument of mind, relevant studies include: (a) inquiry into the range of mental states and processes that support inferences about the ontological make-up, spatiotemporal profile, and character inventory of a storyworld, and also about the degree to which a given text or representation can be assimilated to the category “narrative”—i.e. assigned at least some degree of narrativity—in the first place (Doležel 1998; Fludernik 1996; Gerrig 1993; Herman 2002, 2009, 2013a; Hogan 2003b: 115–139; Jahn 1997; Ryan 1991, 2001; Sanford & Emmott 2013); (b) cognitively inflected accounts of narrative perspective or focalization in fictional and nonfictional texts (van Peer & Chatman eds. 2001; Dancygier 2011: 87–116; Grishakova 2002; Jahn 1996, 1999; Herman 2013a: chap. 4); (c) attempts to formulate what Eder (2003) terms “cognitive reception theories,” including research on the effects of narrative suspense, curiosity, and surprise (Gerrig 1993; Keating 2013; Perry 1979; Sternberg 1978, 1990, 1992) as well as studies of specific storytelling strategies that can foster, amplify, or inhibit empathetic responses by interpreters (Keen 2007); (d) empirical studies that, relying on techniques ranging from the measuring of reading times to methods of corpus analysis to the elicitation of diagrams of storyworlds, seek to establish demonstrable correlations between what Bortolussi and Dixon (2003) term “text features” and “text effects” (Emmott, Sanford & Alexander 2013; Sanford & Emmott 2013; Gerrig 1993; Ryan 2003; Herman 2005; Salway & Herman 2011); (e) transmedial studies suggesting that narrative functions as a cognitive “macroframe” enabling interpreters to identify stories or story-like elements across any number of semiotic media— literary, pictorial, musical, etc. (Gardner & Herman 2011; Herman 2004, 2013a: chap. 3; Ranta 2013; Ryan ed. 2004; Ryan & Thon eds. 2014; Wolf 2003);

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(f) research on characters and methods of characterization in fictional as well as nonfictional narratives; this work includes studies of specific techniques used by storytellers to figure forth their characters’ mental lives and also studies of how interpreters’ encounters with such individuals-in-storyworlds shape and are shaped by broader understandings of persons (Cohn 1978; Eder et al., eds. 2010; Fludernik 2003; Herman 2011a, 2013a: chap. 5; Herman ed. 2011; Jannidis 2004, 2009; Palmer 2004, 2010; Schneider 2001; Zunshine 2006); (g) relatedly, research on narrative vis-à-vis folk-psychological reasoning, or the everyday heuristics that people use to make sense of their own and others’ conduct; at issue is how stories provide a means for evaluating the conduct of self and other, as well as the folk-psychological abilities bound up with narrative comprehension (Butte 2004; Herman 2010, 2011a, 2013a: chaps. 2, 8; Hutto 2008). (h) studies of emotions and emotion discourse in narrative contexts; relevant work includes inquiry into the way emotional responses undergird the telling and interpretation of stories (Burke 2011; Hogan 2003a, 2011; Miall 2011; Oatley 2012) and also research on how narratives at once reflect and help shape “emotionologies,” or systems of emotion terms and concepts deployed by participants in discourse to ascribe emotions to themselves as well as their cohorts (Herman 2010, 2013a). (i) research drawing inspiration from developments in the theory of evolution and also evolutionary psychology, including Easterlin’s (2012) hypothesis that “narrative thinking arose [...] because it facilitated interpretation of events in the environment and consequently promoted functional action” (47) and Boyd’s (2009) argument that narrative fiction and other forms of makebelieve link up with an evolved human predisposition to engage in play (177–187, 192–193; see also Abbott 2000; Austin 2010: 17–40; Dissanayake 2001; Mellmann 2010); (j) work exploring how narratives about counterfactual scenarios support efforts to negotiate experience (Dannenberg 2008; Doležel 1999: 265–267; 2010: 101–126; Herman 2013a: chap. 8); (k) studies of the structure and uses of autobiographical accounts vis-à-vis memory processes and their potential disruption by dementia or other debilitating diseases or injuries (Brockmeier & Carbaugh eds. 2001; Damasio 1999; Eakin 2008; Medved & Brockmeier 2010; Hydén 2010); and

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(l) research on narrative engagements with nonhuman phenomenology, or the way stories across media can be used to model what it might be like for nonhuman animals to encounter the world—and thereby reshape humans’ own modes of encounter (Herman 2011b, 2013c; Irvine 2013; Nelles 2001). The following subsections hone in on focal areas (a) and (f) to highlight some of the strategies for inquiry that have been developed by analysts exploring the mind-narrative nexus. 3.2.1 Narrative Ways of Worldmaking Using semiotic affordances to construct and imaginatively inhabit storyworlds is a fundamental aspect of interpreting narratives—and also a precondition for leveraging narratives to construe what’s going on in wider environments for sense making. Work on deictic shift theory (Duchan et al., eds. 1995), contextual frame theory (Emmott 1997), text-world theory (Werth 1999), possible-worlds theory (Doležel 1998; Pavel 1986; Ronen 1994; Ryan 1991), and the fiction/nonfiction distinction (Cohn 1999) helps illuminate the mental processes underlying narrative ways of worldmaking. This work suggests how interpreting narratives entails mapping discourse cues onto storyworlds more or less analogous to contexts in which that mapping process takes place. What is more, reconsidered from a perspective that foregrounds issues of worldmaking, earlier narratological scholarship can be read anew, providing further insight into the mental states, capacities, and dispositions underlying the (re)construction of narrative worlds. Genette’s ([1972] 1980) influential account of time in narrative, for example, can be motivated as a heuristic framework for studying the WHEN component of world creation. Thus Genette's concept of narrative order suggests how a narrative world is “thickened” by forays backward and forward in time, raising questions about the processing strategies triggered by such temporal agglutination (cf. Abbott [2002] 2008: 163–65; Sternberg 1978, 1990, 1992). The approach to narrative worldmaking outlined in Herman et al. (2012) and Herman (2013a, 2013b) focuses on the way specific discourse patterns enable narrative experiences; suggesting how ideas from psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, and related areas of research can be integrated with scholarship on stories to characterize processes of narrative understanding, the approach starts with the hypothesis that engaging with stories entails mapping textual cues onto the WHEN, WHAT, WHERE, WHO, HOW, and WHY dimensions of mentally

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configured worlds. By using textual affordances to specify or “fill out” these dimensions in more or less detail, interpreters can frame provisional answers to questions such as the following—to the extent required by their purposes in engaging with a given text: i. ii. iii. iv.

v. vi.

How does the time frame of events in the storyworld relate to that of the narrational or world-creating act? Where did/will/might narrated events happen relative to the place of narration—and for that matter, relative to the interpreter’s current situation? How exactly is the domain of narrated events spatially configured, and what sorts of changes take place in the configuration of that domain over time? During a given moment of the unfolding action, what are the focal (foregrounded) constituents or inhabitants of the narrated domain—as opposed to the peripheral (backgrounded) constituents? Whose vantage point on situations, objects, and events in the narrated world shapes the presentation of that world at a given moment? In what domains of the storyworld do actions supervene on behaviors, such that it becomes relevant to ask, not just what cause produced what effect, but also who did (or tried to do) what, through what means, and for what reason?

The interplay among the dimensions at issue—the specific pattern of responses created by the way an interpreter frames answers to these sorts of questions when engaging with a narrative—accounts for the structure as well as the functions and overall impact of the storyworld at issue. Hence, whereas the questions just listed concern what kind of world is being evoked by the act of telling, those questions connect up, in turn, with further questions about how a given narrative is situated in its broader discourse environment—questions concerning why or with what purposes that act of telling is being performed at all. To reiterate, stories do not merely evoke a world, and thereby constitute a target of interpretation; they also afford resources for sense making by intervening in a field of discourses, a range of representational strategies, a constellation of ways of seeing—and sometimes a set of competing narratives, as in a courtroom trial, a political campaign, or a family dispute (see Abbott [2002] 2008: 175–192).

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3.2.2 Characters and Categorization Processes Many analysts have laid groundwork for an exploration of characters (and techniques of characterization) vis-à-vis the broader categorization processes by means of which people structure and comprehend elements of experience. Barthes ([1970] 1974) suggested that, in conjunction with four other “codes for reading,” a semic code governs the process by which story recipients identify and interpret characters and their attributes, enabling semantic features of the text (e.g. lists of character attributes or descriptions of the places they inhabit) to be categorized as information relevant for understanding individuals-in-narrative-worlds, fictional and otherwise. Taking inspiration from Barthes, Chatman (1978) described characters as paradigms of traits. According to this analysis, a character is a “vertical assemblage of [a set of traits, or more or less enduring qualities or dispositions] intersecting the syntagmatic chain of events that comprise the plot” (127). Chatman thus explores how interpreters rely on their knowledge of culturally and historically variable trait-codes to map textual cues onto individuals-in-storyworlds (123–126; cf. Culler 1975: 236–237). These repertoires of trait-names derive from a variety of sources, including specialized domains such as psychoanalysis, jurisprudence, and literary history (she was neurotic; he acted with malice aforethought; he had the fiery temperament of a Heathcliff) as well as the broader domain of folk psychology (he’s not a resentful person; she couldn’t let well enough alone). More recent work by theorists such as Eder, Jannidis and Schneider (Eder et al. 2010), Gerrig (2010), Jannidis (2004, 2009), and Schneider (2001) likewise stresses the way understandings of persons arising from social norms, from specific narrative texts, or from embodied interactions with others structure and mediate encounters with characters in stories—indeed, make them recognizable as such (cf. Margolin 2007: 78–79). In his account of how “understanding literary characters requires [...] attributing dispositions and motivations to them [and] forming expectations about what they will do next and why, and, of course, reacting emotionally to them,” Schneider (2001) argues that “all this happens through a complex interaction of what the text says about the characters and of what the reader knows about the world in general, specifically about people and, yet more specifically, about ‘people’ in literature” (608). On the textual side, Schneider identifies several sources of characterizing information: “(1) descriptions/ presentations of a character’s traits, verbal and nonverbal behavior, outer appearance, physiognomy and body language made by the narrator, character himself/herself, or other characters; (2) the presentation of character’s con-

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sciousness and mind-style; (3) inferred character traits mapped metonymically from the presentation of fictional space to the character” (2001: 611; see also Gorman 2010: 171–173; Jannidis 2004: 195–237; Jannidis 2009: 21–23). On the interpretation side, story recipients bring to bear on this information prior knowledge about categories or types of individuals—categories derived from social, literary, and also textspecific knowledge (Schneider 2001: 617–627). Hence, one’s assumptions about members of different social classes or holders of various occupations, about protagonists or villains across narrative genres, and about characters previously encountered in a particular text will mediate one’s engagement with the demeanor, conduct, and typical settings of the intelligent agents featured in any given narrative. But the interplay between characterizing information and categorization processes is more complicated than the previous paragraph would suggest. Interpreters bring to bear on characters not only socially grounded, literature-based, and text-specific categories of individuals, but also the more fundamental concept of person itself—that is, ways of engaging with persons that emerge over the course of ontogenetic development and that continue to support practices of embodied interaction later in life (Herman 2013a: chap. 2; cf. Jannidis 2004: 195–237; Trevarthen 1993). In turn, some narratives (e.g. Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood or Neill Blomkamp’s District 9) are purposely designed to cut against the grain of available person-oriented models, thereby holding those models up for conscious scrutiny and inviting a reconsideration of their scope and limits. In such contexts, the process of making sense of a narrative begins to overlap with that of using stories to make sense of the world, since interpreting the text entails reassessing what entities belong in the category of person and, by extension, the relationship between persons and nonpersons. In other words, some narratives invite interpreters to probe the nature and boundaries of the person concept itself by suggesting more or less extensive parallels between members of the category of persons and beings that have been excluded from that category; by underscoring the phenomenological richness of nonhuman experiences and showing how they too emerge from intelligent agents’ interactions with their surrounding environments; or by portraying literally hybridized beings who combine the traits of persons and nonpersons and thus cross over a boundary that can then be recast as both historically and culturally variable (Herman 2013a: chap. 5).

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4 Topics for Further Investigation Since important contributions and refinements continue to be made to the focal areas for research listed in section 3.2, all of these areas also constitute, in effect, topics for further investigation. In addition, several other, overarching issues warrant further consideration when it comes to study of the mind-narrative nexus. A first key issue is how best to foster genuine dialogue or interaction between scholarship on narrative and the sciences of mind—as opposed to a unidirectional borrowing, by narrative scholars, of ideas from the cognitive sciences. To this end, Herman (2013a) proposes a “transdisciplinary” approach to studying stories vis-à-vis the cognitive sciences. The argument is that the mind-narrative relationship cannot be exhaustively characterized by the arts and humanities, by the social sciences, or by the natural sciences taken alone; hence genuine dialogue and exchange across these fields of endeavor, rather than unidirectional borrowing from a particular field that thereby becomes dominant, will be required to address how mental states, capacities, and dispositions provide grounds for or, conversely, are grounded in narrative experiences. Instead of there being any subordination of humanistic vocabularies and methods to those of the social or natural sciences, or vice versa, in a transdisciplinary approach different frameworks for inquiry will converge on various dimensions of the mind-narrative nexus. A second key question is how to take into account the relationship between theory and corpus—that is, the way one’s understanding of the mind-narrative nexus will be shaped by the kinds of narrative practices one considers. How might the choice of stories from different periods, genres, or cultural traditions affect the way theorists characterize the mental states and processes associated with narrative experiences? And how do issues of medium-specificity come into play in this same connection? A third important issue is the difference this area of research might make when it comes to interpreting particular stories. The structuralists claimed that, just as the Saussurean linguist studies the system of language (langue) rather than the individual messages made possible and intelligible by that system (parole), narratologists should study how narrative in general means, rather than what particular narratives mean. In the years since structuralism, however, convergent research developments across fields such as ethnography, sociolinguistics, and narrative analysis itself have revealed the importance of studying how people deploy various sorts of symbol systems to refer to, and constitute, aspects of their experience. Thus, although Saussure emphasized code

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over message, a key question for future inquiry is how a focus on the mind-narrative nexus might illuminate the structure and functions of situated storytelling acts. Multiple issues are at stake in this connection, including the way in which story designs allow for tentative, defeasible ascriptions of authorial intention—ascriptions to story creators of the reasons for acting that (probabilistically) account for why a given text has the structure it does (Herman et al. 2012; Herman 2013a: chap. 1).

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Abbott, H. Porter (2000). “The Evolutionary Origins of Storied Mind: Modeling the Prehistory of Narrative Consciousness and Its Discontents.” Narrative 8, 247– 256. – ([2002] 2008). The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. – ed. (2001). “On the Origins of Fiction: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.” Special Issue of SubStance 30.1. Alber, Jan (2009). “Impossible Storyworlds—and What to Do with Them.” Storyworlds 1, 79–96. – & Monika Fludernik, eds. (2010). Postclassical Narratologies: Approaches and Analyses. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Austin, Michael (2010). Useful Fictions: Evolution, Anxiety, and the Origins of Literature. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Bamberg, Michael, ed. (1997). “Oral Versions of Personal Experience: Three Decades of Narrative Analysis.” Special Issue of the Journal of Narrative and Life History 7.1–4. Barthes, Roland ([1966] 1977). “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives.” Image Music Text. New York: Hill & Wang, 79–124. – ([1970] 1974]). S/Z. New York: Hill & Wang. Bartlett, Frederick C. ([1932] 1995). Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Bortolussi, Marisa & Peter Dixon (2003). Psychonarratology: Foundations for the Empirical Study of Literary Response. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Boyd, Brian (2009). On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. Brockmeier, Jens & Donal Carbaugh, eds. (2001). Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bruner, Jerome (1991). “The Narrative Construction of Reality.” Critical Inquiry 18, 1–21. Burke, Michael (2011). Literary Reading, Cognition and Emotion: An Exploration of the Oceanic Mind. London: Routledge. Butte, George (2004). I know That You Know That I Know: Narrating Subjects from Moll Flanders to Marnie. Columbus: Ohio State UP.

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Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Cohn, Dorrit (1978). Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP. – (1999). The Distinction of Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Culler, Jonathan (1975). “Literary Competence” & “Convention and Naturalization.” J. C. Structuralist Poetics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 113−130 & 131−160. Damasio, Antonio R. (1999). The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace. Dancygier, Barbara (2011). The Language of Stories: A Cognitive Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Dannenberg, Hilary P. (2008). Coincidence and Counterfactuality: Plotting Time and Space in Narrative Fiction. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Dissanayake, Ellen (2001). “Becoming Homo aestheticus: Sources of Imagination in Mother-infant Interactions.” SubStance 94/95, 85–99. Doležel, Lubomír (1998). Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – (1999). “Fictional and Historical Narrative: Meeting the Postmodern Challenge.” D. Herman (ed.). Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 247–273. – (2010). Possible Worlds of Fiction and History: The Postmodern Stage. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Duchan, Judith F. et al, eds. (1995). Deixis in Narrative: A Cognitive Science Perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Eakin, Paul John (2008). Living Autobiographically: How We Create Identity in Narrative. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Easterlin, Nancy (2012). A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Eder, Jens (2003). “Narratology and Cognitive Reception Theories.” T. Kindt & H.-H. Müller (eds.). What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: de Gruyer, 277–301. – et al. (2010). “Characters in Fictional Worlds: An Introduction.” J. Eder et al. (eds.). Characters in Fictional Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film, and Other Media. Berlin: de Gruyter, 3–64. Emmott, Catherine (1997). Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Oxford: Oxford UP. – Anthony J. Sanford & Marc Alexander (2013). “Rhetorical Control of Readers’ Attention: Psychological and Stylistic Perspectives on Foreground and Background in Narrative.” L. Bernaerts et al. (eds.). Stories and Minds: Cognitive Approaches to Literary Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 39–57. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. – (2003). “The Diachronization of Narratology.” Narrative 11.3, 331–348. Gardner, Jared & David Herman (2011). Introduction. Special issue on “Graphic Narratives and Narrative Theory.” SubStance 40.1, 3–13. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP.

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Gerrig, Richard J. (1993). Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven: Yale UP. – (2010). “A Moment-by-moment Perspective on Readers’ Experiences of Characters.” J. Eder et al. (eds.). Characters in Fictional Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film, and Other Media. Berlin: de Gruyter, 357–376. Goffman, Erving (1974). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper & Row. Gorman, David (2010). “Character and Characterization.” D. Herman et al. (eds.) Teaching Narrative Theory. New York: MLA, 165–177. Grishakova, Marina (2002). “The Acts of Presence Negotiated: Towards the Semiotics of the Observer.” Sign Systems Studies 30.2, 529–553. Herman, David (1999). “Introduction.” D. Herman (ed.). Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1–30. – (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. – (2004). “Toward a Transmedial Narratology.” M.-L. Ryan (ed.). Narrative across Media: The Language of Storytelling. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 47–75. – (2005). “Quantitative Methods in Narratology: A Corpus-based Study of Motion Events in Stories.” J. Ch. Meister (ed.). Narratology Beyond Literary Criticism. Mediality, Disciplinarity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 125–149. – (2009). Basic Elements of Narrative. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. – (2010). “Narrative Theory after the Second Cognitive Revolution.” L. Zunshine (ed.). Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 155–175. – (2011a). Introduction. D. Herman (ed.). The Emergence of Mind: Representations of Consciousness in Narrative Discourse in English. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1–40. – (2011b). “Storyworld/Umwelt: Nonhuman Experiences in Graphic Narratives.” SubStance 40.1, 156–181. – (2013a). Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge: MIT P. – (2013b). “Approaches to Narrative Worldmaking.” M. Andrews et al. (eds.). Doing Narrative Research, 2nd edition. London: Sage. 176–195. – (2013c). “Modernist Life Writing and Nonhuman Lives: Ecologies of Experience in Virginia Woolf’s Flush.” Modern Fiction Studies 59.3, 547–568. – et al. (2012). Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates. Columbus: Ohio State UP. – ed. (2003). Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences. Stanford: CSLI. – ed. (2011). The Emergence of Mind: Representations of Consciousness in Narrative Discourse in English. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Hogan, Patrick Colm (2003a). The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. – (2003b). Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts: A Guide for Humanists. London: Routledge. – (2011). Affective Narratology: The Emotional Structure of Stories. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P.

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Hutto, Daniel D. (2008). Folk Psychological Narratives: The Sociocultural Basis of Understanding Reasons. Cambridge, MA: MIT P. Hydén, Lars-Christer (2010). “Identity, Self, Narrative.” M. Hyvärinen et al. (eds.). Beyond Narrative Coherence. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 33–48. Ingarden, Roman ([1931] 1973). The Literary Work of Art. Evanston: Northwestern UP. Irvine, Leslie (2013). “Animals as Lifechangers and Lifesavers: Pets in the Redemption Narratives of Homeless People.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 42.1, 3– 30. Iser, Wolfgang ([1972] 1974). The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore, ML: Johns Hopkins UP. Jackson, Tony E. (2005). “Explanation, Interpretation, and Close Reading: The Progress of Cognitive Poetics.” Poetics Today 26.3, 519–533. Jahn, Manfred (1996). “Windows of Focalization: Deconstructing and Reconstructing a Narratological Concept.” Style 30, 241–267. – (1997). “Frames, Preferences, and the Reading of Third-Person Narratives: Toward a Cognitive Narratology.” Poetics Today 18.4, 441–468. – (1999). “More Aspects of Focalization: Refinements and Applications.” J. Pier (ed.). Recent Trends in Narratological Research. Tours: GRAAT 21, 85–110. Jannidis, Fotis (2004). Figur und Person: Beitrag zu einer historischen Narratologie. Berlin: de Gruyter. – (2009). “Character.” P. Hühn et al. (eds.). Handbook of Narratology. Berlin: de Gruyter, 14–29. Jauß, Hans Robert ([1977] 1982). Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Keating, Patrick (2013). “Narrative Dynamics in the Competitive Reality Show.” Storyworlds 5, 55–75. Keen, Suzanne (2007). Empathy and the Novel. Oxford: Oxford UP. Labov, William (1972). “The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax.” Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 354–396. Linde, Charlotte (1993). Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence. Oxford: Oxford UP. Mandler, Jean Matter (1984). Stories, Scripts, and Scenes: Aspects of Schema Theory. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Margolin, Uri (2007). “Character.” D. Herman (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 66–79. Medved, Maria I. & Jens Brockmeier (2010). “Weird stories.” M. Hyvärinen et al. (eds.). Beyond Narrative Coherence. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 17–32. Mellmann, Katja (2010). “Voice and Perception: An Evolutionary Approach to the Basic Functions of Narrative.” F. L. Aldama (ed.). Toward a Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts. Austin: U of Texas P, 119–140. Miall, David S. (2011). “Emotions and the Structuring of Narrative Responses.” Poetics Today 32.2, 323–348. Minsky, Marvin (1975). “A Framework for Representing Knowledge.” P. Winston (ed.). The Psychology of Computer Vision. New York: McGraw-Hill, 211–277. Nelles, William (2001). “Beyond the Bird’s Eye: Animal Focalization.” Narrative 9.2, 188–194.

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Noë, Alva (2004). Action in Perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT P. – (2009). Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. New York: Hill & Wang. Oatley, Keith (2012). The Passionate Muse: Exploring Emotions in Stories. Oxford: Oxford UP. Ochs, Elinor, Carolyn Taylor, Dina Rudolph & Ruth Smith (1992). “Storytelling as Theory-building Activity.” Discourse Processes 15, 37–72. Palmer, Alan (2004). Fictional Minds. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. – (2010). Social Minds in the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Pavel, Thomas G. (1986). Fictional Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Peer van, Willie & Seymour Chatman, eds. (2001). New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. Albany: State U of New York P. Perry, Menakhem (1979). “Literary Dynamics: How the Order of a Text Creates Its Meanings.” Poetics Today 1.1/2, 35–64, 311–361. Ranta, Michael (2013). “(Re-)Creating Order: Narrativity and Implied World Views in Pictures.” Storyworlds 5, 1–30. Richardson, Alan & Ellen Spolsky, eds. (2004). The Work of Fiction: Cognition, Culture, and Complexity. Aldershot: Ashgate. – & Francis F. Steen, eds. (2002). “Literature and the Cognitive Revolution.” Special Issue of Poetics Today 23.1. Ronen, Ruth (1994). Possible Worlds in Literary Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2001). Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore, ML: Johns Hopkins UP. – (2003). “Cognitive Maps and the Construction of Narrative Space.” D. Herman (ed.). Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences. Stanford: CSLI, 214–242. – ed. (2004). Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. – & Jan-Noël Thon, eds. (2014). Storyworlds Across Media: Toward a MediaConscious Narratology. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Salway, Andrew & David Herman (2011). “Digitized Corpora as Theory-building Resource: New Methods for Narrative Inquiry.” R. Page & B. Thomas (eds.). New Narratives: Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. 120–137. Sanford, Anthony J. & Catherine Emmott (2013). Mind, Brain, and Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Schank, Roger C. & Robert P. Abelson (1977). Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding: An Inquiry into Human Knowledge Structures. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Schneider, Ralf (2001). “Toward a Cognitive Theory of Literary Character: The Dynamics of Mental-model Construction.” Style 35.4, 607–640. Stanzel, Franz K. ([1979] 1984). A Theory of Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Sternberg, Meir (1978). Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Baltimore, ML: Johns Hopkins UP.

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(1990). “Telling in Time (I): Chronology and Narrative Theory.” Poetics Today 11.4, 901–948. – (1992). “Telling in Time (II): Chronology, Teleology, Narrativity.” Poetics Today 13.3, 463–541. – (2003). “Universals of Narrative and Their Cognitivist Fortunes (I).” Poetics Today 24.2, 297–395. Stockwell, Peter (2002). Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Tompkins, Jane, ed. (1980). Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to PostStructuralism. Baltimore, ML: Johns Hopkins UP. Thompson, Evan (2007). Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Trevarthen, Colwyn (1993). “The Self Born in Intersubjectivity: The Psychology of an Infant Communicating.” U. Neisser (ed.). The Perceived Self: Ecological and Interpersonal Sources of Self-Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 121–173. Turner, Mark (1991). Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science. Princeton: Princeton UP. – (1996). The Literary Mind. Oxford: Oxford UP. Varela, Francisco J., Evan Thompson & Eleanor Rosch (1991). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT P. Werth, Paul (1999). Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. M. Short (ed.). London: Longman. Wolf, Werner (2003). “Narrative and Narrativity: A Narratological Reconceptualization and Its Applicability to the Visual Arts.” Word & Image 19, 180–197. Zunshine, Lisa (2006). Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP.

5.2 Further Reading Aldama, Frederick Luis, ed. (2010). Toward a Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts. Austin: U of Texas P. Bernaerts, Lars, Dirk de Geest, Luc Herman & Bart Vervaeck, eds. (2013). Stories and Minds: Cognitive Approaches to Literary Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Bruner, Jerome (1990). Acts of Meaning. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Eder, Jens et al., eds. (2010). Characters in Fictional Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film, and Other Media. Berlin: de Gruyter. Hutto, Daniel D., ed. (2007). Narrative and Understanding Persons. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Jaén, Isabel & Julien J. Simon, eds. (2012). Cognitive Literary Studies: Current Themes and New Directions. Austin: U of Texas P. Jahn, Manfred (2005). “Cognitive Narratology.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 67–71. Zunshine, Lisa, ed. (2010). Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies. Baltimore, ML: Johns Hopkins UP.

Coherence Michael Toolan

1 Definition As a technical term, as distinct from its use in cultural activities to denote a range of qualities deemed desirable (e.g. clarity, orderliness, reasonableness, logicality, “making sense,” and even persuasiveness), coherence has tended to be regarded as a textlinguistic (TL) notion. From its everyday senses, textlinguistic coherence has inherited some defining criteria, in particular the assumption that it denotes those qualities in the structure and design of a text that prompt language users to judge that “everything fits,” that the identified textual parts all contribute to a whole, which is communicationally effective. But there has always been a tension in the linguistic analysis of coherence, rooted in the recognition that TL “rules” for textual coherence (e.g. rules of anaphora, norms of paragraphing and paragraph structure) are inevitably general and therefore insensitive to the unique contextual pressures of the particular text, on the one hand, while on the other, judgments of coherence are very much based on what addressees assess as relevant and informative in the unique discoursal circumstances of the individual text. This tension is often summarized as a distinction between (purely linguistic) cohesion and (contextualized) coherence: the former is neither necessary nor sufficient for the latter, even if it is normally a main contributory feature (de Beaugrande & Dressler 1981; Giora 1985). In broad terms, it is now widely recognized that coherence is ultimately a pragmatically-determined quality, requiring close attention to the specific sense made of the text in the cultural context. This might suggest that determining coherence is a simple matter of applying common sense in context; but narratives often go beyond common sense, that transcending being crucial to their importance and tellability, so that narratological studies of coherence suggest common sense is not a sufficient guide.

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2 Explication Although it is not usually foremost among the interests of narratologists, coherence is implicitly regarded as an important feature of narrative. All formalist, structuralist, or psycholingistic modelings of story and discourse that propose any kind of morphology or grammar (those of Propp, Barthes, Genette, Greimas, Mandler & Johnson 1977, Thorndyke 1977, Stein & Glenn 1979, to name only a selection) can be viewed as including elements regarded as essential to narrative coherence. For TL, it is often convenient to identify particular main subtypes of coherence, such as temporal, causal, and thematic coherence as well as topic-maintenance and -furtherance. Because of general expectations of unity, continuity and perseveration in story topic, coherent narrative seems to involve a healthy amount of repetition and near repetition (repetition with alteration), including forms of lexical repetition and semantic recurrence. Thus Chatman (1978: 30–31) mentions the assumption of perseveration of identity with respect to naming of characters (Jannidis → Character) as a kind of coherence automatically relied on in narratives: if there is a sequence of mentions of Peter falling ill, later dying, later being buried, it is assumed these refer to one and the same Peter. Some sense of the continuity of existents—hence of assumed co-reference where there are multiple mentions of a single name—is the norm. On the other hand, abundance of quasi-repetitive language seems to be the cohesive corollary—in extended texts such as literary narratives—of the coherence requirement of unified connectedness. However, no simple standard of topic or thematic unity and continuity will apply generally. In actuality, in narratives as in other forms of discourse, the norm is for there to be multiple topics, complexly related to each other, so that the local absence of maintenance of topic A by no means creates incoherence (where topic B or C is being developed). Perhaps more than anything else, narratological studies of coherence highlight the insufficiency of a “common sense” approach to the issue. It is perfectly true that stories that defy normal expectations about time, intention, goal, causality, or closure may fail to elicit interest and be judged incoherent or incomplete by some readers; but these departures from the norm, singly or jointly, do not invariably lead to incoherence. Similarly, narratologists recognize that a story that begins at the chronological end, then jumps to the chronological beginning, moves forward two years from that point, and then moves backward one month, and so on may be difficult to follow. Difficulties of readerprocessing caused by achronological narration, or under-explained

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shifts in setting or character, even when extreme, do not invariably amount to incoherence, either. And, as McAdams (2006: 113) reminds us, norms concerning narrative coherence can vary considerably from one society or culture to the next; these expectations are also dependent on period and genre (cf. Jauss [1977] 1982 on “horizons of expectation” and Culler 1975 on “naturalization”).

3 History of the Concept and its Study A history of the concept of narrative coherence must begin with mention of Aristotle’s Poetics, which insists on completeness of plot with a beginning, a middle, and an end, unity of incident, the episode as central to tragedy, and structure by means of complication followed by unraveling or denouement: “the muthos must imitate a single, unified and complete sequence of action. Its incidents must be organised in such a way that if any is removed or has its position changed, the whole is dislocated and disjointed. If something can be added or taken away without any obvious effect, it is not intrinsic to the whole” (1416a 31–34). Other major landmarks in Western discourse on coherence in narrative or drama include promotion of the “three unities” in 17th-century neoclassicism (and put into practice in the plays of Corneille and Racine); Aristotle was invoked, but prescriptively, demanding unity of time, place, and action. In other dramatic traditions, however, such restrictive requirements were freely ignored (e.g. Shakespeare). In the modern period, Poe’s ([1846] 1982) poetics of composition, with its advocacy of brevity, hidden craft, and unity of effect, can be mentioned with reference to narrative coherence, as can Propp’s ([1928] 1968) morphological modeling of the folktale, Lämmert’s (1955) “forms of narrative construction,” Stanzel’s ([1955] 1971, [1979] 1984) narrative situations, several of the articles in the landmark volume 8 (1966) of the review Communications, Prince’s (1973) narrative grammar, van Dijk’s treatment of text grammars (1972), and some work by Todorov ([1971] 1977, [1978] 1980) as well as his foundational narrative grammar of the Decameron (1969). 3.1 Coherence in Textlinguistic Studies Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) study of cohesion in English is often cited as a pioneering enquiry into the key resources in a language for underpinning textual coherence, indeed for the creation of genuine text. They look chiefly at inter-sentential grammatical mechanisms (e.g. means of

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co-reference via personal and indefinite pronouns, projecting of relatedness via retrievable ellipsis, use of sense-conveying sentential conjunctions), and they also comment, less systematically, on how texts display coherence by elaborate means of lexical collocation and association. Despite a generally enthusiastic welcome for their work, linguists were quick to emphasize that cohesion seemed neither necessary nor sufficient for textual coherence (particularly in the case of short, deeply situationally-embedded “texts”). More importantly, Halliday and Hasan, like other grammarians, do not fully address the specific demands of cohesion and coherence of narrative. De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) remains an important and still influential overview of text structure which delineates seven standards of “textuality”: (a) cohesion (mutually connected elements of the surface text); (b) coherence (the configuration of concepts and relations which underlie the surface text); (c) intentionality (instrumentalizing of cohesion and coherence according to the producer’s intention); (d) acceptability (use or relevance of the cohesive and coherent text to the receiver); (e) informativity (degree to which the occurrences of the text are (un)expected or (un)known); (f) situationality (relevance of a text to a situation); (g) intertextuality (presupposed knowledge of one or more previous texts). There are many exemplifications, in the linguistic and discourse analytic literature, of discourse deemed to have cohesion without coherence, or the reverse. One of the better known comes in Brown and Yule (1983), where the doorbell rings at the apartment of a couple, A and B. A says to B: “There’s the doorbell.” B replies: “I’m in the bath.” Here, the total absence of textual cohesive links between the two utterances does not prevent B’s response being entirely coherent. Brown & Yule ascribe the coherence of the AB exchange above to assumed “semantic relations” between the utterances, which relations must lean heavily on familiar schemata or cultural “scripts.” Such mental challenges seem quite slight, however, by comparison with the challenges to sense-making posed by contemporary fictional narration and dialogue by writers like DeLillo (e.g. in Underworld) and Mamet (e.g. the opening of his play Oleanna, in which just one half, highly elliptical, of a lengthy telephone conversation is accessible to the playgoer or reader). And these texts in turn are considerably more accessible, coherence-minded, than many narrative poems published during the last hundred years. Innumerable linguists have grappled over the years with the topic of discourse coherence and its bases. One of the richer overviews remains that of Brown and Yule (1983), which contains many observations oriented to helping clarify what makes for discourse coherence (a more

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recent introductory text, also containing valuable discussion of coherence, is Georgakopoulou and Goutsos [1997] 2004). Brown and Yule emphasize the inherent contextualization that accompanies any verbal text and the role of normal expectations, shaping memories of past verbal material and the initial efforts at interpreting newly-encountered language. The sections of Halliday and Hasan (1976) devoted to lexis can be seen as an early attempt to systematize Firth’s collocational textlinguistic thesis; also relevant is the work of Sinclair and Coulthard (1975). Firthian collocational ideas have recently been elaborated in a different direction in Hoey’s theory of lexical priming (2005), which argues that for a large number of texts conforming to one genre or another, language users are primed to expect certain patterns of word-choice, appearing at certain points (and not others) in the sentence, in the paragraph, and in the discourse structure. But as already indicated, linguistic form is not always necessary to achieve coherence: “part of discourse competence involves an ability to discover discourse coherence where it is not evident in the surface lexical or propositional cohesion” (Stubbs 1983: 179). Citing the doting parents of babbling infants as simply an extreme example of “interpretive charity,” Brown and Yule (1983) emphasise the human bias in favor of assuming a coherent message amenable to coherent interpretation. Addressees “naturally” attribute relevance and coherence to any text or discourse until evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. Echoing Grice (1975), they argue that a rational assumption of relevance has shaped any speaker’s (or writer’s) contribution. Where an utterance’s relevance, orderliness, informativeness and truthfulness is not obvious, a search for their covert presence is warranted. A corollary of this is that a speaker or writer can be assumed to be continuing to speak or write of the same spatiotemporal setting and the same characters, unless a change is explicitly signaled. Most fundamentally, humans “naturally assume coherence, and interpret the text in the light of that assumption. They assume, that is, that the principles of analogy [things will tend to be as they were before: MT] and local interpretation [if there is a change, assume it is minimal: MT] constrain the experience” (Brown & Yule 1983: 66–67). For such reasons, Yaron has argued that analysts should calibrate texts in terms of their displaying “high or low degrees of explicit coherence. Differentiating thus would make it possible to include among coherent texts those that the reader has imbued with implicit connections” (Yaron 2008: 139). As Bublitz (1999: 2) recognizes in his somewhat negatively-phrased defi-

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nition, coherence is “a cognitive category that depends on the language user’s interpretation and is not an invariant property of discourse.” We should not overstate the contrast between those who study coherence as a linguistic property of texts and those who focus on the discourse reception and the addressee’s attributing of coherence to a text, guided by cultural norms, cognitive scripts and schemata. There is often no fundamental opposition between the two approaches, but rather a division of labor and of disciplinary interest; some contributions attempt to combine TL and cognitive or receptionist concerns (e.g. certain approaches to narrativity (Abbott → Narrativity), Emmott 1997 on comprehension, Toolan 2009 on narrative progression). Ultimately, very much the same point can be made regarding coherence in narratives and narration as is made concerning narratological accounts of events and eventfulness (Hühn → Event and Eventfulness). In the latter, the point is made that many accounts are vulnerable to the criticism that they appeal largely to textual structure, whereas ultimately cultural norms and expectations cannot be excluded from the calculation of eventfulness (see Hühn 2008). Similarly, an entirely text-immanent treatment (or grammar) of narrative coherence seems only locally possible, relative to particular genres or culture-specific types of narrative, rather than universally valid. And even here, like any grammar, the norms are susceptible to variation and change. Thus anything approximating a grammar of narrative coherence will sooner or later fail, by virtue of its insensitivity to context. Lesser and Milroy (1993) make this point concerning discourse coherence generally: notwithstanding certain kinds of familiar scripts and stereotyped situations, top-down models which attempt to extend syntactic analytic methods, by postulating a set of rules by reference to which discourses can be judged ill-formed or coherent, have tended to fail. Discourse and discourse coherence is so often a joint production, influenced by context and assumed background knowledge, that decontextualized standards for the specifying of coherence are unsatisfactory. For all the above reasons, we must conclude that coherence and full interpretation of a text often requires that we have access to more than the text alone. As Georgakopoulou and Goutsos ([1997] 2004: 16) note, we often need to know “who the text-producer is, what the intended audience is, what the time and place of text-production and reception are […] and the purpose or function of the text in the speech community in which it has been created.” One of the challenges and interests of much literary narration, however, lies in the radical under-specification or unreliability of answers to many of these questions. Literary narratives give rise to much-debated uncertainty concerning “who speaks?”

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in particular stories or passages, where and when events are reported to have taken place (in which storyworld?), and for what purpose; much of this is dependent on genre and text-type conventions and their cultural and historical variation. 3.2 Degrees of Coherence There are degrees of TL cohesion, and more importantly, according to addressee judgments, degrees of coherence, ranging from the minimal to the maximal. Additionally, broad user assumptions about the subtype of text involved help to guide or constrain coherence norms and expectations. In the case of narratives, such generic norms include the presence of story or plot, of an inter-related event sequence, of focus on one or a few characters undergoing change, and of a situation of stability developing a disequilibrium following which a renewed but altered equilibrium emerges (closure). As implied above, there are arguably minimal and maximal notions of coherence, as this concept has been developed and applied in linguistics generally and narrative studies in particular. Minimal or basic coherence is that property attributed to sequences of utterances or sentences, in a particular context of speaking or writing, which prompts participants or observers to judge that the full sequence “makes sense,” fits together, and forms a (spoken or written) text. The implied contrast is with randomly assembled phrases or sentences or utterances having no discernible sense of connection between them, being merely the parts from which various (different) texts might be assembled. Any text is coherent or projects coherence if it is interpretable as parts comprising an effective or useable whole. The more particular interest here is in what constitutes a whole narrative text (as distinct from a text of no particular kind). An immediate complication, in the creation or designing for coherence in texts generally, and perhaps especially in narratives, is the elliptical, the implied, the unsaid but inferable or adducible (such that a text has a covert wholeness). Prototype theory (Rosch 1978; Bortolussi & Dixon 2003) has been shown to be relevant to projections of narrative coherence; typification as an interpretive resource is very important in Stanzel [1955] 1971; and many approaches to inferability and its putative steps or degrees have been proposed: see Ingarden ([1931] 1873) on reading as the creation of coherence; cf. also Schmid (2003) on narrativity and eventfulness. A maximal notion of coherence is invoked where analysts demand that all the segments of a text (however that segmentation is imposed: e.g. sentence by sentence, or shot by shot or scene by scene in film, or

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in some other way) fit together in multiple respects, to the point that every segment is deemed an indispensable part of the whole. But such an absolute standard is neither usual nor even optimal. Longer or more complex narratives where every segment fits and is indispensable for coherence seem rare. In a novel or film of normal length, absence or presence of a few sentences or of a few shots—provided they are semantically congruent with adjacent material—rarely causes significant damage to the work’s perceived coherence; this would accord with general linguistic principles of acceptable ellipsis and redundancy: not everything needs to be “spelled out” in communication (interpreters can tolerate reasonable gaps), but iterative statement is also often acceptable. It may be that coherence is analogous to the main load-bearing structure of a house, by contrast with various walls and materials whose present or absence has little or no effect on the robustness of the main building. By that reasoning, where the wall between the lounge and the study is non-load-bearing, one might be inclined to say that “on coherence grounds” it does not matter whether the wall is present or is removed. And yet one might immediately make the rejoinder that, on the contrary, a study without a wall sealing it off from the noisy lounge, the site of informal sociality, is no longer a fully coherent or coherentlyfunctional study. So the limits and scope of coherence, in buildings and in texts, is by no means a settled question. 3.3 Coherence in Psychological Studies In the psychological literature relating to narrative representations, coherence is viewed as established by means of a collaboration of the text (spoken or written) and the receiving mind of the listener or reader. But the reader’s mental contribution is judged essential, so that coherence is in effect “a mental entity” (Gernsbacher & Givón 1995: vii). A text is deemed coherent if it is judged intelligible, with “no required material or information missing.” Immediately a clarification is needed, however: by “missing” here is meant “total absence from the text” without reasonable possibility of retrieval by means of ellipsis-detection, inference, attention to relevant context and background knowledge, or similar textually-facilitated means. So the key contrast here, with respect to coherence, is between contextually retrievable relevant information, and contextually unretrievable relevant information: the more there appears to be of the latter, the less coherent the narrative will be. But there seems to be no possibility of a fully autonomous and generalizable set of prescriptions as to what will count as relevant but unretrievable in any particular case, even if addressee attention to prototypical narrative

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patterns, genres, sub-genres, scripts, and cognitive frames can help to delimit the problem space. Narrative coherence is often regarded as the representation (or the possibility of producing a representation) of the narrative under scrutiny as conforming to a “grammar” for the presentation, in licensed sequence, of a series of related events and states. But under a second definition it is the representation (or possibility of representation, by the reader/listener) of particular relations between the segments of a narrative: e.g. seeing one segment as a consequence following a reported cause, a further segment as an emotional response to a reported consequence, and so on. Much psycholinguistic work on narrative is devoted to exploring the kinds and richness of inferencing that readers make in the course of interpreting stories (cf. Emmott 1997; Emmott et al. 2006; Gerrig 1993; Goldman et al., eds. 1999). 3.4 Creating a Storyworld A more contemporary narratological approach to coherence might be derived from the cognitivist idea that for full understanding and experiencing of a narrative, the interpreter must reconstruct a storyworld (Ryan 1991; Gerrig 1993; Herman 2002, 2009) or mental model, a rich projection of the entire, developing situation in which events, characters and their variously motivated actions are embedded. Where such reconstruction or imagining is thwarted (e.g. by narratorial or characterderived vagueness, unreliability, inconsistency, or even selfcontradiction), then the sense of coherence is undermined. In these respects, character is perhaps the most striking domain in which coherence within the storyworld normally needs to be protected by the author: recent work on characterization and narrative comprehension (Margolin 1983, 1990; Culpeper 2001; Emmott 1997; Werth 1999; Schneider 2001) has done much to chart how interpreters draw on a text’s characterizations, in interaction with the given or assumed background and non-specific real-world knowledge, to understand and evaluate characters. Also relevant here is the cognitive narratological idea of a narrative storyworld (Herman 2002, 2009). But even the assumption of coreference among uses of a proper name can be overridden, as in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, where there are two quite distinct Quentins (uncle and niece). As Chatman implies, much of this inferencing is basic interpretation; it may be that narrative coherence is threatened or damaged where “basic inferencing” of this kind cannot easily or obviously apply. Beyond consistency of naming, each character will

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be expected to be physically, emotionally and mentally self-consistent—within reasonable or narrated limits. Thus a character at the close of a novel may not be quite the same person disclosed, many years earlier in the storyworld, at the novel’s opening; but the changes that are apparent are congruent with the experiences also narrated, and the ambient conditions within the storyworld (if those conditions are fantastical or magical realist ones, where a dead character can return to life in some other form, then coherence may well be maintained). In short, the criteria of coherence may change with genre, epoch, and culture. 3.5 The Pragmatics of Coherence: Cooperativeness and Relevance Despite the steady advance in the descriptions of narrative coherence from TL, cognitive linguistics, and psycholinguistics, it is to pragmatics that many narrative analysts look for a general account of coherence, and to the seminal ideas of Grice in particular. Grice (1975) propounds the idea that participants in a conversation are predisposed to cooperate, making their contributions—all other things being equal—suitably truthful, informative, relevant, and orderly; and, knowing this, one party to a conversation is entitled and can be expected to derive what Grice called “conversational implicatures” where another’s contribution seems intentionally to diverge from reasonable truthfulness, informativity, relevance, and orderliness. What Grice applied to idealized conversational meaning, others have extended with due qualifications and adjustments to other uses of language, including literature (e.g. Pratt 1977; Watts 1981) and narrative (Bhaya Nair 2002; Bortolussi & Dixon 2003). On a par with Gricean conversational implicature is the notion of narrative implicature: the reader of a narrative assumes the general cooperativeness of the teller, and draws on powers of inferencing to fill out the sense of the information conveyed by the teller where these seems calculatedly incomplete or indirect. Following Grice, but moving in a more explicitly cognitivist direction, Sperber and Wilson ([1986] 1995), and some attempts have been made to develop a specifically relevance-theoretical account of narrative implicature (Walsh 2007). If a coherent narrative is one in which there are sufficient overt or covert clues for the reader to see links, understand the text as a totality (i.e. the double logic of narration—a telling here and now of a unified sequence of events that happened then and there—is felt to be sustained), see a point and a tellability (Baroni → Tellability), then an incoherent narrative is one in which such clues seem to be insufficient. And since coherence (like conversation cooperativeness) is such a

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strong norm, its absence in turn may give rise to strong reactions of frustration, annoyance, rejection of the text as “unnatural,” absurd, or valueless (irrelevant in the Sperber and Wilson sense, of yielding little or no benefits for the interpretive relevance-calculating efforts invested). 3.6 Narrativity, Tellability, and Coherence Is narrative coherence essentially a matter of narrativity, substantially overlapping with the latter, such that a text that is judged high in narrativity will by the same token be high in coherence? Everything depends on how these terms are understood, and as one authoritative introduction states, discussions of narrativity can soon become “a tangled web” of differently emphasized elements (Abbott [2002] 2008: 25). For some, the focus is primarily on plot or event-progression, the sense of a narrative arc; others emphasize the creation of a storyworld; different again is Fludernik’s emphasis on narrativity as “mediated experientiality,” sourced in oral storytelling (for a recent overview of discussions of narrativity, see Prince 1999; for a thought-provoking rebuttal of narratology’s over-determining of progression, point, closure, etc., see Tammi 2005). Elsewhere, Fludernik treats narrativity as the quality of narrativehood that a reader can impose on a text by reading it as a narrative, calling that process narrativization (Fludernik 1996: 34). Abbott (Abbott → Narrativity) discusses narrativity under four headings, and by implication four at least partly distinct aspects: as inherent or extensional; as scalar or intensional (perhaps the most widely-adopted conception); as varying according to narrative type or genre; and as a mode among modes. Mention should also be made of Pier and García Landa eds. (2008). The several understandings of narrativity on offer nevertheless suggest that it is a property of texts that is of a different order from coherence; texts can be high or low in coherence independently of their being high or low in narrativity. Generic and cultural narrative norms concerning tellability, narrativity, event and eventfulness, and the nature of the narrator or implied author are crucial in the shaping of reception (on which the work of Iser [1976] 1978 was seminal). Norms of narrativity and narrative comprehension are discussed (in addition to the authors cited above) by Kindt and Müller 2003; Culler 1975; Alber 2005; Emmott 1997. All the foregoing concepts are in part ways of addressing the issue of coherence in narrative, and all point to the difficulty of teasing apart what can be called the intensional and the extensional aspects of narrative coherence, or of making a distinction between what it consists in and how it

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is produced. Regarding the latter, reference can be made to patterns of grammatical and lexical cohesion at the level of récit or discours, and to the normal expectation of multiple connections in the projected storyworld and in the sequence of incidents (chiefly at the level of histoire); similarly, continuity in the schemata (frames or scripts) activated on the discours level and in the references to the context, is usual. But it remains controversial to claim that they are essential. 3.7 Challenges to Coherence One form of challenge to coherence is, significantly, almost a design feature of modern literary narratives: free indirect discourse. Being “unspeakable” sentences, radically divided or indeterminate between two deictic centers of utterance or footing, free indirect discourse text is inherently problematic on first encounter. No less challenging is metaphor. Where metaphor is intended but fails to be detected by the reader or listener, the perception of coherence will be put to the test; on the other hand, a reader’s ability to interpret superficially unconnected entities or processes as metaphorical can enable the recognition of coherence. Besides metaphor, milder threats to coherence include hyperbole, litotes, irony, sarcasm, and metalepsis (Pier → Metalepsis). Lying and misrepresentation often constitute an attempted counter-coherence, perhaps a coherence that seems more compelling or rewarding than the truth (cf. Iago’s wicked storytelling to Othello), so perhaps need not be covered here as a threatening of coherence, but a manipulation of it. Different again, and much more troubling for the reader/addressee, is the narration which is or is suspected of being unreliable. With unreliable narration, the reader is able to reconstruct two or more coherent versions of events and their motivation. But by their very nature, each coherent version implies the false coherence of the others. Another kind of challenge to perceptible coherence can come in a narrative centered upon the unfamiliar equipment and discourse of some specialist field or activity (neurosurgery, fly fishing, electronic engineering), to the point that the average addressee has only limited understanding of “what is going on.” One of the most basic of all challenges concerns continuity of topic: the sense that whatever a narrative is judged to be “about,” it is consistently about that person or situation, without digressions or irrelevances. But typically, literary narratives are sufficiently multidimensional that, at any transition point, a multiplicity of relevant discoursal continuations can reasonably be made and so must be chosen from. Flouting of the simplest topic-continuity and -progression does not invariably lead

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to incoherence (cf. Tristram Shandy as an early novelistic testing of topic and narrativity expectations). Lack of inferrable topic-attentiveness, in subsequent narration, may be grounds for suspecting incoherence, but not conclusive grounds if, subsequently, some more global or macro-textual perspective can “repair” the textual situation by seeing a macro-thematic relevance among the seemingly unrelated material. What is the opposite of coherence, the greatest challenge to narrative coherence? It is common to cite “texts” comprising randomly concatenated sentences, with perhaps equally random sequencing of unconnected words within those sentences, as exemplifying incoherence. By no reasonable means can the reader detect any covert sense in or behind the text; no hidden chain of unfolding events can be found. But another kind of coherence-challenge is presented by the narrative in which continuities of character, time, place, and event-chain are accompanied by “senseless” tragedy or comedy: the hero abruptly kills his lover without a shred of motivation or justification; or the wealthy main character is suddenly and inexplicably showered with untold wealth. These are such challenges to narrative expectation and norms of causation as to destabilize coherence-patterns concerning content, rather than form. What are at issue here are not forms of irrationality or immorality (there need be no lack of coherence—and plenty of interest and tellability—in narratives driven by these), but seemingly purely random unplanned, unplotted sequencing of events leading to an “unfitting” outcome. In such narratives containing absurd or “senseless” tragic or comic reversal, there is no prima facie incoherence, so they are often shunned on grounds of tellability and verisimilitude (even though we know that “inexplicable” tragedy or comedy are not uncommon in the real world). One means of further exploring coherence and its apparent absence is by trying to pinpoint the source of “incoherence” (where alleged) in notorious cases, such as Kafka’s Metamorphosis or the films of David Lynch (e.g. Mulholland Drive), or e. e. cummings’s poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town” (Cummings 1991). This nine-stanza poem, despite its interpretive challenges to the reader, is widely felt to tell a coherent narrative about a generic young couple, anyone and no-one, and indeed the poem was adapted into a short film by George Lucas. But there are textual characteristics which at first seem to militate against narrative coherence, such as the listing and chanting, and a general uncertainty as to “what happens.” Despite various textual markers and cues which seem not to guarantee particularity of agentive existents (characters) or a clear sequence from opening lack to attempted final completion, skilled readers find enough here to impose just such a narrativity frame on the text, and thus to naturalize it as adequate and tell-

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able narrative. The naturalizing interpretive procedure is essentially probabilistic: given the kinds of genre-reflective clues in the poem, story or film under scrutiny, including particularity and continuity of settings, characters, events, and perceptibility of change of state, the whole is judged to make more sense when treated as a narrative than if not. Whatever the mode in which a narrative appears, more local coherence or processing challenges can be presented where the teller has opted for extensive narrative ellipsis, cutting, or gaps. Striking the most satisfactory balance between what is explicitly told or shown and what is left unsaid or unshown but to be inferred is as much an art as a science, and again will vary with audience, culture, and narrative literacy. A different kind of challenge is presented by the following brief narrative: The lone ranger rode off into the sunset and jumped on his horse. This sentence is used in the pragmatics literature to exemplify the conventional sequential implicature of “and” (over and above its atemporal conjoining function, as in “eggs and bacon” or “buy and sell”). But if we judge the report to be narratively incoherent, on the grounds that the ranger must have jumped on his horse before riding off into the sunset, then this highlights the special coherence demands always created by the “double-logic” of narration (built on a sequence of events which are potentially reportable via a different sequence of textual or filmic segments). Because the narrative discourse, whatever its anachronies and shifts of voice or viewpoint, is ultimately matched to a projected (imagined) prior event-sequence story, it cannot radically misrepresent that story without risking incoherence. 3.8 Perceived Coherence Coherence must be not merely local (i.e. appropriate anaphoric or cohesive links between sentences), but global (appropriate relevance of most if not all sentences to an overarching theme or purpose; cf. Reinhart 1980; Kintsch & van Dijk 1978; Goldman et al., eds. 1999). However, one must be guarded about assuming that continuity alone (however defined) is what differentiates a text from “a random sequence of sentences (a non-text)” (Charolles & Ehrlich 1991: 254). A large body of poetry with greater or lesser degrees of narrativity (and not just postmodern poetry) challenges our canons of continuity without being dismissable as non-text or incoherent. And as a rule of thumb, we can postulate that where some form of more global coherence is detectable, this will override or displace local discontinuities or incoherences. Furthermore, human language-users can be remarkably resourceful in making sense (global coherence) even where none is immediately apparent, e.g.

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by means of re-contextualizing or interpreting selected items or events metaphorically (a literary theoretical term for such processes is “naturalization”; cf. Culler 1975: 134–160; equally relevant is Fludernik’s 1996 conception of “narrativization”). Like beauty, coherence seems finally to be perceptual, in the eye or mind of the beholder. We preferentially look for “just one thing” to be narrated, in all necessary detail, and “completely.” This may involve a shifting of attention among numerous different things (characters, places, times, etc.), provided they can eventually be seen to interrelate. By contrast, a seemingly unmotivated and unpredictable shifting of attention through a multiplicity of things is usually rejected as producing narrative incoherence. If at the ideational core of most narratives some kind of lack or problem is introduced, and an attempted resolution or completion of that lack or problem is then reported, then forms of narrative that are judged to move far from this core will tend to be seen as less than fully coherent. Narrative’s emphasis on a unifiable lack and its attempted resolution means that there is a natural place here for the Aristotelian unities of time, place, and action, as further standard measures of coherence (to be departed from where this is justified).

4 Topics for Further Investigation What may have escaped notice is the borrowing of the more particular notion of “narrative coherence,” which is now frequently invoked in (inter alia) theories and practices of psychiatry (Fiese ed. 2001), human psychology (McAdams 2006), psychotherapy (e.g. Linde 1993; Roberts & Holmes eds. 1999), and work with high-functioning autistic or learning-disabled children and adults (e.g. Diehl et al. 2006). Some of the most interesting use of the notion of coherence in narrative studies has focused on the macrothematic and the largest long-term consequences of a series of events. For example, life-story analyses often focus on the coherence within those stories (Linde 1993; Ochs & Capps 2001) in the course of understanding experiences which are problematic or painful: coherence is integral to the therapeutic or identity-affirming work undertaken (e.g. illness narratives: Hawkins 1993). And analysts of narratives who are most interested in the ideological, political or ecological positions depicted in life stories and many other public narratives evaluate their consistency and fairness by reference to coherence.

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5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Abbott, H. Porter ([2002] 2008). The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Alber, Jan (2005). “Narrativisation.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 386–387. Bhaya Nair, Rukmini (2002). Narrative Gravity: Conversation, Cognition, Culture. Delhi: Oxford UP. Bortolussi, Marisa & Peter Dixon (2003). Psychonarratology: Foundations for the Empirical Study of Literary Response. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Brown, Gillian & George Yule (1983). Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Bublitz, Wolfram (1999). “Introduction: views of coherence“. W. Bublitz et al. (eds.). Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse. How to Create It and How to Describe It. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1–7. Charolles, Marc & Marie-France Ehrlich (1991). “Aspects of Textual Continuity: Linguistic Approaches.” G. Denhière & J.-P. Rossi (eds.). Text and Text Processing. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 251–267. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Culler, Jonathan (1975). Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Culpeper, Jonathan (2001). Language and Characterisation: People in Plays and other Texts. London: Longman. Cummings, E. E. (1991). Complete Poems: 1904-1962. Ed. G. J. Firmage. New York: Liveright. de Beaugrande, Robert & Wolfgang U. Dressler (1981). Introduction to Text Linguistics. London: Longman. Dijk, Teun A. van (1972). Some Aspects of Text Grammars. The Hague: Mouton. Diehl, Joshua et al. (2006). “Story recall and narrative coherence of high-functioning children with autism spectrum disorders.” Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 34, 87–102. Emmott, Catherine (1997). Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Oxford: Oxford UP. – et al. (2006). “Capturing the attention of readers? Stylistic and psychological perspectives on the use and effect of text fragmentation in narratives.” Journal of Literary Semantics 35, 1–30. Fiese, Barbara, ed. (2001). The Stories That Families Tell: Narrative Coherence, Narrative Interaction and Relationship Beliefs. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra & Dionysis Goutsos ([1997] 2004). Discourse Analysis: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Gernsbacher, Morton Ann & Talmy Givón (1995). Coherence in Spontaneous Text. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

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Gerrig, Richard J. (1993). Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven: Yale UP. Giora, Rachel (1985). “Notes Towards a Theory of Text Coherence.” Poetics Today 6, 699–715. Goldman, Susan R. et al., eds. (1999). Narrative Comprehension, Causality, and Coherence: Essays in Honor of Tom Trabasso. Mahwah: Erlbaum. Grice, Herbert Paul (1975). “Logic and Conversation.” P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (eds.). Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3, Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, 41–58. Halliday, Michael A. K. & Ruqaiya Hasan (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman. Hawkins, Anne (1993). Reconstructing Illness: Studies in Pathography. West Lafayette: Purdue UP. Herman, David (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. – (2009). Basic Elements of Narrative. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Hoey, Michael (2005). Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language. London: Routledge. Hühn, Peter (2008). “Functions and Forms of Eventfulness in Narrative Fiction.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 141–163. Ingarden, Roman ([1931] 1973). The Literary Work of Art. Evanston: Northwestern UP. Iser, Wolfgang ([1976] 1978). The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. London: Routledge. Jauss, Hans Robert ([1977] 1982). Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Kindt, Tom & Hans-Harald Müller (2003). ”Narrative theory and/or/as Theory of Interpretation.” T. Kindt & H.-H. Müller (eds.). What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: de Gruyter, 205–219. Kintsch, Walter & Teun A. van Dijk (1978). “Toward a Model of Text Comprehension and Production.” Psychological Review 85, 363–394. Lämmert, Eberhard (1955). Bauformen des Erzählens. Stuttgart: Metzler. Lesser, Ruth & Lesley Milroy (1993). Linguistics and Aphasia: Psycholinguistic and Pragmatic Aspects of Intervention. London: Longman. Linde, Charlotte (1993). Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence. New York: Oxford UP. Mandler, Jean & Nancy Johnson (1977). “Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall.” Cognitive Psychology 9, 111–151. Margolin Uri (1983). “Characterization in Narrative: Some Theoretical Prolegomena.” Neophilologus 67, 1–14. – (1990). “Individuals in Narrative Worlds: An Ontological Perspective.” Poetics Today 11, 843–871. McAdams, Dan P. (2006). “The Problem of Narrative Coherence.” Journal of Constructivist Psychology 19, 109–125. Ochs, Eleanor & Lisa Capps (2001). Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling. Cambridge: Harvard UP.

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Pier, John & José Ángel García Landa (eds) (2008). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter. Poe, Edgar Allan ([1846] 1982). “The Philosophy of Composition.” The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 889–907. Pratt, Mary Louise (1977). Towards a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Prince, Gerald (1973). A Grammar of Stories: An Introduction. The Hague: Mouton. – (1999). “Revisiting Narrativity.” A. Grünzweig & A. Solbach (eds.). Grenzüberschreitungen: Narratologie im Kontext / Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Context. Tübingen: Narr, 43–51. Propp, Vladimir ([1928] 1968). Morphology of the Folktale. Austin: U of Texas P. Reinhart, Tanya (1980). “Conditions for Text Coherence.” Poetics Today 1.1, 161–180. Roberts, Glenn & Jeremy Holmes, eds. (1999). Healing Stories: Narrative in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. New York: Oxford UP. Rosch, Eleanor (1978). “Principles of Categorization.” E. Rosch. & B. B. Lloyd (eds.). Cognition and Categorization. Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 27–48. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Schmid, Wolf (2003). “Narrativity and Eventfulness.” T. Kindt & H.-H. Müller (eds.). What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: de Gruyter, 17–33. Schneider, Ralf (2001). “Toward a Cognitive Theory of Literary Character: The Dynamics of Mental-Model Construction.” Style 35, 607–640. Sinclair, John M. & Malcolm Coulthard (1975). Towards an Analysis of Discourse: The English Used by Teachers and Pupils. London: Oxford UP. Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson ([1986] 1995). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Stanzel, Franz K. ([1955] 1971). Narrative Situations in the Novel: Tom Jones, MobyDick, The Ambassadors, Ulysses. Bloomington: Indiana UP. – ([1979] 1984). A Theory of Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Stein, Nancy & Christine Glenn (1979). “An analysis of story comprehension in elementary school children.” R. D. Freedle (ed.). Advances in Discourse Processes: Vol. 2. New Directions in Discourse Processing. Norwood: Ablex, 53–119. Stubbs, Michael (1983). Discourse Analysis: the Sociolinguistic Analysis of Natural Language. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Tammi, Pekka (2005). “Against Narrative (‘A Boring Story’).” Partial Answers 4, 19– 40. Thorndyke, Perry W. (1977). “Cognitive structures in comprehension and memory of narrative discourse.” Cognitive Psychology 9, 77–110. Todorov, Tzvetan (1969). Grammaire du “Décaméron.” The Hague: Mouton. – ([1971] 1977). The Poetics of Prose. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – ([1978] 1990). Genres in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Toolan, Michael (2009). Narrative Progression in the Short Story: a corpus stylistic approach. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Walsh, Richard (2007). The Rhetoric of Fictionality. Columbus: Ohio State UP.

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Watts, Richard J. (1981). The Pragmalinguistic Analysis of Narrative Texts. Tübingen: Narr. Werth, Paul (1999). Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Longman. Yaron, Iris (2008). “What is a ‘Difficult Poem’? Towards a Definition.” Journal of Literary Semantics 37, 129–150.

5.2 Further Reading Bordwell, David (1985). Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: U of Wisconsin P. – (2006). The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies. Berkeley: U of California P. Brown, Gillian (1995). Speakers, Listeners and Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Bublitz, Wolfram et al., eds. (1999). Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse: How to Create it and How to Describe It. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Charolles, Michel et al. (1986). Research in Text Connexity and Text Coherence: A Survey. Hamburg: Buske. Chafe, Wallace, ed. (1980). The Pear Stories. Cognitive, Cultural, and Linguistic Aspects of Narrative Production. Norwood: Ablex. Herman, David (2005). “Events and Event Types.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 151–152. Hühn, Peter (2005). “Plotting the Lyric: Forms of Narration in Poetry.” E. MüllerZettelmann & M. Rubik (eds.). Theory into Poetry: New Approaches to the Lyric. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 147–172. Richardson, Brian, ed. (2008). Narrative Beginnings. Theories and Practices. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Sternberg, Meir (1993). Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP. – (2001). “How Narrativity Makes a Difference.” Narrative 9, 115–122. Trabasso, Tom et al. (1984). “Causal cohesion and story coherence.” H. Mandl et al. (eds.). Learning and Comprehension of Text. Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 83–111. Viehoff, Reinhold (1988). “Preliminary Remarks to ‘Coherence’ in Understanding Poems.” J. Petöfi & T. Olivi (eds.). From Verbal Constitution to Symbolic Meaning. Hamburg: Buske, 397–414. Vorderer, Paul et al., eds. (1996). Suspense: Conceptualizations, Theoretical Analyses, and Empirical Explorations. Mahwah: Erlbaum.

Computational Narratology Inderjeet Mani

1 Definition Computational narratology is the study of narrative from the point of view of computation and information processing. It focuses on the algorithmic processes involved in creating and interpreting narratives, modeling narrative structure in terms of formal, computable representations. Its scope includes the approaches to storytelling in artificial intelligence systems and computer (and video) games, the automatic interpretation and generation of stories, and the exploration and testing of literary hypotheses through mining of narrative structure from corpora. The use of the term ‘Computational Narratology’ covers several senses: (i) a ‘humanities narratology’ sense, used in Meister (2003) to designate a methodological instrument in the construction of narratological theories, from the standpoint of automatically extending narratological models to larger bodies of text, providing empirical testing of their predictions in actual corpora, and precise and consistent explication of concepts; (ii) a ‘cognitive computing’ sense, used as a title for a course (Goguen 2004) covering artefacts such as narrative texts, video games, and computational artworks, and integrating insights from semiotics, sociolinguistics and cognitive linguistics. Fox Harrell has characterized it further, as providing “techniques from computer science to provide a language to describe cognitive insights and to implement narrative effects of the type analyzed in discourse narratology” (Harrell 2007: 7); (iii) a ‘computational implementation of narratology’ sense (cf. Cavazza & Pizzi [2006] and many others), referring to the importation of constructs from humanities narratology for implementation in computer systems that carry out storytelling, along the lines of computational linguistics, where formalisms from linguistic theories are implemented in systems.

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2 Explication As “a humanities discipline dedicated to the study of the logic, principles, and practices of narrative representation” (Meister 2011; Meister → Narratology), narratology has a natural and substantial overlap with the (scientific and engineering) disciplines involved in the development of artificial intelligence systems aiming for human-like narrative behavior, as well as the (engineering and aesthetic) practices involved in the design of intelligent computer-based interfaces and game environments for interacting with narratives. In the course of developing such systems, researchers have mapped narratological constructs to computational ones and elucidated interactions among them, formulating (sometimes implicitly) theoretical and empirical approaches to narrative. Computational narratology has also been strongly influenced by linguistic theories. Computational narratology is a fast-evolving field, motivated in part by the surge in popular interest in interactive games and entertainment and their promise of offering engaging narratives with life-like characters. The pervasiveness of computer technology and digital media in everyday life and cultural activity has substantially raised expectations about their future involvement. The advent of the new millennium has accordingly seen a spate of books, journal articles and conferences on topics related to this subject.

3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 Influences from Humanities Narratology Research in computational narratology has absorbed and instantiated approaches from humanities narratology that specify formal and/or logical structure. The narratological differentiation of fabula versus sujet (Šklovskij [1917] 1965; Tomaševskij [1925] 1971) has provided a scaffolding for much of the computational narratology work in story generation, where the fabula is usually implemented—as in Genette ([1972] 1980)—as the events of the entire narrative in chronological and causal order prior to any verbalization thereof, and where the sujet is the final generated output. Here events (Hühn → Event and Eventfulness), like other narratological constructs, are given a precise and specific computational representation, involving their participants, places and times, and in some cases their causes and effects. Focusing on fabula, algorithms to generate story have incorporated the narrative functions of

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Propp ([1928] 1968), e.g., Grasbon and Braun (2001); Peinado and Gervás (2006) as well as those of Bremond (1970), e.g., Schäfer et al. (2004); Cavazza and Charles (2005). More coarse-grained accounts of the roles of characters in plot (Jannidis → Character), such as the narrative arc of Freytag (1900) and the heroic quest of Campbell ([1949] 1990), have also inspired the design of many interactive narrative systems (Mateas & Stern 2005; Gervás et al. 2006). In relation to the sujet, text information extraction systems (Mani et al. 2006; Mani 2010a) have been able to infer Genette’s ([1972] 1980) temporal orderings (Scheffel, Weixler & Werner → Time) by having the computer learn from annotated corpora, while sentence generators such as Montfort (2011) have used rules that can express any of Genette’s orderings with a felicitous use of narrative voice, tense, and aspect. 3.2 Influences from Linguistics Constructs which have emerged from linguistics, such as story grammars, (e.g., Rumelhart 1980), have been widely elaborated and applied in computational narratology, as in Bringsjord and Ferrucci (2000) and Lang (2003). These notions, along with others arising independently out of AI, such as scripts (Schank & Abelson 1977), have also (despite their computational brittleness) influenced humanities narratology (Emmott & Alexander → Schemata and Herman → Cognitive Narratology). The contributions of corpus linguistics to narratology are also well-recognized (Salway & Herman 2008), and in recent years, more advanced text mining techniques have allowed for large-scale empirical tests of literary hypotheses. For example, Elson et al. (2010) have been able to automatically extract conversational social networks from the dialogues between characters in 19th-century novels, disproving a claim by the literary critic Moretti (1999) that urban novels reflect the looser ties of city life, resulting in more characters sharing fewer conversations. 3.3 Computational Elaborations of Narratological Concepts Computational narratology has also developed its own accounts of key narratological concepts. An example is the fine-grained notion of plot based on plot units (Lehnert 1981), which is derived, much as in Bremond’s account, from a representation of events that involves characterizing the motivations behind the actions of characters as well as their emotional outcomes. While systems use such models of plot in story generation, the inferential challenges involved in imputing mo-

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tives to characters in narrative understanding are substantial enough to limit the ability of systems to fully extract a plot representation. However, Goyal et al. (2010) have developed, based on a corpus, a text understanding system that can infer characters’ emotions (or affect states) associated with events, identifying which outcomes are beneficial, harmful, or neutral for particular characters. More nuanced models of characters’ emotions have also been explored. For example, the interactive storytelling system of Pizzi (2011) is driven by plans that exploit an inventory of characters’ feelings listed in Flaubert’s preliminary studies for Madame Bovary; such a framework allows for a variety of sentiment-driven interactive retellings of the novel. Another interesting reformulation of a narratological construct is that of suspense. Cheong (2007) generates stories judged to be suspenseful by modeling the reader’s reasoning about limitations and conflicts involving a protagonist’s goals (Prince → Reader), based on narratological insights from Gerrig and Bernado (1994). For computational accounts to be made more relevant to humanities narratology, two issues need to be confronted: (a) the challenge of interdisciplinary communication across substantial methodological divides, especially given the shift in interest of post-classical narratology away from the precise analyses that characterized its structuralist phase; (b) the fact that computational representations and techniques for story generation are not general enough to concoct anything other than very short, relatively simple stories (such as fairy tales), let alone epics or novels (Gervás et al. 2006). The availability of multimillion-word narrative corpora and advanced machine learning algorithms used for training computational approaches can partially alleviate this problem, though annotating narratological information can be expensive.

4 Trends in the Field The search for generic computational methods that could be used across narratives focused attention in the 1970s on planning formalisms. The spotlight has remained there ever since, although the planning techniques have evolved to accommodate ever-wider narratological concerns. In planning terms, to understand a story requires inferring, based on the Aristotelian notion of mythos, the causes of the events in the story and the goals of the characters involved—in effect, reconstructing from the sentences in the sujet a plan that corresponds to a causal chain of events (or operators) that can transform the initial state of the storyworld into the final state. The inferred events in the chain can include

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mental states and actions that may or may not be explicitly mentioned in the sujet. Story understanding systems (e.g. Wilensky 1978) never got very far, since (i) inferring characters’ goals involves a large search space and the inferences may need to be revised during processing and (ii) humans use a great deal of knowledge to interpret even simple stories. Given Forster’s exemplifying sentence “The king died and the queen died of grief,” a child has no difficulty figuring out why the queen was upset, but imparting a body of such commonsense knowledge to a computer is difficult; (iii) aspects of language that are hard to formalize but that are important for story interpretation, such as humor, irony, and subtle lexical associations, have by and large eluded computational approaches. However, planning of fabulae for story generation, where the author can limit the system considerably, has proved more viable (Gervás → Story Generator Algorithms). In recent years, interactive narrative has been the major driver in the field, promising new varieties of aesthetic experience, aided by game engines and vivid animations. One of the challenges here (Mateas & Stern 2005) is retaining authorial control over the plot while granting some freedom to the user (who may act as an animated protagonist) in shaping the evolution of the narrative. Empowering the user can lead to aesthetically unsatisfying outcomes, but restricting her through constraints from the plot can limit engagement. The need for generation of text snippets and dialogue rather than full stories (Fludernik → Conversational Narration – Oral Narration) to accompany storyworld animations has also spurred a trend of increased use of text generation based on templates that map non-linguistic input directly to the linguistic output form, sacrificing linguistic generalization for rapid prototyping. Overall, key issues include the modeling of narrative progression and the invention of suitable metrics for aesthetic satisfaction (Mani 2010a, 2010b).

5 Topics for Further Investigation (1) As a hybrid of game and narrative that spans multiple media, interactive narrative represents a new and evolving genre. What novel constructs from computational narratology are applicable here, and which old ones need refinement? (2) The computer-assisted annotation of large-scale corpora with narratological information bearing on time, place, plot, character, emotion, point-of-view, narrative embedding, metalepsis, etc. is feasible when carried out as collaborative projects. In

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this respect the “crowd-sourcing” of narratological markup aims to serve human readers by providing more comprehensive narratological descriptions of narratives across an entire corpus, while at the same time facilitating computer-based research into their narratological patterns (cf. Meister 2012). Assuming that such efforts can advance computational narratology and also test more foundational theories, which models should be elaborated for corpus-level annotation efforts by the community? (3) How should an empirical theory of aesthetic response be formulated, and can this be exploited computationally?

6 Bibliography 6.1 Works Cited Bremond, Claude (1970). “Morphology of the French Folktale.” Semiotica 2, 347–375. Bringsjord, Selmer & David A. Ferrucci (2000). Artificial Intelligence and Literary Creativity: Inside the Mind of BRUTUS, a Storytelling Machine. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum. Campbell, Joseph ([1949] 1990). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Harper & Row. – & F. Charles (2005). “Dialogue Generation in Character-based Interactive Storytelling.” AAAI First Annual Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference, Marina del Rey, California [1] (http://www.scm.tees.ac.uk/f.charles/publications/conferences/2005/AIIDE05CavazzaM.pdf). – & D. Pizzi (2006). “Narratology for Interactive Storytelling: A Critical Introduction.” S. Gobel et al. (eds.), Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment. Third International Conference. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4326. Berlin: Springer. Cheong, Y. G. (2007). A Computational Model of Narrative Generation for Suspense. PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Elson, David K. et al. (2010). “Extracting Social Networks from Literary Fiction.” Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL’2010), 138–147. Freytag, Gustav (1900). Freytag’s Technique of the drama : an exposition of dramatic composition and art. Transl. by Elias J. MacEwan. Chicago: Scott, Foresman. Gerrig, R. & D. Bernardo (1994) Readers as problem-solvers in the experience of suspense. Poetics 22, 459–472. Gervás, Pablo et al. (2006). “Narrative Models: Narratology Meets Artificial Intelligence.” Proceedings of the LREC-06 workshop Toward Computational Models of Literary Analysis, Genoa, Italy.

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Goguen, Joseph (2004). CSE 87C Winter 2004 Freshman Seminar on Computational Narratology. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California, San Diego [2] (http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~goguen/courses/87w04/). Goyal, Amit et al. (2010). “Automatically Producing Plot Unit Representations for Narrative Text.” Proceedings of the 2010 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP’2010), 77–86 [3] (http://www.aclweb.org/anthology-new/D/D10/D10-1008.pdf). Grasbon, D. & N. Braun (2001). “A Morphological Approach to Interactive Storytelling.” Proceedings of Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment, CAST '01, Living in Mixed Realities, Sankt Augustin, Germany, 337–340 [4] (http://netzspannung.org/version1/extensions/cast01- proceedings/pdf/by_name/Grasbon.pdf). Harrell, D. A. (2007). Theory and Technology for Computational Narrative. PhD Thesis, Departments of Computer Science and Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego. Lang, R. (2003). “A Declarative Model for Simple Narratives.” M. Mateas & P. Sengers (eds.), Narrative Intelligence. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lehnert, W. G. (1981). “Plot Units: A Narrative Summarization Strategy.” W. G. Lehnert & M. H. Ringle (eds.), Strategies for Natural Language Processing. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. Mani, Inderjeet (2010a). The Imagined Moment. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. – (2010b). “Predicting Reader Response in Narrative.” 3rd Workshop on Intelligent Narrative Technologies. Foundations of Digital Games Conference, Monterey, CA, June 18, 2010. – et al. (2006). “Machine Learning of Temporal Relations.” Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Sydney, Australia, 753–760. Mateas, M. & A. Stern (2005). “Structuring Content in the Facade Interactive Drama Architecture.” Proceedings of Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE 2005), Marina del Rey. Meister, Jan Christoph (2003). Computing Action. A Narratological Approach. Berlin: de Gruyter. – (2012). “Crowd sourcing “true meaning”. A collaborative markup approach to textual interpretation.” W. McCarty & M. Deegan (eds.), Festschrift for Harold Short. Surrey: Ashgate Publishers. Montfort, Nick (2011). “Curveship's Automatic Narrative Variation.” Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG '11), 211–18, Bordeaux, France. Moretti, Franco (1999). Atlas of the European Novel, 1800–1900. London: Verso. Peinado, Federico & Pablo Gervás (2006). “Evaluation of Automatic Generation of Basic Stories.” New Generation Computing 24, 289–302. Pizzi, D. (2011). Emotional Planning for Character-based Interactive Storytelling. PhD Thesis, School of Computing, Teesside University, Middlesbrough. Propp, Vladimir ([1928] 1968, 1988). Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd edn. Austin: U of Texas P.

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Rumelhart, David E. (1980). “On Evaluating Story Grammars.” Cognitive Science 4, 313–316. Salway, Andrew & David Herman (2008). “Digitized Corpora as Theory-Building Resource: New Foundations for Narrative Inquiry.” R. Page & B. Thomas (eds.), New Narratives: Theory and Practice. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Schäfer, L. et al. (2004). “Storynet: An Educational Game for Social Skills.” S. Göbel et al. (eds.), Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, Second International Conference, TIDSE 2004, LNCS 3105. Berlin: Springer, 148–157. Schank, Roger C. & Robert P. Abelson (1977). Scripts, plans, goals, and understanding: An inquiry into human knowledge structures. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. Šklovskij, Viktor B. (Shklovsky, Victor) ([1917] 1965). “Art as a Technique.” L. T. Lemon & M. J. Reis (eds.), Russian Formalist Criticism. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 3–24. Tomaševskij, Boris (Tomashevsky) ([1925] 1971). A Theory of Literature. Letchworth: Bradda Books. Wilensky, Robert W. (1978). “Understanding Goal-based Stories.” Yale University Computer Science Research Report.

6.2 Further Reading Callaway, Charles (2000). Narrative Prose Generation. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina. Correira, A. (1980). “Computing Story Trees.” American Journal of Computational Linguistics 6.3–4, 135–149. Cullingford, R. E. (1978). “Script application: Computer understanding of newspaper stories.” Research Report 116. Computer Science Department, Yale University. DeJong, G. F. (1982). “An Overview of the FRUMP System. W. G. Lehnert & M. H. Ringle (eds.), Strategies for Natural Language Processing. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 149–176. Elson, David K. (2012). “Dramabank: Annotating agency in narrative discourse.” Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2012). Finlayson, Mark A. (2009). “Deriving narrative morphologies via analogical story merging.” B. Kokinov et al. (eds.), New Frontiers in Analogy Research. Sofia: NBU P. Hobbs, Jerry (1990). Literature and Cognition. Lecture Notes, Number 21, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford, California. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Kazantseva , Anna & Stan Szpakowicz (2010). “Summarizing Short Stories.” Computational Linguistics 36.1, 71–109. Lebowitz, M. (1985). “Story-telling as planning and learning.” Poetics 14: 483–502. Lehnert, Wendy et al. (1983). “Boris—an experiment in in-depth understanding of narratives.” Artificial Intelligence 20, 15–62. Löwe, Benedikt (2010). “Comparing formal frameworks of narrative structures.” Computational Models of Narrative: Papers from the 2010 AAAI Fall Symposium, Menlo Park, California.

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Mani, Inderjeet (2013). Computational Modeling of Narrative. San Rafael: Morgan & Claypool. Mateas, M. (2000). “A Neo-Aristotelian Theory of Interactive Drama”. Working Notes of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment. Palo Alto, CA: AAAI Press. Meehan, James R. (1977). The Metanovel: writing stories on computer. PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Science, Yale University. Mueller, Erik T. (2002). “Story understanding.” N. Lynn (ed.), Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science 4, 238–246. London: Nature Publishing Group. – (2004). “Understanding script-based stories using commonsense reasoning.” Cognitive Systems Research 5.4, 307–340. Pérez y Pérez, R. & M. Sharples (2004). “Three Computer-Based Models of Storytelling: BRUTUS, MINSTREL and MEXICA.” Knowledge-Based Systems 17.1, 15– 29. Reed, Aaron (2010). Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7. Independence: Course Technology PTR. Riedl, Mark O. & R. Michael Young (2010). “Narrative Planning: Balancing Plot and Character.” Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 39, 217–268. Turner, Scott R. (1994). The Creative Process: A Computer Model for Storytelling and Creativity. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.

6.3 Web Resources [AAAI Symposia http://www.aaai.org/Press/Reports/reports.php] [Computational Linguistics for Literature http://sites.google.com/site/clfl2012/] [ICIDS — Interactive Storytelling http://www.icids.org/] [Intelligent Narrative Technologies http://www.aaai.org/Library/Workshops/ws1118.php] [Computational Models of Narrative http://narrative.csail.mit.edu/ws13/]

Conversational Narration – Oral Narration Monika Fludernik

1 Definition “Oral narrative” is a term that covers a number of different types of storytelling: spontaneous conversational narrative (“natural narrative”); institutionalized oral narrative in an oral culture context; oral bardic poetry; simulations of orality in written texts by means of narrative strategies such as pseudo-orality or skaz. For narratology, oral narrative has been important at two different stages of the discipline. In Russian formalism (especially in the work of Propp) and during the 1960s (especially in the work of Bremond and Greimas) fairytales, which had their basis in orally transmitted storytelling, were used to analyze the deep structure of narrative and to discover functions of plot elements and typical actant structures (Jannidis → Character). More recently, Herman, Fludernik and others, inspired by discourse analysis, have concentrated on conversational storytelling both as an interesting type of narrative in and by itself and as a prototype of all narration. This work has additionally had a close affinity with cognitive studies (Herman → Cognitive Narratology). Institutionalized oral narrative as in the Homeric epics focuses on both the deep and the surface structure of narrative, analyzing plot-related motifs and the repetition of epitheta and formulae on the discourse level. The technique of pseudo-orality, finally, is a secondary phenomenon. It refers to the evocation of characters’ mode of utterance (especially in terms of dialect and colloquiality) in the written representation of speech.

2 Explication The basic prototype of oral narrative is spontaneous conversational narrative. This covers narratives produced in face-to-face exchanges in a variety of contexts such as storytelling sequences at dinner parties, brief narratives interspersed in telephone conversations or in doctor/patient and lawyer/client exchanges. In the wake of Labov and Waletzky

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(1967) “natural narrative” has become the established term for this type of oral narration. In German, the Alltagserzählung (e.g. Ehlich ed. 1980) is current, emphasizing the fact that conversational narrative occurs in the framework of everyday interaction. Spontaneous (or unsolicited) conversational narrative must be distinguished from solicited narratives told to interviewers. In the corpus of the Survey of English Usage (London), now the London-Lund Corpus, mealtime conversations, telephone conversations, etc. were taped in which narratives spontaneously occurred without solicitation or elicitation by the researcher. By contrast, in Labov’s (1972) study, the material comes from solicited narratives in which interviewers asked African-American youths to tell stories about specific personal experiences. The same method was adopted for more extended acts of storytelling in Terkel ([1984] 1990). Unsolicited conversational storytelling takes place in very diverse circumstances, but it is also present in much informal exchange on the telephone, in social gatherings, etc. In the latter case, story sequences may emerge in which the conversation develops into a series of narratives (one joke after the other, one story after the other about one’s worst experience with doctors, etc.). Spontaneously occurring natural narrative has received extensive analysis in the linguistic sub-disciplines of discourse analysis and conversation analysis. (See Brown & Yule 1983; Hutchby & Wooffitt 1998; Jaworski & Coupland eds. 1999; Johnstone [2002] 2008 for the former, and Atkinson & Heritage eds. 1984; Psathas 1995; Schegloff 2007 for the latter.) The second and third prototypes of oral narration characterize institutionalized storytelling in an oral culture context. On the one hand, this includes oral poetry, on the other, traditional and not necessarily poetic (i.e. verse-form) storytelling. Based partly on the work of Lord (1960) and Parry (ed. 1971), Ong (1982), Foley (1990, 1995) and others have studied the emergence of traditional epic poetry and noted extensive similarities in structure and style between Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey and the oral epics of the Balkans (guslar poetry). Much of this research focuses on the complexity of epic poetry and on how oral production manages to create and sustain it with the help of formulaic elements. In addition, Parry’s insights into the Homeric epics and Lord’s analyses of contemporary guslar poetry raise questions regarding transformation from the oral to the written poetic tradition. In addition to the tradition of oral poetry, where long epics in verse are performed, there are cultures in which narratives are presented by a storyteller to an audience that interacts with the narrator while the story is being told, serving as a kind of chorus or speaker of refrains. Such oral narratives can be found in various parts of the world, e.g. in Cana-

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da (Tedlock 1983), in African countries, and in India. In contrast to spontaneous conversational storytelling, this type of storytelling has an appointed bard who is a practiced performer; nor is it framed by an ongoing conversation between a small number of interlocutors in which stories are longer turns in verbal exchange. Even so, oral poetry and oral storytelling in traditional cultural contexts do have a frame: the institutional frame which gives the storyteller his exclusive “turn” as performer, providing for audience/bard interaction in ritualized responses. It could be argued that anecdotes, exempla, parables and similar short narrative forms introduced into sermons, speeches or lectures constitute an intermediate type of oral narration. In these contexts, narratives are inserted into ongoing oral discourse (as in spontaneous conversational narratives), but with one dominant speaker (as in oral poetry) rather than a framing conversational exchange. The fourth type of oral narrative is “pseudo-oral discourse” (fingierte Mündlichkeit; cf. Goetsch 1985). Although, literally, the evocation of orality in literary narrative has nothing to do with actual conversational storytelling, this phenomenon is widespread in literary texts and therefore of crucial importance to the narratologist. Pseudo-orality occurs in two forms in literary (and sometimes in non-literary) narratives: the representation of dialect or foreign speech in written dialogue and the evocation of an oral narrator persona, as in the skaz (Ėjxenbaum 1918). As pointed out by Leech and Short (1981: 167–170), the transcription of oral speech in literary dialogue aims not at a phonologically precise rendering of dialect, but at accentuating typical dialect features. By orthographic means, authors thus seek to highlight the differences between standard written language and dialectal forms. Pseudo-orality should be distinguished from cases of an actual linguistic oral substrate as in the transposing of oral narrative into written (frequently verse) discourse. The question to what extent oral features in vernacular medieval texts are traces of an oral origin (as in oral poetry) or intentional superadded markers of oral delivery on the lines of skaz, hence signs of pseudo-orality, has been discussed controversially (Chinca & Young 2005; Vitz et al. 2005; Reichl 2012). In addition to narratives that evoke linguistic alterity by stressing stereotypical features, there are narratives that give prominence to a pseudo-oral narrative voice, a teller figure whose style suggests that the discourse has been uttered rather than written down. Such evocation of orality in narrative report can be based on the combination of several techniques. In English literature, it requires the avoidance of literate vocabulary and complex syntax. Thus, pseudo-oral narrators, such as

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Holden in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, are often garrulous, repetitive, contradictory and illogical; they keep interrupting themselves and tend to address a fictive listener or audience familiarly; they seem to have an intimate rapport with the fictional world, to which they apparently belong, and also do not shy away from expressing their feelings and views emphatically, thus setting themselves off from the typical authorial narrators of literary texts—aloof, bland, reliable, neutral. Russian skaz (cf. Ėjxenbaum [1918] 1975; Vinogradov [1925] 1980; Schmid 2005: 156–176) often falls under this category of the pseudooral, but at times undermines the mimetic quality of the represented discourse by having a naïve peasant narrator resort to inappropriately elevated (stylized) diction, e.g. the register of the legal or administrative elite. It must be noted that the evocation of orality in literary texts is just that: an evocation or stylization produced by highlighting the most striking features of oral language. What counts for narrative purposes is not a faithful copy of the “original” utterance in all its linguistic detail, but the effect of deviation from the norm through quaintness, informality, intimacy, lack of education, cultural difference, class ascription. The simplifications and exaggerations of the linguistic features of orality and/or register therefore serve the purpose of facilitating identification, stereotyping, “local color,” or effet de réel. The technique is also used to characterize the narrator persona, just as dialect in the dialogue of 19th-century fiction tends to underline class difference, lack of education or idiosyncrasy (cf. Dickens, Scott or Trollope).

3 History of the Concept and its Study Returning to the first category, spontaneous conversational narratives, a closer look will be taken at research results in discourse analysis and conversation analysis before going on to discuss their relevance for present-day narratology. 3.1 Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis Discourse analysis developed as a sub-discipline of pragmatics, i.e. language in use (Levinson 1983). More immediately, it derives from the work of sociologists, in particular Sacks (1992). Sacks began by analyzing telephone exchanges at a call center and then went on to establish the basic rules of conversation, notably (in narrative sequences) “turn-taking,” “adjacency pairs,” “overlap,” “repair” and “abstracts.” His initial research (in 1972) was followed by a landmark contribution

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(Sacks et al. 1974) which concentrated on turn-taking. It was found that conversations are structured by turns taken and held by each speaker. In narratives, speakers are allowed longer turns, provided the interlocutors are alerted to the speaker’s intention to delve into a story. In ordinary conversation, turns often come in adjacency pairs, particularly at the beginning of exchanges: greeting/greeting; question/answer; request/agreement or compliance; command/compliance; identification/recognition (telephone); etc. Interlocutors frequently interrupt each other and overlap (B starts to speak while A is completing his/her turn), but they also proceed in fits and starts and may start their sentences over (repair): e.g. “I wanted… (pause) I was wondering… (pause) could you tell me when flight LS 03 comes in?” These frame conditions have a significant impact on how narratives are produced in spontaneous conversational narrative. Discourse analysis has also been heavily influenced by Labov (1972) and his school of discourse study, which remains fundamental to the study of conversational narrative. Labov collected narratives elicited in interviews with young African-American males, and from this material he developed a model of the structure of natural narrative. Labov and Waletzky (1967) propose a model of episodic narrative consisting of a basic structure: abstract; orientation; narrative clauses (insert clauses of delayed orientation and evaluation); result; coda. Abstract and coda provide a link with the conversational frame, while the orientation section introduces characters and setting. The authors also introduced the terms “point” and “reportability” or “tellability”: to be effective, narratives must be “newsworthy” (reportable) and have a “point” (demonstrate something). These features play a crucial role in Fludernik’s definition of experientiality, which consists in the dialectic of tellability and point (1996: 26–30; Baroni → Tellability). Discourse analysis since Sacks and Labov has developed in great strides. Many fruitful insights into natural narrative and oral exchange have been gained by Schegloff, Gail Jefferson, Schiffrin, Chafe, Tannen, Quasthoff, etc. Besides focusing on the structure and syntactic and lexical peculiarities of natural narrative, this research has moved into elucidating the psychological and cultural functions of conversational storytelling (Bamberg ed. 1997; Ochs & Capps 2001), the construction of identity (Lucius-Hoene & Deppermann 2004), and questions of gender (Tannen 1990) as well as the aesthetic effects of using quoted speech or thought (Schiffrin 1981). Conversational exchanges, including narratives, come not in sentences but in discourse units (Chafe calls them “idea” or “intonation units”) which are set apart by pauses and the completion of frames

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(Ono & Thompson 1995). To keep an audience’s interest, natural narrative is often repetitious and interlaced with verbatim dialogue by the participants in the events and even quotations from their thoughts, thus fictionalizing and dramatizing stories in ways that are reminiscent of novels or short stories (Tannen 1984, 1989; Fludernik 1993: 398–433). Conversational narratives also employ narrative and non-narrative “discourse markers” (Schiffrin 1987), namely particles (mostly adverbs) placed in conjunct or adjunct position of a clause but whose “meaning” remains vague. They serve primarily macro-structural discourse functions such as initiation of a new topic, return from a side remark to the main topic, capturing the interlocutors’ attention, etc. Specifically narrative discourse markers shift between the on-plot and the off-plot levels of conversational narratives, and they also mark the key points of narrative episodes (Fludernik 1991, 1992a, 1992b, 1996). More recently, conversation analysis has been established as a still more refined research discipline for examining conversational exchange. According to Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998), discourse analysis describes the systematic, rule-governed features of natural narrative, whereas conversation analysis is concerned with the performative and interactive aspects of conversational exchange. In particular, conversation analysis studies the online production of utterances and the unfamiliar shape of oral syntax (Atkinson & Heritage eds. 1984; Longacre [1983] 1996; Hutchby & Wooffitt 1998; Schegloff 2007). However, few conversation analysts deal with narrative, Quasthoff and Becker (eds. 2005) being an exception. Another sub-discipline, having more literary credentials, is critical discourse analysis (Hodge & Kress [1979] 1993; Fairclough 1995; Carter 1997; Wodak & Meyer 2001; Blommaert 2005), which studies how discourses generate, transmit and perpetuate ideologies and interpellate readers. Two handbooks of discourse analysis also discuss some aspects of critical discourse analysis (van Dijk ed. 1997; Schiffrin et al., eds. 2001). 3.2 Oral Poetry and Narratology Analyses of oral poetry have concentrated on two questions: formulaicity and motifs. The formulaic repertoire of the epic was found to employ recurring epitheta for common objects and heroes such as “the crafty Ulysses.” Whole verse lines are repeated nearly verbatim in order to facilitate oral composition and delivery. The oral epic is also characterized by a recurrence of typical motifs such as greeting between host and guest, raising of the cup, embarkation, burial of the fallen hero.

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More narratologically relevant are discussions of narrative episodes based on Bremond (1973), revealing the affinity between the structure of the epic and that of the fairy tale (cf. Wittig 1978). However, due to narratology’s concentration on the novel and on prose fiction, there has been little narratological analysis of epic verse narrative in English studies. However, scholars in classics have contributed immensely to the narratological study of ancient Greek and Latin narrative, including the verse epic. (See especially de Jong 2001, 2004; Grethlein & Rengakos 2009). 3.3 Relevance of Conversational Narrative for Narratology While classical narratology, in the foundational work of Propp ([1928] 1968) and Bremond (1973), analyzed short forms of narrative (the fairytale), the emphasis fell on event sequences rather than on the oral delivery of such tales (in the absence of tape recordings, written transcriptions were used). Narratological models such as those of Genette and Stanzel shifted their interest to the discourse level of narratives but were primarily concerned with the novel, largely disregarding narratives prior to the 18th century and all forms of oral narration. Between the complexity and sophistication of the novel and seemingly unstructured, syntactically misformed conversational narratives, a wide gap was perceived, felt to be unbridgeable. However, in the 1970s discourse analysts increasingly undertook research into the structure of conversational narratives, analyzing them in their own right. In addition to studies by Labov, Tannen, Johnstone and Chafe for English, major work was carried out for German (Ehlich ed. 1980; Quasthoff 1980; Quasthoff & Becker eds. 2005; Brinker & Sager [1989] 2006) and French (Gülich 1970; Mondada ed. 1995; KerbratOrecchioni 1996, 2001). In the field of narratology, two researchers have drawn inspiration from conversational narrative as a major source of their own work. Herman (1997, 1999) pleads for the relevance of natural narratives for postclassical narratology. Taking a cue from Young (1999), who examines the performative nature of spontaneous conversational narrative and the creation and maintenance of self in patient/doctor exchanges, Herman proposes a model of conversational storytelling treated as an interactive process in which the borders between ongoing conversation and story are marked. He underlines the “jointly referential and evaluating function” (1999: 231) of modal expressions and repetitions in conversational narratives and emphasizes their “interactional achievement.” Based on a cognitive model in which producers of sto-

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ries and their listeners rely on cognitive action schemata and inferences drawn from the events related or from information provided by the narrator, Herman presents narratives (in his example: elicited ghost stories) as relying on “a process of negotiation between storytellers and their interlocutors” (239). His ultimate aim is to examine narrative competence in conversational narrative. Fludernik moved into the study of conversational narrative through the problem of the historical present tense. She developed a model of episodic narrative structure (a modification of Labov) in which the historical present tense can occur at key points in a narrative episode (1991, 1992a), serving a highlighting function (in modification of Wolfson 1982). Fludernik (1996) went on to define conversational storytelling as a prototype of narrative tout court. She maintains that conversational narrative is basically about experientiality and that this is also true of the fictional narrative of novels and short stories (53–91), therefore providing a bridge between oral and written forms of narrative on the basis of narrativity (Abbott → Narrativity) and the purpose of storytelling (point and tellability). She further demonstrates that substrata of the oral pattern of narrative episodes can be traced in English medieval and early modern texts (92–128). In the history of English literature, the formal structure of the novel, which looks so very different from that of conversational narratives, developed slowly out of its oral roots in episodic narrative. Over the past forty years, massive material has become available to discourse analysts. Much of it was gathered in medical or therapeutic contexts (cf. Bamberg ed. 1997), but oral history has also produced extensive records (Perks & Thomson eds. [1990] 2006). One sophisticated model of conversational storytelling is provided by Lucius-Hoene and Deppermann (2004), describing conversational narrative as a process of ego construction, presentation of self, and negotiation of identities. In focusing on these performative issues, the authors come strikingly close to the kind of analysis of literary narratives undertaken by literary critics (Bamberg → Identity and Narration).

4 Topics for Further Research Now that so much conversational narrative is available in transcript, there is ample opportunity for narratological analysis of this material. The handling of dialogue and thought processes in conversational narratives, the management of time schemata, deictic shifts, the question of whether the concept of focalization (Niederhoff → Focalization) should

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be used in the analysis of conversational narratives—these topics and more could well come into the scope of extensive research. Particularly with the narrative turn at the end of the 20th century, such an emphasis on naturally occurring stories could provide an increasing awareness of the affinity between natural narrative and more literary and elaborated forms of storytelling.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Atkinson, John Maxwell & John Heritage, eds. (1984). Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Bamberg, Michael, ed. (1997). Oral Versions of Personal Experience. Three Decades of Narrative Analysis. Special Issue of Journal of Narrative and Life History 7. Blommaert, Jan (2005). Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Bremond, Claude (1973). Logique du récit. Paris: Seuil. Brinker, Klaus & Sven F. Sager ([1989] 2006). Linguistische Gesprächsanalyse. Berlin: Schmidt. Brown, Gillian & George Yule (1983). Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Carter, Ronald (1997). Investigating English Discourse. London: Routledge. Chafe, Wallace (1994). Discourse, Consciousness, and Time. The Flow and Displacement of Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Chafe, Wallace, ed. ([1980] 2006). Pear Stories. Cognitive, Cultural, and Linguistic Aspects of Narrative Production. Norwood: Ablex. – & Christopher Young, eds. (2005). Orality and Literacy in the Middle Ages: Essays on a Conjunction and its Consequences in Honour of D. H. Green. Turnhout: Brepols. Dijk, Teun A. van, ed. (1997). Discourse Studies. 2 vols. London: Sage. Ehlich, Konrad, ed. (1980). Erzählen im Alltag. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Ėjxenbaum, Boris (Eikhenbaum) ([1918] 1975). “The Illusion of ‘Skaz’.” Russian Literature 12, 233–236. Fairclough, Norman (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis. Boston: Addison Wesley. Fludernik, Monika (1991). “The Historical Present Tense Yet Again: Tense Switching and Narrative Dynamics in Oral and Quasi-Oral Storytelling.” Text 11, 365–398. – (1992a). “The Historical Present Tense in English Literature: An Oral Pattern and its Literary Adaptation.” Language and Literature 17, 77–107. – (1992b). “Narrative Schemata and Temporal Anchoring.” The Journal of Literary Semantics 21, 118–153. – (1993). The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction. The Linguistic Representation of Speech and Consciousness. London: Routledge. – (1996). Towards a ‛Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge.

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Foley, Miles (1990). Traditional Oral Epic. The Odyssey, Beowulf, and the SerboCroatian Return Song. Berkeley: U of California P. – (1995). The Singer of Tales in Performance. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Goetsch, Paul (1985). “Fingierte Mündlichkeit in der Erzählkunst entwickelter Schriftkultur.” Poetica 17, 202–218. Grethlein, Jonas & Antonios Rengakos, eds. (2009). Narratology and Interpretation. The Content of Narrative Form in Ancient Literature. Trends in Classics 4. Berlin: de Gruyter. Gülich, Elisabeth (1970). Makrosyntax der Gliederungssignale im gesprochenen Französisch. München: Fink. Herman, David (1997). “Scripts, Sequences, and Stories. Elements of a Postclassical Narratology.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 112, 1046–1059. – (1999). “Toward a Socionarratology: New Ways of Analyzing Natural-Language Narratives.” D. Herman (ed.). Narratologies. New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 218–246. Hodge, Bob & Gunther Kress ([1979] 1993). Language as Ideology. London: Routledge. Hutchby, Ian & Robin Wooffitt (1998). Conversation Analysis. Principles, Practices, Applications. Cambridge: Polity. Jaworski, Adam & Nikolas Coupland, eds. (1999). The Discourse Reader. London: Routledge. Johnstone, Barbara ([2002] 2008). Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. Jong, Irene J. F. de (2001). A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. – (2004). Narrators and Focalizers. The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad. Second edition. London: Duckworth. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine (1996). La conversation. Paris: Seuil. – (2001). Les actes de langage dans le discours. Théorie et fonctionnement. Paris: Nathan. Labov, William (1972). Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. – & Joshua Waletzky (1967). “Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience.” J. Helm (ed.). Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts. Seattle: U of Washington P, 12–44. Leech, Geoffrey N. & Michael H. Short (1981). Style in Fiction. A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. London: Longman. Levinson, Stephen C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Longacre, Robert E. ([1983] 1996). The Grammar of Discourse. New York: Plenum. Lord, Albert (1960). The Singer of Tales. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Lucius-Hoene, Gabriele & Arnulf Deppermann (2004). Rekonstruktion narrativer Identität: Ein Arbeitsbuch zur Analyse narrativer Interviews. Wiesbaden: VS für Sozialwissenschaften. Mondada, Lorenza, ed. (1995). Formes linguistiques et dynamiques interactionelles. Lausanne: Institut de Linguistique des Sciences du Langage.

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Ochs, Elinor & Lisa Capps (2001). Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Ong, Walter (1982). Orality and Literacy. London: Methuen. Ono, Tsuyoshi & Sandra A. Thompson (1995). “What Can Conversation Tell Us About Syntax?” P. W. Davis (ed.). Alternative Linguistics: Descriptive and Theoretical Modes. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 213–271. Parry, Adam, ed. (1971). The Making of Homeric Verse. The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Oxford: Clarendon. Perks, Robert & Alistair Thomson, eds. ([1990] 2006). The Oral History Reader. London: Routledge. Propp, Vladimir ([1928] 1968). Morphology of the Folktale. Austin: U of Texas P. Psathas, George (1995). Conversation Analysis. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Quasthoff, Uta (1980). Erzählen in Gesprächen. Tübingen: Narr. – & Tabea Becker, eds. (2005). Narrative Interaction. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Reichl, Karl, ed. (2012). Medieval Oral Literature. Berlin: de Gruyter. Sacks, Harvey (1972). “An Initial Investigation of the Usability of Conversational Data for Doing Sociology.” D. Sudnow (ed). Studies in Social Interaction. New York: Free P, 31–74. – (1992). Lectures in Conversation. Ed. G. Jefferson. 2 vols. Oxford: Blackwell. – et al. (1974). “A Simple Systematics for the Organization of Turn-taking for Conversation.” Language 50, 696–735. Schegloff, Emanuel A. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Schiffrin, Deborah (1981). “Tense Variation in Narrative.” Language 57, 45–62. – (1987). Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. – et al., eds. (2001). Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. Schmid, Wolf (2005). Elemente der Narratologie. Berlin: de Gruyter. Tannen, Deborah (1984). Conversational Style. Analyzing Talk Among Friends. Norwood: Ablex. – (1989). Talking Voices. Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. – (1990). You Just Don’t Understand. Women and Men in Conversation. New York: Morrow. Tedlock, Dennis (1983). The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. Terkel, Studs ([1984] 1990). ‘The Good War.’ An Oral History of World War Two. New York: Ballantine. Vinogradov, Viktor ([1925] 1980). “The Problem of Skaz in Stylistics.” E. Proffer & C. R. Proffer (eds.). The Ardis Anthology of Russian Futurism. Ann Arbor: Ardis. Vitz, Evelyn Birge, eds. (2005). Performing Medieval Narrative. Brewer: Cambridge. Wittig, Susan (1978). Stylistic and Narrative Structures in the Middle English Romances. Austin: U of Texas P. Wodak, Ruth &Michael Meyer, eds. (2001). Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage. Wolfson, Nessa (1982). CHP. Conversational Historical Present in American English Narrative. Dordrecht: Foris.

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Young, Katherine (1999). “Narratives of Indeterminacy: Breaking the Medical Body into its Discourses; Breaking the Discursive Body out of Postmodernism.” D. Herman (ed.). Narratologies. New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 197–217.

5.2 Further Reading Norrick, Neal R. (2000). Conversational Narrative. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Polanyi, Livia (1985). Telling the American Story: A Structural and Cultural Analysis of Conversational Storytelling. Norwood: Ablex. Renkema, Jan (2004). Introduction to Discourse Studies. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Ten Have, Paul (1999). Doing Conversation Analysis. A Practical Guide. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Vitz, Evelyn Birge (1999). Orality and Performance in Early French Romance. Cambridge: Brewer. Zumthor, Paul ([1983] 1990). Oral Poetry. An Introduction. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P.

Corporate Storytelling Birgitte Norlyk, Marianne Wolff Lundholt & Per Krogh Hansen

1 Definition Corporate storytelling designates private and public companies’ and organizations’ strategic utilization of stories and storytelling (in the broad sense of man’s ability to tell and understand narratives) to create coherence and progression concerning the companies’ or organizations’ brand, identity and development. The term ‘story’ does not follow the traditional narratological definition of a story (as proceeding from the paradigmatic story/discourse distinction of narratology) when applied in the field of corporate storytelling. This reflects the general looseness of the application of narratological terms commonly used in the storytelling context. In general, the specific narratological terminology is in this context rather applied as a set of tools to reach a more value-based approach to the sensemaking of organizations and their stakeholders.

2 Explication The concept of corporate storytelling belongs to the somewhat amorphous field within business communication called “corporate communication.” The idea is that the organization is a “body” (a corpus) which needs to coordinate its parts and movements to function and develop correctly. Corporate communication is therefore characterized by activities involved in managing and orchestrating all internal and external communication and by the attempt to control or influence corporate ‘stakeholders’. In business communication and management ‘stakeholders’ is understood as all those (individuals, groups, organizations or systems) who affects or can be affected by the organization’s actions, i.e. individuals, groups or organizations with an interest in the activities of the organization: shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Green Peace or Doctors without Borders, local communities, the media, etc. (Friedman & Miles 2006; Cornelissen 2004).

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Seen from a narratological point of view, stakeholders cannot be considered as mere ‘actors’ (that is characters taking up actantial positions) in the story of the organization. They are also co-narrators and narratees, so that the clear-cut (and often abstract) categories and concepts of narratology pertain only to a limited extent to studying and working with corporate storytelling. For this reason, the concept ‘stakeholders’ is adopted to mediate between the pragmatic aspect and the communicative aspect of this special storytelling situation. By conceptualizing producers and recipients of the corporate narrative as ‘stakeholders’, we acknowledge the fact that they produce and process corporate narratives against the backdrop of their individual, pragmatic and extra-narrative interests. In a strategic business context, storytelling is understood as the conscious attempt to produce, promote or change a story. Thus, within the framework of corporate communication, narratives or narrative elements are used to establish and maintain the organizational brand, image, culture and identity of various groups of internal and external stakeholders. New media are often used to facilitate mutual dialogue between the organization and its stakeholders. Stories or fragments of stories related in corporate blogs and Facebook groups help the organization gain an understanding of how the different stakeholders perceive the organizational identity and brand. In a communicative context, storytelling enables organizations to establish dialogical relationships with multiple stakeholders. For organizations, the overall strategic purpose is to use and control stories inside and outside the organization in order to establish long-lasting, value-based relationships with different groups of stakeholders in order to strengthen the corporate brand and differentiate the organization from its competitors. An essential challenge of corporate communication concerns management’s ability to control all aspects of storytelling in a diverse and complex context of multiple stakeholders. Formal storytelling (e.g. founder stories and stories of corporate heroes that serve as role models for the socialization of current and future employees) lies within the realm of management control and is therefore subordinate to a pragmatic function. Founder stories can be compared with Medieval exempla and with the religious stories of the lives of the saints. Other types of stories, however, are beyond managerial control: informal stories or counter-stories told by employees or other stakeholders such as the media, NGOs or investors may challenge formal stories of front-stage activities, as was the case when Foxconn (a manufacturer for e.g. Apple) admitted to finding underage interns as young as 14 working at one of its factories in China (Putnam et al. 2005; Mumby &

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Clair 1997; Deetz & Mumby 1990). This did not correspond with Apple’s commitment to ensuring that the working conditions in their supply chain were “safe, [that] workers are treated with respect and dignity, and [that] manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible” (Apple.com). As in this case, informal stories and their discourse may reflect negatively on the corporate image and identity, especially if the formal stories are not authentic in their presentation of corporate culture and corporate patterns of meanings (Martin 2002).

3 History of the Concept and its Study Once marginalized as a way of distinguishing between fact and fiction, the term ‘storytelling’ has developed into an academic tool applied in a broad range of scientific disciplines throughout the later part of the 20th century. With MacIntyre’s (1981) claim that man is a “storytelling animal” and Fisher’s (1984) characterization of man as ‘homo narrans’, storytelling, by the end of the 20th century, came to be considered an omnipresent meaning-making concept applied in a broad range of narrative processes (journalism, personal identity, movies, etc.). It was in this historic turn towards stories as a conscious sensemaking tool that corporate storytelling was born. Dutch management and communication scholar van Riel established himself in the 1990s as a frontrunner in the development of corporate communication by stressing the importance of stories and value-based stakeholder communication. With the term “common starting point” (CSP), van Riel laid a strong foundation for further development of corporate storytelling based on a common denominator (what he initially referred to as “accent”) for internal and external communication in organizations. “Accent” refers to a common platform—or what could be referred to as a common storyline—that must remain intact in order to achieve well-balanced communication. The strategic importance of corporate storytelling was stressed at the turn of the millennium in two influential works by Denning (2001, 2005). Denning establishes the concept of business narratives as ‘stories with a small s’ in contrast to ‘stories with a capital S’, as represented in established literary genres such as epics, novels and short stories.

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3.1 First Wave of Theories of Corporate Communication: Controlling Communication Taking its starting point around the turn of the millennium, the first wave of theories on corporate communication focused on the importance of managerial control and responsibility in the orchestration of all communication activities within the organization (van Riel 1995; Cornelissen 2004). During this period, communication was seen as being too important to be left to the communication department alone. Visual and non-verbal statements such as logos, product designs, colors, artifacts, dress codes as well as verbal manifestations including press releases, slogans, mission and vision statements, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities, blogs, etc. were all regarded as manifestations of a corporate story of uniqueness, culture, identity and brand. Hence, corporate communication and corporate brand must clearly and coherently communicate to all stakeholders “who we are and what we stand for” (Hatch & Schultz 2000: 15). From a business perspective, long-term survival depends on the creation of a strong corporate brand and a unique corporate identity that help differentiate the organization from its competitors by establishing permanent valuebased relationships with stakeholders. The strategic focus on the importance of building long-lasting relationships with stakeholders is reflected in the increasing focus on ‘corporate reputation’ as opposed to ‘corporate image.’ Corporate reputation refers to stakeholders’ longterm relationship with the corporation or organization, whereas corporate image refers to a short-term and less stable relationship at a given moment of time (Cornelissen 2004). The five pillars of successful corporate reputation rely on a stable and coherent communication of corporate visibility, distinction, authenticity, transparency and consistency in the total sum of corporate activities (Fombrun & van Riel 2004). Communication scholar Cornelissen operates with the following, much quoted, definition of corporate communication: “Corporate communication is a management function that offers a framework and vocabulary for the effective coordination of all means of communication with the overall purpose of establishing and maintaining favourable reputations with stakeholder groups upon which the organization is dependent” (2004: 23). The same point is made by van Riel, who defines corporate communication as “an instrument of management” (1995: 26) whose overall purpose is to create and maintain a favorable basis for relationships with all stakeholder groups. In the context of building relationships with corporate stakeholders, storytelling performs an important strategic role as a pathos-based sensemaking tool, as pointed out

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by Denning: “Storytelling is natural and easy. Stories help us understand complexity. Stories can enhance or change perceptions. Stories are easy to remember […] they bypass normal defense mechanisms and engage our feelings” (2001: 9). 3.2 Second Wave of Corporate Communication: The Contradictional Corpus From roughly 2010, the term “corporate” increasingly refers to a holistic understanding of the organization as one coherent and coordinated body (corpus). The body metaphor implies the additional existence of a corporate voice which is the total net effect of all the ways a company communicates organizational values and purpose to its stakeholders (e.g. Deutsche Telekom’s Guiding Principles (2013): “Customer delight drives our actions, Respect and integrity guide our behavior, Team together—Team apart, Best place to perform and grow, I am T—Count on me”). The corporate voice helps present the organization as a unified and integrated whole to groups of multiple stakeholders. However, the second wave of research on corporate communication challenges the assumption of unity and questions whether or not it is indeed “possible and desirable for an organization to communicate as one whole” (Christensen et al. 2008: vii) and to speak with one voice. The second wave of corporate communication thus introduces the concept of multiple voices in postmodern organizations and the concept of antenarratives. According to Boje, “stories are antenarratives when told without the proper plot sequence and mediated coherence preferred in narrative theory” (2001: 3). Within the framework of the second wave of corporate communication, the fragmented nature of antenarratives represents a narrative action of creating preliminary, prospective sensemaking at both individual and organizational levels before antenarratives eventually develop into complete and recognizable narratives. In an increasingly complex and fragmented context of globalization and diversity, contemporary organizations face multiple audiences with different interests and different patterns of interpretation. This requires organizations to embrace a broader cosmopolitan approach which is able to include contradictions and plurality (Beck 2006) while also remaining open to local meanings and a view of leadership based on “a set of rich and varied basic images or metaphors” (Alvesson & Spicer eds. 2011: 30). Consequently, communication scholars increasingly challenge the rigid notion of one organization, one body and one voice and call for a reinterpretation of the body metaphor to encompass the concept of a more

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“fluid corporate body capable of flowing and easily changing shape” (Christensen et al. 2008: 221). As modern corporations operate in everchanging dynamic environments, the challenge of corporate communication lies in the ability to navigate consistently between the opposing forces of unity and diversity while maintaining credibility and authenticity across groups of multiple audiences. In this fluid and chaotic context, storytelling offers a unique possibility for establishing a common framework of multiple interpretations. The Telekom example quoted above urges customers, working teams and individual employees to take part in a unifying narrative of mutual interests and shared purpose: “I am T—Count on me.” 3.3 Key Concepts in Corporate Communication: Culture and Brand The amorphous concept of corporate communication has been aptly described as a “corporate umbrella” (Schulz & Kitchen 2004), since it encompasses a large number of activities such as the establishment, maintenance and communication of corporate values and uniqueness to various groups of stakeholders. Acknowledging that the corporate umbrella covers a large number of relevant organizational activities, the following discussion highlights the key concepts of culture, brand and leadership that implicitly contribute to the concrete realization of corporate communication. Research and studies on the importance of culture in organizations got under way during the 1980s, represented by the works especially of Deal and Kennedy (1982), Peters and Waterman (1982) and Schein ([1985] 1992). These works studied the influence of organizational stories and their hero figures as well as organizational rites, rituals and artifacts. These early studies of organizational culture were based on a functionalist understanding of culture as instrumental and operational. Culture was considered a management tool, and thus culture was seen as something to be manipulated, constructed and controlled by management. This normative approach to cultures was subsequently challenged by more complex and dynamic views of organizational culture. The functionalist understanding of culture as something the organization “has” is complemented by an understanding of organizational culture based on what the organization “is” or “does” (Cheney et al. [2004] 2011). The descriptive approaches to culture advocate a view of culture as a social construct and argue for the need of a pluralistic view of culture which encompasses ambiguity and fragmentation. Attention is drawn to the existence of organizational subcultures based on professional subcul-

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tures or subcultures of resistance, for example (Martin 1992, 2002). The complexity of organizational culture further entails different patterns of interpretations as well as individual sensemaking of organizational life and values (Weick 1995). In the descriptive approach to culture, fragmentation and ambiguity challenge the functionalist concept of a single integrated and unifying organizational culture mirroring discussion in corporate communication of one body and one voice as essential for developing and maintaining a strong corporate brand. Expressed in terms of narrative: the descriptive approach opens up room for counterstories and accepts a higher degree of fragmentation and disparity of the organization’s overall narrative. The corporation’s narratives are less focused on making sure that ‘the left hand’ of the organizational body knows what ‘the right hand’ is doing than it is on telling the stakeholders about what the left and right hand are doing respectively, and why it both adds value to the organization and is in the stakeholders’ interest. The corporate brand reflects a development in marketing in which the need to brand the physical and concrete product has been superseded by a realization of the need to brand the corporation behind the product. Consumers and other potential stakeholders no longer see themselves as mere passive receivers of rational messages of prices and products. While product branding represented the first step in theories on branding, the strategic focus of branding in corporate communication is primarily concerned with branding the corporation together with its culture, image and values—and no longer the physical product (Aaker 1996; Gobé 2001; Hatch & Schulz 2003). 3.4 Mind and Market In recent years, especially with the increasing and uncontrollable influence of social media such as interactions in virtual communities and networks like weblogs and Facebook, the concept of corporate branding has been taken one step further. The former attention toward conquering market shares has been transformed into the important, long-term strategic focus of corporate communication: conquering the minds of corporate stakeholders, thus placing ‘mind shares’ first and market shares later (Olins 2003). Google is an example of a company that managed to conquer mind shares, as for a long time the first brand people thought of when they needed to search on the Internet was Google. Relationship branding or network branding become increasingly important in corporate communication as consumers and other potential stakeholders demand the added value of emotional bonds and immaterial value memberships in which personal and corporate personalities

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synergize into a common story of higher purposes and moral branding (Hatch & Schulz 2008; Wattanasuwan 2005). Stories of moral branding and stories of corporations and stakeholders with a higher ethical purpose reflect “a new dimension” in corporate communication (Morsing 2002: 40). In their recent branding campaign, “Solutions Ready—For the challenge of climate change,” the industrial company Danfoss exemplifies how its product solutions can help its customers save energy (e.g. “1 million tons of CO² are saved every year through the Danfoss Turbocor compressor”). In this case, Danfoss applies moral branding to assume the role of ‘helper’ in an actantial sense, which corresponds with their overall purpose to provide solutions for Climate & Energy. In Danfoss’ internal communication, stories are centered on employees taking up the role of heroes developing energyefficient products, increasing market shares, etc. Stories of corporations and their noble quest for a better world provide excellent potential for consumer and stakeholder identification and ultimate self-realization which have proven vital in customers’ choices of products and in a company’s ability to attract future employees. We find these stories, or fragments of them, on corporate websites and reports on corporate CSR activities as well as in mission and vision statements, job advertisements, blogs, Facebook groups, Twitter dialogues, etc. The view of storytelling as a tool for management has come to include a recognition of storytelling as a framework for establishing value-based and emotional bonds with stakeholders on a long-term basis.

4 Topics for Further Investigation As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the use of narratological concepts and models in the framework of business communication is characterized by a certain pragmatic looseness. Consequently, an obvious topic for further investigation would be to identify how specifically narratological concepts such as narrator, protagonist and focalization can be applied in corporate storytelling and whether they should be reconceptualized. This would bring out what is narratologically interesting and unique about the application of narration in the practiceoriented context of corporate communication. (a) Corporate storytelling in social media and viral marketing. (b) The use and function of fiction and fictionality (Schaeffer → Fictional vs. Factual Narration) in corporate communication.

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5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Aaker, David A. (1996). Building Strong Brands. London: Simon & Schuster. Alvesson, Mats & André Spicer, eds. (2011). Metaphors We Lead By – Understanding Leadership in the Real World. London/New York: Routledge. Beck, Ulrik (2006). Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity Press. Boje, David M. (2001). Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research. London: Sage. Cheney, George et al. ([2004] 2011). Organizational Communication in an Age of Globalization. Chicago: Waveland Press. Christensen, Lars Th. et al. (2008). Corporate Communications: Convention, Complexity, and Critique. London: Sage. Cornelissen, Joep (2004). Corporate Communications: Theory and Practice. London: Sage. Deal, Terrence & Alan Kennedy (1982). Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life. Reading: Addison-Wesley. Deetz, Stan & Dennis Mumby (1990). “Power, discourse and the workplace: Reclaiming the critical tradition.” Communication Yearbook 13, 18–48. Denning, Stephen (2001). The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge Era Organizations. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann. – (2005). The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative. San Francisco: Wiley and Sons. Deutsche Telekom’s Guiding Principles (2013). http://www.telekom.com/company/ata-glance/corporate-values/81682 Fisher, Walter R. (1984). “Narration as Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument.” Communication Monographs 51, 1–22. Fombrun, Charles & Cees van Riel (2004). Fame and Fortune: How Successful Companies Build Reputations. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Friedman, Andrew L. & Samantha Miles (2006). Stakeholders: Theory and Practice. Oxford. Oxford UP. Gobé, Marc (2001). Emotional branding: The new paradigm for connecting brands to people. New York: Allworth Press. Hatch, Mary Jo & Maiken Schultz (2000). “Scaling the Tower of Babel: Relational Differences between Identity, Image and Culture in Organizations.” M. Schulz et al. (eds.). The Expressive Organization: Linking Identity, Reputation and the Corporate Brand. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1–11. – (2003). “Bringing the Corporation into Corporate Branding.” European Journal of Marketing 37 (7/8), 1041–1064. – (2008). Taking Brand Initiative. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. MacIntyre, Alasdair C. (1981). After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P. Martin, Joanne (1992). Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives. New York: Oxford UP.

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– (2002). Organizational Culture: Mapping the Terrain. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Morsing, Mette (2002). “Corporate branding basics.” Design DK. The Danish Design Centre Journal 1, 33–44. Mumby, Dennis & R. P. Clair (1997). “Organizational discourse.” T. A. van Dijk (ed.). Discourse as Social Interaction. London: Sage, 181–205. Olins, Wally (2003). Wally Olins on Brand. London: Thames & Hudson. Peters, Thomas & Robert Waterman (1982). In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies. New York: Harper & Row. Putnam, Linda et al. (2005). “Discourse and Resistance. Targets, Practices, and Consequences.” Management Communication Quarterly 19.1, 5–18. Riel, Cees van (1995). Principles of Corporate Communication. London: Prentice Hall. Schein, Edgar H. ([1985] 1992). Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Schulz, Don E. & Philip J. Kitchen (2004). “Managing the Changes in Corporate Branding and Communication: Closing and Reopening the Corporate Umbrella.” Corporate Communication Review 6.4, 347–366. Wattanasuwan, Kritsadarat (2005). “The self and symbolic consumption.” Journal of American Academy of Business 6, 179–184. Weick, Karl (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

5.2 Further Reading Mumby, Dennis (1987). “The Political Function of Narrative in Organizations.” Communication Monographs 56, 113–127. – & Cynthia Stohl (1991). “Power and discourse in organization studies: absence and the dialectic of control.” Discourse and Society 2.3, 313–332. Rentz, Kathy (1992). “The Value of Narrative in Business Writing.” Journal of Business and Technical Writing 6.2, 293–315. Salmon, Christian ([2007] 2010). Storytelling: The Bewitching of the Modern Mind. New York: Verso.

Diachronic Narratology (The Example of Ancient Greek Narrative) Irene J. F. de Jong

1 Definition Diachronic narratology means the description and analysis of the history of the forms and functions of narrative devices within a given (period of a) literature.

2 Explication An explicit plea for the diachronization of narratology was launched by Fludernik (2003), although before her others, e.g. Pavel (1996), had in actual practice combined literary history and structuralist analysis. With this term, Fludernik does not mean the historiography of narratology itself, i.e. the history of the development of theoretical concepts, but the history of the actual use made by authors of narrative devices. What is the history of the first-person novel, of narratorial comments, of audience-address, of the locus amoenus, etc.? Some narrative devices have long been identified and studied, such as mimesis, the Muse, or openings, but narratology has brought together, systematised, and much expanded the number of narrative devices found employed by authors in narrative texts, and thereby opened the way to the study of their use over time.

3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 From Synchronic to Diachronic Narratology Classical narratology, a product of formalism and structuralism, almost is by definition synchronically rather than diachronically oriented. Its interest is the narrator in the text rather than the historical author producing that text, the narratees rather than flesh-and-blood readers, and the common signifying structures of narratives across time and space. Thus early narratology could perhaps be called ‘achronic’ rather than synchronic: it explicitly tried to elide extra-textual time and historical

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context in order to find the common ground of all narratives and get away from the traditional biographical fashion of literary criticism. As a result, there was for a long time, as Fludernik (2003: 331) noted, “comparatively little interest on a theoretical level in the history of narrative forms and functions.” Of course, there always have been narratological studies with historical dimensions. We may think here of Booth ([1961]1983), which deals with the shift from overt to covert narrators in the 19th century; Romberg (1962), which discusses first-person novels from different countries and ages; or Scholes and Kellogg ([1968] 2006), which includes historical studies on point of view, plot, and character in European narrative from antiquity onwards. And of course, before the advent and spread of narratology, classic historical studies on aspects of narrative were written e.g. by Auerbach ([1946] 2003), who deals with the representation of reality in European narrative, or Curtius ([1948] 1953), who traces the continuity of a.o. narrative devices like the Muse from Classical Latin via Medieval Latin into modern European literatures. But what put diachrony more emphatically on the agenda in the 1990s were, according to Fludernik (2003: 332), feminist narratology, the application of narratology to historical texts, and research into the origins of the novel. As an example of diachronic narratology, she discusses the handling of scene shifts in a corpus of some fifty texts of British literature between the late medieval period and the early 20th century. In her conclusion she notes that “the scene shift was ideally suited to demonstrate that formal analysis needs to be complemented by a functional approach [...] a function can be superseded and its former expressions still used for new purposes” (344). At about the same time that Fludernik was launching the idea of diachronic narratology, de Jong started—independently—editing a history of ancient Greek narrative. The need for such a history arises from the fact that while there are many histories of Greek drama, historiography, rhetoric, or literary criticism, “the history of ancient Greek narrative is as yet untold” (de Jong et al. eds., 2004: xi). This history appears in a series of volumes entitled “Studies in ancient Greek narrative” (SAGN). The historical approach offers, for the first time, a major example of diachronic narratology in that it traces the history of various narrative devices for one literature in its entirety. In the case of ancient Greek literature, this covers a time span of twelve centuries (800 BC to 400 AD). So far, three volumes have appeared: on narrators, narratees, and narratives (de Jong et al. eds., 2004), on time (de Jong & Nünlist ed. 2007), and on space (de Jong ed. 2012). A

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fourth volume, on characterization, is currently in progress. The narrative devices discussed include overt versus covert narrators or narratees, primary versus secondary narrators and narratees, second-person narration, embedded narratives, analepsis and prolepsis, singulative, iterative and scenic narration, retardation, acceleration, setting versus frame, focalised space, description and ekphrasis, the thematic, symbolic, and psychological functions of space. The series is aimed at a larger readership than the community of classicists, and thus all passages are discussed in translation. 3.2 A History of Ancient Greek Narrative as an Example of Diachronic Narratology 3.2.1 Defining Ancient Greek Narrative When writing a history of narrative devices, the first question to answer is what actually constitutes a narrative in the literature under discussion. For SAGN, the following texts of ancient Greek literature have been included: purely narrative genres (epic, novel); what could be called applied narrative genres (historiography, biography, philosophy); narratives embedded in non-narrative genres (the mythological parts of lyric, hymn, and pastoral; the prologue and messenger-speeches of drama; the narrationes of oratory); and what Genette ([1972 ] 1980: 236–237) called pseudo-diegetic narratives, i.e. narratives with a suppressed narrator. He used this term in explicit reference to Plato’s philosophical dialogue Theaetetus 143 c, where the narrator says that he avoids the tag “and he said.” In addition to Plato’s dialogues, we can think of the so-called mimetic Idyls of Theocritus and the Eclogues of Virgil, poems that consist entirely of dialogue but that belong to genres that also have instances with a narrative frame and a narrator. To modern eyes, this corpus may seem both broad and restricted. It is broad in that it includes philosophy and historiography, text-types which nowadays are not necessarily in narrative form and would not normally be included in a literary history. However, it should be borne in mind that philosophy in antiquity usually takes the form of narrated dialogues. As for ancient historiography, this was invariably in narrative form due to the fact that the genre’s pedigree traces back to epic (cf. Strasburger 1972). It confirms Genette’s ([1991] 1993) and Cohn’s (1999) contention that historiography falls within the domain of narratology. At the same time, it contradicts Cohn’s call for a separate historiographic narratology: in antiquity the same devices are found in semihistorical epic, historiography, and in the fictional novel.

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The SAGN corpus is restricted in that only narratives embedded in lyric and drama are included. Recently, some narratologists have argued that drama and lyric as a whole should be considered forms of narrative (see e.g. Jahn 2001; Hühn & Kiefer 2005; Hühn & Sommer → Narration in Poetry and Drama). In SAGN, however, the presence of a narrator is taken as the defining element of a narrative. 3.2.2 Form and Function of Narrative Devices One of the central research questions of diachronic narratology is that of the relationship between form and function: how does one and the same device acquire ever new functions, depending on the exigencies of a genre, the predilections of an author, the theme of the narrative, or the taste of an age? Since the greater part of ancient Greek narrative deals with the same mythological stories time and again, a beginning in medias res works differently in such a narrative whose content is largely known to the narratees (e.g. the Odyssey) than it does in a purely fictional text like Heliodorus’ Aethiopica. Anticipating the death of a hero may have a tone which is tragic (Iliad: Patroclus), moralistic (Odyssey: the suitors) or revengeful (Herodotus’ Histories). Drawing in the past in the form of external analepses may have a purely informative function (Homer: Iliad) or it may serve ideological purposes, the past being inserted for comparative reasons (Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War or Plutarch’s Biographies). The anachronical order in which many mythological stories are told in Greek literature (a narrator starts in the present, returns step by step to the past and then proceeds in chronological order back to the present) began as an oral device in Homer but was put to highly sophisticated use by Pindar and Sophocles in their lyric narratives. Greek literature has a long history of charging details of spatial setting with (ever-changing) semantic significance: thus when Plato for once situates one of his philosophical dialogues outside the city of Athens in the countryside (the Phaedrus), this setting has all the characteristics of a locus amoenus (trees, water, shade, a breeze); such a décor is typically the place for love-making, but is now refunctionalised to become the setting for a philosophical talk about love. 3.2.3 Genres and Development In ancient Greek narrative the use of narrative devices is not genrebound: historians use epic devices, tragedians use historiographical devices, orators use tragic devices, and so on. This phenomenon can per-

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haps be explained as the result of genres being only loosely defined in ancient Greek literature (see e.g. Depew & Obbink eds. 2000), but it also indicates the tendency of narrative devices to be universal. What can change, of course, is the function a device acquires in a given genre (see previous section). The history of ancient Greek narrative makes clear that literature need not necessarily develop in an evolutionary sense, i.e. in the form of a primitive origin slowly evolving towards ever more sophistication and complexity. Greek literature starts with a ‘big bang’, namely the Homeric epics with their incredibly rich and subtle exploitation of the potential of narrative, and ends with often rather simplistic novels. A caveat here is that for us, Homer’s texts are the first in ancient Greek literature, but that they were in fact preceded by innumerable oral predecessors whose texts have not come down to us, so that Homer was not really the first. There is also the intriguing issue of the indebtedness of early Greek literature to Near Eastern literature (see e.g. West 1997; Haubold 2013). But even taking these two observations into account, it is noteworthy that the text which is the fountainhead of all ancient (and much later European) narrative comes so early in history. 3.2.4 Narratology and (Oral) Poetry Narratology has developed primarily in connection with the novel and hence with prose narrative. In classics, however, narratological studies took poetry, especially epic poetry, into account from an early stage onwards (e.g. Fusillo 1985; de Jong [1987] 2004, 2001; Richardson 1990). Poets such as Homer, Hesiod, Apollonius of Rhodes, Callimachus, Pindar, Bacchylides, the three tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, the comedian Aristophanes, and Theocritus all form a vital part of the history of Greek narrative art. Indeed, it was a poet, Homer, who developed most of the classical narrative toolkit: the Muses, the in medias res technique, prolepsis and analepsis, embedded focalization, or the tale within the tale. Later prose authors took over and carried on with what was originally developed by this poet. The differences between poetic and prose narrative seem to lie more at the level of stylistics: poetry uses more epithets, metaphors, similes, etc. When dealing with orality, narratology has focused on fairytales (mostly in written transcription) or on conversational narration (Fludernik: → Conversational Narration – Oral Narration). Once again, the Homeric epics, be they oral texts or texts still very close to oral traditions (on this much debated issue, see e.g. the overview in Amodio 2005), provided rich material for narratology. For instance, the repeti-

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tion of words, lines, and scenes, a hallmark of oral poetry, can be well understood and appreciated in Homer when analysed in terms of the narratological category of rhythm (de Jong 1991). This oral text has exercised a tremendous influence on all later, written literature, and the unbroken continuum of orality is a telling harbinger for the principle of intermediality in narrative. Whereas narratologists, dealing mainly with modern literature, look for intermediality in the new media of our present age (e.g. Ryan ed. 2004; Ryan → Narration in Various Media), ancient Greek literature also provides much fascinating material in this area. The Homeric epics were oral in that they were composed orally and listened to, while many other texts were aural, i.e. written by their author but listened to by their consumers rather than read: the lyrics of Sappho and Pindar, the narratives of Greek drama, and the many speeches of orators like Lysias or Demosthenes. Even when ancient Greek narrative was written, it often still breathed a spirit of orality in the form of ‘fingierte Mündlichkeit’, either because writing was deemed suspect (in the time of the historian Herodotus) or because of the strength of tradition (the extremely bookish epic narrator Apollonius of Rhodes posing as a bard in order to resemble his venerated model Homer).

4 Topics for Further Investigation One of the areas calling for further reflection and investigation is how exactly we are to evaluate the results of diachronic narratology. What are we observing when we see different authors using the same narrative device across time and space? Can we indeed draw up a history, or should we be content with making a typological comparison? Can we consider such correspondences a form of narratological intertextuality, i.e. can we imagine author X consciously following the example of author Y, or should we rather think in terms of narrative universals, i.e. assume that different authors may employ the same device independently? Or should we allow for both possibilities? The first option would seem to be a priori plausible in the literature of ancient Greece where, as in Roman literature, imitatio and aemulatio were key concepts, where all authors up until the Hellenistic era were telling roughly the same mythological stories, and where its main canonical text, the Homeric epics, provided most of the narrative tricks of the trade. But what about diachronic narratology on a larger scale which would discuss resemblances in narrative technique between neighbour-

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ing literatures (e.g. the Greek and Near Eastern literatures of 1600–700 BC) or succeeding literatures (such as classical, medieval, and modern European literatures)? Can we still draw historical lines here and, if so, how should we imagine this to have worked in practice? Do authors pick up their narrative devices from other texts, or are they somehow present in a culture in the form of memes? Some first tentative thoughts on these matters are developed in de Jong (2014 a and b).

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Amodio, Mark C., ed. (2005). New Directions in Oral Theory. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Auerbach, Erich ([1946] 2003). Mimesis, the Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP. Booth, Wayne ([1961]1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: Chicago UP. Cohn, Dorrit (1999). The Distinction of Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Curtius, Ernst R. ([1948] 1953). European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton UP. Depew, Mary & Dirk Obbink, eds. (2000). Matrices of Genre. Authors, Canons, and Society. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Fludernik, Monika (2003). “The Diachonization of Narratology.” Narrative 11, 331–348. Fusillo, Massimo (1985). Il tempo delle Argonautiche. Un analisi del racconto in Apollonio Rodio. Roma: Edizioni dell’Ateneo. Genette, Gérard ([1972]1980). Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – ([1991] 1993). Fiction & Diction. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Haubold, Johannes (2013). Greece and Mesopotamia: Dialogues in Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Hühn, Peter & Jens Kiefer (2005). The Narratological Analysis of Lyric Poetry: Studies in English Poetry from the 16th to the 20th Century. Berlin: de Gruyter. Jahn, Manfred (2001). “Narrative Voice and Agency in Drama: Aspects of a Narratology of Drama.” New Literary History 32, 659–679. Jong, Irene J. F. de ([1987] 2004). Narrators and Focalizers. The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad. London: Duckworth. – (1991). “Narratology and Oral Poetry: The Case of Homer.” Poetics Today 12, 405– 423. – (2001).  Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. – (2014 a). “After Auerbach. Ancient Greek Literature as Test Case of European Literary Historiography.” European Review 22, 116–128. – (2014 b). “The Anonymous Traveller in European Literature: a Greek Meme?” D. Cairns & R. Scodel (eds.). Defining Greek Narrative. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 314–333.

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et al., eds. (2004). Narrators, Narratees, and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature. Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative 1. Leiden: Brill. – & René Nünlist, eds. (2007). Time in Ancient Greek Literature. Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative 2. Leiden: Brill. – ed. (2012). Space in Ancient Greek Literature. Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative 3. Leiden: Brill. Pavel, Thomas (1996). L’art d’éloignement. Essai sur l’imagination classique. Paris: Gallimard. Richardson, Scott (1990). The Homeric Narrator. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP. Romberg, Bertil (1962). Studies in the Narrative Technique of the First-Person Novel. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Ryan, Marie-Laure, ed. (2004). Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Scholes, Robert & Robert Kellogg ([1968] 2006). The Nature of Narrative. Fortieth Anniversary Edition. New York: Oxford UP. Strasburger, Herman (1972). “Homer und die Geschichtsschreibung.” Studien zur Alten Geschichte, Bd ii. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1057–1097. West, Martin L. (1997). The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Oxford UP.

5.2 Further Reading Fusillo, Massimo (1991). Naissance du roman. Paris: Seuil. Grethlein, Jonas (2006). Das Geschichtsbild der Ilias. Eine Untersuchung aus phänomenologischer und narratologischer Perspektive. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. – & Antonios Rengakos, eds. (2009). Narratology and Interpretation: The Content of Narrative Form in Ancient Literature. Berlin: de Gruyter. Lowe, Nick J. (2000). The Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Wheeler, Stephen M. (1999). A Discourse of Wonders: Audiences and Performances in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. Winkler, Jack J. (1985). Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius’ The Golden Ass. Berkeley: U of California P.

Dialogism David Shepherd

1 Definition The term “dialogism” is most commonly used to denote the quality of an instance of discourse that explicitly acknowledges that it is defined by its relationship to other instances, both past, to which it responds, and future, whose response it anticipates. The positive connotations of dialogism are often reinforced by a contrast with “monologism,” denoting the refusal of discourse to acknowledge its relational constitution and its misrecognition of itself as independent and unquestionably authoritative.

2 Explication Dialogism is overwhelmingly associated in accounts of literary theory in general, and of narratology in particular (e.g. Prince [1987] 2003: 19–20; Phelan 2005; Williams 2005), with the work of the Russian thinker Baxtin and the Baxtin Circle. Although Baxtin first used the words dialogizm and dialogičnost’ (literally “dialogicality” or “dialogical quality”) in his [1929] 2000 study of Dostoevskij, the locus classicus of his understanding of dialogism is found in his [1934/35] 1981 essay “Slovo v romane,” translated as “Discourse in the Novel”: Directed toward its object, a word enters a dialogically agitated and tense environment of alien words, evaluations and accents, is woven into their complex interrelationships, merges with some, recoils from others, intersects with yet a third group: and all this may in an essential manner shape the word, may leave a trace in all its semantic layers, may complicate its expression and influence its entire stylistic profile. / The living utterance, having taken meaning and shape at a particular historical moment in a socially specific environment, cannot fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads, woven by socio-ideological consciousness around the given object of the utterance; it cannot fail to become an active participant in social dialogue. Indeed, the utterance arises out of this dialogue as a

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continuation of it and as a rejoinder to it—it does not approach the object from the sidelines (Baxtin [1934/35] 1981: 276–277; translation modified).

This extended quotation brings together many of the principal features—utterance, evaluation, accent, social dialogue—associated with the Baxtinian account of dialogism; other terms from the essay that have gained widespread currency as denotations of discourse encapsulating social dialogue include “hybridized” and “double-voiced.” As the title of the essay suggests, for Baxtin the most effective means of representing the inherently dialogic quality of discourse is the novel; in turn, it is the polyphonic novel, exemplified most completely by the works of Dostoevskij, that is the acme of the novelist’s “orchestration” of raznorečie (usually translated as heteroglossia (Tjupa → Heteroglossia), the diversity of socially specific discourses; Baxtin [1929] 2000, [1963] 1984). Baxtin’s promotion of the novel relies to a large extent on a contrast between prose as dialogic and epic and poetry as monologic, an opposition that is clearly unsustainable if all discourse is indeed inherently dialogic: monologic discourse (whether in poetry, epic or in any other medium or genre) can, in Baxtin’s terms, only be dialogic discourse that misrecognizes or misreads, wilfully or otherwise, its own relationship to other discourse in order to present itself as authoritative.

3 History of the Concept and its Study Not only is dialogism predominantly associated with Baxtin, but it has become for many a convenient denotation of the whole tenor of his work, shorthand for a theoretical position that, although refined and rearticulated over the course of decades, remained in essence unchanged, accounting for the Russian thinker’s originality. In large measure, this over-simplification of Baxtin’s intellectual biography is a consequence of his coming to prominence in the Soviet Union, after decades of provincial obscurity, towards the end of his life, and indeed in the years after his death, and therefore also of the circumstances in which he became well known elsewhere. The collection The Dialogic Imagination is symptomatic: its title, furnished by its translators (and impossible to render convincingly in Russian), lends the dialogic a particular prominence and allure and exemplifies the translation’s anachronistic alignment of Baxtin’s texts with the alien time and place of the 1980s theory boom, allowing them to appear to offer an unusually sophisticated, grounded and user-friendly version of positions associated

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with poststructuralism. The effect, perhaps unavoidable at the time, was to mask the resonances of many of Baxtin’s texts (already obscured by his Russian editors’ excision of a large number of his references) with the philosophical and philological traditions with which they engaged. Recent work has uncovered the extent to which Baxtin’s interest in the novel was driven less by literary-critical concerns than by a philosophical agenda that draws on the work of a range of thinkers including Bergson, Cassirer, Misch, Vossler, Lukács and Mixajlovskij, and that is marked by simultaneous adherence to contradictory neo-Kantian and Hegelian principles (Brandist 2002: esp. 120–132; Tihanov 2000). Furthermore, the account of discourse that is part of this philosophical project is likewise crucially dependent on the work of others. It was largely thanks to Vološinov and Medvedev, until recently consistently misrepresented as mere acolytes of Baxtin, but now recognized as important figures in their own right, whose own interests were in significant measure shaped by their participation in the research programmes of the academic institutions where they worked, that Baxtin underwent in the late 1920s the “linguistic turn” (Hirschkop 2001) that allowed dialogue and the dialogic to assume such importance in his works of the 1930s. In particular, Vološinov’s account of discursive interaction (Vološinov [1926] 1983, [1929] 1973), which drew on, inter alia, the work of the linguist Jakubinskij ([1923] 1997), Brentanian psychology, Bühler’s “organon model” of communication, Gestalt theory, and Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, was a precondition for the dialogic theory of the utterance that usually but misleadingly bears Baxtin’s name. Overall, it is essential to recognize that a number of key terms and concepts for which Baxtin tends to be given the sole or principal credit are in fact products and properties of the contexts in which he worked, and of the traditions to which he was, both directly and indirectly, affiliated. Perhaps the most notable instance, apart from dialogism itself, is the concept that underpins it, heteroglossia, the word usually used (although more accurate and appropriate would be “heterology”) to translate the Russian term raznorečie that is often considered a Baxtinian neologism, but that was in fact widely employed by contemporaneous linguists (Zbinden 1999; Brandist 2003; Shepherd 2005). 3.1 Relevance for Narratology If the account of dialogic discourse associated with Baxtin has proved attractive, this may be because it enables detailed description of aspects of fictional narrative such as point of view (Niederhoff → Perspective – Point of View) and voice (McHale → Speech Representation) to be

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combined with reference to factors social and ideological, thereby offering apparent cover against accusations of arid narratological neglect of the referent. However, it has also been subject to misinterpretation as a relativistic rather than relational model, a sustained plea that we should always see all sides of an argument, or that “faced with a choice of competing interpretations we must always choose both” (Booker & Juraga 1995: 16). In large measure, the ease with which dialogism has been appropriated as a tool for (not only) literary analysis, and the blunting of this tool by casual use, are consequences of a failure to recognize and engage with the concept’s place in intellectual history, with the philosophical and philological contexts in which dialogism denotes not an identifiable quality of a narrative text, but a set of problems in the study of human language, communication and cognition (Linell 1998). The implication of all this would appear to be not so much that dialogism is not relevant for narratology, but that there is a mismatch between the complexities of understanding dialogism in historical perspective on the one hand, and on the other narratology’s apparent requirement for an instrument enabling more or less objective description and analysis of certain properties of narrative texts and their effects. But to assert this would be to disregard the prospect that theory describable as “dialogic” does hold out of a sensitive and sophisticated approach, firmly anchored in an account of the concrete institutions in which fiction is produced and consumed, to questions of authorial, narratorial and readerly agency and interdependence—in Prince’s terms, the “elaboration of an explicit, complete, and empirically grounded model of narrative accounting for narrative competence (the ability to produce narratives and to process texts as narratives) [that] ultimately constitutes the most significant narratological endeavor” (2003: 12). It would also be to disparage unduly the achievements and, especially, potential of narratology, not least in what Nünning (2003) describes as the “postclassical” phase in which it seeks to move beyond structuralist typologization (Herman 1999).

4 Topics for Further Investigation (a) The precise relationship between dialogism and other terms used to denote modes of representing point of view (focalization, free indirect discourse, polyphony, etc.; an excellent beginning to this investigation is offered by Lock 2001). (b) The implications of the philosophical and philological lineage of dialogism for the project of narratology (this is

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simply one expression of the broader question of the extent to which literary/critical theory does or does not recognize its historical affiliations). Is dialogism a solution to a (narratological) problem, or a convenient denotation of a set of complex (philosophical and linguistic) problems in search of a solution?

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Baxtin, Mixail ([1929] 2000). Problemy tvorčestva Dostoevskogo. S. G. Bočarov & L. S. Melixova (eds.). Sobranie sočinenij. Moskva: Russkie slovari, vol. 2, 5–175. – (Bakhtin, Mikhail) ([1934/35] 1981). “Discourse in the Novel.” M. B. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: U of Texas P, 259–422. – ([1963] 1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Manchester: Manchester UP. Booker, M. Keith & Dubravka Juraga (1995). Bakhtin, Stalin, and Modern Russian Fiction: Carnival, Dialogism, and History. Westport: Greenwood P. Brandist, Craig (2002). The Bakhtin Circle: Philosophy, Culture and Politics. London: Pluto P. – (2003). “Bakhtine, la sociologie du langage et le roman.” P. Sériot (ed.). Le Discours sur la langue en URSS à l’époque stalinienne (épistémologie, philosophie, idéologie). Lausanne: Presses Centrales de Lausanne, 59–83. Herman, David (1999). “Introduction: Narratologies.” D. Herman (ed.). Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1–30. Hirschkop, Ken (2001). “Bakhtin’s Linguistic Turn.” Dialogism 5–6, 21–34. Jakubinskij, Lev P. (Iakubinskii) ([1923] 1997). “On Dialogic Speech.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 112, 249–256. Linell, Per (1998). Approaching Dialogue: Talk, Interaction and Contexts in Dialogical Perspectives. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Lock, Charles (2001). “Double Voicing, Sharing Words: Bakhtin’s Dialogism and the History of the Theory of Free Indirect Discourse.” J. Bruhn & J. Lundquist (eds.). The Novelness of Bakhtin: Perspectives and Possibilities. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum P, 71–87. Nünning, Ansgar (2003). “Narratology or Narratologies? Taking Stock of Recent Developments, Critique and Modest Proposals for Future Usages of the Term.” T. Kindt & H.-H. Müller (eds.). What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: de Gruyter, 239–275. Phelan, James (2005). “Rhetorical Approaches to Narrative.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopaedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 500–504. Prince, Gerald ([1987] 2003). Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. – (2003). “Surveying Narratology.” T. Kindt & H.-H. Müller (eds.). What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1–16.

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Shepherd, David (2005). “La Pensée de Bakhtine: dialogisme, décalage, discordance.” K. Zbinden & I. Weber Henking (eds.). La Quadrature du Cercle Bakhtine: traductions, influences et remises en contexte. Lausanne: Centre de Traduction Littéraire de Lausanne, 5–25. Tihanov, Galin (2000). The Master and the Slave: Lukács, Bakhtin, and the Ideas of Their Time. Oxford: Clarendon P. Vološinov, Valentin N. (Voloshinov) ([1926] 1983). “Discourse in Life and Discourse in Poetry.” A. Shukman (ed.). Bakhtin School Papers. Oxford: RPT Publications, 1983, 5–30. – (Voloshinov) ([1929] 1973). Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Williams, Patrick (2005). “Dialogism.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 104–105. Zbinden, Karine (1999). “Traducing Bakhtin and Missing Heteroglossia.” Dialogism 2, 41–59.

5.2 Further Reading Baxtin, Mixail (Bakhtin, Mikhail) (1986). Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: U of Texas P. Brandist, Craig (2004). “Voloshinov’s Dilemma: On the Philosophical Roots of the Dialogic Theory of the Utterance.” C. Brandist et al. (eds.). The Bakhtin Circle: In the Master ’s Absence. Manchester: Manchester UP, 97–124. Cossutta, Frédéric (2003). “Dialogic Characteristics of Philosophical Discourse: The Case of Plato’s Dialogues.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 36, 48–76. de Man, Paul (1983). “Dialogue and Dialogism.” Poetics Today 4, 99–107. Hirschkop, Ken (1992). “Is Dialogism for Real?” Social Text 30, 102–113. – (1986). “The Domestication of M. M. Bakhtin.” Essays in Poetics 11, 76–87. – (1999). Mikhail Bakhtin: An Aesthetic for Democracy. Oxford: Oxford UP. Holquist, Michael (2002). Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. London: Routledge. Matejka, Ladislav (1996). “Deconstructing Bakhtin.” C.-A. Mihailescu & W. Hamarneh (eds.). Fiction Updated: Theories of Fictionality, Narratology, and Poetics. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 257–266. Morson, Gary Saul & Caryl Emerson (1990). Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford: Stanford UP. Pechey, Graham (2007). Mikhail Bakhtin: The Word in the World. London: Routledge. Schmid, Wolf (1999). “Dialogizität in der narrativen Kommunikation.” I. Lunde (ed.). Dialogue and Rhetoric.Communication Strategies in Russian Text and Theory. Bergen: U of Bergen, 9–23; and Amsterdam International Electronic Journal for Cultural Narratology 1 (2005). http://cf.hum.uva.nl/narratology/s05_index.htm. Todorov, Tzvetan ([1981] 1984). Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle. Manchester: Manchester UP.

Diegesis – Mimesis Stephen Halliwell

1 Definition Diegesis (“narrative,” “narration”) and mimesis (“imitation,” “representation,” “enactment”) are a pair of Greek terms first brought together for proto-narratological purposes in a passage from Plato’s Republic (3.392c–398b). Contrary to what has become standard modern usage (section 3 below), diegesis there denotes narrative in the wider generic sense of discourse that communicates information keyed to a temporal framework (events “past, present, or future,” Republic 392d). It is subdivided at the level of discursive style or presentation (lexis) into a tripartite typology: 1) haple diegesis, “plain” or “unmixed” diegesis, i.e. narrative in the voice of the poet (or other authorial “storyteller,” muthologos, 392d); 2) diegesis dia mimeseos, narrative “by means of mimesis,” i.e. direct speech (including drama, Republic 394b–c) in the voices of individual characters in a story; and 3) diegesis di’ amphoteron, i.e. compound narrative which combines or mixes both the previous two types, as in Homeric epic, for example. From this Platonic beginning, the terms have had a long and sometimes tangled history of usage, right up to the present day, as a pair of critical categories.

2 Explication The diegesis/mimesis complex is introduced by Socrates at Republic 392c ff. to help categorize different ways of presenting a story, especially in poetry. His aim is to sketch a basic psychology and ethics of narrative. From Republic 2.376c ff. Socrates has been concerned with the contribution of storytelling in general, poetry (the most powerful medium of verbal narrative in Greek culture) in particular, to the education of the “guardians” of the ideal city hypothesized in the dialogue. From the outset (377b), he makes the important assumption that stories/narratives (muthoi, which signifies traditional “myths” but also artfully constructed stories more broadly) can embody and convey value-

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laden beliefs about the world. It is clear, moreover, that before reaching the typology of Book 3, Socrates treats authors of muthoi as globally and supra-textually responsible for everything “said” in their works: he thus criticizes Homer, without apparent discrimination, for passages in the voice of both the poetic narrator and individual characters (e.g. 3.386b–387b). The distinctions drawn at 392c ff. add a new, more technical layer of analysis to the discussion of muthoi which has preceded. There is, for sure, some continuity between the two main phases of the argument (the analysis first of logos, “what is said,” and then lexis, “how it is said”: 392c) in so far as even in the second phase Socrates thinks of poets (or other author-narrators) as controlling and varying their use of “voice”: hence, when characters speak (i.e. in “diegesis by means of mimesis”), Socrates formulates this in terms of the poet speaking “as (if)” the character (393a–c). However, on another level the second part of the argument involves a major shift, precisely because Socrates’ main concern is now with the psychological complications of discursive multiplicity. Without leaving behind his earlier, global model of authorial responsibility, he pursues the idea that mimesis, whether in its own uninterrupted form (i.e. as drama, 394b–c) or as one element in compound diegesis, such as Homeric epic, entails a particularly intense and therefore psychically dangerous mode of narrative imagination. The fear of narrative which powerfully foregrounds various characters’ viewpoints is brought out especially clearly at the end of the analysis (397d–398b), where Socrates brands the “mimetic” poet as manipulating a kind of multiple personality and creating works which induce others (not least, performers of poetry) to introduce imagined multiplicity into their own souls—something which threatens the “unity” of soul that is foundational to the psychology and ethics of the entire Republic (see esp. 443e: “becoming one person instead of many”). The diegesis/mimesis terminology of Republic Book 3 is therefore the vehicle of an embryonic narratology which posits connections between narrative form (including narrating person, voice and viewpoint) and the psychology of both performer and (by extrapolation) audience. On this account, different narrative forms are not simply technical alternatives for the telling or presentation of stories; they have differential expressive capacities to communicate the points of view and mental processes of characters in a story. Notice that the basic distinction drawn by Socrates could be said to be not so much between “telling” and “showing” (Klauk & Köppe → Telling vs. Showing), in the standard (if problematic) modern opposition, as between two modes of “telling” (itself not a bad translation of Greek diegesis: see section 3 be-

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low): telling in the voice of an authorial narrator versus telling in the voices of the agents. See esp. 393b: “it is diegesis both when the poet delivers character-speeches and in the sections between these speeches” (which underlines the fundamental point that mimesis is not opposed to, but is one type of, diegesis). Nor is the problem Socrates has with mimesis a matter of the quantity of information it conveys (contra Genette [1972] 1980: 166); his rewriting of the first episode of the Iliad (393c– 394a) preserves much the same “information” as the Homeric text. The problem, rather, with mimesis is what Socrates takes to be its seductively perspectival psychology and its consequent inducement to the mind to step inside, and assimilate itself to, the character’s viewpoint. His anxiety is about a particularly intense way of imagining what it is like to be someone else. We must now, however, add two important (and related) points. The first is that the proto-narratology of this well-known Platonic text is driven by normative, not purely descriptive, concerns. Socrates is not attempting to explore questions of narrative or poetic technique for their own sake, but to draw attention to what he sees as the vital implications of certain storytelling techniques for the larger ethical psychology which he outlines in the Republic. The second point, usually overlooked altogether by modern scholars, is that the typology presented by Socrates is not only incomplete: it actually ignores a number of discursive and narrative practices found in Plato’s own work. This applies above all to types of narrators. Socrates operates exclusively with the idea of the heterodiegetic, author-as-narrator type (which, ironically, is never used by Plato himself: contrast the Socratic works of Xenophon) and paradoxically ignores homo- and intra-diegetic narrators of the kinds which do occur in Plato, including Socrates himself in the Republic! This cannot be explained away by Socrates’ focus on Homeric epic, since it is equally true that he takes no account of complications brought about by the role of a secondary narrator such as Odysseus in Odyssey Books 9 through 12, where several levels of embedded narrative come into play. It is imperative, finally, to note that the formal diegesis/mimesis typology of Republic Book 3 is not itself repeated anywhere else in Plato’s writings. It should not, therefore, be converted into a fixed Platonic orthodoxy. On the rare occasions when similar distinctions are mentioned elsewhere, the terminology varies: at Theaetetus 143b–c, for example, a contrast is drawn between diegesis as third-person narrative and dialogos (with the verb dialegesthai) as the speech of characters. Furthermore, mimesis is used in many Platonic passages, including Re-

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public 2.373b (see below), in a broader sense of poetic/literary representation which is not tied to direct character-speech.

3 History of the Terms Diegesis is derived from a Greek verb diegeisthai, which means literally “to lead/guide through” and which came to mean “give an account of,” “expound,” “explain,” and “narrate.” Together with the verb, the noun diegesis itself became established in the 5th century BC as a common term for acts of verbal narration. It could apply, for instance, to the section(s) of a courtroom speech in which a litigant provided a version of events relevant to the case: a reference in Plato’s Phaedrus, 266e, shows that diegesis was codified in this sense in some of the first rhetorical handbooks (cf. Aristotle Rhetoric 1.1, 1354b18; 3.13, 1414a37–b15). It also seems that in the early forms of Greek linguistics associated with thinkers such as Protagoras, diegesis was adopted as a term for one of the basic modes or functions of discourse (cf. Aristotle Poetics 19.1456b8–19, where diegesis might mean either “statement” or “narration”). Such usage helps to explain why Plato chose diegesis to denote the genus “narrative” in Republic Book 3. The term mimesis has a more complex and less easily reconstructed early history (Halliwell 2002: 15–22). Before Socrates employs it at Republic 392d, he has already used the cognate noun mimetes (producer/practitioner of mimesis) at Republic 2.373b for all those engaged in visual arts, poetry, drama, and music (and seemingly more besides) in the imaginary “city of luxury.” So mimesis there designates (artistic/cultural) “representation” in a broader sense than in Book 3, and indeed Book 10 of the Republic itself will return to that wider perspective (595c, “mimesis as a whole”). From around the late 6th century BC, in fact, the vocabulary of mimesis had been applied in both wider and narrower senses: in the former, to representation, depiction, expression in various media (visual and musical as well as poetic); in the latter, to “dramatic enactment” (cf. esp. Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae 156, where mimesis refers to the imaginative-cum-theatrical process of creating/playing a dramatic role). The category of “diegesis by means of mimesis” in Republic Book 3, therefore, does not depend on anything like a comprehensive Platonic theory of mimesis. Aristotle follows Plato Republic Book 3 in seeing a distinction between first- and third-person modes of storytelling as important to poetics. He does not, however, follow either Plato’s precise terminology or his ethico-psychological priorities. In the Poetics, Aristotle uses mime-

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sis as the master-concept of representational art-forms (this is arguably in line with Book 10 rather than Book 3 of the Republic). He then categorizes different art-forms according to the media, objects, and “modes” of representation. Where poetic mimesis is concerned, Aristotle’s typology of modes—that is, of “how” the poet represents actions and events (Poetics 3.1448a19–24)—is obscured by some knotty syntax and textual corruption. Two main construals of the typology are possible: 1) a binary distinction between (third-person) “narrative” and fully dramatic representation (of the characters “all in action,” as he puts it), with a further subdivision of narrative into (a) the Homeric kind where the narrator’s voice is interrupted by passages of characterspeech (the author “becoming a different person,” as Aristotle puts it in quasi-Platonic fashion, 3.1448a21–22; but cf. section 5 below) and (b) continuous third-person narrative; or 2) an explicitly tripartite scheme comprising the mixed Homeric mode of third-person narration alternating with direct character-speech; unbroken third- person narrative; and fully dramatic representation. The second of those interpretations aligns Aristotle with the tripartite typology in Plato Republic Book 3, though Aristotle curiously does not here use the terminology of diegesis at all (a fact obscured by e.g. Genette 1969: 52) but denotes narrative by the verb apangellein, “to relate/report” (cf. the noun apangelia at Poetics 5.1449b11, 6.1449b26– 27; Plato uses the same terms of both the author-narrator and the characters, Republic 3.394c2, 396c7). In addition, as mentioned, he makes mimesis, in a broader sense of representation, the genus of which the narrative and dramatic modes are species. But the first interpretation, by contrast, makes Aristotle insist on a fundamental distinction, of the kind favored by some modern narratologists, between narrative and drama: on this view, even though he knows that each mode can be used “inside” the other, he draws a sharp line between their status as frames of representation in particular works. On either interpretation, however, Aristotle strips his categories of the normative judgments made by Socrates in the Republic. He shows no sign of taking dramatic representation to be intrinsically more powerful, or less psychologically “distanced,” than narrative; nor, accordingly, does he think that the one raises greater ethical concerns than the other. Aristotle’s position is complicated, however, by his later treatment of epic poetry in Poetics Chapters 23 and 24. Here, in the first place, he introduces the vocabulary of diegesis which he had not used earlier (for the different case of Poetics 19.1456b8–19, see above). Epic is now classed as diegesis (24.1459b26), where before it was apangelia, and three times it is called “diegematic mimesis” (23.1459a17, 24.1459b33,

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36). Moreover, he proceeds to single out Homer as the only epic poet who understands that he should say very little “in his own person/voice” and who accordingly builds his work around richly presented characters; other epic poets, by contrast, engage only a little in mimesis (1460a5–11). Aristotle clearly thinks of Homer as a strongly dramatic poet (cf. the explicit praise of him as “dramatic” and as a proto-dramatist at 4.1448b34–49a2). But the puzzle is that the present passage appears to treat plain third-person narrative, contrary to Chapter 3 and indeed to the preceding references to “diegematic mimesis,” as nonmimetic (see e.g. Halliwell [1986] 1998: 126–127). It is as though Aristotle were momentarily slipping back into the terminology of Plato Republic 3.392c–398b. But the difficulties of that reading make it attractive to follow the alternative of taking Aristotle to be decrying the tendency of epic poets other than Homer to include in their work many self-referential remarks on themselves and their poetry. This would leave intact the status of all epic narrative as, in Aristotle’s terms, mimetic, and would also emphasize a conception of the Homeric narrator as an “impersonal” voice (see de Jong 2005). After Aristotle, most ancient critics take a narratological line which broadly follows the tripartite typology of Plato’s Republic Book 3, but with a terminological adjustment: diegesis ceases to be a genus with “plain diegesis” and “diegesis by means of mimesis” as its species and instead is equated with “plain diegesis,” i.e. third-person narrative in a narrator’s voice (as in Chapters 23 and 24 of Aristotle’s Poetics). The resulting scheme distinguishes, then, between diegesis, mimesis and a “mixed” mode which combines the first two. Somewhat ironically, given what was said in section 2 above about the discrepancies between the typology in Republic Book 3 and Plato’s own practices as writer, a diegesis/mimesis distinction came to be used in antiquity to classify the discursive forms of the Platonic dialogues themselves. There was more than one version, however, of such a classification. In Plutarch Moralia 711b–c, for instance, we find a bipartite scheme of “diegematic” (diegematikos, i.e. introduced/framed by third-person narrative) and “dramatic”: the Republic itself would be an example of the first kind, Crito of the second. In Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Philosophers 3.50, on the other hand, the classification is tripartite—”dramatic,” “diegematic,” and mixed”—but without discussion of any of the ramifications of the “mixed” form (see above). Proclus’ Commentary on the Republic 1.14– 15 (Kroll 1899–1901) also has a tripartite typology but with further and more complex terminology: “dramatic/mimetic,” “non-mimetic” (also aphegematikos, a term akin to diegematikos), “mixed.” (For these and other variants of classification/terminology, see Haslam 1972: 20–21;

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Janko 1984: 126–133; Nünlist 2009: 94–115. On the tripartite schema in Diomedes’ Ars grammatica, which proved especially influential in the Middle Ages, cf. Curtius 1953: 440–441). The distinctions of literary mode first drawn by Plato and Aristotle were often picked up and adapted by Renaissance critics. Castelvetro, for instance, in his commentary on the Poetics (1571), produced a critical analysis of Chapter 3 which allowed him to work towards the “unity of time,” thought by him to be intrinsic to the dramatic mode (Bongiorno ed. 1984: 27–35). Just one year later, in his treatise in defense of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Jacopo Mazzoni combined the Poetics with elements from Plato’s Sophist (the distinction between “phantastic” and “eicastic” mimesis), as well as from the Republic, to produce his own elaborate typology of narrative and dramatic forms of “imitation” (Gilbert ed. 1962: 361–364). It was not, however, until the 20th century, with the development of modern narratology, that the vocabulary of diegesis/mimesis was given a new currency. That currency has brought with it some complications. In the most widely adopted usage, Plato’s terminology has been simplified in such a way as to equate diegesis exclusively with third-person narrative, whereas the Republic, as explained above, treats diegesis as an overarching category which is then split into the two main types of “plain” (or, in a sense, “single-voiced”) diegesis and “diegesis by means of mimesis.” (Examples of this near-universal simplification are Genette 1969: 50, [1972] 1980: 162–164, [1983] 1988: 18; RimmonKenan [1983] 2002: 107.) The theoretical consequence of this simplification is to foist onto the Platonic argument, which might be said to be concerned with different kinds of narrativity, a strict division between modes conceived of as respectively narrative and non-narrative. (For one discussion of this issue see Chatman 1990: 109–118.) In addition, some modern theorists have converted diegesis into a narratological category denoting the imagined story-universe as opposed to the discursive or textual constituents of a narration. The closest we come to this distinction in ancient criticism is in Aristotle’s pair of terms praxis, “action” qua events depicted, and muthos, the structuring of depicted action into a dramatic/narrative representation (see esp. Poetics 6.1450a3–5). In French, this other sense of diegesis is denoted by “diégèse” (Genette [1972] 1980: 27, 280, [1983] 1988: 17–18), while “diégésis” is reserved for the narrative mode contrasted with mimesis. This further terminological splitting has led to a somewhat confusing variation in the sense of the adjective “diegetic”/”diégétique,” together with related compounds, in the hands of different theorists. One reason for this state of affairs is the fact that the earliest modern

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usage of French “diégèse” originates in film theory, where diegesis designates everything which constitutes or belongs to the world projected, and not only visually, by a film (Metz [1971] 1974: 97–98; Pier [1986] 2009: 217–218).

4 Topics for Further Investigation Book 3 of Plato’s Republic apparently draws no distinction between heterodiegetic narrators and the authors of the works in which those narrators are found. Nünlist (2009: 132–133) claims that such a distinction was simply unknown in antiquity. Lattmann (2005: 39–40), however, attempts to locate a concept of the fictive narrator lurking in Chapter 3 of Aristotle’s Poetics: this is Lattmann’s unorthodox interpretation of the description of Homer as “becoming a different person” (Poetics 3.1448a21–22; cf. section 3 above). More work would be justified on the pre-modern history of critical assumptions about the relationship between authors and narrators. How far can a version of the diegesis/mimesis schema be applied beyond literary art-forms? In Plato’s Republic Socrates appears at one point, if rather mysteriously, to imply that all discourse involves diegetic variations of “voice,” above all in the extent to which the mimesis of direct speech is employed (397c). But he nowhere hints that his terms of reference extend beyond the verbal. Aristotle, however, introduces his typology of “modes” in Poetics Chapter 3 as part of a classification of mimetic art in general: does he therefore believe that there are equivalent modes in visual or musical art? He never provides the answer to this question, but Berger (1994: 415–433) offers some independent reflections in this direction. More might be done to explore how far the issues of diegesis/mimesis can be extrapolated/adapted from verbal to other media.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Berger, Karol (1994). “Diegesis and Mimesis: The Poetic Modes and the Matter of Artistic Presentation.” Journal of Musicology 12, 407–433. Bongiorno, Andrew, ed. (1984). Castelvetro on the Art of Poetry. Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies.

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Chatman, Seymour (1990). Coming to Terms. The Rhetoric of Narrative in Film and Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Curtius, Ernst Robert (1953). European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Genette, Gérard (1969). Figures II. Paris: Seuil. – ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Oxford: Blackwell. – ([1983] 1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Gilbert, Allan H., ed. (1962). Literary Criticism: Plato to Dryden. Detroit: Wayne State UP. Halliwell, Stephen ([1986] 1998). Aristotle’s Poetics. London: Duckworth. – (2002). The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems. Princeton: Princeton UP. Haslam, Michael (1972). “Plato, Sophron, and the Dramatic Dialogue.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 19, 17–38. Janko, Richard (1984). Aristotle on Comedy: Towards a Reconstruction of Poetics II. London: Duckworth. Jong, Irene J. F. de (2005). “Aristotle on the Homeric Narrator.” Classical Quarterly 55, 616–621. Kroll, Wilhelm (1899–1901). Procli Diadochi in Platonis Republicam Commentarii. 2 vols. Leipzig: Teubner. Lattmann, Claas (2005). “Die Dichtungsklassifikation des Aristoteles.” Philologus 149, 28–51. Metz, Christian ([1971] 1974). Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. Chicago: Chicago UP. Nünlist, René (2009). The Ancient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Pier, John ([1986] 2009). “Diegesis.” T. A. Sebeok et al. (eds.). Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. vol. 1. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 217–219. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith ([1983] 2002). Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Methuen.

5.2 Further Reading Halliwell, Stephen (2009). “The Theory and Practice of Narrative in Plato.” J. Grethlein & A. Rengakos (eds.). Narratology and Interpretation: the Content of the Form in Ancient Texts. Berlin: de Gruyter, 15–41. Jong, Irene J. F. de (1987). Narrators and Focalizers. The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad. Amsterdam: Gruner, 1–14. Kirby, John T. (1991). “Mimesis and Diegesis: Foundations of Aesthetic Theory in Plato and Aristotle.” Helios 18, 113–128.

Dreaming and Narration Richard Walsh

1 Definition Understanding what dreams are and interpreting what they mean has been a preoccupation of diverse cultures for millennia. The close relation between dreams and narratives is apparent and manifests itself in several ways: the use of dreams in literature; narrative reports of dreams; and dreams themselves as narratives. The exact nature of the relation is unclear, though. If dreams are a form of hallucination, that is to say a delusory experience, where does narration come into the picture? Only retrospectively, in the dream report, or in memory? Or is the memory trace all there ever was of the dream? On the other hand, if dreaming is, or can be, an instance of narration, multiple questions arise: how do we understand the agency of narration in dreaming? What are the materials with which this narrating activity engages? What principles of coherence and intelligibility inform such activity—how is narrative sense achieved? What constitutes the medium of narration?

2 Explication It is necessary to distinguish between the status of dreams as experiences, and so objects of narrative report, and the status of dreaming as itself a kind of narration. In the former capacity, dreams have been important in many periods and cultures, and their fascination has much to do with their characteristic resistance to the naturalized (but artificial) logic of narrative vraisemblance (Culler 1975: 131–160). At the same time, the suggestive power of dreams has been harnessed throughout the history of art and literature as a mode of meaning in which the semiotic force of dream events is foregrounded. Indeed, there are dream features that appear to be language-like or even predicated upon language, such as dream puns (Kilroe 2000).

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Dream researchers tend nonetheless to maintain a distinction between the experiential dream and its signifying capacity, whether the latter is confined to the dream report (Marozza 2005) or credited to the memory of the dream, understood as the primary cognitive process in which the dream experience is interpreted, thus acquiring meaning and the status of text (Kilroe 2000). This “Cartesian theatre” model of dream experience has been critiqued by Dennett (1981), for whom the memory trace is all there ever was of the dream. The retrospective implication of a “memory” is not intrinsic to this view, the main force of which is to assert that the dream itself is no experience, but narrative. Whose narrative, then, and with regard to what? The notion of the dream as itself narrative appears to conflate perceptual consciousness of the “facts” of the dream with reflective consciousness about the dream. In the Freudian model, the dream gives expression to prior, unconscious dream thoughts (Freud [1900] 1953). From a neurobiological perspective, however, there is no further regression of meaning, because dreams arise from the activation of the forebrain by periodic neuronal activity in the brain stem (Hobson & McCarley 1977). Such brain activity during sleep may be random or part of some adaptive process associated with that of sleep itself; the inception of dream mentation is just a by-product in this account. All the remarkable coherence of dreams is attributed to the mind’s subsequent cognitive efforts of synthesis, drawing upon the narrative sense-making capacities of waking life (Hobson 2002). Cognitive models of dreaming have more to say about the functioning of such sense-making processes, however. They too regard narrativizing as integral to the formation of dreams, but note that this should not be taken for granted; our storytelling capabilities develop in the course of childhood, and this development correlates with the development of children’s dreams (Foulkes 1999). Narrative logic, here, is not a given; instead, cognitive accounts foreground the creativity of dreams—their status, that is, not just as narratives but as fictions. Such approaches conceive the motive forces of dreaming as continuous with those of waking thought, whether the emphasis falls upon imaginative world-making (States 2003) or on the articulation of emotion (Hartmann 2010b).

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3 History of the Concept 3.1 Dreams across Cultures In most cultures, the role of dreams has been spiritual or visionary. It is possible to distinguish between conceptions of the dream as experiential and the dream as meaningful (and therefore narrative); however, the two views often co-exist, and even cultures for which dreams occur in a real space (Ryan → Space) often regard them as a kind of thinking (Kracke 1992). This anthropological perspective is borne out in classical and biblical sources: Homer makes reference to the Greek personifications of dreams, the Oneiroi, in the Iliad (2.1–35); but in the Odyssey (19.560–569) he presents dreams as true or false narratives of future events, in the image of the gates of horn and ivory (Howatson ed. 1989). In the Bible the most common form of dreams is discursive (“God said to him in a dream”), but Jacob’s dream of the ladder (Gen. 28: 12) is a situated experience, if fraught with symbolism, and the major biblical dreams tend to be of this type: those of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 2) and Daniel (Dan. 7: 1–27) are obscurely portentous events in need of interpretation, while the events of Joseph’s dreams (Gen. 37: 5– 10) are clearly legible for his brothers. Such fusions of experiential and symbolic concepts of dreaming are less surprising than they may seem, since it is only a materialist worldview (in which what exists simply is) that enforces this dichotomy. From a religious perspective, reality itself is charged with meaning, and dreams fit within the implied model of experience as itself a discursive medium. 3.2 Dreams in Literature, Art and Film Dreams have had a pervasive influence upon art and literature throughout history, and upon film from the very beginnings of its emergence as a narrative medium. Three examples will suffice here. The most prominent literary manifestation of the influence of dreams is the tradition of dream poetry in the Middle Ages following Le Roman de la Rose. Medieval dream vision poetry was a self-consciously literary genre, notably in Chaucer’s use of it, and in this respect dreams served as an inspirational model for imaginative fictional narrative (Spearing 1976). But dreams also functioned here as a motivational device for allegory, as in Piers Plowman and Pearl. In the dream vision tradition, dreams are more than a representational resource; they become a basis for understanding fictional narrative—to the extent that The Divine Comedy, for example, is read as a dream vision despite not being formally framed as a dream.

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Dreams feature very prominently in the earliest years of film— especially as frame narratives—and not just as a topical psychological preoccupation (Marinelli 2006), but as part of early filmmakers’ selfconscious exploration and play with the affordances of the new medium. There are plausible grounds for thinking that the cognitive experience of dreams was crucial to early cinema’s transition from a cinema of visual attractions, founded upon the illusion of life, to a narrative cinema with its own conventions of storytelling (Gunning 1990). The influence of dreams may be discerned not only in foregrounded cinematic techniques such as montage, but also in early negotiations of the grammar of editing within the scene, the continuity of which we have now thoroughly naturalized. (Indeed, the question now may well be whether the conventions of filmic narrative have in turn begun to influence the form of our dreams.) A third example is Surrealism, which in part follows on in the history of cinema (especially Buñuel), but is more broadly an encounter between dreams and the idea of art. The Surrealists’ interest in dreams was caught up with their interest in the Freudian unconscious, but the aesthetic concern behind both was the attempt to liberate the imagination from rationality. Dream logic appealed to Breton, Dali and others as a key to narrative creativity, to the primacy of the play of thought over social, moral and intellectual convention (Breton 1978). 3.3 Dream Interpretation Such appropriations of the formal qualities of dreams in art and literature correspond to a very widespread assumption about dreams themselves: that they require or invite interpretation. This assumption also cuts across any distinction between experiential and (framed) communicative models of dreaming, because it is a corollary of the recognition that the dream is not empirical fact. It makes a representational medium of the dreamer’s perceptual faculties, giving the dream the status of a text (Kilroe 2000). This calls into question the narratological consensus that equates mental representations with the non-discursive story level of narrative. More specifically, dream narratives are fictions—if we exclude possibilities such as literal foresight or a dream corresponding directly to a memory. The latter possibility seems substantial, but clinical evidence argues against it, even in the strong case of repetitive posttraumatic dreams, which consistently manifest a creative element (Hartmann 2010a). Dream interpretation, then, undertakes to motivate this fictive narration. As most modern dream research discounts any external communicant of the dream narrative (God, or some other kind

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of spiritual inspiration), the narration must be understood as the dreamer’s own, despite being typically characterized by novelty (to the dreamer, as against the wholesale recall of prior cognitions in episodic memory); by strangeness; and by the sense of a lack of control. Such a view of dream narration is suggestive for our understanding of narrative creativity in general. 3.4 Psychoanalysis The Freudian unconscious offered a royal road to dream interpretation, providing as it did for an expressive intentionality beyond the conscious frame of reference of the dreaming dreamer. The dream itself is for Freud a transformative articulation of prior unconscious dream thoughts (Freud [1900] 1953). This process of articulation—the dream-work—is a kind of negotiation between the unconscious and the constraints of, on the one hand, the censorship of consciousness and, on the other hand, the affordances of the perceptual medium of dreams (Freud [1900] 1953: IV–V, chap. 6). Of the four dream-work mechanisms that Freud identifies, two—condensation and displacement—bear mainly upon the symbolic potency of the manifest dream and do not directly bear upon its narrative form, although it should be noted that displacement, taken under the rubric of metonymy, has been accorded a central place in appropriations of the Freudian model to literary narrative (e.g. Brooks 1984; for the structuralist heritage of this connection, see Jakobson & Halle 1971: 90–92, and Lacan 1977: 146–178). Freud’s other two mechanisms—considerations of representability (the pressure of vraisemblance and the constraints of particularity imposed by a perceptual medium) and, especially, secondary revision (the dreamer’s efforts towards imposing global coherence and intelligibility upon the dream)—have a close relation to the typically narrative form of dreams. In this respect it is important to note that secondary revision, often invoked in relation to the narrative report of a dream, is for Freud a part of the dream-work itself; its secondariness bears upon the relation between the manifest dream and the (primary) latent dream thoughts (Freud [1900] 1953: V, 488–508). The influence of literature upon Freud’s thinking is apparent here, as throughout his writings, and there is a risk of circularity in reading dreams according to literary protocols that may themselves owe much to the influence of dreams. Freud’s account of narrative creativity in dreaming, by invoking the agency of the unconscious, reinscribes in a covert form the transmissive model of narrative intentionality that dreams seem to problematize. For Jung, by contrast, the dream itself is

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a natural phenomenon in which consciousness attempts to find meaning (Marozza 2005: 697–698; Jung 1928–30). This move dissociates a psychoanalytic perspective from the specific agency of the Freudian unconscious so unappealing to scientific accounts of dreaming, but it also jettisons much of the suggestiveness, from a narratological point of view, of the dream-work. The general drift of post-Freudian thought, however, has been towards an emphasis upon the creative function of the dream-work (Marozza 2005), and to that extent there is some congruence between psychoanalytical and scientific approaches to dreaming. 3.5 Neurobiology The neurobiological account of dreams, the “activation-synthesis” model (Hobson & McCarley 1977), offers some answers to questions about the physiological causes of dreams and helps to specify the neurological conditions that define the characteristic qualities of dream mentation, as distinct from thought in waking consciousness (Hobson 2002). In the activation-synthesis model, dreams arise in the first place as a result of neuronal activity that occurs during REM and non-REM sleep, and which probably has (like sleep itself) an adaptive function. Such a function would relate to the ordering, updating and/or consolidating of the brain’s memory systems, and only incidentally intrudes into consciousness in the form of dream percepts (87–88). This is the ‘activation’ side of the model. The cognitive deficiencies of dream consciousness relative to waking consciousness, combined with the mind’s effort to impose coherence on initially chaotic perceptual images, result in an elaborative process that constitutes the “synthesis” component of the model, which Hobson conceives as a kind of confabulation (101) or, more broadly, narrative creativity. The mind’s cognitive sense-making efforts, in other words, are themselves progressively incorporated into the ongoing dream, allowing the dream to give a novel and emotionally significant coherence to its materials. 3.6 Cognitive Approaches The focus of cognitive approaches to dreaming is this sense-making effort in itself, without reference to either a Freudian unconscious or to the neurobiological activation of dreaming. A cognitive perspective clarifies the relation between narration and experience in dreaming by distinguishing between volitional and non-volitional parts of dream mentation in terms of receptive consciousness and associational pat-

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terns; a double-mindedness, but not of the Cartesian homunculus variety (States 2000: 188). Such doubleness, combined with the perceptual medium of dreaming, explains a characteristic feedback loop: “in the dream state, owing to the peculiar simultaneity of thought and image, the arousal of an expectation almost guarantees its arrival” (States 2003: 7). These special conditions granted, the emphasis of cognitive accounts falls on the continuity between dreaming and waking thought, rather than on its cognitive deficiencies (4); the bizarreness of dreams is a reflection of the absence of the constraints upon thought characteristic of waking imagination (States 2000). 3.7 Significance for Narratology The foregoing has shown that narration is a relevant concept for dreams and that dream research affords some provocative insights into the process of narration, narrative sense and its connective logic, and the medium of narration in a cognitive context. It remains to draw out some of the implications for narratology that follow. Most obviously, dream research problematizes conventional models of narrative creativity. The standard communication model of narrative, or any model predicated upon a view of narrative as the transmission of a prior conception, cannot accommodate the case of dreams. The recursive process of elaboration in dreams, on the other hand, is suggestive as a model for the genesis of fictional narrative in general: it implies that narrative emerges from the particularization of emotions (or ideological concerns, or values) and the representational elaboration of those interests. Unlike the communication model, this account does not posit a pre-narrative meaning which the act of narration communicates, but rather takes narration itself to be the generative principle for meaning it bears as narrative. Such a model (call it the articulation model)—whether it understands narrative as emerging through an evaluative feedback loop or through a surrogate logic of representational particularization—accords well with novelists’ own accounts of the process of narrative creativity, which frequently emphasize a loss of originary creative control (Walsh 2007, chap. 7). The equivalence of narrative content with the process of narration in dreams also calls into question the standard distinction between story and discourse, the “what” and the “how” of narrative (Chatman 1978); dreams may just be taken to compromise the universal applicability of that distinction, but must also call into question its adequacy to any form of narrative. The view that our cognitive-perceptual faculties are themselves the medium of narration in dreams disallows recent efforts

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to redeem the story-discourse distinction by claiming that story is conceptual and discourse is material (Shen 2005). The cognitive-perceptual medium of dreams also bears upon new media narratology and the representational status of simulations and virtual worlds. The contrast between experiential and narrative views of dreaming applies equally well in the context of a user’s interaction with a virtual environment: such an interaction may construe the simulation as a context for (virtual) behaviour; or the user may understand the simulation as representational, so that interaction with it is a semiotic activity. Only the latter involves narrative creativity and hence, properly speaking, interactive narrative. The relation between simulation and narrative, or between worlds and narratives in general, illustrates the tension between systemic and narrative modes of understanding. Here, too, the case of dreams is significant. Dreaming involves a dynamic interaction “between linear and non-linear thought processes” (States 2000: 190) in which the representational logic of narrative sense-making constrains and stimulates the hyperconnective associational capacity of dream mentation. Dreams test the limits of narrative cognition, not as a struggle between sense and nonsense so much as between two incompatible kinds of sense— one sequential, the other systemic. This is not a problem confined to dreaming: temporal processes on all scales, across the range of disciplines, are generally better modelled in terms of the behaviour of complex systems than the sequential logic of narrative (the case of evolution by natural selection is a representative example). Yet as the form of our dreams also makes clear, narrative is not a mode of sense-making that we can shed or outgrow; it is a non-negotiable part of our cognitive heritage, and so it is only by being brought into relation with narrative that systemic phenomena become intelligible and acquire human meaning. A proper scepticism about narrative must therefore take the form of self-reflexive lucidity rather than abstinence.

4 Topics for Further Investigation Two areas of ongoing research bear upon the relation between the experience and narration of dreams, in complementary respects; both would benefit from the influence of a narratological perspective. The first is research into sleep behaviour disorders, in which persistence of muscle tone during REM sleep results in sporadic goal-oriented motor behaviour from the sleeping subject. For some researchers this disorder presents an opportunity to confirm the nature of the relation between REM and dream content, on the hypothesis that the eye movements have an

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experiential correlation with dream images (Leclair-Visonneau et al. 2010). The unexamined premise here appears to be a particularly literal notion of a Cartesian theatre of images for the eyes to scan—a topic that cries out for re-examination in terms of narrative cognition. The second area of research is lucid dreaming, a topic with genuine interest that has been compromised by association with unduly speculative new age thinking. Dennett (1981) dismisses lucid dreams as recursive effects within the memory trace (you dreamt that you realized that you were dreaming), and States implicitly agrees, without subscribing to the broader no-experience explanation, by understanding lucidity in terms of an ontological distinction (dream world vs. real world) and doubting the possibility of “an independent in-sleep discovery that somehow rises above the curtain of sleep—during sleep” (States 2000: 189). There is lab-based research into lucid dreams that supports a different view, however, not only by cultivating experimental conditions in which it becomes possible for the dreamer to signal awareness of dreaming while still asleep, but also by intimating a more integrated notion of dream lucidity as lying on a continuous scale with other degrees of the reflective consciousness inherent in all dreaming (LaBerge & DeGracia 2000). Such an approach reaffirms the creativity of dream representations, offering the possibility of new insights into the nature of narrative fictionality and its affective power.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Breton, André (1978). What Is Surrealism? Selected Writings. Ed. F. Rosemont. New York: Pathfinder. Brooks, Peter (1984). Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. New York: Knopf. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Culler, Jonathan (1975). Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Dennett, Daniel (1981). “Are Dreams Experiences?” Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology. Brighton: Harvester P, 129–148. Foulkes, David (1999). Children’s Dreaming and the Development of Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Freud, Sigmund ([1900] 1953). The Interpretation of Dreams. J. Strachey (trans.). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vols. 4 & 5. London: Hogarth P.

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Gunning, Tom (1990). “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde.” T. Elsaesser (ed.). Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative. London: British Film Institute, 56–62. Hartmann, Ernest (2010a). “The Dream Always Makes New Connections: The Dream is a Creation, Not a Replay.” Sleep Medicine Clinics 5, 241–248. – (2010b). “The Underlying Emotion and The Dream: Relating Dream Imagery to the Dreamer’s Underlying Emotion Can Help Elucidate the Nature of Dreaming.” International Review of Neurobiology 92, 197–214. Hobson, J. Allan (2002). Dreaming: An Introduction to the Science of Sleep. Oxford: Oxford UP. – & Robert McCarley (1977). “The Brain as a Dream State Generator: an Activation- Synthesis Hypothesis.” American Journal of Psychiatry 134, 1335–1348. Howatson, Margaret C., ed. (1989). The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP. Jakobson, Roman & Morris Halle (1971). Fundamentals of Language. 2nd ed. The Hague: Mouton. Jung, Carl G. (1928–30). Dream Analysis. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Kilroe, Patricia (2000). “The Dream as Text, the Dream as Narrative.” Dreaming 10.3, 125–137. Kracke, Waud H. (1992). “Cultural Aspects of Dreaming.” International Institute for Dream Research. http://www.dreamresearch.ca/pdf/cultural.pdf. LaBerge, Stephen & Donald J. DeGracia (2000). “Varieties of Lucid Dreaming Experience.” R. G. Kunzendorf & B. Wallace (eds.). Individual Differences in Conscious Experience. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 269–307. Lacan, Jacques (1977). Écrits. A Selection. Trans. A. Sheridan. London: Tavistock. Leclair-Visonneau, Laurène et al. (2010). “Do the Eyes Scan Dream Images During Rapid Eye Movement Sleep? Evidence from the Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behaviour Disorder Model.” Brain 133.6, 1737–1746. Marinelli, Lydia (2006). “Screening Wish Theories: Dream Psychologies and Early Cinema.” Science in Context 19.1, 87–110. Marozza, Maria Ilena (2005). “When Does a Dream Begin to ‘Have Meaning’? Linguistic Constraints and Significant Moments in the Construction of the Meaning of a Dream.” Journal of Analytical Psychology 50, 693–705. Shen, Dan (2005). “Story-Discourse Distinction.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. New York: Routledge, 566–568. Spearing, Anthony C. (1976). Medieval Dream Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. States, Bert O. (2000). “Dream Bizarreness and Inner Thought.” Dreaming 10.4, 179– 192. – (2003). “Dreams, Art and Virtual Worldmaking.” Dreaming 13.1, 3–12. Walsh, Richard (2007). The Rhetoric of Fictionality: Narrative Theory and the Idea of Fiction. Ohio State UP.

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5.2 Further Reading Brottman, Mikita (2008). “Some Thoughts on Dream Aesthetics.” Image [&] Narrative 23. http://www.imageandnarrative.be/timeandphotography/brottman.htm. Cavallero, Corrado & David Foulkes, eds. (1993) Dreaming as Cognition. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Hartmann, Ernest (2010). The Nature and Functions of Dreaming. Oxford: Oxford UP. Hobson, J. Allan (1998). The Dreaming Brain: How the Brain Creates both the Sense and Nonsense of Dreams. New York: Basic Books. Jahn, Manfred (2003). “‘Awake! Open Your Eyes!’ The Cognitive Logic of External and Internal Stories.” D. Herman (ed.). Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences. Stanford: CSLI Publications, 195–213. Kahn, David & J. Allan Hobson (1993). “Self-Organization Theory of Dreaming.” Dreaming 10.3, 151–178. States, Bert O. (1993). Dreaming and Storytelling. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP. – (1994). “Authorship in Dreams and Fictions.” Dreaming 4, 237–253. Walsh, Richard (2010). “Dreaming and Narrative Theory.” F. L. Aldama et al. (eds.). Toward a Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts. Austin: U of Texas P, 141–157.

Experientiality Marco Caracciolo

1 Definition The term “experientiality” was introduced by Fludernik (1996), where it was defined as “the quasi-mimetic evocation of real-life experience” (12). Experientiality refers to the ways in which narrative taps into readers’ familiarity with experience through the activation of “natural” cognitive parameters (see Fludernik 2003), and particularly the embodiment of cognitive faculties, the understanding of intentional action, the perception of temporality, and the emotional evaluation of experience. This cognitively grounded relation between human experience and human representations of experience is at the root of Fludernik’s definition of narrative: any text that foregrounds the above-mentioned parameters qualifies as narrative; any text that sidelines them (including factual summaries and reports) possesses weak or zero narrativity because it “[cancels] the dynamics of experientiality” (Fludernik 1996: 28). Thus, for Fludernik, experientiality and narrativity (Abbott → Narrativity) are interchangeable terms. What remains unclear in Fludernik’s account is whether experientiality should be considered an intrinsic (and textually identifiable) property of narrative, or a psychological process triggered in the text-reader interaction. Such definitional ambiguity explains why the concept of experientiality has been used in significantly different ways in narratological discussions after Fludernik.

2 Explication According to Fludernik, narrative’s experientiality consists in its implication or activation of a number of cognitive parameters, i.e. basic structures of human engagement with the world that straddle the divide between real-life experience and semiotic representations of experience. We may group these parameters under the headings of embodiment, intentionality, temporality, and evaluation. They are prototypically

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found in “naturally occurring” (that is, conversational) narrative, where a storyteller relates a past experience by conveying his or her own embodied and emotional appraisal of temporally unfolding actions. Such a “natural” narrative situation, where the experiencer and the storyteller coincide, provides the groundwork for Fludernik’s narratological model. Among her cognitive parameters, Fludernik places a premium on the concept of embodiment, which, she argues, can subsume all other categories: it “evokes all the parameters of a real-life schema of existence which always has to be situated in a specific time and space frame, and the motivational and experiential aspects of human actionality likewise relate to the knowledge about one’s physical presence in the world” (Fludernik 1996: 30). Intentionality refers to the goal-directed nature of human action whose understanding is implicit in readers’ engagement with narrative (23). Finally, narrative draws on the dynamic patterning of human temporality, which is always accompanied by emotional, evaluative processes: “Experientiality includes this sense of moving with time, of the now of experience, but this almost static level of temporal experience is supplemented by more dynamic and evaluative factors” (29). These evaluations are depicted by Fludernik in terms of emotional relevance: “All experience is therefore stored as emotionally charged remembrance, and it is reproduced in narrative form because it was memorable, funny, scary, or exciting” (29). In the conversational storytelling studied by sociolinguist Labov (1972), the evaluations that are intertwined with narrative patterns are those of the speaker and storyteller. By contrast, in fictional narrative such evaluations tend to convey the viewpoint of a character or protagonist, mirroring “her experience of events as they impinge on her situation or activities” (Fludernik 1996: 30). Hence, Fludernik’s model grounds the narrativity (and experientiality) of fictional narrative in the representation of characters’ experiences: “Narrativity can emerge from the experiential portrayal of dynamic event sequences which are already configured emotively and evaluatively, but it can also consist in the experiential depiction of human consciousness tout court” (30). In this way, Fludernik uncouples narrativity from the criteria of temporal progression and causal connectedness with which it is associated in plot-based definitions of narrative: “In my model there can […] be narratives without plot, but there cannot be any narratives without a human (anthropomorphic) experiencer of some sort at some narrative level” (13). The upshot of this view is that texts not traditionally considered narrative (e.g., lyric poetry) are said to possess narrativity, whereas purely factual accounts such as summaries or reports—which sideline

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embodiment, intentionality, and emotionally charged temporality—do not qualify as stories, since they lack experientiality (see 28). Any text that represents experience is, for Fludernik, a narrative text, even if it does not map onto a clear-cut sequence of causally connected events and actions.

3 History of the Concept and its Discussion Experientiality is one of the key terms of postclassical narratology (see Herman ed. 1999; Meister → Narratology), reflecting the considerable influence exerted by Fludernik’s model on the recent history of this field. However, scholars working in the wake of Fludernik’s “natural” narratology have construed and utilized the concept of experientiality in substantially different ways. Since Fludernik places a premium on the narrative figuration of characters’ experiences, some narratologists have equated experientiality with the textual representation of fictional consciousnesses, one of the traditional areas of narratological investigation (Hamburger [1957] 1973; Cohn 1978; Fludernik 1993). Margolin, for example, writes that experientiality is the “representation of mental activity” (2000: 604). Likewise, Palmer uses experientiality interchangeably with “fictional mental functioning” (2004: 32). On the other hand, Herman has defined experientiality (or the “consciousness factor,” in his term) more globally as narrative’s capacity to “emulate through [its] temporal and perspectival configuration the what-it’s-like dimension of conscious awareness itself” (2009: 137–160). Caracciolo (2012) has gone further in this direction, arguing that the experientiality of narrative arises from the tension and interaction between a narrative text and the past experiences of its recipients. All in all, after the publication of Fludernik’s work, experientiality has been extended to cover the continuum between the textual representation of fictional (i.e., characters’) experiences and the creation of “story-driven” experiences in narrative audiences. These semantic oscillations reveal a number of theoretical issues left open by Fludernik’s treatment. Diengott (2010), in particular, has criticized the expository blind spots and shortcomings of Fludernik’s model. Consider the definition provided by Fludernik: experientiality is “the quasi-mimetic evocation of real-life experience.” Almost all of the terms used in this phrase call for clarification and tie in with age-old debates within narratology and literary theory. Firstly, it may be wondered whether “the quasi-mimetic evocation of real-life experience” is a necessary and/or a sufficient condition for

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narrativity. Secondly, depending on the exact scope of the terms “quasimimetic” and “real-life experience,” experientiality seems to occupy different positions vis-à-vis the concept of mimesis. Thirdly, depending on how we construe the term “evocation,” Fludernik’s definition seems to hover between the textualist orientation of structuralist narratology and the readerly orientation of postclassical, and specifically cognitive, approaches (Herman → Cognitive Narratology). The textualist perspective is at the root of interpretations of experientiality (such as those by Margolin and Palmer), focusing on the representation of characters’ experiences, while the reader-response perspective leads to interpretations focusing on recipients’ experiences (cf. Caracciolo 2012). 3.1 Experientiality and Narrativity Fludernik’s “natural” narratology ties a tight knot between experientiality and narrativity. As Fludernik writes, “narrativity […] centers on experientiality of an anthropomorphic nature” (1996: 26). However, starting with Sternberg (2001: 122) and Alber (2002), scholars have disputed Fludernik’s claim, arguing that experientiality cannot be straightforwardly equated with narrativity (see Wolf 2003: 181; Ryan 2005: 4; Herman 2002: 168–169; 2009: 211). For instance, Alber (2002: 68–70) points out that merging narrativity and experientiality results in an overextension of the category “narrative”: lyric poetry can be said to depict human consciousness (and therefore possesses experientiality) even though its narrativity is usually quite weak. Indeed, while all artistic artifacts are in some way related to human experience, not all of them can be made sense of in narrative terms. The upshot is that narrativity must be defined on other grounds than experientiality alone. Yet the fact that experientiality cannot be taken as a sufficient condition for narrativity does not mean that stories can be devoid of experientiality. No matter how distant from the laws and conventions of what we consider to be our real world, stories are always bound up with human experience: they speak to human concerns and help us negotiate values that are part of our everyday reality. In other words, narrative is deeply implicated in what has been variously called “the repertoire” (Iser [1976] 1978) or “the experiential background” (Caracciolo 2012) of recipients. We can therefore conclude that experientiality is a necessary—but not sufficient—condition for narrativity. Hence, theorists such as Wolf (2003) and Herman (2009) have included experientiality among their “narratemes” or “basic elements of narrative” without equating it with narrativity. Experientiality thus becomes only one of

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the factors that contribute to making a semiotic artifact intelligible in narrative terms. 3.2 Experientiality and Mimesis Fludernik’s definition of experientiality includes the term “quasimimetic,” which should be understood in light of Fludernik’s own discussion of mimesis: “mimesis must not be identified as imitation but needs to be treated as the artificial and illusionary projection of a semiotic structure which the reader recuperates in terms of a fictional reality. This recuperation, since it is based on cognitive parameters gleaned from real-world experience, inevitably results in an implicit though incomplete homologization of the fictional and the real worlds” (1996: 35, original emphasis). To paraphrase Fludernik’s proposition: we make sense of narrative texts by projecting their events and existents onto a quasi-ontological domain, a storyworld or fictional world. Such a simulative—and in this sense “mimetic” (see Oatley 1999)—process draws heavily on basic cognitive and experiential parameters. However, the storyworlds of fiction can deviate significantly from these parameters: they can contain physically or even logically impossible states of affairs such as the metamorphosis of a human being into an aquatic salamander (in Cortázar’s short story “Axolotl,” 1956) or a disembodied narrator inhabiting the body of another character (in Amis’s novel Time’s Arrow, 1991). These narratives are now the object of so-called “unnatural” narratology (Alber et al. 2010). Yet for all their bizarreness, these stories maintain a connection with human experientiality via the themes they address (see Alber 2009). Indeed, while the advocates of unnatural narratology tend to drive a wedge between unnatural and natural approaches, Fludernik (2012) herself has pointed out how natural and unnatural elements are, in literary mimesis, intrinsically bound up. Experientiality as narrative’s mimetic relation with human experience should not be conceptualized as a one-way exchange in which narrative can only draw on recipients’ familiarity with the real world (Caracciolo 2012). Indeed, both conversational and fictional stories can impact recipients’ interaction with reality by leaving a mark on their values and attitudes. This phenomenon, known in social psychology as “narrative persuasion” (Green & Brock 2000), shows that experientiality is a complex, dynamic relation in which real-world and story-driven experiences become intertwined (cf. Fludernik’s “incomplete homologization of the fictional and the real worlds”). Thus, engaging with narrative not only taps into recipients’ repertoire of past experiences (or “experiential background”), but can also produce shifts and changes in

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this repertoire. This double movement between storytelling and background is, according to Caracciolo (2012), constitutive of experientiality. Ricœur’s ([1984] 1985) tripartite theory of mimesis already gestured towards this interaction between narrative and recipients’ past experiences: by temporally organizing or “configuring” a series of events (“mimesis 2”), narrative exploits recipients’ pre-understanding of the world (“mimesis 1”) in a way that can restructure or “refigure” their perception of reality (“mimesis 3”). From this hermeneutic perspective, narrative experientiality is bound up with interpretation qua our basic way of engaging with the physical, social, and cultural world. The boundaries of human experience—and thus of what humans consider possible or impossible, natural or “unnatural”—are constantly renegotiated through a cultural, interpretive dynamic that is, at least in part, driven by the experientiality of storytelling practices (see Bernaerts et al. 2014). 3.3 Experientiality in an Interdisciplinary Context Taken in its psychological sense, experientiality can be seen as narrative’s capacity to give rise to experiential states and responses in recipients. Experientiality thus ties in with a larger movement within contemporary narratology—a movement that focuses on the psychological processes underlying recipients’ engagement with stories. The investigation of the experiential texture of storytelling can benefit from the rising interest in experience itself within contemporary cognitive science: traditional, AI-inspired cognitivism sidelined experience, concentrating instead on abstract, unconscious processes and their function in shaping behavior (Chalmers 1996: 15). By contrast, embodied and situated approaches to cognition highlight the subject’s experiential history of interaction with the environment (Varela et al. 1991; Lakoff & Johnson 1999). Psycholinguists have shown how this history plays a role in discourse and narrative comprehension through the activation of memories of past experiences (or “experiential traces”; see Pecher & Zwaan 2005). In sum, the interdisciplinary convergence on experience as an object of theoretical as well as empirical inquiry can help narratologists come to grips with two dimensions of narrative experientiality, both of them contained—in an inchoate form—in Fludernik’s discussion of cognitive parameters: firstly, neo-phenomenological approaches within the philosophy of mind (Gallagher & Zahavi 2008) can yield insight into the temporal and emotional structure of story-driven experiences; secondly, cognitive-psychological research can explain how cognitive-

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level (i.e., unconscious) mental processes interact with experiences (Gerrig 2011). While this interdisciplinary exchange with the cognitive sciences can open up new avenues of investigation into narrative experientiality, it also creates unprecedented challenges for narrative theory. As soon as the emphasis shifts from the textual pole (experientiality as the representation of characters’ experiences) to the readerly pole, any reference to the text and its structures as autonomous and independently describable objects becomes problematic: textual properties exist only as experienced by particular recipients; yet the story-driven experiences of each recipient depend not only on the text but also on his or her own experiential background (predispositions, interests, competencies, etc.). As a result, the text-reader interaction becomes a “black box” where it is difficult to disentangle the text from the (more or less shared) cognitive make-up and presuppositions of the audience. It is likely that textual properties are responsible for some aspects or structures of recipients’ experiences. However, characterizing these aspects or structures is a daunting task, especially given the wide diversity of recipients’ responses to narrative (which reflects the diversity of their experiential background). The empirical-phenomenological project launched by literary scholar Miall and psychologist Kuiken (see, e.g. Kuiken et al. 2004) seems to pave the way for this investigation into the structures of story-driven experiences.

4 Topics for Further Investigation It is argued above that the concept of experientiality lends itself to two interpretations: it can refer to the textual representation of experience, but it also hints at the experiences undergone by the recipients of narrative. We should be open to the possibility that studying narrative strategies for representing characters’ experience and studying recipients’ story-driven experiences are essentially independent enterprises. But at this stage it seems important to follow Fludernik in attempting to build a synergy between the text-first and the recipient-first approach to experientiality. Hence, future research should concentrate on how specific textual cues can modulate recipients’ experience of narrative. Empathy for characters appears to be crucial to bridge the gap between the textual and the readerly pole of experientiality. Although this phenomenon has received increasing attention in recent years (Keen → Narrative Empathy), we know relatively little about the textual strategies that can encourage recipients to empathize with a character. Other relevant

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questions include: how can narrative manipulate the experiential “feel” of emotions? How can it create moods and other “existential feelings” (Robinson 2005; Ratcliffe 2008)? What is the role of mental imagery in the reading experience, and to what extent does it depend on textual cues? How can stories produce a sense of presence in the storyworld (“immersion”) and other bodily responses such as proprioception and kinesthesia? Finally, how do all the experiential processes just mentioned influence recipients’ engagement with the thematic and interpretive meanings of narrative?

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Alber, Jan (2002). “The ‘Moreness’ or ‘Lessness’ of ‘Natural’ Narratology: Samuel Beckett’s ‘Lessness’ Reconsidered.” Style 36, 54–75. – (2009). “Impossible Storyworlds—and What to Do with Them.” Storyworlds 1, 79–96. – et al. (2010). “Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narratology: Beyond Mimetic Models.” Narrative 18, 113–136. Bernaerts, Lars et al. (2014). “The Storied Lives of Non-Human Narrators.” Narrative 22, 68–93. Caracciolo, Marco (2012). “Notes for A(nother) Theory of Experientiality.” Journal of Literary Theory 6, 141–158. Chalmers, David J. (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford UP. Cohn, Dorrit (1978). Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP. Diengott, Nilli (2010). “Fludernik’s Natural Narratological Model: A Reconsideration and Pedagogical Implications.” Journal of Literary Semantics 39, 93–101. Fludernik, Monika (1993). The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction: The Linguistic Representation of Speech and Consciousness. London: Routledge. – (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. – (2003). “Natural Narratology and Cognitive Parameters.” D. Herman (ed.). Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences. Stanford: CSLI Publications, 243–267. – (2012). “How Natural Is ‘Unnatural Narratology’; or, What Is Unnatural about Unnatural Narratology?” Narrative 20, 357–370. Gallagher, Shaun & Dan Zahavi (2008). The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science. Abingdon: Routledge. Gerrig, Richard J. (2011). “Conscious and Unconscious Processes in Readers’ Narrative Experiences.” G. Olson (ed.). Current Trends in Narratology. Berlin: de Gruyter, 37–60.

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Green, Melanie C. & Timothy C. Brock (2000). “The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79, 701–721. Hamburger, Käte ([1957] 1973). The Logic of Literature. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Herman, David (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. – (2009). Basic Elements of Narrative. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. – ed. (1999). Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Iser, Wolfgang ([1976] 1978). The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins UP. Kuiken, Don et al. (2004). “Forms of Self-Implication in Literary Reading.” Poetics Today 25, 171–203. Labov, William (1972). Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Margolin, Uri (2000). “Telling in the Plural: From Grammar to Ideology.” Poetics Today 21, 591–619. Oatley, Keith (1999). “Why Fiction May Be Twice as True as Fact: Fiction as Cognitive and Emotional Simulation.” Review of General Psychology 3, 101–107. Palmer, Alan (2004). Fictional Minds. Lincoln/London: U of Nebraska P. Pecher, Diane & Rolf A. Zwaan (2005). Grounding Cognition: The Role of Perception and Action in Memory, Language, and Thinking. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Ratcliffe, Matthew (2008). Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality. Oxford: Oxford UP. Ricœur, Paul ([1984] 1985). Time and Narrative. Vol. 2. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Robinson, Jenefer (2005). Deeper than Reason: Emotion and its Role in Literature, Music, and Art. Oxford: Clarendon P. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2005). “On the Theoretical Foundations of Transmedial Narratology.” J. Ch. Meister (ed.). Narratology beyond Literary Criticism: Mediality, Disciplinarity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1–24. Sternberg, Meir (2001). “How Narrativity Makes a Difference.” Narrative 9, 115–122. Varela, Francisco J. et al. (1991). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT P. Wolf, Werner (2003). “Narrative and Narrativity: A Narratological Reconceptualization and its Applicability to the Visual Arts.” Word & Image 19, 180–197.

5.2 Further Reading Caracciolo, Marco (2012). “Fictional Consciousnesses: A Reader’s Manual.” Style 46, 42–64. Hurlburt, Russell T. & Eric Schwitzgebel (2007). Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic. Cambridge: MIT P. Oatley, Keith (2011). Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction. Malden: Wiley.

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Phelan, James (2007). Experiencing Fiction: Judgments, Progressions, and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP.

Event and Eventfulness Peter Hühn

1 Definition The term “event” refers to a change of state as one of the constitutive features of narrativity (Abbott → Narrativity). We can distinguish between event I, a general type of event that has no special requirements, and event II, a type of event that satisfies certain additional conditions. A type I event is any change of state explicitly or implicitly represented in a text. A change of state qualifies as a type II event if it is accredited—in an interpretive, context-dependent decision—with certain features such as relevance, unexpectedness, and unusualness. The two types of event correspond to broad and narrow definitions of narrativity, respectively: narration as the relation of changes of any kind and narration as the representation of changes with certain qualities.

2 Explication The concept of event has become prominent in recent work on narratology. It is generally used to define narrativity in terms of the sequentiality inherent in the narrated story. This sequentiality involves changes of state in the represented world and thus implies temporality, a constitutive aspect of narration that distinguishes it from other forms of discourse such as description or argumentation. The concept of event is used primarily in two contexts to define two basic types of narration: a type of narration that can be described linguistically and manifests itself in predicates that express changes (event I), on the one hand, and an interpretation- and context-dependent type of narration that implies changes of a special kind (event II), on the other. Both categories are characterized by a change of state: the transition from one state (situation) to another, usually with reference to a character (agent or patient) or a group of characters. The difference between event I and event II lies in the degree of specificity of change to which they refer. Event I involves all kinds of change of state, whereas

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event II concerns a special kind of change that meets certain additional conditions in the sense, e.g., of being a decisive, unpredictable turn in the narrated happenings, a deviation from the normal, expected course of things, as is implied by event in everyday language. Whether these additional conditions are met is a matter of interpretation. Event II is therefore a hermeneutic category, unlike event I, which can largely be described objectively. In language, a type I event is expressed by the difference of predicates (Prince [1987] 2003). A type II event, on the other hand, acquires relevance only with reference to intradiegetic expectations and to a particular literary or cultural context. In other words, it is brought into being and related to its surroundings by an entity (character, narrator, or reader) that comprehends and interprets the change of state involved. Contextual reference of this kind can allow a type I event or a combination of type I events to be transformed into a type II event. Consider the following examples. In and of itself, the sentence “Mary stepped onto the ship” contains a type I event; only as a result of reference (via character, narrator, or reader) to a social context does it acquire special relevance and thereby become a type II event in the sense of being a deviation from what is normal and expected (e.g. emigration as a new beginning). Next, take a historiographical narrative in which the French Revolution is treated in the context of long-term socio-political developments in France. If the historian here describes the Revolution as a type II event on the basis of the profound changes set in motion at the time, we are dealing with the transformation not of a single type I event, but of a multiplicity of type I events. The two types of event imply different definitions of narrativity, each with a different scope. The type I event is treated as a defining feature inherent in every kind of narrative (e.g. Prince [1987] 2003; Herman 2005); whereas the type II event is integral to a particular type of narrative, contributing to its raison d’être, or tellability (Labov 1972; Baroni → Tellability). These two basic types of narrativity can be contrasted (drawing on Lotman [1970] 1977) as plotless narration vs. narration that possesses plot, or as process narration vs. event-based narration. Type I events, largely objective and independent of interpretation, have been studied primarily in linguistics (Frawley 1992), literary computing (Meister 2003), and numerous stucturalist approaches (from the Russian formalists to the French and American narratologists of the 1960s and 70s). The concept of type II event, on the other hand, has been discussed above all in the context of Lotman’s idea of plot, in research on everyday narratives (Labov 1972), in psychology (Bruner 1991), in literary theory, in historiography (Suter & Hettling 2001;

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Rathmann 2003), and also in anthropology (van Gennep 1960; Elsbree 1991).

3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 The Concept of Event in the Poetics of the Tragedy and the Novella The earliest theoretical conceptualization of type II eventfulness specifically refers to drama, and in particular to Aristotle’s Poetics, where plot (in tragedy) is characterised by a decisive turning point (Halliwell 1987: chaps. X, XI, XIII). Aristotle distinguishes three types of change which, singly or (ideally) combined, constitute a tragic plot: reversal (peripeteia); recognition (anagnorisis); and suffering (pathos). While peripeteia is to be understood as the formal designation of eventful change, anagnorisis and pathos specify its concrete―i.e. cognitive and existential―manifestations. The tragic hero thus undergoes a (primarily negative) eventful change from prosperity to adversity, but also from ignorance to knowledge. As to narrative fiction proper, there is a close connection between event II and the genesis and development of the novella as a genre, implicitly with respect to plot structure, and explicitly, although rarely and only at a late stage, with respect to poetological reflection. The relevant authors include, above all, Boccaccio and Goethe. In Boccaccio’s Decameron, the plot frequently involves the violation of a prohibition or crossing a boundary imposed by moral norms (affirmation of sexuality) or by the social order (flaunting of class differences), involving at the same time a revolt against literary tradition (Pabst 1953: 1–7). The power of natural desire, frequently assisted by chance, thus results in a break with the established order, which is characteristic of an event (Schlaffer 1993: 22–23). The obvious eventfulness of narratives, however, does not lie in the form of the author’s assertions (found, say, in the introductory passages) but, rather, is hidden behind his apologetic stance, aimed at playing down the disruption of norms by diverting attention to the inferiority of the genre (with its orality, colloquial language, conversational style, and strategy of providing entertainment; Pabst 1953: 27–41, esp. 37). In contrast to cases of eventfulness, however, we also find novellas still aligned with the medieval exemplum tradition, which lack unexpected turns. In this respect, the term “novella” does not refer to genre but rather to what is new, but also to gossip and current developments.

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Eventfulness II is first mentioned explicitly as a defining feature of Novelle by Goethe and the participants in the German Novelle debate during the 19th century, although they refer only to certain aspects of the question and then, only in a formulaic manner (Swales 1977: 16, 21–26; Aust [1990] 2006: 26–36). The most concise formulation is found in Goethe’s conversations with Eckermann (29 January 1827): “what is a Novelle if not an unheard-of occurrence [Begebenheit] that has taken place.” These words stress both the exceptional nature of an event and its special character of singularity and facticity (Perels 1998: 179–180, 181–189): in Goethe’s usage, Begebenheit means a disquieting, decisive turn that takes place in the public sphere or is significant in constituting the individual subject (cf. “Begebenheit,” in Goethe Wörterbuch 1989). This is also the sense in which the term is used in the Conversations of German Refugees (Goethe [1795] 1960: 188). In the 19th century, Tieck and Heyse stand out for making event the defining property of the Novelle in their “turning point” and “falcon” theories, respectively. Tieck describes the central feature of the novella as the “turn in the story, that point at which it unexpectedly begins to take an entirely new course” (1829, reprinted in Kunz ed. [1968] 1973: 53). Heyse highlights the anomalous, the unusual, as a defining feature of the event, especially in his reference to the falcon (drawn from a Boccaccio novella), stating that “the story, not the states, the event, not the world-view reflected in it, are what matters here,”; “the ‘falcon’,” he notes, [is] “the special quality that distinguishes this story from a thousand others” (1871, reprinted in Kunz ed. [1968] 1973: 67–68; original emphasis). 3.2 The Concept of Event in the Context of Tellability and the “Point of the Narrative” As a theoretical concept, event II has played no more than a peripheral role in narrative studies to date. Aspects of the phenomenon, however, have been highlighted in other contexts and in the guise of a different terminology. Discussions of “tellability” and of the “point of the narrative” (Labov 1972: 366) are the main examples of these other theoretical frameworks, focusing on events as one of the reasons why stories are narrated. An early approach to describing the noteworthiness of a narrative was put forth by Labov (1972: 363–370) in his study of everyday narratives, where the term tellability was adopted. The term “evaluation” (366–375) was used to describe the various ways the narrator stresses the “point” of the narrative, its raison d’être. These include external evaluation (direct identification), embedding (of utter-

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ances of a character or the narrator in the narrated happenings), evaluative action (in which case emotional involvement in the decisive action is reported), and evaluation by suspension of the action (in which case the central aspect is highlighted by interrupting the reported action). Pratt (1977: 63–78) transfers Labov’s approach to literature and shows that his categories apply to literary narrative texts as well; the tellability of a literary narrative, she suggests, is also dependent on deviation from what is normal and on the relevance of such deviation (132–151). In contrast to Labov’s concentration on mediation techniques, Ryan (1991: 148–166) develops a theory of tellability concerning the level of the narrated happenings. Particularly relevant to eventfulness is her distinction between three types of progression in the narrated happenings (155–156): (a) sudden switches in the plot, contrasts between the goals and results of characters’ actions, and self-contradiction; (b) repetition of narrative sequences (e.g. the three wishes or three attempts found in fairy tales); and (c) elements of the narrated happenings that have multiple meanings (e.g. the marriage of Oedipus and Jocasta is a reward, a case of incest, and also the fulfilment of a prophecy). In a second take, Ryan defines tellability in terms of the complexity of the plot sequences, which she situates in an “underlying system of purely virtual embedded narratives” (156), i.e. a network of realized and alternative, unrealized (desired, rejected, imagined), courses of action. In this way, as with event II, but without the term itself being used, the tellability of a story is derived from the structure of its course of action and the complexity of that structure. However, the equation of structural complexity with tellability is problematic, since it tends to isolate textual structures from (cultural, literary) contexts. As a result, the definitions involved remain unspecific, for it is questionable whether complex texts are tellable simply because they are complex, and whether tellability is really determined by the text alone. A different approach to defining tellability turns to conventionalized genres rather than individual stories in its study of the crucial points in plot development. Here, tellability is examined in terms of structural switches or contrasts. Kock (1978) provides an example of such an approach by drawing a direct link between the interest that genres such as tragedy, the story of quest or trickery in the fairy tale, and the detective novel arouse in the reader and the genre-specific plot structures of those genres. Kock describes plot structures with reference to the concept of the narrative trope. This enables him to point to aspects of narrated happenings that have two functions thereby generating tension between two levels (intention vs. outcome, appearances vs. reality, surface vs. depth, etc.)—a tension that, moreover, serves as the central motivation

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for reading. An example of such tension-producing dual functions is a setback unwittingly brought about by the protagonist in a tragic or a comic work through his own actions. Clearly this approach does identify crucial switches or changes in the genres in question, but it is nonetheless vulnerable to the criticism outlined above regarding any definition of eventfulness that is based purely on textual structure; both cultural dependency and the relevance of text-internal norms are ignored. 3.3 The Concept of Event in Historiographical Theory The concept of event has a long, and changeable heritage in historiography. As a historical category, event, was an accepted historiographical category, lacking any explicit definition until the turn of the 19th century. From then onwards, however, it was subjected to increasing theoretical reflection, first in France and later in Germany (Rathmann 2003: 3–11; Ricœur 1984: 96−111; Rüth 2005). This criticism, with a concern for scientific accuracy, was directed at aspects of the historical event that depend on interpretation: its singularity; its instantaneous nature; and the involvement of the subject. Event-based history was superseded by structural history and the history of ordinary life. Longterm tendencies, processes, structures, collective mentalities, and supraindividual patterns were now the object of attention. However, a renaissance of the event can be observed in recent historiography, one factor at work here being the realization that events are an irrefutably relevant aspect of historical processes. Historical changes do not take place simply because of structural conditions; they are set in motion as unpredictable and unique occurrences by individuals and individual actions (Rathmann 2003; Suter & Hettling 2001; see also the volumes edited by these scholars). The definition of eventfulness proposed in this context displays affinities with the narratological concept of the type II event (3.4 below). Suter and Hettling (2001: 24–25) use three criteria to distinguish events from simple happenings: (a) contemporaries must experience a sequence of actions as disquieting and breaking with expectations; (b) the grounds on which the sequence of actions is considered surprising and disquieting must be collective in nature—part, that is, of a social horizon of expectations; and (c) the sequence of actions must result in structural changes that are perceived and discursively processed by those involved. Rathmann (2003: 12–14) argues that fulfilment of criterion (c) alone, without criteria (a) and (b), is enough to constitute an event if the change is presented and discursively mediated as a case of

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major upheaval. This definition seeks to connect structure and event, long held to be incompatible with one another, as mutually dependent categories. The affinities with the narratological type II event lie in contextual reference, the importance of deviation, the role of relevance, the need for interpretation and perception, and the discursive foundations of the event. Differences exist regarding the point of reference, however: Suter and Hettling and Rathmann suggest primarily that reference be made to the consciousness of contemporaries, whereas narratologists distinguish various points of reference: a change can be eventful for characters, the narrator, the abstract author, or the intended (or actual) reader, but not necessarily for all of them. Equally, though, since incidents may turn out to be eventful only in retrospect, the historian or a later generation can be postulated as a possible frame of reference in the case of historical events. 3.4 Concepts of Eventfulness in Cultural and Social Anthropology A concept of eventful change, termed “passage,” “transition” or “transformation” across an intermediate state or “threshold” (Latin “limen,”, hence the term liminality for this in-between state), has also been developed in cultural and social anthropology. The concept is used to designate significant ritualized changes of status in the lives of individuals or groups within tribal societies. Van Gennep ([1909] 1960) introduced the term “rite of passage” to analyse such processes as betrothals, marriages, funerals and—most typically—initiations from adolescence to adulthood, which all, he argued, share a basic three-phase structure: “I propose to call the rites of separation from a previous world preliminal rites, those conducted during the transitional stage liminal (or threshold) rites, and the ceremonies of incorporation into the new world postliminal rites” (21). Turner (1967, 1969) developed van Gennep’s concept further in two directions: on the one hand, extending the application to non-tribal, i.e. modern societies, and on the other, concentrating on the in-between stage of liminality to analysze the particular conditions prevailing during that period (such as erosion of the established order, disorientation, possibility of new perspectives, etc.). For the individuals involved and, seen from their perspective, changes defined as rites of passage possess the features of a type II event. But for a knowledgeable superior observer, these changes are conventional and predictable, lacking the quality of unexpectedness and deviation from a norm. This difference highlights the contextdependence of type II events. As for their relevance to social life and

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their reflection in literature, such rites are clearly prescribed in traditional, relatively stable and cyclical cultures, but much less so in modern societies. Positing a structural homology between ritual and story, Elsbree (1991) has applied van Gennep’s tripartite model to the analysis of literary narratives, using (contemporary) novels and (Victorian) poems as examples. He argues that these narratives variously focus on the stage of liminality, mostly an unwonted and unchosen liminality imposed on the characters by social or political developments and characterized by a painful dissolution of the normal and the familiar (18−20). “Liminality is the phase during which values are tested, issues are clarified, choices begin to have consequences,” […] “the threshold between past and future, […] the present tense of destinies in the making” (22). But this model, though potentially suggestive of interesting parallels between ritualized transitions and eventful narrative turns, is as yet applied only in a loose and unspecific sense lacking terminological and analytical precision. 3.5 Discussion of the Concept of Event in Literary Theory Defining narrativity on the basis of the concept of event supersedes (in most cases, earlier) attempts to capture the special quality of narration by referring to the role of mediation (e.g. Friedemann [1910] 1965; Stanzel [1955] 1971; Alber & Fludernik → Mediacy and Narrative Mediation). Event-based approaches are supported by the following insight: although representations in language or other media—e.g. narratives, but also descriptions and arguments—are always mediated, narration alone is set apart from other forms of discourse by the fact that what is represented is marked by temporality (Sternberg 2001: 115; Schmid 2003, 2005: 11–16). Accordingly, the representation of a change (of state, of situation, of a form of behavior) that takes place in time is frequently identified as constitutive of narration, as noted by Ryan (1991: 124) in commenting on her “narrative as state-transition diagram”: “the most widely accepted claim about the nature of narrative is that it represents a chronologically ordered sequence of states and events.” Similarly, Herman (2005: 151): “Events, conceived as timeand place-specific transitions from some source state S […] to some target state S’ […], are thus a prerequisite for narrative.” Approaches to a definition that are based on changes in time can be divided into two basic types (cf. “Explication” above): event I (general changes of any kind) and event II (changes that meet further qualitative conditions).

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3.5.1 Event I The approaches to defining narrativity based on event I are many and varied. Numerous theorists define the minimal story or narrative or identify event as a basic element of narration in terms of change of state. This is the background against which Prince (1973: 31) describes changes as causal-chronological sequences of three elements: “A minimal story consists of three conjoined events: The first and third events are stative, the second active. Furthermore, the third event is the inverse of the first.” “Event” here refers to stative and dynamic states of affairs (17). In a later take on the issue, in his programmatic definition of a minimal story, Prince ([1987] 2003: 8; original emphasis) uses event to mean a change: “event. a change of state manifested in discourse by a process statement in the mode of Do or Happen.” Stempel (1973: 328– 330) defines the minimal narrative schema syntactically as a sequence of sentential statements that meet the following conditions: the subjects must have the same reference; it must be possible to contrast and correlate the predicates; and the predicates must be chronologically ordered. The same idea of the event is put forward, on a higher level of abstraction, by Meister (2003: 116; original emphasis): “by an event we understand the attribution of distinct properties to an identical event object under a stable event focus” (the term “event focus” refers to the point of reference for the change involved). Todorov (1971: 39) defines change in time as a necessary component of narration by referring to two principles of narrative: successiveness and transformation. By further distinguishing between different kinds of transformation, he arrives at a typology of narrative organization understood as involving different kinds of event: mythological, gnoseological, and ideological transformations—changes, that is, involving situation, cognition, or behavioral norms (40, 42). With respect to the basic elements of the structure of narrative progression, Todorov ([1968] 1977: 111) proposes a three-stage configuration: initial equilibrium—destabilization—new equilibrium. Bremond ([1966] 1980: 387– 388) sets out a more flexible dynamic way of modeling change in which alternatives are also considered. He puts forward the idea of a three-part elementary sequence of events leading from the virtuality (of a goal or an expectation), via the act of (non-)actualization, to manifest (non-)realization, the attainment or non-attainment of the goal, with amelioration or degradation as variants of change (390–392). Ryan (1991: 127–147) uses a similar kind of sequential structure with multiple stages to classify events with reference to the causes or driving forces behind them, particularly in terms of the level of inten-

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tionality involved. Actions are contrasted with happenings (changes with and without human causation respectively) and moves with passive moves (plan-based action and lack of action, respectively, as conflict resolution). Ryan’s system also includes outcomes (the successes or failures that result from actions) and plans (the planning of actions). The study of linguistics has witnessed comparable efforts to draw up predicate-based typologies of events or their components. Examples include Frawley (1992: 182–195), who distinguishes between statives, actives, inchoatives, and resultatives, and Vendler (1967), who distinguishes between activity, accomplishment, achievement, and state. Drawing on Frawley and Vendler, Herman (2002: 27–51) refers to the selection and linking of such event components in an attempt to define individual narrative genres (e.g. the epic, newspaper articles, ghost stories) in terms of their event structures. The undertaking is not a convincing success, for it seems likely that the specific type of eventfulness associated with a genre can be identified only hermeneutically—in terms, that is, of event II—rather than on a linguistic level. It is also questionable whether the distinctive nature of a genre can be delineated so clearly from that of other genres or be captured in simple, general formulas of this kind. All these different ways of conceptualizing event I have two features in common. (a) If they define narrativity in terms of temporality, they do so with reference to the presence of change on the level of the represented happenings. The necessity of linguistic mediation is highlighted in the process, but in the vast majority of cases this implies reference to changes in the narrated world alone, not to changes on the level of discourse (presentation). The proposals regarding sentence-based definitions (Stempel 1973; Todorov [1968] 1977; Prince 1973, [1987] 2003) are no different in this respect. In the terminology of Meister (2003: 107–108, 114–116), we are dealing with object events, which he distinguishes from discourse events, where the changes take place on the discourse level; the difference, though, concerns merely the recipient’s acts of cognitive interpretation involving the events. At any rate, all these definitions seek to achieve an objectivizing operationalization of the definition of event on the basis of linguistic expressions without considering the scope of reference to literary contexts and normative social contexts as a source of meaning. The hermeneutic role of the reader, that is to say, is excluded. (b) If different types of event are distinguished from one another, the aim is either to provide no more than a qualitative classification of kinds of change or to distinguish between different types of narrative on the basis of such a classification (which, however, is inadequate as far as the dimension of meaning is con-

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cerned). It was recognized at an early date (Culler 1975: 205–207; Chatman 1978: 92–95) that the crucial processes and aspects of meaning in narrative texts cannot be grasped by means of categories, such as these, that are formalized independently of interpretation and context. Recently, Sternberg (2010) has put forward a comprehensive critique of objectivist approaches to eventfulness. 3.5.2 Event II Use of the concept of type II event in literary theory requires that a change meets certain additional conditions. Such conditions have been identified from various perspectives, which will now be reviewed not in historical order but systematically, progressing from approaches concerned with definition to ones involving methodology and analysis, above all in the case of Lotman’s plot model, which has proved to be particularly fruitful in practice. In his discussion of the role of narration in structuring reality as part of human existence, Bruner (1991) draws attention to all the central dimensions of eventfulness involved in event II: the hermeneutic component; the modality of deviation; the place of norms as a point of reference; and context sensitivity. With the idea of “hermeneutic composability” (7–11) he stresses the fact that stories do not exist in the world, but depend for their existence on human consciousness to provide the horizon against which they stand. He adopts the phrase “canonicity and breach” (11–13) to describe how a precipitating event, resulting in a break with expectations, i.e. a deviation from what is normal and from routine scripts, is a necessary condition of tellability. Breaks of this kind always involve norms (15–16). Finally, these features give rise to the context sensitivity (16–18), making real-world narration “such a viable instrument for cultural negotiation” (17). In order to distinguish event II from event I, Schmid (2003, 2005: 20–27) introduces additional criteria that a change of state must fulfil in order to qualify as an event in this narrower sense. First, facticity and resultativity are specified as necessary conditions. Eventfulness, that is to say, requires that a change actually take place (rather than being simply desired or imagined) and that it reach a conclusion (rather than having simply begun or being in progress). These binary conditions are supplemented by five properties that can be present to different degrees and must also be displayed by a change, if the event is to qualify as eventful in the manner of a type II event. Thus, changes are more or less eventful depending on the extent to which these five properties are present. Specifically, the criteria are those of relevance (significance in

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the represented world), unpredictability (deviation from what is expected, from the principles of the general order of the world), effect (consequences of the change for the character concerned or for the narrated world), irreversibility (persistence and irrevocability of the change’s consequences), and non-iterativity (singularity of the change). In theory, the necessary conditions of facticity and resultativity are binary and context-independent, whereas the nature and magnitude of the five additional criteria are predominantly dependent on cultural, historical, or literary contexts and can be interpreted in different ways by the various participants in narrative communication. The extent to which a change in the narrated world qualifies as significant, unpredictable, momentous, or irreversible depends on the established system of norms and current conventional ideas about the nature of society and reality, but also on literary (e.g. genre-specific) conventions and can therefore vary socially and historically between different mentalities and cultures. This is ultimately true of facticity and resultativity as conditions for full type II eventfulness, as well. In certain historical cultural contexts, changes that are only imagined or not fully realized can acquire (reduced) eventful status in so far as the acts of imagining, planning (etc.) as such signal a (beginning or faltering) change in a character. The relevance of a change can be evaluated differently from different standpoints. Thus, the level of relevance often differs depending on whether the point of reference is the real author, the narrator, or one or more characters. In the case of unpredictability, we must distinguish the expectations of protagonists from the scripts of author and reader. What for a hero is an unpredictable event can for the reader be a central part of a genre’s script. These are the central criteria for the definition of event II as also suggested by Bruner: the role of interpretation, the modality of deviation, context sensitivity, and the relevance of norms. Lotman’s plot model ([1970] 1977) offers a comprehensive approach that combines a context-sensitive and norm-related concept of type II eventfulness with a practical apparatus for analyzing texts in terms of their event structures (Titzmann 2003: 3077–3084; Hauschild 2009). Lotman explicitly distinguishes two kinds of event: a basic concept of event of the event I variety, described as “the smallest indivisible unit of plot construction” (Lotman [1970] 1977: 233); and a concept of event of the event II variety, occurring on a higher level, which he defines in terms of spatial semantics as a “unit of plot construction,” writing that “an event in a text is the shifting of a persona across the borders of a semantic field” (233). By plot, Lotman means an eventful action sequence with three components: “1) some semantic field divid-

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ed into two mutually complementary subsets; 2) the border between these subsets, which under normal circumstances is impenetrable, though in a given instance (a text with a plot always deals with a given instance) it proves to be penetrable for the hero-agent; 3) the heroagent” (240; original emphasis). A semantic field represents a normative order, subdivided like any other order into two binary subsets, set apart, that is, from its opposite. Lotman uses topological terms as the basis for his definition of an event, but he stresses the normative relevance of the definition by pointing out that normative values (e.g. good vs. evil, ruling vs. serving, valuable vs. worthless) tend to be described by spatial images and oppositions (above vs. below, right vs. left, open vs. closed, near vs. far, moving vs. stationary, etc.). Thus, Lotman’s spatial semantics should be understood as a metaphor for non-spatial, normative complexes. The concept of the semantic field is shaped by Lotman’s belief that artistic language represents a “secondary modeling system” (9), that is, that its role in creating world structure is culturally and historically specific and in this respect embodies the link between text and context. In this way, Lotman takes the semantic field with its binary subdivisions as a point of reference for establishing and elucidating the normative dimension of eventfulness as well as its dependence on cultural and social historical contexts. Whether or not a change is eventful (e.g. the marriage of a female servant and a nobleman) depends on the historically variable class structure of society (such a marriage was eventful in 18th-century England; it would be so to a far lesser degree, if at all, in the 21st century). Determining eventfulness is therefore a hermeneutic process. Lotman defines as “plotless” a text that simply describes a normative framework and anchors the characters in both subspaces without the possibility of change—a text, that is, whose only function is classification. By adding cross-boundary mobility of one or more characters to this plotless substrate, a text with a plot is created, producing an event (237–238). An event therefore represents a violation of the established order, a deviation from the norm, in extreme cases a “revolutionary event” (238). According to how strict the system of norms is and how stable its order, the boundary between the subsets can be more or less impermeable, making it possible for events to acquire various degrees of eventfulness, to be positioned at various points on the plot scale (236). Lotman’s plot model provides a powerful set of tools that makes it possible to describe with precision the many forms and degrees of eventfulness in narrative texts. The protagonist, for example, can be

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integrated into the second semantic subset, and thereby become immobile, after the boundary crossing has taken place; but he can also return to the first subset and negate the event (meaning that the established order and norms are affirmed) or remain in motion, set forth again, and go through another important change, triggering a realignment of field structure (what was the second subset becomes the first subset of a new overall and differently defined field; 240–241). Renner (1983, 2004), Titzmann (2003), and Krah (1999) seek to increase the practical suitability of Lotman’s model for textual analysis by refining its concepts and formalizing its categories. Renner (1983, 2004) reformulates Lotman’s spatial metaphor in terms of set theory, describing the normative regularities of the semantic space as a set of “ordering statements” so that spatial change can be redefined as a successive process of disruption, removal, or replacement of such ordering statements. This description of how the boundary crossing takes place provides a more precise picture of it as a potentially progressive, as opposed to instantaneous, phenomenon. An important prerequisite for this refinement lies in the observation that spaces are not homogeneous but can display a graded structure with respect to their ordering principles: through his changing position within the space, the protagonist increases his opposition to the dominant order of this subset, until, at some stage, he reaches an extreme point that qualifies as an event (the extreme point rule). It is questionable, however, whether Renner’s extreme formalization of Lotman’s categories really represents a step forward for analysis in practical terms. Titzmann (2003) suggests two additional categories to supplement those of Lotman. First, he introduces the concept of “meta-event,” which involves not only the passage of the protagonist from the first to the second subset as a result of his boundary crossing, but also modification of the entire field, the world order itself (e.g. if the boundary crossing transforms the social opposition between the subsets into a morally defined subdivision in the field). Second, Titzmann introduces the concept of modalization of semantic spaces, which accounts for the fact that it is possible for subsets to differ from one another in terms of their modality (as dreams, fantasies, wishes contrasting with reality). Subcategories of spatial opposition and boundary crossing, in particular, are suggested by Krah (1999: 7–9) in the context of a closer study of certain aspects of the concept of space. Subspaces can represent autonomous alternatives in formal terms, or they can be related to one another functionally as contrastive spaces or by their relationship to a certain standpoint (system vs. environment, inside vs. outside). Spatial subdivisions can also be conceptually defined in many ways, (in terms of nature vs. culture, home vs.

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foreign, normality vs. deviation, past vs. present, everyday vs. exotic, etc.) as well as from a gender-specific perspective. An event can take place in the form of a boundary crossing by a character in which that character retains his features unchanged or, alternatively, adopts opposing ones (so as to adapt to the other field); or an event can also—as a meta-event (Titzmann 2003)—take place as a transformation of the spatial opposition. This corresponds to forms of event-deletion, (by which Krah means ways of continuing after an event has taken place): return to the initial space, absorption into the opposing space, or meta-deletion (retracting the reorganization of the spatial opposition). Typologies of this kind allow the phenomenon of eventfulness to be identified more precisely, thus providing a prerequisite for a closer analysis of eventfulness in narrative texts. Members of the Narratology Research Group in Hamburg have combined Lotman’s plot and concept of events with schema theory (Emmott & Alexander → Schemata) to produce a text model designed around narrative theory and a practical model for narratological analysis that includes a detailed typology of events (Hühn & Schönert 2002; Hühn & Kiefer 2005; Hühn 2005, 2008; Schönert et al. 2007). Reference is made to lyric poetry on the one hand, and to narrative fiction on the other. The approach stresses the fact that eventfulness is dependent on cultural and historical context, and it proposes that the relevant contexts be treated in terms of the schemata (frames and scripts) called to mind and activated by the text—that is, the meaning-bearing cultural or literary patterns relevant in each case (such as conventional patterns for how to proceed in choosing a partner, etc., or literary, genre-specific plot schemata). Eventfulness is constituted by deviation from a script, a break with expectations. With this in mind, schema theory (whose script concept makes it possible to model processes of change) and plot theory in the Lotman style (which uses the boundary crossing to model deviation and break with the norm) can be combined in the search for a precise definition of eventfulness (Hühn 2008). As levels of deviation can be more or less pronounced, eventfulness is not an absolute quality, but relative and a matter of degree: a text can be more or less eventful depending on the amount of deviation involved (Schmid 2003, 2005). Eventful changes involve a participant in the action (an agent or a patient) and can be located on various levels of textual structure. Correspondingly, three types of event can be distinguished (Hühn, in Hühn & Kiefer 2005: 246–251, 2008). In events in the happenings, the crucial change affects the protagonist on the level of the narrated happenings, i.e. one or more characters in the narrated world. Presentation events involve the extradiegetic level, since they concern the narratorial figure

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as an agent, the story of the narrator (Schmid 1982). In reception events, the crucial change takes place neither on the level of the happenings nor on that of presentation, since its occurrence involves neither the protagonist nor the narrator as agent. Instead, it must be enacted by the (ideal) reader in place of the protagonist or the narrator because they are unwilling or unable to do so, as in the dramatic monologue (Browning, Tennyson) or in Joyce’s Dubliners. In such cases, a full expression of the event is distinctively omitted from the text. This prompts readers either to undertake an eventful mental change or to somehow seek to achieve a better understanding—in both cases ‘against’ the text. In the context of practical analysis, such a differentiation between event types, based on the structure of the narrative text, can be combined with Krah’s concrete categorizations.

4 Topics for Further Investigation (a) The historical dimension of the category of event, i.e. its relationship to different types of culture and social world orders, remains open to study: does it appear—as a sign of the new and the novel—more frequently in periods when traditional orders are disintegrating or being weakened (in the modern and modernist periods)? Are events to be found in tradition-bound societies, or in cultures that operate in terms of tradition and continuity? It would be interesting in this respect to provide a comparison with narrative texts from ‘distant’ cultures not yet affected by the West (such as certain populations in South America, Asia, Africa). (b) The potent concept of event forged by Lotman is particularly well suited for use with literary narrative texts. How might we describe points of eventfulness, or tellability, in other text types (anecdotes, news reports, newspaper articles, jokes, gossip, etc.) that also involve surprises and the unexpected? (c) How events are expressed in other literary genres, such as drama and lyric poetry, requires consideration. (d) And finally, the expression of event as it occurs in other media, particularly film and painting, is also an interesting topic for investigation.

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5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Aust, Hugo ([1990] 2006). Novelle. Stuttgart: Metzler. Bremond, Claude ([1966] 1980). “The Logic of Narrative Possibilities.” New Literary History 11, 387–411. Bruner, Jerome (1991). “The Narrative Construction of Reality.” Critical Inquiry 18, 1–21. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Culler, Jonathan (1975). Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Elsbree, Langdon (1991). Ritual Passages and Narrative Structures. New York: Lang. Frawley, William (1992). Linguistic Semantics. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. Friedemann, Käte ([1910] 1965). Die Rolle des Erzählers in der Epik. Darmstadt: WBG. Gennep, Arnold van ([1909] 1960). The Rites of Passage. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Goethe, Johann W. von ([1795] 1960). Goethes Werke. Vol. VI: Romane und Novellen. Eds. B. v. Wiese & E. Trunz. Hamburg: Wegner. Goethe Wörterbuch (1989). 2 Vols. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Halliwell, Stephen (1987). The Poetics of Aristotle: Translation and Commentary. London: Duckworth. Hauschild, Christiane (2009). “Jurij M. Lotmans semiotischer Ereignisbegriff: Versuch einer Neubewertung.” W. Schmid (ed.). Slavische Erzähltheorie. Russische und tschechische Ansätze. Berlin: de Gruyter, 141–186. Herman, David (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. – (2005). “Events and Event-Types.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 151–152. Hühn, Peter (2005). “Plotting the Lyric: Forms of Narration in Poetry.” E. MüllerZettelmann & M. Rubik (eds.). Theory into Poetry: New Approaches to the Lyric. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 147–172. – (2008). “Functions and Forms of Eventfulness in Narrative Fiction.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 141–163. – & Jens Kiefer (2005). The Narratological Analysis of Lyric Poetry: Studies in English Poetry from 16th to the 20th Century. Berlin: de Gruyter. – & Jörg Schönert (2002). “Zur narratologischen Analyse von Lyrik.” Poetica 34, 287–305. Kock, Christian (1978). “Narrative Tropes: A study of points in plots.” G. D. Caie et al. (eds.). Occasional Papers 1976–1977. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 202–252. Krah, Hans (1999). “Räume, Grenzen, Grenzüberschreitungen: Einführende Überlegungen.” Kodikas/Code 22, 3–12. Kunz, Josef ed. ([1968] 1973). Novelle. Darmstadt: WBG.

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Labov, William (1972). Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. Lotman, Jurij M. ([1970] 1977). The Structure of the Artistic Text. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. Meister, Jan Christoph (2003). Computing Action: A Narratological Approach. Berlin: de Gruyter. Pabst, Walter (1953). Novellentheorie und Novellendichtung: Zur Geschichte ihrer Antinomie in den romanischen Literaturen. Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter. Perels, Christoph (1998). “Der Begriff der Begebenheit in Goethes Bemerkungen zur Erzählkunst.” Ch. Perels Goethe in seiner Epoche. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 177–189. Pratt, Mary Louise (1977). Towards a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Prince, Gerald (1973). A Grammar of Stories: An Introduction. The Hague: Mouton. – ([1987] 2003). A Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Rathmann, Thomas (2003). “Ereignisse Konstrukte Geschichten.” Th. Rathmann (ed.). Ereignis: Konzeptionen eines Begriffs in Geschichte, Kunst und Literatur. Köln: Böhlau, 1–119. Renner, Karl Nikolaus (1983). Der Findling: Eine Erzählung von Heinrich von Kleist und ein Film von George Moorse. Prinzipien einer adäquaten Wiedergabe narrativer Strukturen. München: Fink. – (2004). “Grenze und Ereignis: Weiterführende Überlegungen zum Ereigniskonzept von J. M. Lotman.” G. Frank & W. Lukas (eds.). Norm ― Grenze ― Abweichung: Kultursemiotische Studien zu Literatur, Medien und Wirtschaft. Passau: Stutz, 357–381. Ricœur, Paul (1984). Time and Narrative, vol. 1. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Rüth, Axel (2005). Erzählte Geschichte: Narrative Strukturen in der französischen Annales-Geschichtsschreibung. Berlin: de Gruyter. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Schlaffer, Hannelore (1993). Poetik der Novelle. Stuttgart: Metzler. Schmid, Wolf (1982). “Die narrativen Ebenen ‘Geschehen,’ ‘Geschichte,’ ‘Erzählung’ und ‘Präsentation der Erzählung’.” Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 9, 83–110. – (2003). “Narrativity and Eventfulness.” T. Kindt & H.-H. Müller (eds.). What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: de Gruyter, 17–33. – (2005). Elemente der Narratologie. Berlin: de Gruyter. Schönert, Jörg et al. (2007). Lyrik und Narratologie: Text-Analysen zu deutschsprachigen Gedichten vom 16. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: de Gruyter. Stanzel, Franz ([1955] 1971). Narrative Situations in the Novel: Tom Jones, MobyDick, The Ambassadors, Ulysses. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Stempel, Wolf-Dieter (1973). “Erzählung, Beschreibung und der historische Diskurs.” R. Koselleck & W.-D. Stempel (eds.). Geschichte―Ereignis und Erzählung. München: Fink, 325–345. Sternberg, Meir (2001). “How Narrativity Makes a Difference.” Narrative 9, 115–22. – (2010). “Narrativity: From Objectivist to Functional Paradigm.” Poetics Today 31, 507–650.

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Suter, Andreas & Manfred Hettling (2001). “Struktur und Ereignis―Wege zu einer Sozialgeschichte des Ereignisses.” A. Suter & M. Hettling (eds.). Struktur und Ereignis. Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 7– 32. Swales, Martin (1977). The German ‘Novelle.’ Princeton: Princeton UP. Titzmann, Michael (2003). “Semiotische Aspekte der Literaturwissenschaft: Literatursemiotik.” R. Posner et al. (eds.). Semiotik / Semiotics. Berlin: de Gruyter, vol. 3, 3028–3103. Todorov, Tzvetan ([1968] 1977). “The Grammar of Narrative.” T. Todorov. The Poetics of Prose. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 108–119. – (1971). “The 2 Principles of Narrative.” Diacritics 1, 37–44. Turner, Victor W. (1967). “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage”. The Forest of Symbols. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 93−111. – (1969). The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Vendler, Zeno (1967). Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell UP.

5.2 Further Reading Audet, René et al. (2007). Narrativity: How Visual Arts, Cinema and Literature are Telling the World Today. Paris: Dis Voir. Czucka, Eckehard (1992). Emphatische Prosa: Das Problem der Wirklichkeit der Ereignisse in der Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Steiner. Danto, Arthur C. (1965). Analytical Philosophy of History. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Hühn, Peter & Jens Kiefer (2007). “Approche descriptive de l’intrigue et de la construction de l’intrigue par la théorie des systèmes.” J. Pier (ed.). Théorie du récit. L’apport de la recherche allemande. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 209–226. Kędra-Kardela, Anna (1996). “An (Un)Eventful Story: ‘Events’ in Frank O’Connor’s Short Story ‘The Frying Pan’.” L. S. Kolek (ed.). Approaches to Fiction. Lublin: Folium, 71–80. Korthals, Holger (2003). Zwischen Drama und Erzählung: Ein Beitrag zur Theorie geschehensdarstellender Literatur. Berlin: Schmidt. Koselleck, Reinhart & Wolf-Dieter Stempel, eds. (1973). Geschichte―Ereignis und Erzählung. München: Fink. Lotman, Jurij M. (2009). “Zum künstlerischen Raum und zum Problem des Sujets.” W. Schmid (ed.). Russische Proto-Narratologie. Texte in kommentierten Übersetzungen. Berlin: de Gruyter, 261–289. Meuter, Norbert (2004). “Geschichten erzählen, Geschichten analysieren. Das narrativistische Paradigma in den Kulturwissenschaften.” F. Jäger & J. Straub (eds.). Handbuch der Kulturwissenschaften: Paradigmen und Disziplinen. Stuttgart: Metzler, vol. 2, 140–155. Naumann, Barbara (2003). “Zur Entstehung von Begriffen aus dem Ungeordneten des Gesprächs.” Th. Rathmann (ed.). Ereignis: Konzeptionen eines Begriffs in Geschichte, Kunst und Literatur. Köln: Böhlau, 103–118.

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Nünning, Ansgar (2007). “Grundzüge einer Narratologie der Krise: Wie aus einer Situation ein Plot und eine Krise (konstruiert) werden.” G. Grunwald & M. Pfister (eds.). Krisis! Krisenszenarien, Diagnosen und Diskursstrategien. München: Fink, 48–71. Scherer, Stefan (2003). “Ereigniskonstruktionen als Literatur.” Th. Rathmann (ed.). Ereignis: Konzeptionen eines Begriffs in Geschichte, Kunst und Literatur. Köln: Böhlau, 63–84.

Fictional vs. Factual Narration Jean-Marie Schaeffer

1 Definition Factual and fictional narrative are generally defined as a pair of opposites. However, there is no consensus as to the rationale of this opposition. Three major competing definitions have been proposed: (a) semantic definition: factual narrative is referential whereas fictional narrative has no reference (at least not in “our” world); (b) syntactic definition: factual narrative and fictional narrative can be distinguished by their logico-linguistic syntax; (c) pragmatic definition: factual narrative advances claims of referential truthfulness whereas fictional narrative advances no such claims. One could add a fourth definition, narratological in nature: in factual narrative author and narrator are the same person whereas in fictional narrative the narrator (who is part of the fictional world) differs from the author (who is part of the world we are living in) (Genette [1991] 1993: 78–88). But this fourth definition is better seen as a consequence of the pragmatic definition of fiction.

2 Explication 2.1 The Validity of the Fact/Fiction Opposition Poststructuralist philosophers, anthropologists and literary critics have questioned the validity of the fact/fiction distinction as such, sometimes contending, in a Nietzschean vein, that fact itself is a mode of fiction (a fictio in the sense of a ‘making up’). Applied to the domain of narrative, this approach insists on the ‘fictionalizing’ nature of narrative because every narrative constructs a world. But at least in real-life situations, the distinction between factual and fictional narrative seems to be unavoidable, since mistaking a fictional narrative for a factual one (or vice versa) can have dramatic consequences. One could object to this common-sense assertion that not all societies produce fictional narratives and that often the socially most im-

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portant narratives, notably myths, cannot be accounted for in terms of the dichotomy between fact and fiction. But even if it may be true that fictional narrative as a socially recognized practice is not an interculturally universal fact, all human communities seem to distinguish between actions and discourses that are meant to be taken “seriously” and others whose status is different: they are recognized as “playful pretense” or as “make-believe.” Furthermore, developmental psychology and comparative ethnology have shown that the distinction between representations having truth claims and ‘make-believe’ representations is crucial in the ontogenetic development of the cognitive structure of the infant psyche and that this phenomenon is transcultural (see Goldman & Emmison 1995; Goldman 1998). Finally, as far as myth is concerned, it is clearly considered a type of factual discourse: people adhere to it as serious discourse referring to something real (this is also the case of the Bible; see Sternberg 1985, 1990). As shown by Veyne ([1983] 1988), the social construction of “truthful discourse” posits an array of “truth programs” linked to various ontological domains (e.g. the profane as distinct from the sacred). Thus “myth” can be “true” (i.e. treated as serious and referring to some reality), even if believing in its truth enters into conflict with what in another ontological domain is accepted as truthful. For example, in myth and its corresponding reality, people can be endowed with powers nobody would imagine them having in everyday life. This does not imply that there is no distinction between fact and fiction, but that what counts as a fact may be relative to a specific “truth program.” The poststructuralist criticism of the fact/fiction dichotomy has pointed out that every (narrative) representation is a human construction, and more precisely that it is a model projected onto reality. But the fact that discourse in general, and narrative discourse in particular, are constructions does not by itself disqualify ontological realism or the distinction between fact and fiction. To rule out ontological realism, it would be necessary to show independently that the constructive nature of discourse in general or of narrative in particular makes them fictional or at least implies a “fictionalizing” dynamics. This proof has never been delivered, and so the common-sense hypothesis remains the default option. 2.2 Fact and Fiction, Narrative and Non-narrative The relationship between narratology (Meister → Narratology) and theory of fiction long remained non-existent, in part because classical narratology rarely addressed the question of the fact/fiction difference.

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The theory was intended to be valid for all narratives, although in reality the classical narratologists drew only on fictional texts. The classical models by Genette ([1972] 1980, [1983] 1988) and Stanzel (1964, [1979] 1984), for example, were general narratologies whose sole input was fictional texts. It was only at a later stage that narratologists explicitly investigated the relationship between narrative techniques and the fictionality/factuality distinction (Genette [1991] 1993; Cohn 1999). It is important, therefore, that the problem of the distinction between factual and fictional narrative be placed in its wider context. First, not every verbal utterance is narrative, nor is every referential utterance narrative. Thus discursive reference cannot be reduced to narrative reference. More generally, reference is not necessarily verbal: it can also be visual (e.g. a photograph makes reference claims without being of a discursive nature). The same holds for fiction. Not every fiction is verbal (paintings can be, and very often are, fictional), and not every fiction, or even every verbal fiction, is narrative: both a painted portrait of a unicorn and a verbal description of a unicorn are fictions without being narrations. Factual narrative is a species of referential representation, just as fictional narrative is a species of non-factual representation. And of course not every verbal utterance without factual content is a fiction: erroneous assertions and plain lies are also utterances without factual content. Indeed, fiction, and its species narrative fiction, are best understood as a specific way of producing and using mental representations and semiotic devices, be they verbal or not. This means that narrative and fiction are intersecting categories and must be studied as such (see Martínez & Scheffel 2003). 2.3 Types of Fiction The difficulty of getting a clear picture of the distinction between factual and fictional narrative results in part from a long history of shifting uses of the term “fiction.” The sense which is most current today—that of a representation portraying an imaginary/invented universe or world—is not its original nor its historically most prominent domain of reference. In Latin, fictio had at least two different meanings: on the one hand, it referred to the act of modeling something, of giving it a form (as in the art of the sculptor); on the other hand, it designated acts of pretending, supposing, or hypothesizing. Interestingly, the second sense of the Latin term fictio did not put emphasis on the playful dimension of the act of pretending. On the contrary, during most of its long history, “fiction,” stemming from the second sense of the Latin meaning, was used in reference to serious ways of pretending, postulat-

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ing, or hypothesizing. Hence the term has usually been linked to questions of existence and non-existence, true and false belief, error and lie. In classical philosophy, “fiction” was often used to designate what we today would call a cognitive illusion (Wolf → Illusion (Aesthetic)). Hume used the term in this sense when he spoke about causality or about a unified self, calling them “fictions” (Hume [1739] 1992: Bk I, Pt IV, Sec VI). Now, this type of fiction, as Hume himself explicitly stated, is quite different from fiction in the artistic field. It is part of the definition of a cognitive fiction that it is not experienced as a fiction. An artistic fiction, by contrast, is experienced as a fiction. This means that artistic fictions, contrary to cognitive fictions, should not produce real-world beliefs (even if in fact they sometimes do: fiction has its own pathologies). The term fiction has also often been used to designate willful acts of deception intended to be misleading or to produce false beliefs. In this sense, deceptive fiction resembles cognitive fiction. But in the case of willful deception, the production of a false belief depends at least partly on the existence of true beliefs entertained by the person engaged in deceiving others: to induce willfully false beliefs, one must hold at least some correct beliefs concerning the state of affairs about which false beliefs are to be produced, for otherwise the result of willful deception will be haphazard. Willful deception (lies and manipulations) is, once again, quite different from artistic fiction, which implies that at some level pretense is experienced as pretense. In science, the term is sometimes applied to theoretical entities postulated to account for observational regularities which otherwise would be unexplainable. Electrons and other elementary particles have been called “fictions” in this sense. “Fiction,” used this way, does not designate something known to be non-existent, but is rather the hypothetical postulation of an operative entity whose ontological status remains indeterminate. Theoretical fictions are postulated entities whose ontological status remains unclear but which operate in real-world cognitive commitments. Here again, the situation is quite different from fictional entities in the context of artistic fiction: such entities do not operate in real-world commitments. On the other hand, and contrary to theoretical entities, artistic fictional entities are entities which, if they existed, or if their existence were asserted, would have a canonical ontological status—part of the real stuff of reality. So the difference is the following: in the case of theoretical fictions, fictionality is due to the fact that the ontological status (theoretical terms/real entities) of the entities is indeterminate; in the case of artistic fictions, fictionality is due to the fact that the entities are not inferentially linked to real-world existential

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propositions (although they are of course in general inferentially linked to real-world beliefs and evaluations). Finally, the term is also used to designate thought experiments. Searle’s “Chinese Room” thought experiment and Putnam’s “Brain in a Vat or Twin Earth” thought experiments are fictions in this sense of the word. Thought experiments are generally counterfactual deductive devices giving rise to valid conclusions which are integrated into the realworld belief system. Superficially, this may seem to be a situation which resembles that of artistic fiction, but in fact, a narrative fiction cannot be a thought experiment in the technical sense. The principal reason why this assimilation is impossible is that the mental experience induced by an artistic fiction and its validation are very different from those of a thought experiment, for the attitude adopted when creating or reading a thought experiment is an attitude of logical discrimination: we have to verify its formal validity, determine whether or not it is conclusive, think about how its relevance could be increased or refuted, etc. Validating (or rejecting) a thought experiment is achieved through technical controversies between specialists who accept it or not, reformulate or modify it using criteria of logical consistency and necessity. An artistic fiction, by contrast, is activated in an immersive way: it is “lived” and stored in the reader’s or spectator’s memory as a universe closed on itself. As far as validating it is concerned, this is also quite different from validating a thought experiment, since one would not say of an artistic fiction that it is conclusive or faulty, but rather that it is successful or unsuccessful in terms of its “effectiveness” as a vector of immersion, its richness as a universe, etc. In other words, its “felicity conditions” are tied primarily to its immersion-inducing effectiveness and to its capacity for producing an aesthetically and hermeneutically satisfying experience of its mimetic and artifactual properties. Admittedly, artistic fictions can be evaluated in terms of the consistency of the fictional universe or in those of their plausibility in relation to supposed real-world situations or in terms of the desirable character or not of their explicit or implicit standards. But all this has nothing to do with validating a thought experiment. To state the difference more bluntly: a thought experiment is an experimental device of a logical nature, a suppositional or counterfactual propositional universe intended to help resolve a philosophical problem; an artistic fiction, by contrast, invites mental or perceptual immersion in an invented universe, engaging the reader or the spectator on an affective level with the persons and events that are depicted or described.

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2.4 Mimesis and the Fact/Fiction Distinction Historically (at least in Western culture), the key concept for analyzing and describing fiction in the sense of artistic and, more specifically, narrative fiction has not been the Latin concept of fictio, but the Greek concept of mimesis. Unfortunately, mimesis, like fictio, is far from being a unified notion. In fact, the first two important discussions of mimesis, in Plato’s Republic (1974: chap. III and X) and a little later in Aristotle’s Poetics, develop two quite divergent conceptions which have structured Western attitudes toward fiction up to this day. Plato’s theory of representation is founded on a strong opposition between imitation of ideas and imitation of appearances (the empirical world): representation of events as such, contrary to rational argument, is an imitation of appearances, which means that it is cut off from truth. He further posits a strong opposition between mimesis and diegesis. Speaking about stories and myths, he distinguishes between: (a) a pure story (haple diegesis), in which the poet speaks in his own name (as in dithyrambs) without pretending to be someone else; (b) a story by mimesis (imitation), in which the poet speaks through his characters (as in tragedy and comedy), meaning that he pretends to be someone else; (c) a mixed form combining the two previous forms (as in epic poetry, where pure narration is mixed with characters’ discourse). Plato’s preference goes to pure narration, for he disapproves of representation by mimesis (in Book X of The Republic, he goes so far as to exclude mimetic artists from the “ideal city”). Mimesis is a simulacrum, an “as if,” and as such it is opposed to truth: mimesis can never be more than a “make-believe” (for the concept of “make-believe,” see Walton 1990). The concept of mimesis developed by Aristotle in his Poetics diverges from Plato in several important regards. For the fact/fiction problem, only one is of interest: according to Aristotle, mimesis is a specific form of cognition. Mimetic representation is even considered by Aristotle to be superior to history because poetry expresses the general (i.e. the verisimilar or necessary relations between events), while history only expresses the particular (that which has happened): history relates the life of the individual Alcibiades, while poetry is a mimetic rendering of the typical actions that an Alcibiades-like individual would probably or by necessity carry out (1996: chap. 9, 1451b). This means not only that, according to Aristotle, mimesis triggers cognitive powers of a different kind from those of history, but also that these powers are of a higher order than those of factual discourse. Most classical literary theories which assert that fiction possesses its own truth value do so by reactivating some form or another of the Aristotelian distinction be-

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tween “mere” factual truth representing contingent actualities and a more “general” type of truth, that of verisimilitude or of necessity, representing ontological possibilities. The Aristotelian conception must be distinguished from “possible worlds” theories of fiction (Pavel 1986; Ryan 1991; Ronen 1994; Doležel 1998, 1999), inspired by the possible worlds logics of Kripke (1963, 1980) or Lewis (1973, 1978). In terms of possible worlds theories, a fictional world is a counterfactual world, but this counterfactual world is as individual as the world we live in: the counterfactual world is not of a superior kind to our actual world (whereas in Aristotle mimetic reference attains a higher order of truth than factual reference), but simply an alternative world. In fact, the real world is also a possible world. According to modal fictionalism, it differs from other possible worlds because it is the only one which is also actual, whereas according to the modal realism defended by Lewis, it differs from other possible worlds (which are as real as “our” world) only by the contingent fact that we happen to live in it. Possible worlds theories of fiction therefore do not claim that fictional truth is more general than factual truth: it is simply true in another world or universe.

3 History of the Concepts and their Study 3.1 The Semantic Definition of the Fact/Fiction Difference The semantic definition of the distinction between factual and fictional narrative is the most classical one. It was defended by Frege in his famous “On Sense and Reference” ([1892] 1960) and by Russell in the no less famous “On Denoting” ([1905] 2005), two seminal papers of 20thcentury philosophical theories of reference. It emphasizes the ontological status of represented entities and/or the truth value status of the proposition or the sequence of propositions which assert these entities. The ontological status of entities and the truth value status of propositions are related, since an assertion which states something about an entity that is non-existent is ipso facto referentially void. But it is important to bear in mind, firstly, that some types of fiction assign “fictive” properties and actions to proper names that refer to existing entities. This is the case for example of the subgenre of counterfactual novels which, like counterfactual history (see Ferguson ed. 1997), ascribe fictional actions to historical persons (e.g. Hitler winning World War II). Autofiction can be seen as a special case of such counterfactual fictions. Secondly, historical persons and descriptions of their real his-

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torical actions figure prominently in fictional texts, as in historical novels that often contain a fair amount of factual information. These mixed situations are difficult to integrate into a semantic definition of the fact/fiction distinction (see e.g. Zipfel 2001), since semantic definitions (with the exception of possible worlds semantic definitions: see Doležel 1999) are by necessity “segregationist” (Pavel 1986: 11–17). Counterfactual fictions seem on the face of it easy to manage, at least in terms of possible worlds semantic models. These models being ontologically holistic, it can be said, for example, that a narrative in which Napoleon wins the battle of Waterloo is not an example of outright falsehood, but refers to a possible world in which Napoleon wins the battle of Waterloo. But is it the same Napoleon? The principle of “minimal departure” (Lewis 1973; Ryan 1991) suggests a positive answer, but the holism of the possible worlds approach (each possible world being complete) suggests a negative answer. Whatever the answer, it is difficult to distinguish counterfactual fiction from counterfactual history on these grounds. Other mixed situations are even more difficult to handle. For example, the sentence “Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo” seems to express a plain simple truth. Does its status change when it is read in a historical novel as compared to when it is read in a biography of, say, Chateaubriand or Stendhal? Does it lose its truth value when it is integrated into a novel? Most advocates of semantic definitions of the fact/fiction dichotomy give a positive answer to this question: the proper name “Napoleon,” when used in a novel, does not refer to the real Napoleon but to some fictional counterpart (e.g. Ryan 1991; Ronen 1994). However, this seems counterintuitive, for in a historical novel it is important for the reader that the proper names referring to historical persons really do refer to the historical persons as he knows them outside of fiction, and not to some fictional homonym of those real persons (see Searle [1975] 1979). Counterfactual fictions give rise to an analogous problem: it seems counterintuitive to say that in an autofiction, for example, proper names lose their referential power, since the point of autofiction is precisely the idea that fictional assertions apply to an existing person (the author himself). This does not amount to saying that semantic criteria are irrelevant, for the idea that there is a semantic difference between fact and fiction certainly is part of our conception of fiction. Thus a narrative in which every sentence is true (referentially) and which nevertheless pretends to be a fiction would not be easily accepted as a fiction. Invented entities and actions are the common stuff of fiction, and for this reason the idea of the non-referential status of the universe portrayed is part of our

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standard understanding of fictional narrative. Even so, this does not necessarily mean that a semantic definition of fiction is workable. 3.2 Syntactic Definitions Syntactic definitions of the distinction between factual and fictional narrative commend themselves by their promise of economy: if it were possible to distinguish factual and fictional narrative on purely syntactic grounds, there would be no need to take a position as far as semantic problems are concerned, be they epistemological or ontological. It would then be possible to arrive at a purely “formal” definition of the two domains. The best-known theories that seek to define fiction on a syntactic level have been elaborated by Hamburger ([1957] 1973) and Banfield (1982). Both theories define fictional narrative by syntactic traits which, in theory, are excluded from factual narrative. Hamburger famously stated that the domain of what is usually regarded as fiction divides into two radically disjoined fields: “pretense,” which is a simulation of real utterances and defines the status of first-person nonfactual narrative; and “fiction proper,” which is a simulation of imaginary universes indexed to perspectively organized mental states and which defines non-factual third-person narrative. In other words, according to Hamburger, in the narrative realm only third-person narrative is fictional, non-factual first-person narrative belonging to another logical field, that of pretended utterances. Hamburger, at least in the first edition of her book ([1957] 1973), contends that, contrary to pretense, fiction is narratorless, a view sharply opposed to mainstream narratology according to which the narrator (not necessarily personified) is a structural element of any narration, be it factual or fictional, firstperson or third-person. Banfield, although her theory is formulated in a much more technical way (based on Chomskyan generative grammar), defends a position similar to that of the German critic. She develops a “grammatical definition” (Banfield 1982, 2002) of the genre “novel,” which in fact is a definition of internally focalized heterodiegetic fiction. Among the anomalies defining the novel understood this way, Banfield puts particular emphasis on the specific use of deictics and free indirect discourse. According to her theory, the specific grammar of the novel consists in a double phenomenon: elimination of the first person except in inner direct speech coinciding with the construction of a special third-person pronoun (called “the E-level shifter” by Banfield). This special shifter suspends the “one text / one speaker” rule that governs discourse outside of fiction and which is grounded in the

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principle that deictics shift referents with each new E (each new speaker). In a novel, a new point of view need not correspond to a new referent of the first person and hence to a new text. This situation is of course impossible in real-life communication, where each point of view is tied to a specific person. Therefore, fictional sentences are “unspeakable.” In fact, Banfield’s “E-level shifter” is functionally equivalent to Hamburger’s floating “narrative function” which can move freely between different “I-origins.” Hamburger and Banfield have clearly identified linguistic processes which are typical of internally focalized heterodiegetic fiction (Niederhoff → Focalization) and which cannot be easily accounted for in terms of pretense in third-person factual narrative. This is especially true of free indirect discourse and grammatical anomalies of spatial and temporal deictics. All of these phenomena are tied to what Banfield aptly calls a “special” third-person pronoun which is able to shift freely between different Egos. They invite an analysis of fictional narrative in terms of direct simulation of imaginary universes presented perspectively and (on the side of the reader) in terms of immersion (see Ryan 2001: 89–171). The symptoms of fictionality (see Schmid 2010: 21–33) analyzed by Hamburger and Banfield all share the same characteristic: they use a third-person grammatical perspective to present a firstperson mental (perceptual, etc.) perspective (Schaeffer 1998: 148–166; [1999] 2010: chap. 3.4, 153–173). On the side of the writer, these deviating practices are in fact the grammatical third-person transcription of the imaginative simulation of “fictive I-origins” (Jannidis → Character). On the side of the reader, they activate an immersive dynamics: the reader “slips into” the characters, experiencing the fictional world as it is seen perspectively by the characters from within or sometimes, as Banfield suggests, from a point of view that remains “empty” (in terms of a specific “I”). Contra Hamburger and Banfield, however, it is no less true that the majority of heterodiegetic fictions also contain elements that are best described as simulations of factual narrative statements (Schaeffer [1999] 2010: cap. 2, 41–108). The textual passages which Banfield calls “pure narration,” and which correspond to Plato’s haple diegesis, are a case in point. Furthermore, if we look at the history of narrative fiction, the systematic use of internal (variable) focalization is fairly recent (as Banfield and Hamburger acknowledge). If we take a broad historical and intercultural outlook, it appears that heterodiegetic fictions without any element of formal mimesis of third-person factual narrative are relatively rare except in some 19th-century fiction and, more frequently, in the 20th-century fiction. So instead of interpreting

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the symptoms of fictionality in an essentialist way and trying to use them as definitional criteria of fiction, as Hamburger and Banfield do, we should study them in a historical, cultural, and cognitive perspective: why did verbal fiction in the course of its evolution develop devices aimed at neutralizing the enunciative structure of language in favor of a purely “presentational” use? To our best knowledge, the answer to this question has to do with the processes of immersive simulation induced by narrative and maximized by fictional narrative. Whatever the importance of the insights gained by syntactic definitions of the fact/fiction distinction, as definitions they have severe shortcomings: to accept them, it would be necessary either to exclude first-person narration from the realm of fiction (Hamburger) or to distinguish between a grammar of epic narration and a grammar of the novel (Banfield). More generally, it would be necessary to accept the counterintuitive conclusion that most fictional texts fall short of the definition of fiction. If semantic definitions of fiction are generally too weak (they fail to distinguish between a fiction and a lie), syntactic definitions are generally too strong (many texts must be excluded which common sense considers to be fictional). 3.3 The Pragmatic Status of Narrative Fiction: Imagination and Playful Pretense The pragmatic definition of fiction is generally linked to the name of Searle, who is certainly its most important proponent, even though the idea of defining fiction pragmatically is much older than Searle. A pragmatic theory of narrative fiction was implicitly defended by Hume. It could be argued, more generally, that wherever and whenever public representations function as fictions, people link them to their pragmatic specificity because it is only by treating representations in this particular way that they become fictional representations (instead of false statements or lies). Even so, Searle’s definition of verbal fiction in terms of pretended speech acts ([1975] 1979: 58–75) is certainly one of the most important and influential contemporary pragmatic analyses of the fact/fiction distinction in the domain of verbal narrative. Walton, whose contribution to a pragmatics of fiction is as important as Searle’s, objected to the latter’s definition that the notion of a pretended speech act cannot yield a general definition of fiction because it has no application in, among other things, the domain of pictorial depiction: paintings cannot be described in terms of pretended speech acts because pictorial depiction is not a speech act (1990: Part I, 2.6). It could be argued, however, that Searle’s theory operates at two levels: a

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definition of verbal narrative fiction in terms of pretended speech acts, and a general definition of fiction in terms of intended playful pretense. It has also been objected to Searle that his definition of fiction as intended playful pretense is unable to explain the fact that many texts intended to be factual end up being read as fictions. Walton argues that fictional intention cannot be a defining property of fiction: a fiction is any object which serves as a prop in a game of make-believe, meaning that a fiction is a fiction because it functions as such independently of the question of whether or not somebody intended it to function in that way. Walton is surely right, but Searle’s interest lies primarily in the canonical public status of narrative fiction, and most of the time narrative texts which publicly function as props in a game of make-believe or as playful pretenses are intended to function in this way and, more importantly, have been specifically designed to do so. So if it is true that fictional intention cannot define fiction as a pragmatic stance, it is nevertheless the existence of a shared intention which explains the fact that the emergence of fictional devices has the cultural and technical history it has. It is important to distinguish the question of the structural function of intentionality from that of the communication of that intentionality. According to Searle, public representations only possess derived intentionality, which implies that mental intentionality is not transparent across minds: it has to be communicated by conventional means, i.e. using verbal or other signals. This is true also for the intention of fictionality: as shown by Koselleck (1979), the intention to create a factual or a fictional text has to be communicated by signals to be effective. These signals are often paratextual, but for the competent reader there also exist many textual “signposts” (Cohn 1990) signaling fictionality or factuality (see Iser 1983: 121–152). The pragmatic definition of fiction also highlights the difference between narrative fiction qua playful or artistic fiction and the types of fiction which are tied to the question of truth value and belief. Narrative fiction qua artistic fiction is not opposed to truth in the way cognitive illusion, error, and manipulation are opposed to truth, nor is it constrained by real-world truth conditions in the way the suppositional and counterfactual fictions of thought experiments are. As propounded by Searle, it is best characterized by the irrelevance of real-world truth conditions. In the light of this pragmatic definition, what distinguishes fictional narrative from factual narrative is not that the former is referentially void and the latter referentially full. What distinguishes them is the fact that in the case of fictional narrative the question of referentiality is irrelevant, whereas in non-fictional narrative contexts it is im-

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portant to know whether the narrative propositions are referentially void or not. Searle has been criticized for excluding the possibility of any syntactical criterion of fictionality (Cohn 1990). In fact, he only claims that syntactical markers of fictionality are neither necessary (a fictional text can be textually indistinguishable from a factual counterpart) nor sufficient (a factual text may use fictional techniques). The same fact was pointed out long ago by Hume: one and the same text may be read both as fiction and non-fiction. The text (in its syntactic and semantic dimensions) remains the same whatever the type of pragmatic attitude, but the use to which it is put will differ according to the pragmatic attitude (see Hume [1739] 1992: Bk I, Pt III, Sec VII). So Searle’s thesis is compatible with the fact that fictional texts and factual texts generally differ syntactically. A more important criticism is that Searle’s pragmatic definition is only negative: it tells us what fiction is not, but not what fiction is. Genette ([1991] 1993: chap. 2), while accepting Searle’s definition of fiction as a series of non-serious utterances, proposed to amend it by distinguishing two levels of illocution: a literal level—the level of the pretended speech acts—concealing a figural or indirect level that transmits a serious speech act (a declaration or a demand) which declares fictionally that such and such an event occurred, or, alternatively, invites the reader to imagine the content transmitted by the pretended speech acts (see Crittenden 1991: 45–52; Zipfel 2001: 185–195). In conclusion, the pragmatic definition claims that the syntactic status of fiction depends on its formal make-up, its semantic status on its relationship to reality, but that its status as fiction (or not) depends on the way the representations implemented by the text are processed or used. This would imply that the pair fact/fiction is logically heterogeneous. The conditions for satisfying the criteria of factual narrative are semantic: a factual narrative is either true or false. Even if it is willfully false (as is the case if it is a lie), what determines its truth or its untruth is not its (hidden) pragmatic intention, but that which is in fact the case. The conditions for satisfying the criteria of fictional narrative are pragmatic: the truth claims a text would make if it (the same text, from the syntactic point of view) were a factual text (be these claims true or false) must be bracketed out. 3.4 Simulation, Immersion and the Fact/Fiction Divide In recent years, theories of fiction and narratology have been renewed by cognitive science (Herman → Cognitive Narratology). The notion of

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simulation and its cognate immersion seem especially fruitful and may well lead to a better understanding of both the distinction between fact and fiction in narrative and their interplay. Simulation and playful pretense are basic human capacities whose roots are situated in mental simulation, a partly sub-personal process (Dokic & Proust 2002: intro., vii). Could it be that the mental specificity of fictional narrative is to be found in mental simulation? Actually, simulation is a very broad concept which encompasses much more than fiction. Theories of mental simulation were originally developed in order to account for “mind reading,” i.e. the ability to explain and predict the intentional behaviors and reactions of others. The assumption of simulation theories is that the competence of mind reading makes it possible to put oneself imaginatively “into someone else’s shoes.” It is true that mind reading has a strong narrative component, as the “mind reader” immerses himself in scenarios and scripts. But, of course, not every narrative is fictional. Basically it can be said that if every fiction results from a process of mental simulation, the opposite is not the case, i.e. that every simulation produces a fiction. Mind reading has a strong epistemic component: (a) it simulates the mental states of a really existing person; (b) simulation must reproduce that person’s intentional states in a reliable way, i.e. it is constrained by the necessity of correctly identifying and assessing the real properties of the person whose mental states are being simulated as well as by the context in which that person is found. In the case of fictional simulation, however, the agents and actions are invented in and through the process of simulation. This process is not referentially constrained and cannot be validated or invalidated in a direct way (e.g. by a comparison between behaviors predicted by the simulation and an actually occurring behavior). This means that, contrary to the results of mind reading, the results of a fictional narrative simulation are not directly fed into ongoing real-world interactions. Fictional (narrative) simulation is not only off-line representational activity (as is every simulation), but also a pragmatically encapsulated activity of simulation. Except for pathological cases, the postulated entities of fictional representations are not fed into our belief system concerning the trappings of the real world. Among other things, mental representations triggered by fictional simulation are not fed into real-world feedback loops. This does not mean that make-believe beliefs do not play into the inferential processes concerning real-world situations, but that this “playing into” is pretty much indirect. Cognitive science also has shown that simulation and immersive processes are not limited to fictional narratives. Every narrative induces

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varying degrees of immersive experience. As Ryan has convincingly shown, both fictional and non-fictional narrative texts invite readers to imagine a world (2001: 93): this “recreative” imagination (Currie & Ravenscroft 2002) is a process of immersive simulation. Of course, contrary to referentially oriented representing devices, fictional devices are generally (but not always and not necessarily) constructed so as to maximize their immersion-inducing power. Nevertheless, narrative immersion is not limited to fiction. Another point where simulation theories could be illuminating concerns the ongoing debate in narrative studies as to whether, as is the case in factual narrative, narrative (heterodiegetic) fiction implies the existence of a narrator or not (Margolin → Narrator). What is at stake here is in fact the question of the target domain of narrative immersion: does the reader or spectator immerge into a (fictional) world, or into a narrative act depicting a world? Does narrative fiction induce immersion through mimetic primers feigning descriptive utterances, or simply through a perspectively organized mentally centered and phenomenologically saturated presentation of a universe? As Currie and Ravenscroft (2002) have shown, both options are open, depending on the structure of the text. Finally, simulation theories may also help to achieve a better understanding of the grammatical deviations or anomalies of internal focalization in heterodiegetic fictional narrative as studied by Hamburger and Banfield. These “deviations” are not the result of conscious stipulations or decisions, but rather they have arisen slowly out of the practice of writing fiction. At the same time, they are not random, but on the contrary structurally coherent and functionally pertinent. It could therefore be hypothesized that they are the result of deep-level linguistic rearrangements due to cognitive-representational pressures stemming from the immersive process of mental simulation. If such were the case, and if these linguistic anomalies were to be read as a co-optation of language by fictional simulation, this would imply that at some deep level the immersion induced by verbal narrative is never only propositional, but also phenomenological and imaginative. The fact that the evolution of third-person fiction has given rise to techniques for neutralizing the enunciative anchoring of sentences could be interpreted as a symptom of the fact that narration as such induces this type of phenomenological immersion. The difference between factual and fictional narrative as far as simulation is concerned could thus be explained by the fact that once narrative is liberated from the epistemic constraints of truth value, the real aim of the immersive process becomes how to maximize it. This in

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turn would serve to account for the development of the anomalies studied by Hamburger and Banfield.

4 Topics for Further Investigation The interplay of the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic aspects of fictionality need to be further clarified. Historical and comparative studies of the way they co-evolved differently in different historical and cultural contexts are still too rare. The problem of the inferences we draw from the fictional world to the world in which we live is still very poorly understood, partly because these inferences are difficult to document by non-introspective methodologies: (a) Studying the “pathologies of fiction”—the different ways fictions can “go wrong”—would shed considerable light on the conditions under which fictions function “normally.” Some psychological studies suggest that these pathologies, operating on a sub-personal level, might be more common than a fiction-friendly attitude would have it. (b) Comparative work on various fictional “devices”—mental, verbal, visual, “actantial”—is necessary, because fiction is still too often identified with verbal fiction, and verbal fiction with fiction incarnated in a narrative act (oral or written). This is a “reductionist” move which underestimates the importance of theater, i.e. embodied verbal fictions being acted out in front of a public.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Aristotle (1996). Poetics. Tr. M. Heath. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Banfield, Ann (1982). Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. – (2002). “A Grammatical Definition of the Genre ‘Novel’.” Polyphonie – linguistique et littéraire / Lingvistik og litterær polyfoni No. 4, 77–100. Cohn, Dorrit (1990). “Signposts of Fictionality.” Poetics Today 11, 753–774. – (1999). The Distinction of Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Crittenden, Charles (1991). Unreality: The Metaphysics of Fictional Objects. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Currie, Gregory & Ian Ravenscroft (2002). Recreative Minds. Oxford: Oxford UP. Dokic, Jérôme & Joëlle Proust (2002). Simulation and Knowledge of Action. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

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Doležel, Lubomír (1998). Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – (1999). “Fictional and Historical Narrative: Meeting the Postmodernist Challenge.” D. Herman (ed.). Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 247–273. Ferguson, Niall, ed. (1997). Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactual. London: Picador. Frege, Gottlob ([1892] 1960). “On Sense and Reference.” P. Geach & M. Black (eds.). Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege. Oxford: Blackwell. 56–78. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Cornell: Cornell UP. – ([1983] 1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – ([1991] 1993). Fiction & Diction. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Goldman, Laurence (1998). Child’s Play: Myth, Mimesis and Make-Believe. New York: Berg. – & Michael Emmison (1995). “Make-Believe Play among Huli Children: Performance, Myth, and Imagination.” Ethnology 34, 225–255. Hamburger, Käte ([1957] 1973). The Logic of Literature. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Hume, David ([1739] 1992). Treatise of Human Nature. Buffalo: Prometheus Books. Iser, Wolfgang (1983). “Akte des Fingierens. Oder: Was ist das Fiktive im fiktionalen Text?” D. Henrich & W. Iser (eds.). Funktionen des Fiktiven. München: Fink, 121–152. Koselleck, Reinhard (1979). Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Kripke, Saul (1963). “Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic.” Acta Philosophica Fennica 16, 83–94. Kripke, Saul (1980). Naming and Necessity. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Lewis, David (1973). Counterfactuals. Cambridge: Harvard UP. – (1978). “Truth in Fiction.” American Philosophical Quarterly 15, 37–46. Martínez, Matías & Michael Scheffel (2003). “Narratology and Theory of Fiction: Remarks on a Complex Relationship.” T. Kindt & H.-H. Müller (eds.). What Is Narratology: Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: de Gruyter, 221–238. Pavel, Thomas (1986). Fictional Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Plato (1974). The Republic. Tr. L. Desmond. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Ronen, Ruth (1994). Possible Worlds in Fictional Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Russell, Bertrand ([1905] 2005). “On Denoting.” Special Issue: 100 Years of “On Denoting.” Mind 114, 873–887. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP. – (2001). Narrative as Virtual Reality. Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Schaeffer, Jean-Marie (1998). “Fiction, Pretense and Narration.” Style 32, 148–166. – ([1999] 2010). Why Fiction? Lincoln: U of Nebraska P.

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Schmid, Wolf (2010). Narratology: An Introduction. Berlin: de Gruyter. Searle, John ([1975] 1979). “The logical status of fictional discourse.” J. Searle. Expression and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 58–75. Stanzel, Franz K. (1964). Typische Formen des Romans. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. – ( [1979] 1984). A Theory of Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Sternberg, Meir (1985). The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading. Bloomington: Indiana UP. – (1990). “Time and Space in Biblical (Hi)story Telling: The Grand Chronology. ” R. Schwartz (ed.). The Book and the Text: The Bible and Literary Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Veyne, Paul ([1983] 1988). Did the Greeks Believer their Myths? Chicago: U of Chicago P. Walton, Kendall (1990). Mimesis as Make-Believe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. Zipfel, Frank (2001). Fiktion, Fiktivität, Fiktionalität: Analysen zur Fiktion in der Literatur und zum Fiktionsbegriff in der Literaturwissenschaft. Berlin: Schmidt.

5.2 Further Reading Caïra, Olivier (2011). Définir la fiction: Du roman au jeu d’échecs. Paris: Les Editions de l’EHESS. Doležel, Lubomír (2010). Fiction and History: The Postmodern Stage. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Gu, Ming Dong (2007). Chinese Theories of Fiction. A Non-Western Narrative System. Albany: SUNY P. Hoffman, Michael J. & Patrick D. Murphy, eds. (2005). Essentials of the Theory of Fiction. Duke UP. Lavocat, Françoise & Anne Duprat, eds. (2010). Fiction et cultures. Paris: SFLGC. Palmer, Alan (2002). Fictional Minds. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Pratt, Mary Louise (1977). Towards a Speech Act Theory of Narrative Discourse. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Vaihinger, Karl ([1911] 1984). The Philosophy of “As If”. A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind. London: Routledge. Zunshine, Lisa (2006). Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP.

Focalization Burkhard Niederhoff

1 Definition Focalization, a term coined by Genette (1972), may be defined as a selection or restriction of narrative information in relation to the experience and knowledge of the narrator, the characters or other, more hypothetical entities in the storyworld.

2 Explication Genette introduced the term “focalization” as a replacement for “perspective” and “point of view” (Niederhoff → Perspective – Point of View). He considers it to be more or less synonymous with these terms, describing it as a mere “reformulation” ([1983] 1988: 65) and “general presentation of the standard idea of ‘point of view’” (84). This, however, is an underestimation of the conceptual differences between focalization and the traditional terms. Genette distinguishes three types or degrees of focalization—zero, internal and external—and explains his typology by relating it to previous theories: “The first term [zero focalization] corresponds to what English-language criticism calls narrative with omniscient narrator and Pouillon ‘vision from behind,’ and which Todorov symbolizes by the formula Narrator > Character (where the narrator knows more than the character, or more exactly, says more than any of the characters knows). In the second term [internal focalization], Narrator = Character (the narrator says only what a given character knows); this is narrative with ‘point of view’ after Lubbock, or with ‘restricted field’ after Blin; Pouillon calls it ‘vision with.’ In the third term [external focalization], Narrator < Character (the narrator says less than the character knows); this is the ‘objective’ or ‘behaviorist’ narrative, what Pouillon calls ‘vision from without’” ([1972] 1980: 188–189).

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The passage synthesizes two models: a quasi-mathematical one in which the amount of narrative information is indicated by the formulas derived from Todorov; and a more traditional one based on the metaphors of vision and point of view, which is derived from Pouillon and Lubbock. That these two models are not equivalent has been shown by Kablitz (1988). If a novel begins by telling us who a character is, to whom she is married, and for how long she has been living in a certain town, it will reveal no more than the character knows herself, but no one would describe such a beginning as an example of “vision with” or character point of view. To tell a story from a character’s point of view means to present the events as they are perceived, felt, interpreted and evaluated by her at a particular moment. Genette himself leans in the direction of the Todorovian, information-based model. On occasion, he talks about focalization in terms of the point-of-view paradigm, e.g. when he describes it as placing narrative focus at a particular “point” ([1983] 1988: 73); but in general, he thinks of focalization in terms of knowledge and information. He thus defines it as “a restriction of ‘field’ [...], a selection of narrative information with respect to what was traditionally called omniscience” ([1983] 1988: 74). This emphasis is also implied by the very term itself and the preposition that goes along with it. Genette consistently writes “focalisation sur” in French: while a story is told from a particular point of view, a narrative focuses on something. This preposition indicates the selection of, or restriction to, amounts or kinds of information that are accessible under the norms of a particular focalization. If focalization is to be more than a mere “reformulation” of point of view, it is this aspect of the term, the information-based model, which should be emphasized. Genette’s emphasis on knowledge and information is also revealed by his extensive treatment of alterations ([1972] 1980: 194–198), defined as a transgression of the informational norm established by the focalization of a text. Alterations take two forms: paralepsis, the inclusion of an event against the norm of a particular focalization; and paralipsis, a similarly transgressive omission of such an event. According to Genette, the norms that are violated by these transgressions cannot be defined in advance (e.g. by commonsensical inferences as to what a particular narrator may have learnt about the story he or she tells). Instead, the norms are established by each particular text: “The decisive criterion is not so much material possibility or even psychological plausibility as it is textual coherence and narrative tonality” (208). Shen disagrees with this view, arguing that it boils down to a merely quantitative approach, a measurement of the relative length of the normative

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and the transgressive portions of the text; she suggests that there is a more general “legitimacy” that is violated by alterations (2001: 168– 169). However, her examples and her analyses show that “legitimacy” in matters of focalization is far from self-evident. In her case, it rests on rather arbitrary assumptions about the limited knowledge of first-person narrators and the unlimited knowledge of third-person narrators. A major point in Genette’s theory is his rigorous separation between focalization and the narrator (referred to with the grammatical metaphor of “voice”). Most previous theories analyze such categories as firstperson narrator, omniscience, and camera perspective under one umbrella term, usually point of view. Genette believes that such cavalier treatments of the subject “suffer from a regrettable confusion [...] between the question who is the character whose point of view orients the narrative perspective? and the very different question who is the narrator—or, more simply, the question who sees? and the question who speaks?” ([1972] 1980: 186). What follows from the separation of the two questions is a plea for a relatively free combination of narrator types and focalization types, a position that has ignited a considerable amount of controversy.

3 History of the Concept and its Study Genette’s theory was welcomed as a considerable advance on the previous paradigm of perspective or point of view, and the neologism of focalization has been widely adopted, at least by narratologists. Genette himself claims that his term is preferable because it is less visual and metaphorical than the traditional ones ([1972] 1980: 189). Other critics prefer it because it is not part of everyday speech and thus more suitable as a technical term with a specialized meaning (Bal [1985] 1997: 144; Nünning 1990: 253; Füger 1993: 44). However, the main argument is that the term dispels the confusion of the questions who sees? and who speaks? This argument has become a veritable commonplace (e.g. Bal [1985] 1997: 143; Edmiston 1991: x; O’Neill 1992: 331; Rimmon-Kenan [1983] 2002: 71; Nelles 1990: 366; Nünning 1990: 255–256). Finney states it as follows: “‘Focalization’ is a term coined by Gérard Genette to distinguish between narrative agency and visual mediation, i.e. focalization. ‘Point of View’ confuses speaking and seeing, narrative voice and focalization. Hence the need for Genette’s term” (1990: 144). It is true that Genette introduces the term focalization immediately after his polemics against the typological conflation of who sees? and who speaks?, but he does not establish a connection be-

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tween these polemics and his neologism—nor is there such a connection. As a term, focalization dispels the confusion of seeing and speaking no more than the traditional terms do. On the contrary, the connection between the question who sees? and point of view should be a little more evident than between who sees? and focalization. It is perfectly possible to embrace Genette’s scheme, including the separation and free combination of narrator and focalization types, while referring to his three focalizations as points of view. The case that the advocates of focalization have made for its superiority to point of view is by no means beyond dispute. Nor is it improved by the fact that some of them use the new term while still thinking along the lines of the old, overlooking the semantic differences between them and neglecting the new conceptual emphasis of the neologism. Füger, for example, explains that internal and external focalization can be distinguished by the “situation of the agent of the process of perception” (1993: 47), which is nothing but a roundabout paraphrase of point of view. A characteristic instance of the reinterpretation of focalization in terms of point of view is a change of preposition in the English translation of Genette’s study: “[L]e mode narratif de la Recherche est bien souvent la focalisation interne sur le héros” (1972: 214). “[T]he narrative mood of the Recherche is very often internal focalization through the hero” ([1972] 1980: 199). The rendering of sur as through speaks volumes. It seems that the translator is under the spell of the point-of-view paradigm. Instead of thinking about focalization as a selection of or a focusing on a particular region of the storyworld—in this case the mind of the protagonist—the translator regards this mind as a kind of window through or from which the world is perceived. Bal’s influential revision of Genette’s theory is another example of the reinterpretation of focalization in terms of point of view, although she is more aware of this than others. Thus she admits that perspective “reflects precisely” what she means by focalization ([1985] 1997: 143), and she points out that Genette ought to have written “focalisation par” instead of “focalisation sur” (1977: 29). The continuing influence of the point-of-view paradigm also seems to underlie Bal’s reconceptualization of Genette’s typology in terms of focalizing subjects and focalized objects. According to her, the distinction between Genette’s zero focalization and his internal focalization lies in the agent or subject that “sees” the story (the narrator in the first case, a character in the second); the difference between Genette’s internal and external focalization, however, has nothing to do with the subject that “sees” but with the object that is “seen” (thoughts and feelings in the first case, actions and

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appearances in the second). Thus she ends up with a system of two binary distinctions that replace Genette’s triple typology. There are two types of focalization: character-bound or internal (Genette’s internal focalization) and external (Genette’s zero and external focalization combined into one). Furthermore, there are two types of focalized objects: imperceptible (thoughts, feelings, etc.) and perceptible (actions, appearances, etc.). At least some of the elements in this reconceptualization result from Bal’s adherence to the point-of-view paradigm, notably the elimination of the distinction between Genette’s zero and external types (merged by Bal into external focalization). Within the point-of-view model, this change makes some sense. If one thinks about Genette’s zero and external focalization in terms of a point from which the characters are viewed, this point would appear to lie outside the characters in both cases. However, if one thinks in terms of knowledge and information, zero and external focalization are worlds apart. The first provides us with complete access to all the regions of the storyworld, including the characters’ minds, whereas in the second the access is extremely limited and no inside views are possible. While it is possible to explain the motivation of Bal’s modifications of Genette’s theory by pointing out her adherence to point of view, it must be said that, in themselves, these modifications are hardly compelling. It is simply erroneous to claim that Genette’s zero and internal types are distinguished by the focalizing subjects, whereas his internal and external types differ in the focalized objects. All of Genette’s focalizations vary, among other things, in the range of objects that can be represented; his zero focalization and his internal focalization (distinguished in terms of the focalizing subjects by Bal) are also dissimilar in this respect. Furthermore, the “focalized object” is a misleading concept: the crucial distinction concerning such objects is between “perceptible” and “imperceptible” ones, which means that the subjective element of perception that Bal has previously eliminated is reintroduced by way of the adjective. As Edmiston writes: “[T]he focalizer can be characterized by his objects of focalization, despite Bal’s efforts to separate them [...]. Subject and object [of focalization] may be analyzed separately, but they cannot be dissociated totally, as though there were no correlation between them” (1991: 153). Another feature of Bal’s theory, pointed out and criticized by Jahn, is “that [...] any act of perception (brief or extended; real, hypothetical or fantasized) presented in whatever form (narrated, reported, quoted, or scenically represented) counts as a case of focalization” (Jahn 1996: 260). This is a problematic premise, which perhaps stems from taking

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Genette’s question who sees? rather too literally. It ultimately reduces the analysis of focalization to a paraphrase of narrative content, to identifying acts of perception. However, if a narrative tells us that Mary sees John, we cannot be certain that the narrative is also focalized “by” (to use Bal’s preferred preposition) Mary. Whether this is the case depends on how Mary’s act of perception is narrated and on the context in which it occurs. Admittedly, Bal is not the only one to equate focalization with perception. This premise is also shared by Herman & Vervaeck (2004), Margolin (2009) and Prince, who explicitly states that his “discussion links focalization only to the perception of the narrated by (or through, or ‘with’) an entity in that narrated” (2001: 47). The equation of focalization with perception is also made by David Herman in “Hypothetical Focalization” (1994), an article that I will use here to point out the problems inherent in this equation. Drawing on possible-worlds semantics, Herman examines passages that explicitly describe what might have been seen at a particular point in the story if anyone had been there to see it. Thus, in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the narrator invokes an imaginary onlooker of this kind when he describes the house: “Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall [...]” ([1839] 1956: 97–98). The problem with Herman’s article is that it analyzes hypothetical perception rather than hypothetical focalization. The discovery of the fissure by Poe’s imaginary observer is hypothetical only in comparison with the case of a character actually seeing this fissure. In terms of the focalization of Poe’s story, the discovery is not hypothetical at all for the simple reason that the narrator mentions it. It has an effect on the focalization in that it contributes to the distancing of the narrating I from the experiencing I: the narrating I knows there was a fissure because he saw it very clearly at the end of the story, whereas the experiencing I seems to be unaware of it when he approaches the house for the first time. Generally speaking, instances of hypothetical perception would appear to point in the direction of zero focalization (or narratorial point of view in the traditional paradigm), just like the “report [of] what a character did not in fact think or say” discussed by Chatman ([1978] 1980: 225). Hypothetical focalization in the strict sense is a focalization option that is conceivable but not realized in a text, such as an internally focalized version of Fielding’s Tom Jones. Whether a text itself can achieve or suggest such hypothetical focalization is an interesting question awaiting an answer. While Bal’s revision of Genette’s theory involves deletions such as “external focalization,” it also contains additions, notably the “focaliz-

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er,” i.e. the “agent that sees” in a given focalization (Bal [1985] 1997: 146). This concept has spawned a considerable amount of controversy, including a more specific debate about the question of whether narrators can be focalizers. Bal, Phelan (2001) and many others assume that both characters and narrators can be focalizers; Chatman (1990) and Prince (2001) argue that characters can focalize while narrators cannot. Genette, on the other hand, rejects character focalizers but concedes, with some reluctance, the possibility of regarding the narrator as a focalizer ([1983] 1988: 72–73). However, he does not see any great need for the term, an attitude shared by Nelles, who considers it redundant (1990: 374). The skepticism of the latter two critics seems to be justified. To talk about characters as focalizers is to confuse focalization and perception. Characters can see and hear, but they can hardly focalize a narrative of whose existence they are not aware. This leaves us with the narrator (or the author?) as the only focalizer, an inference whose interest is primarily scholastic. If all types of focalization can be attributed to one agent, this attribution does not provide us with any conceptual tools that we can use in distinguishing and analyzing texts. Furthermore, the concept of focalizer is misleading because it suggests that a given text or segment of text is always focalized by one person, either the narrator or a character. But this is a simplification. Consider the famous beginning of Dickens’s Great Expectations, in which Pip, the first-person narrator, tells us how, as a little orphan, he visited the graves of his family and drew some highly imaginative conclusions about his relatives from the shape of their tombstones. This passage focuses on the thoughts and perceptions of the boy, but it also communicates the knowledge and the attitude of the adult narrator, primarily through style (elaborate language, ironically inflated lexis, etc.). It makes little sense here to ask whether or not the boy is the focalizer in this passage. It is more appropriate to analyze focalization as a more abstract and variable feature of the text, wavering between the knowledge and the attitudes of the adult narrator and the experience of the child character. To sum up, the various theoretical innovations introduced by the advocates of focalization are fraught with considerable problems; focalization is hardly so much superior to point of view that the old term can be discarded. Niederhoff (2001) compares the meanings and merits of the terms, making a case for peaceful coexistence of and complementarity between the two. There is room for both because each highlights different aspects of a complex and elusive phenomenon. Point of view seems to be the more powerful metaphor when it comes to narratives that attempt to render the subjective experience of a character; stating

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that a story is told from the point of view of the character makes more sense than to claim that there is an internal focalization on the character. Focalization is a more fitting term when one analyses selections of narrative information that are not designed to render the subjective experience of a character but to create other effects such as suspense, mystery, puzzlement, etc. If focalization theory is to make any progress, an awareness of the differences between the two terms and of their respective strengths and weaknesses is indispensable.

4 Topics for Further Investigation (a) The most pressing need is for an analysis of the specific conceptual features of the focalization metaphor in comparison with related metaphors such as perspective, point of view, filter, etc. This needs to be complemented by a thorough, non-dogmatic analysis of texts that shows which of these terms is more appropriate to which kind of text. (b) The question raised by Herman’s (1994) article remains to be investigated: Is there such a thing as hypothetical focalization? In other words, can a text suggest or imply a focalization that is not present in this text?

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Bal, Mieke (1977). Narratologie: Essais sur la signification narrative dans quatre romans modernes. Paris: Klincksieck. – ([1985] 1997). Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Chatman, Seymour ([1978] 1980). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – (1990). Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Edmiston, William F. (1991). Hindsight and Insight: Focalization in Four EighteenthCentury French Novels. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP. Finney, Brian (1990). “Suture in Literary Analysis.” LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory 2, 131–144. Füger, Wilhelm (1993). “Stimmbrüche: Varianten und Spielräume narrativer Fokalisation.” H. Foltinek et al. (eds.). Tales and their “telling difference”: Zur Theorie und Geschichte der Narrativik. Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag von Franz K. Stanzel. Heidelberg: Winter, 43–59.

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Genette, Gérard (1972). “Discours du récit.” G. Genette. Figures III. Paris: Seuil, 67–282. – ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Oxford: Blackwell. – ([1983] 1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Herman, David (1994). “Hypothetical Focalization.” Narrative 2, 230–253. Herman, Luc & Bart Vervaeck (2004). “Focalization between Classical and Postclassical Narratology.” J. Pier (ed.). The Dynamics of Narrative Form: Studies in Anglo-American Narratology. Berlin: de Gruyter, 115–138. Jahn, Manfred (1996). “Windows of Focalization: Deconstructing and Reconstructing a Narratological Concept.” Style 30, 241–267. Kablitz, Andreas (1988). “Erzählperspektive—Point of View—Focalisation: Überlegungen zu einem Konzept der Erzähltheorie.” Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 98, 237–255. Margolin, Uri (2009). “Focalization: Where Do We Go from Here?” P. Hühn et al. (eds.). Point of View, Perspective, and Focalization. Modeling Mediation in Narrative. Berlin: de Gruyter, 48–58. Nelles, William (1990). “Getting Focalization into Focus.” Poetics Today 11, 363–382. Niederhoff, Burkhard (2001). “Fokalisation und Perspektive: Ein Plädoyer für friedliche Koexistenz.” Poetica 33, 1–21. Nünning, Ansgar (1990). “‘Point of view’ oder ‘focalization’? Über einige Grundlagen und Kategorien konkurrierender Modelle der erzählerischen Vermittlung.” Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 23, 249–268. O’Neill, Patrick (1992). “Points of Origin: On Focalization in Narrative.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 19, 331–350. Phelan, James (2001). “Why Narrators Can Be Focalizers—and Why It Matters.” W. van Peer & S. Chatman (eds.). New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. Albany: SUNY, 51–64. Poe, Edgar Allan ([1839] 1956). Selected Writings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Prince, Gerald (2001). “A Point of View on Point of View or Refocusing Focalization.” W. van Peer & S. Chatman (eds.). New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. Albany: SUNY, 43–50. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith ([1983] 2002). Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Routledge. Shen, Dan (2001). “Breaking Conventional Barriers: Transgressions of Modes of Focalization.” W. van Peer & S. Chatman (eds.). New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. Albany: SUNY, 159–172.

5.2 Further Reading Peer, Willie van & Seymour Chatman, eds. (2001). New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. Albany: SUNY. Rossholm, Göran, ed. (2004). Essays on Fiction and Perspective. Bern: Lang.

Gender and Narrative Susan S. Lanser

1 Definition The study of gender and narrative explores the (historically contingent) ways in which sex, gender, and/or sexuality might shape both narrative texts themselves and the theories through which readers and scholars approach them. Within this broad inquiry, the field known as “feminist narratology” has explored the implications of sex, gender, and/or sexuality for understanding the “nature, form, and functioning of narrative” (Prince [1987] 2003: 65), and thus also for exploring the full range of elements that constitute narrative texts. Feminist narratology is thus also concerned with the ways in which various narratological concepts, categories, methods and distinctions advance or obscure the exploration of gender and sexuality as signifying aspects of narrative.

2 Explication Usually pursued under the rubrics of feminist narratology and, increasingly, queer narratology, the study of sex, gender, and sexuality as signifying elements of narrative encompasses a diversity of approaches and inquiries. Indeed, the three modifying terms—sex, gender, sexuality—are themselves subject to multiple definitions. In most academic pursuits today, “sex” stands for the biological designations of male and female (with some scholars including “intersex” as a designation), while “gender” marks social identities, roles, and behaviors as well as qualities of masculinity and femininity that have been associated with a specific sex, and “sexuality” refers to the orientation of desire toward a particular sexed or gendered object. The distinction between “sex” and “gender” has been challenged, however, by postmodern theorists and by biological confirmation that “sex” itself is not a singular entity. The term “gender” is now the most common anchor term, since it avoids binary assumptions about bodily identities and recognizes transgender and “gender-queer” possibilities.

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The field of gender and narrative stakes its diverse approaches on the shared belief that sex, gender, and sexuality are significant not only to textual interpretation and reader reception but to textual poetics itself and thus to the shapes, structures, representational practices, and communicative contexts of narrative texts. In claiming that these key vectors of social positioning carry narratological weight, feminist narratology marked a significant departure of value from classical narrative theory. Indeed, it was the insertion of gender that first challenged the premises of classical narratology from within the field, pioneering what is now known as “postclassical” narratology for its insistence on the significance of historical and social context in the production and reception of narrative and in the shaping of narrative forms and functions.

3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 From Universal Laws to Gender Consciousness Whether we date the inception of narrative poetics to the ancient Greeks, the Russian Formalists, the Anglo-American New Critics or the French structuralists, we can safely say that questions of gender were not among the field’s early distinctions or concerns. These “classical” forms of narrative theory aimed at identifying universal laws, outlining formal typologies, and describing stylistic and structural elements that were understood to recur quite apart from thematic content, actual readerships or, in many cases, cultural codes. Yet some early formulations do remind us that seeming universals may be unwittingly gendered. Propp’s morphology ([1928] 1958) depends on gendered functions even though Propp himself aspired to abstract those functions from content (9). While thirty of Propp’s thirty-one functions of the dramatis personae are named in relatively neutral terms, a male hero is implied throughout, and the final function of the wedding—“the hero is married and ascends the throne” (63)—evokes the conventional nature of the folktales themselves. Widespread application of Propp’s functions to other tales and texts reinforced attention to what was in effect a gendered plot. The interest in narrative poetics during the 1960s and 1970s that led Todorov to coin the term “narratology” (1969: 10), pioneered by Anglo-American theorists such as Frye and Booth and (mostly French) structuralists such as Todorov, Barthes, Bremond, Genette, Greimas, Prince, and Uspenskij, intensified the emphasis on a “science” of narrative committed to eliciting general laws understood to assume the de-

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tachability of texts from history, social context, and thematic concerns. Although Genette’s Narrative Discourse used Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu as the key text for his exploration of narrative order, duration, frequency, mood, and voice, his goal was to void his inquiry of narrative content in order to identify “elements that are universal, or at least transindividual” ([1972] 1980: 23). Thus when Genette acknowledges that he “went regularly to the most deviant aspects of Proustian narrative” (265, original emphasis), it is not sexual but narrative “deviance” to which he refers. Nor did narrative theorists such as Booth ([1961] 1983) and Chatman (1978) raise the possibility of gender differences between the writers on whose works they relied. The narratological landscape was soon challenged from within and without, however, in response to a broader shift in literary studies that questioned the abstraction of formal elements from cultural contingencies. New, identity-conscious inquiries into narrative practice were spurred by the emergence of political movements of the 1960s and their academic institutionalization in women’s studies, ethnic studies, and postcolonial studies. Perhaps the earliest internal reconfiguration of narratology appeared with Bal (1977), whose emphasis on works by women may not be unrelated to her integration of form, content, and context. In that same year, Showalter (1977) took all formalisms to task for “evad[ing] the issue of sexual identity entirely, or dismiss[ing] it as irrelevant and subjective” and thus “desexing” women writers (8). Along with the major epistemological challenges to structuralism’s fixities wrought by deconstruction, such identitarian challenges converged to open the intellectual space for rethinking even the newest contributions to narrative poetics. Several interventions of the early 1980s addressed this “desexed” poetics that feminists saw as masking an androcentric view. Nancy K. Miller (1981) exposed current notions of plot and plausibility as malecentered constructs masquerading as universal norms and argued that “the implausible twists” common to many women’s novels revealed “the stakes of difference within the theoretical indifference of literature itself” (44). Arguing that point of view was necessarily a matter of ideology as well as technique, Lanser (1981) aimed explicitly to forge a descriptive poetics of point of view that would accommodate both women’s writings and feminist concerns. Through a psychoanalytic lens, de Lauretis (1984) exposed the gendered Oedipal structure both of narrative desire and of narratological language in conventional understandings of narrativity and plot. Brewer (1984), Homans (1984), and DuPlessis (1985) likewise challenged conventional thinking about plot

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by exploring what they saw as the different dynamics of women’s narratives. 3.2 Feminist Challenges to Narratology “Proper” The tipping point in the study of gender and narrative occurred in 1986 through the simultaneous publication of Warhol’s “Toward a Theory of the Engaging Narrator” (1986) and Lanser’s “Toward a Feminist Narratology” (1986) that called for a gender-conscious narrative poetics. Warhol posited a distinction between “distancing” and “engaging” narrators and argued that the engaging narrator had been undertheorized and devalued because of its association with women writers and “sentimental” novels. Associating the “distancing” narrator with masculine cultural traits and the “engaging” narrator with feminine markers, while also showing that both men and women practice each strategy, Warhol criticized the dismissal of “engaging” practices as parcel to a gendered devaluation of direct engagement with the reader around issues of public concern. Taking on a broader set of narratological issues, Lanser asked “whether feminist criticism, and particularly the study of narratives by women, might benefit from the methods and insights of narratology and whether narratology, in turn, might be altered by the understandings of feminist criticism and the experience of women’s texts” (342). She argued that narratology could help to offset an overly mimetic approach to narrative by feminist readers and that, conversely, feminist studies could demonstrate the utility of narratology for nonnarratologists. To those compatible ends, Lanser proposed a range of interventions toward creating a more supple, rhetorically invested and gender-aware narrative poetics. Neither of these essays escaped critique. Warhol’s piece stirred sufficient dissent to warrant responses in subsequent issues of PMLA that challenged her gendering of distancing and engagement. More provocatively, Diengott (1988) rejected Lanser’s coupling of terms entirely, arguing that “there is no need, indeed no possibility” of a feminist narratology because “feminism has nothing to do with narratology” (49– 50). Lanser (1988) challenged Diengott’s understanding of narrative poetics as separable from content and context and even from the specific textual instance. Feminist narratology has also faced criticisms from feminist theorists who find narratology esoteric, elitist, and politically unconcerned. In response, Bal argued that rejecting formal analysis is foolhardy, since “political and ideological criticism cannot but be based on insights into the way texts produce those political effects” ([1985] 2009: 13).

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As Nünning concluded, however, “though Lanser and other feminist narratologists have incurred the displeasure of those to whom this sounds suspiciously like an ideological balkanization of narratology, the new approaches have raised pertinent new questions which have proved to be of greater concern to a larger number of critics than the systematic taxonomies, typologies and models so dear to the hearts of narratologists” (2000: 354). Indeed, by the turn of the new century, the study of gender had become a standard pursuit within both narrative theory in the broad sense and narratology “proper.” Simply defined by Warhol, feminist narratology at this stage consisted in “the study of narrative structures and strategies in the context of cultural constructions of gender” (quoted in Mezei 1996: 6), though as Warhol (1999) recognized, feminist narratologists were also likely to “mess up” (354) the neat binaries and categories of structuralist narratology in its questioning of “either/or” reasoning (340). 3.3 The Post-classical Turn: The Emergence of Feminist Narratologies Warhol’s Gendered Interventions (1989), Lanser’s Fictions of Authority (1992), and Mezei’s edited collection Feminist Narratology and British Women Writers (1996) all pushed the study of gender and narrative into further prominence and encouraged new work in the field. This trend helped to usher in the “postclassical” phase of narratology, an umbrella term coined by Herman (1997) to designate a range of theories that “move toward integration and synthesis” not only by “expos[ing] the limits” but also by “exploit[ing] the possibilities of the older, structuralist models” in “rethink[ing] their conceptual underpinnings” (Herman 1999: 3). Most common among these postclassical approaches are the cognitive, the postmodern, and the contextual, the latter pioneered by a feminist poetics that “refuses to separate questions about narrative grammar from questions about the contexts in which narratives are designed and interpreted” (11). By 2000, Richardson (2000) could claim that feminist criticism had “utterly and fruitfully transformed narrative theory and analysis” by subjecting “virtually every component of or agent in the narrative transaction” to “sustained examination” (168). As Sommer (2007) has noted, feminist narratology remains the “most established strand” of the contextual turn (61). At this juncture, then, feminism and narratology form a visible intersection on the literary map with a thick and varied scholarly and methodological dossier not always identified as “feminist narratology.” Bauer (1988) has fruitfully deployed Baxtin’s concepts of both carnival and the dialogic (Shepherd → Dialogism) to think about the dynamics of

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discourse and power in American women’s writing. Keen (2007) brings a feminist perspective to her exploration of narrative empathy (Keen → Narrative Empathy), calling for greater attention to women readers of popular fiction. Dannenberg (2009), which offers new understandings of plot that synthesize cognitive, ontological, and spatial approaches, also quietly focuses on deep history of writing by and about women. Rather than advancing a monolithic feminist narratology, these projects collectively yield a range of gender-conscious interventions in narrative thought that are not necessarily compatible with one another but each of which recognizes the legitimacy and indeed necessity of addressing gender in tandem with narrative inquiry. However, the postclassical “turn” also exposed the limitations of Lanser’s approach and, to a lesser extent, of Warhol’s, limitations that have become more evident in the wake of separate transformations in feminist and narratological thought. As Page has noted, Lanser (1992) rests on a “binary model of gender that emphasize[s] difference” and tends “to construct the category ‘women’ as if it were a universal group” (2006: 46–47). This same binarism arguably informs the essays in Mezei (1996) and continues in Case (1999), which advances the work initiated by Lanser and Warhol by exploring “feminine” strategies and male interventions that forge textual struggles over narrative authority. Moreover, all of these books and most work on feminist narratology of the 1980s and 1990s rests on a canon of English, American, and French writers that dates primarily to the 19th and 20th centuries. Page addresses this limitation by focusing variously on plot patterns in medieval Japanese and English texts, on media narratives about Hillary Rodham Clinton and Cherie Booth/Blair, and on children’s storytelling in New Zealand. Using engaging strategies of her own, Warhol (2003) takes up the question of the embodied and gendered reader by exploring affective responses to serial narratives from soap operas to detective novels. Thus Page and Warhol join several other scholars—Friedman (1998), most notably—who have been “re-mapping” feminist narrative thought along a multiplicity of theoretical and geographical routes in what Alber and Fludernik (2010) describes as a “phase of diversification” (5) for narratologies in general. 3.4 Re-Mapping: Toward an Intersectional Approach In a provocative essay exposing a methodological faultline between classical and contextual narratologies, Sommer (2007) argues that while a top-down imposition of narrative categories of the kind practiced by classical narratologists may be valid for projects attempting to describe

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all narrative possibilities, this approach is invalid for fields such as “postcolonial or intercultural narratologies” that are concerned with “specific features of specific texts embedded in specific cultural and historical contexts” (70). These contextual projects, Sommer claims, must therefore work inductively to build an inclusive corpus of texts from which to theorize. While of course no narrative poetics is entirely separable from individual instances, feminist narratology has been approached in both ways: some feminist narratologists work to develop fully universalist theories, whereas others argue for a more culturally specific poetics that describes the contours of particular bodies of texts. While the former group is more likely to favor deductive methodologies and the latter inductive ones, the more central difference concerns the extent to which it is possible to develop any narrative poetics that could account for all texts. At the heart of this bifurcation, however, sits feminist narratology’s still lopsided corpus, more white than interracial, more Anglo and American than global, more post- than pre-1800, more novelistic and cinematic than pan-generic. This imbalance has underscored the need for intersectional approaches that, rather than isolating the presumptive implications of gender, examine narratives within the specificities of multiple social vectors. Named in 1989 by legal scholar Crenshaw, the theory of intersectionality argues that diverse aspects of identity converge to create the social positions, perceptions, limitations, and opportunities of individuals and groups ([1989] 1991). Thus motherhood, often considered a universal female experience, is recalibrated as conditioned by nationality, age, race, and social class, to name only a few variables. Intersectionality theory maintains that no coherent female or male experience exists even within a single culture let alone across cultures, since cultures are always constituted within, and in turn constitute, aspects of identity, location, individual agency, and discursive realm. Intersectional thinking would thus reject a narratology that assumes gender or sexuality to be predictable or predictive. Rather than adopting a deductive approach by starting with the premise of difference, as was usually the case for feminist narratology in the 1980s, an intersectional narratology works upwards to narratological theory from the careful study of many and diverse textual instances. Although it is not strictly a narratological project and does not explicitly use intersectional theory, Friedman (1998) helped significantly to shift feminist narrative theory toward intersectional thought and away from its Euro-American emphases by arguing for the primacy of exploring “the role of geopolitical and cultural differences in providing what generates, motivates, and fuels narrative” (134). Advocating a

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shift from a psychoanalytic to an anthropological paradigm, Friedman lays the ground for a feminist narrative poetics that is spatial as well as temporal. In more recent work (Warhol & Lanser ed. forthcoming), Friedman advances the case for incorporating religion, a frequently ignored aspect of identity, in an intersectional narrative paradigm. Lanser (2010) has called for a vast project of global mapping not only of texts but of narratological scholarship generally in order to see where feminist narratology has placed its empirical emphases and where narrative study remains underexplored. Many other feminist scholars of narrative have now advanced the project of inclusion through their own attention to individual non-Anglo-American texts, to writings by and representations of men as well as to genres other than novel and film. Still, the creation of a holistic narratology that is adequate to these multiple contributions remains to be achieved. 3.5 Queer(ing) Narratology Although sexuality has entered the narratological conversation more recently and less fully than gender, the dramatic rise of “queer theory” since the 1990s has drawn attention to the implications of sexuality for narrative analysis. The term “queer” has been used in at least three ways within the study of narrative: to designate, respectively, nonheteronormative sexual identities, the dismantling of categories of sexuality and gender, and any practice that transgresses or deconstructs categories and binaries. In different ways, these approaches pose challenges not only to narratology “proper” but to feminist narratology as well. For example, Lanser’s (1995) insistence that non-dramatized heterodiegetic narrators are gendered—and normatively gendered according to the sex of the author—might usefully yield to the argument that heterodiegesis is a freer locus of non-gendered narrative voice. A primary concern within queer narrative theory—and one that still divides theorists along dystopic and utopic lines—has focused on whether narrative is irrecoverably heteronormative or, conversely, is capable of “queering.” Roof (1996) argued for the underlying heteronormativity of narratives that “include” lesbian, gay, or queer characters and of narrative theory itself, with its binary definitions that make defining narrative “always a tautological project where the question of a narrative ‘logic’ is preempted at the very moment one tries to answer it” (48). In declaring that “there is no there to get” (187), Roof joins such scholars as D. A. Miller (1992), who asks “so long as narrative is wedded to marriage and kin to the family, what is left for us to tell?” (46) and Edelman, who exposes “the (il)logic by which narrative pro-

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duces the crime that it apparently only reports” (1994: 191). More sanguine about narrative’s queer potential, Farwell argues that the lesbian subject disrupts the “asymmetrical gender codes” (1996: 17) of traditional narrative and rewrites the dynamics of power, while Lanser (1995), exploring the implications of narratives such as Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body in which the narrator’s gender is unknown, suggests that narratological categories be revisited for their queer potential. The implications of queerness for narrativity itself continue to preoccupy scholars of sexuality and narrative, and it is fair to say that the jury is still out concerning the viability of narrative to take a significantly queer turn. The inquiry has expanded as narrative theorists consider heteronormativity in its broadest sense—what Berlant and Warner (1998) describe as a system of “institutions, structures of understanding, and practical orientations” that privilege heterosexuality even in “contexts that have little visible relation to sexual practice” (547). Meanwhile, however, queer narratology has turned to a range of texts and topics from queer manifestations in Japanese novels to queer formations in Hollywood cinema. Some of the most exciting new work, which also engages questions of narrativity, has focused on queer temporality, a topic whose broad ramifications for history, scholarship, and politics were featured in a special issue of GLQ (2007). Recent work by Rohy (2009), Freeman (2010) and Vincent (2012) also takes up the question of narrative time from the perspective of queer theories and positionalities, variously studying the implications of linear or “straight” time, of pseudo-iterativity and recursivity, of arresting and arrested temporalities, of queer convergences of time, and of the impasses that accrue when a narrative cannot move toward the heteronormative promise of reproduction that some scholars have argued constitutes the very foundation of narrativity. Others have looked at queer voice and queer characterization although explicit intersections between narratology and queer theory remain, in the early stages, ready for further attention by both queer theorists and narratologists. A volume of essays on feminist and queer narrative theories (Warhol & Lanser forthcoming) should help to further conversation between queer and feminist approaches while providing a fuller foundation for queer(ing) narratology.

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4 Topics for Further Investigation Although the study of gender and narrative has opened up new vistas, many challenges remain. (a) Paramount among these is to forge a genuinely global and intersectional narrative corpus and, through this corpus, a poetics supple enough to address aspects of gender evoked by the range of the world’s narrative texts present and past. (b) Given the general neglect of character (Jannidis → Character) in narratology, as opposed to its significance in feminist and queer studies, feminist and queer narratologists might profitably follow up on Woloch’s (2003) innovative work by studying the gendered distribution of characters and the intersectional implications of character distribution. (c) Narratology still largely proceeds as though it is women who “have” gender and men who are gender-free; very little work has been accomplished on the gendering of male writers, narrators, and characters according to the same intersectional principles that feminist narratologists have called on with respect to women’s works. (d) Like other identity-based studies of narrative, the study of queer narratives has emphasized mimetic aspects of character and plot; fuller attention to textual form will help to shape a more comprehensive poetics for studying of queer narratives. (e) Questioning both gendered and “gender-neutral” assumptions within narratology itself could yield a productive “queering” of such narrative elements as heterodiegesis, metalepsis, and free indirect discourse as a way to challenge the binaries still prevalent even within postclassical narratologies. (f) Attending to a burgeoning cognitive narratology is perhaps the toughest current challenge for a gendered narrative poetics. While Palmer has argued that a cognitive method creates the very basis for historical and cultural approaches (2010: 7), gender has thus far been a sidebar to cognitive narratology, and some feminist thinkers find its penchant for universal theories of mind to be as problematic as the universal structures proposed by classical narratology. Finally, (g) a narratology conscious of gender and sexuality can provide new opportunities for feminist and queer theory and scholarship, particularly if non-literary genres are engaged. Thus, while narratologists might work toward forging a narratology that is more broadly gender-inclusive, scholars of gender and sexuality might forge feminist and queer theories that are more deeply narratological. Extending narratology to such socially invested fields might require addressing some longstanding problems of terminology and relevance that have limited the value of narrative poetics for non-specialists. But such efforts can

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help to demonstrate the value of narratology for an interdisciplinary community of scholars and readers.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Alber, Jan & Monika Fludernik, eds. (2010). Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Bal, Mieke (1977). Narratologie. Essais sur la signification narrative dans quatre romans modernes. Paris: Klincksieck. – ([1985] 2009). Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Bauer, Dale (1988). Feminist Dialogics: A Theory of Failed Community. Albany: State U of New York P. Berlant, Lauren & Michael Warner (1998). “Sex in Public.” Critical Inquiry 24, 548– 566. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Brewer, Mária Minich (1984). “A Loosening of Tongues: From Narrative Economy to Women Writing.” MLN: Modern Language Notes 99, 1141–1161. Case, Alison A. (1999). Plotting Women: Gender and Narration in the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Novel. U of Virginia P. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Crenshaw, Kimberlé ([1989] 1991). “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43, 1241–1299. Dannenberg, Hilary (2009). Coincidence and Counterfactuality: Plotting Time and Space in Narrative Fiction. U of Nebraska P. De Lauretis, Teresa (1984). Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Diengott, Nilli (1988). “Narratology and Feminism.” Style 22, 42–51. DuPlessis, Rachel Blau (1985). Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century Women Writers. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Edelman, Lee (1994). Homographesis: Essays in Gay Literary and Cultural Theory. New York: Routledge. Farwell, Marilyn (1996). Heterosexual Plots and Lesbian Narratives. New York: New York UP. Freeman, Elizabeth (2010). Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Durham: Duke UP. Friedman, Susan Stanford (1998). Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter. Princeton: Princeton UP. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP.

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Herman, David (1997). “Scripts, Sequences, and Stories: Elements of a Postclassical Narratology.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 112, 1046–1059. – (1999). “Introduction: Narratologies.” D. Herman (ed.). Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1–30. Homans, Margaret (1984). “Feminist Fictions and Feminist Theories of Narrative.” Narrative 2, 3–16. Keen, Suzanne (2007). Empathy and the Novel. Oxford: Oxford UP. Lanser, Susan (1981). The Narrative Act: Point of View in Prose Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP. – (1986). “Toward a Feminist Narratology.” Style 20, 341–363. – (1988). “Shifting the Paradigm: Feminism and Narratology.” Style 22, 52–60. – (1992). Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – (1995). “Sexing the Narrative: Propriety, Desire, and the Engendering of Narratology,” Narrative 3, 85–94. Published with some revisions in Mezei ed. (1996) as “Queering Narratology,” 250–261. – (2010). “Are We There Yet? The Intersectional Future of Feminist Narratology.” Foreign Literature Studies 32, 32–41. Mezei, Kathy, ed. (1996). Feminist Narratology and British Women Writers. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P. Miller, D. A. (1992). Bringing Out Roland Barthes. Berkeley: U of California P. Miller, Nancy K. (1981). “Emphasis Added: Plots and Plausibilities in Women’s Fiction.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 96, 36–48. Nünning, Ansgar (2000). “Towards a Cultural and Historical Narratology: Concepts, Diachronic Approaches and Projects.” B. Reitz & S. Rieuwerts (eds.). Anglistentag 1999 Mainz: Proceedings. Trier: WVT, 345–373. Page, Ruth E. (2006). Literary and Linguistic Approaches to Feminist Narratology. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Palmer, Alan (2010). Social Minds in the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Prince, Gerald ([1987] 2003). A Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Propp, Vladimir ([1928] 1958). Morphology of the Folktale. Bloomington: Indiana UP. “Queer Temporalities” (2007). Special Issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 15. Richardson, Brian (2000). “Recent Concepts of Narrative and the Narrative of Narrative Theory.” Style 34, 168–175. Rohy, Valerie (2009). Anachronism and its Others: Sexuality, Race, Temporality. Albany: SUNY Press. Roof, Judith (1996). Come as You Are: Sexuality and Narrative. New York: Columbia UP. Showalter, Elaine (1977). A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton: Princeton UP. Sommer, Roy (2007). “Contextualism Revisited: A Survey (and Defence) of Postcolonial and Intercultural Narratologies.” Journal of Literary Theory 1, 61–79. Todorov, Tzvetan (1969). Grammaire du “Décameron.” The Hague: Mouton.

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Vincent, J. Keith (2012). Two-Timing Modernity: Homosocial Narrative in Modern Japanese Fiction. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Warhol, Robyn R. (1986). “Toward a Theory of the Engaging Narrator: Earnest Interventions in Gaskell, Stowe, and Eliot.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 101, 811–818. – (1989). Gendered Interventions: Narrative Discourse in the Victorian Novel. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP. – (1999). “Guilty Cravings: What Feminist Narratology Can Do for Cultural Studies.” D. Herman (ed.). Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 340–355. – (2003). Having a Good Cry: Effeminate Feelings and Pop-Culture Forms. Columbus: Ohio State UP. – & Susan S. Lanser, ed. (forthcoming). Narrative 2.0: Queer and Feminist Approaches. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Woloch, Alex (2003). The One vs. the Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel. Princeton: Princeton UP.

5.2 Further Reading Herman, David, James Phelan, Peter J. Rabinowitz, Brian Richardson, & Robyn Warhol (2012). Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Lanser, Susan S. (2010). “Sapphic Dialogics: Historical Narratology and the Sexuality of Form.” J. Alber & M. Fludernik (eds.). Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 186–205. Peters, Joan Douglas (2002). Feminist Metafiction and the Evolution of the British Novel. Gainesville: UP of Florida. Prince, Gerald (1982). Narratology: The Form and Function of Narrative. Berlin: Mouton. – (1995). “On Narratology: Criteria, Corpus, Context.” Narrative 3, 73–84. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith ([1983] 2002). Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London & New York: Routledge. Scholes, Robert E. & Robert Kellogg (1966). The Nature of Narrative. New York: Oxford UP. Shen, Dan (2005). “Why Contextual and Formal Narratologies Need Each Other.” Journal of Narrative Theory 35, 141–171.

Heteroglossia Valerij Tjupa

1 Definition This term results from a translation (Morson & Emerson 1990) of Mixail Baxtin’s neologism raznorečie. According to Baxtin’s understanding of language use, a “social person,” who is also a “speaking person,” operates not with language as an abstract regulatory norm, but with a multitude of discourse practices that form in their totality a dynamic verbal culture belonging to the society concerned: “language is something that is historically real, a process of heteroglot development, a process teeming with future and former languages, with prim but moribund aristocrat-languages, with parvenu-languages and with countless pretenders to the status of language which are all more or less successful, depending on their degree of social scope and on the ideological area in which they are employed” (Baxtin [1934/35] 1981: 356–357).

2 Explication The category of heteroglossia has entered the scholarly apparatus of narratology because the verbal presentation of the narration necessarily possesses certain linguistic characteristics that create the effect of a voice. Narration not only takes place from a particular standpoint in time and space, but also inevitably has a certain stylistic color, a certain tone of emotion and intention that can be described as “glossality.” This is directed at the reader’s ability to hear (Tjupa 2006: 35–37). Heteroglossia is a “dialogical,” agonal structure of verbal communication whose essence lies in the fact that “within the arena of almost every utterance an intense interaction and struggle between one’s own and another’s word is being waged” (Baxtin [1934/35] 1981: 354), a struggle, that is, involving two or more codes between which links of selection and connotation emerge. The former kind of link is based on the use of different words to describe one and the same reality in differ-

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ent languages; the latter kind of link on the description of different realities using the same words in different languages. The phenomenon of heteroglossia is relevant to narratology in so far as the narrative text is composed of two elements, the narrator’s (Margolin → Narrator) text and the characters’ (Jannidis → Character) text (Doležel 1960, 1973; Schmid [1973] 1986, 2005). The second of these “heteroglot” texts that are “alien” to one another presents itself as “utterance within utterance,” whereas the first is encountered as “utterance about utterance” (Vološinov [1929] 1973: 115), as a “framing context” that, “like the sculptor’s chisel, hews out the rough outlines of someone else’s speech, and carves the image of language out of the raw empirical data of speech life” (Baxtin [1934/35] 1981: 358). The text framed by narrative can be a diverse one (a bundle of heterogeneous texts produced by various characters) or a zero text (in the case of a silent hero whose position within the event is not verbalized). In the latter case, the character’s text is indeed pushed out of the presentation of the narration, but it cannot be eliminated from the story of narration of whose chain of events it is a part. As a silent dialogizing background to the narrator’s speech, it can have a crucial influence on that speech, on its stylistically relevant lexical features, its syntax, and its tonality of emotion and intention (consider Dostoevskij’s “Gentle Spirit”). And in the opposite case, that of a text stylized as skaz (Schmid → Skaz), in which “the narrator’s speech has at one and the same time the function of representing and of being represented” (Schmid 2003: 191), the role of an actively silent dialogizing background is performed by the virtual zero text of the author, who would have told the story in question in different words (Schönert → Author). The effect of heteroglossia can be used in widely different ways by the presentation of the narration, ranging from a “war of languages” (Barthes [1984] 1986) to their tautology (zero heteroglossia). Between these poles we find various ways of incorporating intratextual discourses into the narrator’s text in the manner of quotation, as well as various forms of “textual interference” (Schmid 2003: 177–222) or, as Baxtin ([1934/35] 1981: 304) puts it, “hybrid construction,” namely “an utterance that […] contains mixed within it two utterances, two speech manners, two styles, two ‘languages,’ two semantic and axiological belief systems.” The discourse related by the narrator can, for him, have the status of an authoritative linguistic action. The turn to the authoritative textbehind-the-text (the reading of the Gospel at the end of Tolstoj’s Resurrection, or the psalter in Bunin’s story “Exodus”) creates the effect of a hierarchically constructed heteroglossia. The opposite of this kind of

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hierarchy occurs when a narrator occupies a position of power where he appears as “editor” (Uspenskij [1970] 1973: 43) of the characters’ direct speech, transforming it as he sees it and thereby reducing the overall level of heteroglossia in the text. Following the norm established in the classical realism of the 19th century, the direct speech of a character often serves to express that character’s linguistic view of the world, which can differ to a greater or lesser extent from the view of the world on which the narration is based. In such cases, the lexical, grammatical, and intonation-related syntactic features of the character’s text contrast with the narrator’s text and combine to form a certain voice belonging to a different subject. The quoted voice does not have the same compositional standing as the quoting voice: fragments of the characters’ speech are extracted from the flow of the characters’ verbal activity by the narrator in a manner similar to the way in which the narrator makes selections from the flow of connected events belonging to (historically real or invented) reality. The axiological hierarchy need not be present here, though. In certain special cases, texts-in-texts of this kind can be presented in a different national language, e.g. French in Tolstoj’s War and Peace: “When foreign and irregular speech is represented […], the author stresses the distance between the speaking character and the describing observer” (Uspenskij [1970] 1973: 51). Even in the context of a single national language, however, the heteroglossia that results from the distance between two or more “socio-linguistic belief systems” (Baxtin [1934/35] 1981: 356) can act as an effective means of organizing the narrative world of a work. Thus, in Lermontov’s “The Fatalist” (a chapter of the novel A Hero of our Times), the words of the Cossacks on the one hand and of Maksim Maksimyč on the other are stylistically brief, but clearly set apart from the speech of Pečorin (the narrator). They are the voices of another life, the life of the “others.” The replies by Vulič and the unnamed officers, on the other hand, cannot be stylistically distinguished from the text of the narrator. In this case, zero heteroglossia points not to the anonymity of an act of narration that is inextricably bound to the world of transmission it shares with the characters (as in Homer’s Iliad), but to the potential power of the narrator where discourse is concerned: for him, the characters (primarily Vulič, Pečorin’s inner Doppelgänger) seem in some way to be actors in a drama taking place inside his lonely mind. This is the zero heteroglossia of Romantic discourse. By providing other characters with lexical, grammatical, and intonation-related syntactic voices, however, Lermontov brings his prose beyond the boundary of the cultural paradigm of romanticism.

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Interference, or “contaminations” (Uspenskij [1970] 1973: 32), between the narrator’s text and the characters’ text can take place through forms of indirect speech and free indirect speech (McHale → Speech Representation), for which Schmid (2003: 216–239, 2005: 177–222) suggests a detailed classification. The leading role in a textual interference with many forms is performed by the narrator’s text, which can be characterized with reference to its intention regarding the characters’ text (its language, its style, its horizon of values). Using Baxtin’s terms, we can distinguish here between (a) “assimilation,” (b) “demarcation” (razmeževanie), and (c) “dialogized interillumination” as fundamental intentions. In the case of (a), we are concerned with the incomplete absorption of the characters’ text by the narrator’s text: a lexical, grammatical, or syntactic remnant of a foreign discourse can be identified in the narrator’s speech. In the case of (b), there is an axiological divergence, a confrontation of horizons in which every foreign word is carefully preserved but given an undertone of caricature in the narrator’s speech. In the case of (c), we would speak of a convergence of horizons that have equal axiological status and contain “truths” of equal value complementing each another. The types of textual interference just described can be mutually interrelated and intertwined in a complex manner. In Dostoevskij’s story “Mr Prokharčin,” for example, this leads to mental conflict, intensified to extremes, between the eponymous hero, characterized by his egocentric, self-directed speech, and his surroundings, the brotherhood of the officials who formulate their views of life in a flowery style. In the process, the narrator (a biographer who represents the story with a sideways glance at the lovers of a noble style) manipulates all three possible intentions of heteroglossia with virtuosity in his efforts to establish a balance between the opposing positions. More recent prose (since Čechov) has seen the possibility of having mutually complementary narrative entities emerge and establish themselves; this makes the convergence of narrator’s text and characters’ text an all-encompassing principle of narration. Here, without losing its crucial compositional function, the “voice of the narrator” draws near to the “axiological and linguistic horizon of the hero” (Schmid 2003: 233); the narrator, declining to exercise his power, does not give himself the last word, leaving no more than meaningful pointers behind instead (consider Solženicyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovič). This device, which bears a superficial resemblance to skaz but is really the opposite of skaz styling, has been given the name “free indirect authorial narration” (nesobstvenno-avtorskoe povestvovanie; Koževnikova 1994). This choice of term, though, does not seem entirely appropri-

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ate: the narrative text, as the result of the aesthetic verbal activity of “indirect speaking” (Baxtin [1959/60] 1996: 314, 1986: 110), is never directly correlated with the author; there are always mediating entities, and so the narrative text is always an indirect authorial utterance. For the most part, the phenomenon of heteroglossia in narrative discourse is treated as an aspect of the more general problem of point of view (Uspenskij [1970] 1973); it is described in such cases as “phraseological perspective” (Korman [1975] 2006) or “linguistic” perspective (Schmid 2003, 2005). Assuming that the terms are equivalent in this way, though, can give cause for objection. The discursive practice to which a text (or the quoted words of a text) belongs does not end with perspective: behind the discourse there lies a certain axiological and cultural, ideological and linguistic, socio-psychological horizon attached to those who are speaking/writing. This horizon contains all the potential objects, found by the mind in question, of a subjective stance concerning them; it is a potential field of reference for the discourse. Perspective, on the other hand, is always actual: it represents a “single (unique, ‘immediate’) relationship between subject and object” (Korman [1975] 2006: 184), it activates a certain segment of the horizon and positions the subject itself within that horizon. As a narratological category, it may well be sufficient to define narrative perspective as a “position of the ‘observer’ (the narrator, the character) in the represented world,” as a position that “expresses the author’s evaluative stance toward this subject and its mental horizon” (Tamarčenko 2004: 221). Even in the text, the horizon of a narrating entity itself has only a potential existence: it is represented by the stylistic “symptoms” of its boundaries which are activated by the contrapuntal and/or polyphonic heteroglossia of the multi-voiced text. In Lermontov’s novel, for example, the fatalist Vulič is provided with an ideological and chronotopic perspective, but does not have a voice of his own, since his axiological horizon is, as that of a special being, potentially equivalent to the horizon of Pečorin the narrator himself, another special being who remains a doubting officer.

3 History of the Concept and its Study Baxtin’s pupil and successor Vološinov ([1926] 1995, [1929] 1973) must be credited with providing the first fundamental formulation of the problem of heteroglossia. In particular, he set up the term “speech interference” (Vološinov [1929] 1973: 148). In Russian literary studies, the terms “voice” and “socio-linguistic horizon” have become estab-

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lished in the wake of Baxtin’s work on Dostoevskij (1929, [1963] 1984) and of his studies on the genre of the novel (Baxtin [1934/35] 1981). Baxtin conceives of voice in two dimensions at once: as one of the products of the general language-producing “language-intention” of the speaker and as a special stylistically realized “language” of a speaker, a language with its own picture of the world (“its own world inextricably bound up with the parodied language” [1934/35] 1981: 364). The term “voice” was introduced to Western literary studies by Lubbock ([1921] 1957: 68), who believes that the author can make use of both his own language and the languages (of the minds) of his characters. Western scholarship became acquainted with Baxtin’s ideas about heteroglossia via the work of Kristeva ([[1966] 1980, 1970), whose writings have enjoyed a wide and favorable international reception. In enthusiastically adapting Baxtin’s theory to the emerging ideology of postmodernism, however, this French scholar distorted his ideas significantly: she replaced Baxtin’s “plentitude of speech” with the concept of intertextuality; she speaks of an “insight first introduced into literary theory by Baxtin: any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another. The notion of intertextuality replaces that of intersubjectivity, and poetic language is read as at least double” (Kristeva [1966] 1980: 66; italics in original). In reality, Baxtin saw intersubjectivity as one of the fundamental concepts of his ontological and gnoseological deliberations, and the text was never conceived of as an anonymous “mosaic” (in the sense of Kristeva’s thesis that “any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations”). For Baxtin, the text was a compositionally unitary utterance of a particular (in literature fictive) subject, a subject within which there are foreign words and entire foreign intratextual discourses that can enter into various relationships with the discourse surrounding them: subordinated and subordinating relationships, relationships of discussion as equals, and relationships of solidarity. Somewhat later, without turning to Baxtin for support, Barthes ([1984] 1986) considered the phenomenon of heteroglossia in his essays “The Division of Languages” and “The War of Languages.” Barthes, though, treated it as a negative phenomenon, one that must be overcome by “progressive” écriture (Barthes [1984] 1986: 124). In his Encyclopedia entry “Texte,” Barthes (1973)—who similarly to Baxtin conceives of language as a multiplicity of voices surrounding the text on all sides—treats the text as no more than a “new fabric woven out of old quotations.” This is the path that led to deconstruction, which replaces heteroglossia with intertextuality and thereby effectively sus-

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pends the narratological problem of narrating as a positioning of the narrator in discourse. Among the works that have restored an appropriate understanding of Baxtin’s “plentitude of speech,” special mention must be made of a book by the creators of the English term “heteroglossia” (Morson & Emerson 1990). This study has had a visible influence on contemporary narratology, despite the authors’ critical stance toward the narratological approach to the study of literature. Close reading and an appropriate development of the possibilities contained in Baxtin’s typology of the prose word are typical of Schmid’s narratology (2005). In Russianlanguage scholarship, Baxtin’s narratological ideas, particularly that of heteroglossia, have been developed by Tamarčenko (2004) and Tjupa (2006), as well as in Schmid’s book (2003, 2005).

4 Topics for Further Investigation An important starting point for narratological studies is the need to distinguish between the categories of perspectivization (the system of points of view) and glossality (the system of voices), which are of equal status and complement each other. Genette ([1972] 1980: 186) had already begun making this distinction when he separated the question “who sees?” from that of “who speaks?” (Translated by Alastair Matthews)

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Barthes, Roland (1973). “Texte.” Encyclopædia universalis. Paris: Seuil, vol. 15, 1013–1017. – ([1984] 1986). The Rustle of Language. Oxford: Blackwell. Baxtin, Mixail (1929). “Problemy tvorčestva Dostoevskogo.” Sobr. soč. v 7 tt. Moskva: Russkie slovari, vol. 2, 5–175. – (Bakhtin, Mikhail) ([1934/35] 1981). “Discourse in the novel.” M. M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: U of Texas P, 259–422. – ([1959/60] 1996). “Problema teksta.” Sobr. soč. v 7 tt. Moskva: Russkie slovari, vol. 5, 306–326. – (Bakhtin, Mikhail) ([1963] 1984). M. M. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P.

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(Bakhtin, Mikhail) (1986). Speech Genres and Other late Essays. Austin: U of Texas P. Doležel, Lubomír (1960). O stylu moderní ceské prózy. Vystavba textu. Praha: Nakl. Československé Akad. Věd. – (1973). Narrative Modes in Czech Literature. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Korman, Boris O. ([1975] 2006). “Zametki o točke zrenija.” Teorija literatury. Iževsk: Izd. Udmurtskogo un-teta, 180–185. Koževnikova, Natal’ja A. (1994). Tipy povestvovanija v russkoj literature XIX–XX vv. Moskva: Nauka. Kristeva, Julia ([1966] 1980). “Word, Dialogue and Novel.” J. Kristeva. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. New York: Columbia UP, 64– 91. – (1970). Le texte du roman. Approche sémiologique d’une structure discursive transformationelle. La Haye: Mouton. Lubbock, Percy ([1921] 1957). The Craft of Fiction. London: Cape. Morson, Gary Saul & Caryl Emerson (1990). Mikhail Bakhtin. Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford: Stanford UP. Schmid, Wolf ([1973] 1986). Der Textaufbau in den Erzählungen Dostoevskijs. Amsterdam: Grüner. – (2003). Narratologija. Мoskva: Jazyki slavjanskoj literatury. Schmid, Wolf (2005). Elemente der Narratologie. Berlin: de Gruyter. Tamarčenko, Natan D. (2004). “‘Sobytie rasskazyvanija’: struktura teksta i ponjatija narratologii.” N. D. Tamarčenko et al. (eds.). Teorija literatury. Moskva: Academia, t. 1, 205–242. Тjupa, Valerij I. (2006). Analiz khudožestvennogo teksta. Moskva: Academia. Uspenskij, Boris A. ([1970] 1973). A Poetics of Composition. Berkeley: U of California P. Vološinov, Valentin N. ([1926] 1995). “Slovo v žizni i slovo v poėzii.” Filosofija i sociologija gumanitarnykh nauk. S-Peterburg: Asta-Press, 59–87. – (Voloshinov) ([1929] 1973). Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. New York: Seminar P.

5.2 Further Reading Heuvel, Pierre van den (1985). Parole, mot, silence: Pour une poétique de l’énonciation. Paris: Corti. Padučeva, Elena V. (1996). “Semantika narrativa.” Semantičeskie issledovanija. Мoskva: Jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 193–418. Schmid, Wolf (1998). Proza kak poėzija. S-Peterburg: Inapress. Todorov, Tzvetan ([1981] 1984). Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogic Principle. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Zbinden, K. (1999). “Traducing Bakhtin and Missing Heteroglossia.” Dialogism: An International Journal of Bakhtin Studies 2, 41–59.

Historiographic Narration Daniel Fulda

1 Definition Historiographic narration is an umbrella term encompassing the forms and functions of both narration (as an act) and narrative (as a structure) in historiography (both within and beyond the academic study of history) and in thinking about history. In the field of historiography (= the representation of history–historia rerum gestarum) and history (= the represented facts–res gestae–in their historical coherence), narration is primarily discussed as a means of lending coherence to the historiographic text or artefact (and to the narrated history) and interpreting a historical event. Narrative configuration is currently considered fundamental to history as a genetic cause and effect relationship between factual events at various moments in time (cf. Ricœur [1983–85] 1984– 88).

2 Explication History is narrated: historiography organizes its material by naming adversaries, establishing or imputing intentions and identifying obstacles and factors in overcoming them. This entails a fundamentally important operation, since only structuring the infinitely ramified process of human actions in time according to the “dramaturgical model” [dramatisches Handlungsmodell] (Harth 1980: 99–104) can give rise to the coherence and meaningful development implied in the collective singular “History” (coherence in the “syntagmatic” dimension). The dramaturgical model and narrative linking structure serve as heuristics for selecting among the amorphous happenings of the past (as attested by sources) and configuring them historiographically as a consistent and hence understandable (hi)story (cf. Gallie 1964 and Simmel [1916] 2003: 300 who describes the historiographical act as “drawing an ideal line (ideelle Linie) through the happenings,” which connects certain elements and leaves others aside).

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Furthermore, one can speak in terms of an “aesthetic dramaturgical model” where the actors are understood as proponents of collective actors (classes, nations) or more general tendencies (ideas, structural changes, etc.). Here, “aesthetic” refers to the interpretive act of projecting the relevant “foreground” of vivid personal interaction onto a “background” of supra-personal, abstract processes (coherence in the “paradigmatic” dimension). In order to write history, historiography inevitably uses the process of narrative linkage, if history is understood as portraying past events with the coherence, logical consistency and significance demanded by the concept of history since the 18th century. “[W]here there is no narrative, there is no distinctively historical discourse” (White 1999: 3). By no means does all writing about history take the form of narrative. For example, a critical discussion of sources need not of necessity establish a link between actions at various moments in time. However, once we begin to think of history as a process in time, narrative linkages come into play as an assumption framing our understanding of it. For “History,” as a concept or mode of thought, is characterized in its modern form—which integrates past, present and future—by the principle of narrative configuration. The narrative structure of historical thought manifests itself as configurational structure of one narrated (hi)story as soon as historical processes are described in a text.

3 History of the Concept 3.1 From Antiquity to the 19th Century: Rhetoric and Academic Scholarship Within the field of historiography, the question of narrative hardly figures as a novel theme. The writing of history has been conceived as a form of storytelling since Greek antiquity—for almost as long as it has existed. Rhetorical theory thematized and regulated historiography as narratio up to the 18th century (cf. Keßler 1982). Even after the emergence of history as an academic discipline in the 19th century, the representational work of the historian was consistently understood as a narration, although the writing and narrating of history came to be regarded as posterior to historical research and of lesser importance than it. No less a historian than Theodor Mommsen even summoned narration to the explanatory service of history:

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In fact history is nothing else but the clear perception of factual processes, composed in part of the examination and sifting of the available evidence, and in part of its interweaving in a way that accords with the knowledge of the people involved and the relations that exist to a narrative explicating cause and effect (Mommsen 1905: 10).

3.2 Deep-structure Narrativity of Historiography and Historical Thought Demonstrations of the narrative structure of historiography have been plentiful since the 1960s. These have been based on differing epistemological approaches, but they have built upon one another’s arguments. Invariably, they do not deal with “narrative” features (focus on well elaborated characters, intentions and interactions, vividly described setting), as presented by classical historiographers from Antiquity through to Historicism, but with a narrative “deep structure” (comparable to the plot in narratology, but in very general way, not individuated for the respective text) which constitutes historiography. This includes historical research with a post-narrative agenda, such as that of a sociological, structuralist or “kilometric” orientation (for corresponding analyses by annales historians, see Carrard 1992 and Rüth 2005). Analytic philosophy was the first to establish that at a deepstructural level—and thus of necessity—historiography proceeds through narration. Here, narration was shown to be an explanatory form particularly suited to historical processes (cf. Danto 1965). Laws are ineffective in explaining historical processes, being contingent upon multiple factors, whereas the typical three-phase structure of narrated (hi)stories is inscribed with an immanent explanatory power: an initial state of affairs is altered by an event, turning not only the temporal, but also the qualitative difference, into a final state of affairs. Narrative “explains” such changes in the state of affairs by proceeding from Phase 1 to Phase 3 in a way deemed plausible in the experience, or at least in the imagination, of narrator and recipient. Furthermore, transcendental philosophy showed narrative to be an a priori pattern forming the basis of all historical reconstruction and indeed perception (cf. Baumgartner 1972). According to this view, the narrative model of coherence functions as a conceptual form in historical thought, transforming “bare,” amorphous happenings into structured history characterized by continuity and meaningful development. Hence, historical thought itself genuinely takes the general form of narrative.

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3.3 Interpreting History through Emplotment and Multi-layering At the most basic level, the structural principle of history is the necessity of narrating it. This structural principle expresses itself differently in each particular historical work. As White (1973) has shown, the narration of classical historiographical works in particular follows the typical plots of literary genres (White mentions comedy, tragedy, romance and satire, following Northrop Frye). Not only does the narrative act give rise to history as such, but each history narrated is given its own meaningful plot, which is (or may be, to express it more cautiously than White) structurally based upon the different types of story in literary genres. In principle, this plot can be chosen from any of the types of story accepted within a particular culture. Therefore, this choice of plot is significant for the (hi)story being narrated, as it is for history in general. Historiographic narration creates a meaning that may vary greatly, thereby revealing something of the historiographer’s ideological intentions. Hence, the comic structure of Johann Gustav Droysen’s History of Alexander the Great (1833), with its tendency towards reconciliation, attests to particularly high expectations of history to provide meaning. The choice of emplotment is bound up with specific models of action and society, ethics, ideologies and world-views (cf. White 1973; based on this, but more differentiated, is Rigney 1990). In terms of literary-historical location, historiography is closest to the 19th-century Realist novel in its narrative technique. This applies also to the historiography of the present. It has not taken its lead from literary Modernism’s experimentation (fragmentation, achronicity, depersonalisation)—nor can it, if it does not wish to undermine the very concept of history based on narrative consistency. The repeated demands to modernize historiography following the literary precedent can only be satisfied in individual, experimental cases (e.g. Richard Price’s The Convict and the Colonel, 1998). Expressed as a general stipulation, such demands ignore the divergence of the two discourse formations (literature and historiography) that has arisen from literary developments since circa 1900. White (2013) and Kansteiner (2009) consider a historiography with Modernist multi-perspectivity to be possible, while Jaeger (2000) remains skeptical. The ascription of meaning through emplotment represents a crucial moment of multi-layering in which historiography engages in a similar way to literary texts. “Multi-layering” means that, beyond their conventional meaning, other meanings are assigned to linguistic signs, based on metaphoricity, isotopes, symbolic potential, sound correspondences, repetitions of partial sentence structures (anaphora and other figures),

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etc. Multi-layering techniques are also used in (academic) historiography, in the representation of factual content (details of events, monuments, but also horoscopes, dreams, etc.) as symbolic content, the meaning of which extends beyond the given, specific situation, or in the creation of structures of correspondence between different phases of the (hi)story or parts of the text through repetition of motifs. This also means that historical works, too, may exhibit the self-referentiality frequently considered characteristic of literary texts (cf. McIntoshVarjabédian 2010: 43–65; by contrast, Rüth 2005: 193). They use selfreference and multi-layering techniques to produce their meaning, which thus remains at least partly implicit (besides the explanation demanded by academic rigor). 3.4 Historiographic vs. Literary-fictional Narration The insight that narrative is the generative structure of history (see 3.2) has frequently led to the conclusion that historiography, thus understood, is mutating from an academic discipline into a literary genre. Such a view fails to consider that narration is not unique to literature but constitutes a real-life, omnipresent mode of understanding, structuring, interpreting and transmitting real or imagined experience, knowledge, ideas and intentions. If one’s view of scholarly insight is not limited to the establishment of, and deduction from, laws, there is no reason why the linking and representational power of narration may not be deemed academically valid—provided that historiographic narratives go along with methodical reflection and evidence from historical sources (Chartier [1988] 1988: 61–63). Where the term fiction is used interchangeably for both historiography and literature, the aim is to homogenize them. White characterizes historiography as “verbal fictions, the contents of which are as much invented as found and the forms of which have more in common with their counterparts in literature than they have with those in sciences” ([1974] 1978: 82). On the one hand, White attributes fictive contents to historiography, since not all of its statements are based on sources. Indeed, collective subjects such as “The Bourgeoisie” or even abstractions such as “Modernity” are not referenced from sources, but constituted within narrative discourse (cf. Ankersmit 1983). On the other hand, White infers from historiography’s narrative form that it belongs to a mode of fictional literature that cultivates this form. The theory of fiction objects to such arguments by pointing out that cognitive or methodical (including heuristic) fiction differs from literary fiction, both in its relationship to reality and in its pragmatics. Where historiography

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makes statements that go beyond what is substantiated by sources (even if only by using language’s powers of abstraction or lending the structure of narrated stories to historical processes), there is an expectation that it does so in order to develop insights into past reality. It does not, however, have the same license to play with referentiality that is afforded to literary fiction by virtue of a ‘fiction contract’ agreed between author and reader (Schaeffer → Fictional vs. Factual Narration). Historiographic narration is rather a type of factual narration. While McIntosh-Varjabédian (2010: 237) also attributes “une volonté de croire” to the reader of historiography (similar to Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief”), this is not a matter of temporarily taking leave of reality, but of a trust in the professionalism of the historiannarrator that endures beyond the act of reception. Nünning (1999: 368–377) has gathered internal textual criteria for demarcating the boundary between historiographic and literary-fictional narration. Among the privileges accorded to the latter, he includes the opportunity for unlimited representation of inner worlds; the complete freedom to combine invented components (characters, settings, events) with real ones; intertextual references to fictional texts rather than just to other scholarly texts; a meta-fictional reflexiveness that identifies the text as fiction; the differentiation of author and narrator (who in fictional texts is always fictitious); a broad spectrum of possible perspectives such as internal point of view so that the “how” of transmission may assume greater importance than “what” is narrated; scenic narrative with extensive dialogue; and semanticization of space. However, a categorical rather than merely gradual separation of literary and historiographic storytelling based on textual features in this way is open to objections. Some of the features that, according to Nünning, remain the preserve of fiction can also be found in some historical works and not only in pre-modern or non-academic texts: scenic narrative with dialogue, free indirect speech, symbols, sometimes even introspection. The strongest argument against too close an approximation of historiographic and literary narration is the fact that they have been situated within two distinct social systems (sensu Niklas Luhmann) for two centuries. Their reception can be assigned to one or the other system without any reference whatsoever to internal textual features, purely on the basis of paratextual clues (“Novel” as genre description, information on the author) or where it is distributed or marketed (Fiction or History section in a bookshop, seminar in literature or history, etc.). As a general rule, however, historiography also demonstrates its academic affiliation intertextually by engaging explicitly with other scholarly opinions or using footnotes as back-up. Doležel (2010: 37–39) argues that histo-

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riography and fictional narratives can be distinguished from one another by the type of gaps they leave. While historiography’s epistemological gaps may be filled by using new sources or arguments, gaps in fiction are ontological, since there are no referents beyond the fictional world. This also applies where fictional narrative masquerades as historio-graphy. 3.5 The Historicity of the Storyformedness of History History understood as the specific structure of the past in its connection with the present and future does not follow automatically from the narration of stories about the past. Such (hi)stories (in the plural) can be found in the earliest texts of our civilization. But these particular (hi)stories must be clearly distinguished from the narrative configuration of (virtually) all events we know as “history” (hereafter “History”; cf. Megill 1995). To conceive of the past in narratives—be it the individual past of one’s own life or be it in the larger sense of the past of certain peoples—by no means implies that the entire past in its relation to the present and the future forms one unique History. According to Koselleck the conception of History as a single, totalizing process emerged no earlier than the 18th century ([1979] 1985: 200–202). Mink associates this modern concept of History with its storyformedness and regards it as the product of “a single unified story of the human past” which emerged within the philosophy of history during the second half of the 18th century (1978: 140). Since then, “the idea that the past itself is an untold story has retreated from the arena of conscious belief and controversy to habituate itself as a presupposition in that area of our a priori conceptual framework which resists explicit statement and examination” (140–141). The narrative techniques of the historiography that developed around 1800 made a decisive contribution to this habituation. In an exemplary work of historicism, Ranke’s Römische Päpste, written in the early 1830s, ways of thinking and representational techniques formed in the literature of the late Enlightenment and of Romanticism (the Goethe period) can be recognized: e.g., the conversion of historical happenings into story form (often with plots like those of the Bildungsroman), the assigning of ideal tasks to important characters together with the withdrawal of the omniscient narrator, the immanent narrative explanation of historical processes, the symbolic concentration of the whole (hi)story at decisive moments as well as the incorporation of seemingly trivial but nevertheless significant and/or vivid details (cf. Fulda 1996: 344–410, 2005a). Historio-

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graphy emerged as an academic discipline through the process of aestheticization and narrativization. 3.6 History as a Pattern of Thinking: Cognitivist Approaches For the most part, narrativist historical theory has developed independently of narratology in literary scholarship and rarely makes use of its categories. Cognitivist narratologies, which have developed considerably in recent years, offer the opportunity to form a substantial link between the two. They postulate that knowing (understood in a comprehensive sense of including perceptions and utterances) is structured by scripts and frames. What is perceived is perceived because the cognitive apparatus checks it against “internally stored” schemata. These schemata process narrativity when the signified can be related to the recipient’s prior knowledge of standard narrative elements and patterns: “Telling and understanding narratives is a certain way of reconciling emergent with prior knowledge” (Herman 2002: 90; (Herman → Cognitive Narratology; Emmott & Alexander → Schemata). Cognitivism localizes such schemata in an interchange between experience and expectation: “Stored in the memory, previous experiences form structured repertoires of expectations about current and emergent experiences.” (Herman 2002: 89) This recursiveness or interchange can explain the epistemological status as a pattern for thinking that History achieved around 1800: actions and transformations are perceived as historical on the basis of “historical experiences” (which, admittedly, occur in eminently mediated forms) and are further elaborated on the basis of this knowledge of History. Here, the object and mode of perception mutually support one another such that they can be differentiated only on the basis of explicit theoretical criteria. Admittedly, this contrasts with the everyday understanding of History, which assumes that history has actually happened. Using the cognitivist approach, it becomes possible to describe History narratologically as both a pattern for reception and a product of reception, in contrast to the everyday understanding of history as simply happening and given (cf. Fulda 2005b: 178–181). According to this view, History represents a cognitive (macro-) schema containing, as sub-schemata, a number of elements already invoked in the foregoing paragraphs including dramatic action, coherence, genetic cause and effect relationship, emplotment, aesthetic agency and referentiality. The (macro-) schema History does not seem to be innate but is established inspecific cultures and epochs and must be acquired by the members of these cultures. Its sub-schemata, by contrast,

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may be anthropologically inherent and ubiquitous, or it may already have been tried, developed and practiced in other discourse formations, such as literature. Based on cognitivism, History is to be conceived as a historical pattern of thinking. This perspective appears to be all the more germane in view of contemporary representations of history, which are often suspicious of narrative coherence. Such representations require considerable narrativizing effort on the part of the recipient: as History, these texts or other artefacts are “incomplete,” for they have no readily discernible plot. Nevertheless, they can be “read” as historical narratives, for narrativization is a constructive process “which enables readers to re-cognize as narrative those kinds of texts that appear to be non-narrative” (Fludernik 1996: 46). Not least, narrations outside traditionally printed books can be analyzed more appropriately, on a cognitivist basis, as historiographic narrations: if narrativity is something attributed by the perceiving subject, then the object of this attribution is of secondary importance, be it films, TV programs, or other sequences of images, exhibitions (cf. Fulda 2005b: 182–190), theater, historical reenactments or radio plays. This approach also leads beyond the bounds of traditional narratology in the sense that the analysis of artefacts takes a back seat to reception studies. This at least is the call of Nitz and Petrulionis (2011: 4): “One of the first tasks of cultural analysts should be to study empirically how people ‘consume’ history and to examine which cognitive frames of meaning-making they apply in order to come to an understanding of how the past is (re)created in collective memory” (as an example of one such study, cf. Lippert [now Nitz] 2010). By contrast, Fludernik, one of the best-known proponents of cognitivist narratology, excludes historiography from the field of narrative, since the narrator here is not recounting experiences (be it of his or her own, be it of fictive characters) and personal motivs, emotions or perceptions but knowledge obtained from a distance (1996: 328). However, the dependence of narrativity upon experientiality is a minority view within narratology. In any case, Fludernik softens her position in a more recent publication: “I would now argue that experientiality (and hence narrativity) occurs on a scale, and that the more academic a historical text is, the less experientiality there will be” (2010: 50). She concedes that not only can historiography “cite” the experience of people living in earlier times, but that the reception of historiography “can in itself constitute an experience” (51; cf. Jaeger 2009: 120–121).

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4 Topics of Further Investigation While general or literary narratology has a wide array of systematically elaborated theories and concepts at its disposal (most recently Schmid [2003] 2010), there is nothing comparable for historiography. One difficulty lies in the fact that for a historiographic narratology to be comprehensive, it would have to explain the function of narrative in constituting History and its contribution to History as an academic discipline and also to systematically set out the formal repertoire of narrative techniques in historiography. The function of narrative in constituting history has been relatively well studied, while less attention has been given to the repertoire of narrative technique. This applies particularly to narration as an act of a narrator, which is the focus of traditional narratologies. It is fundamentally lacking an inventory with a consistent conceptual framework which frees itself from the models of literary scholarship, be it Frye’s plot structures adopted by White or the terminology of Genette. In historical terms, the spectrum of historiographic narratives investigated from a more or less narratological perspective is encouragingly broad, extending from Greek Antiquity (cf. Grethlein & Renkakos eds. 2009) to the present day (cf. Carrard 1992; Rüth 2005). Less satisfactory is the fact that it is almost exclusively “great works” that are analyzed, i.e. the histories of nations and epochs or major micro-historical studies by famous historians. How and to what degree the many smaller formats that form the bulk of historiographical text production can be characterized as narrative remains entirely unclear. Periodical articles, lectures, edited sources and possibly also reviews would need to be incorporated into investigations of the narrative disposition of historiographical writing (and reading). Due to a lack of previous work to build upon, developing a specific historiographical narratology on the basis of these types of text seems to be a task that is as urgently required as it is exceptionally difficult. An important question of detail here would be whether unlimited validity should be given to the largely customary identification of the historiographical narrator with the author. For Genette, the striking formula reads: “A[uthor] = N[arrator] ≠ C[haracter]→ historical narrative” ([1991] 1993: 74). Indeed, first-person statements in historiographic narration always refer to the author-historian. However, the narrator can be removed both ideologically and temporally from the position of the author such that it seems necessary to separate author and narrator (cf. Rüth 2005: 35–36). The Protestant historian Ranke, for example, narrates his (hi)story of the Römischen Päpste overwhelmingly from the

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vantage point of this historical power. The authorial position can be said to be temporally removed if the narrator attempts to portray the course of history as remaining open and the past in question as the erstwhile future. On this view, the narrator comes to be seen more as a function of the historiographical concept in question than as being identical with the empirical author: for Droysen (1977: 365) the historian’s “general I” is already distinguished from his or her “empirical I.” Narrative perspective also seems to require differentiated consideration as when, for example, Ranke’s narrator, despite attempting to reconstruct the Popes’ perspective of the narrated conflicts, passes judgments from a Protestant perspective. Schmid ([2003] 2010: 100–105, 116–117) additionally provides a distinction between perceptive, ideological, spatial, temporal and linguistic perspective. Gathering historiographic narrations systematically becomes even more difficult once we branch out beyond written historical texts. This appears necessary, as the academic study of history does not have a monopoly on gaining and imparting historical insights. A comprehensive narratology of historiography would also have to consider sources such as television programs, exhibitions and even historical reenactments, and much more, thus engaging with a much broader range of media than printed books. In addition to the cognitive power of narrative forms, this would lead to a wider focus on non-cognitive, emotional aspects of the reception of the various forms of historical representation. Philips (2013) has accomplished this “emotional turn” in an otherwise classical analysis focusing on historiography and historiology in the Enlightenment and in Romanticism.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Ankersmit, F[ranklin] R. (1983). Narrative Logic. A Semantic Analysis of the Historian’s Language. The Hague: Nijhoff. Baumgartner, Hans Michael (1972). Kontinuität und Geschichte. Zur Kritik und Metakritik der historischen Vernunft. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Carrard, Philippe (1992). Poetics of the New History. French Historical Discourse from Braudel to Chartier. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Chartier, Roger ([1988] 1988). Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Danto, Arthur C. (1965). Analytical Philosophy of History. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Doležel, Lubomír (2010). Possible Worlds of Fiction and History: The Postmodern Stage. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.

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Droysen, Johann Gustav (1977). Historik. Rekonstruktion der ersten vollständigen Fassung der Vorlesungen (1857), Grundriß der Historik in der ersten handschriftlichen (1857/58) und in der letzten gedruckten Fassung (1882). P. Leyh (ed.). Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. – (2010). “Experience, Experiantiality, and Historical Narrative. A View from Narratology.” Th. Breyer & D. Creutz (eds.). Erfahrung und Geschichte. Historische Sinnbildung im Pränarrativen. Berlin: de Gruyter, 40–72. Fulda, Daniel (1996). Wissenschaft aus Kunst. Die Entstehung der modernen deutschen Geschichtsschreibung 1760–1860. Berlin: de Gruyter. – (2005a). “Literary Criticism and Historical Science: The Textuality of History in the Age of Goethe—and Beyond.” P. Koslowski (ed.). The Discovery of Historicity in German Idealism and Historicism. Berlin: Springer, 112–133. – (2005b). “‘Selective’ History. Why and how ‘History’ Depends on Readerly Narrativization, with the Wehrmachtsausstellung as an Example.” J. Ch. Meister (ed.). Narratology Beyond Literary Criticism. Mediality, Disciplinarity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 173–194. Gallie, Walter B. (1964). Philosophy and the Historical Understanding. London: Chatto & Windus. Genette, Gérard ([1991] 1993). Fiction and Diction. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Grethlein, Jonas & Antonios Rengakos, eds. (2009). Narratology and Interpretation. The Content of Narrative Form in Ancient Literature. Berlin: de Gruyter. Harth, Dietrich (1980). “Biographie als Weltgeschichte. Die theoretische und ästhetische Konstruktion der historischen Handlung in Droysens Alexander und Rankes Wallenstein.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 54, 58–104. Herman, David (2002). Story Logic. Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Jaeger, Stephan (2000). “Multiperspektivisches Erzählen in der Geschichtsschreibung des ausgehenden 20. Jahrhundert: Wissenschaftliche Inszenierungen von Geschichte zwischen Roman und Wirklichkeit.” V. Nünning & A. Nünning (eds.). Multiperspektivisches Erzählen: Zur Theorie und Geschichte der Perspektivenstruktur im englischen Roman des 18. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Trier: WVT, 323– 346. – (2009). “Erzählen im historiographischen Diskurs.” Ch. Klein & M. Martínez (eds.). Wirklichkeitserzählungen. Felder, Formen und Funktionen nichtliterarischen Erzählens. Stuttgart: Metzler, 110–135. Kansteiner, Wulf (2009). “Success, Truth, and Modernism in Holocaust Historiography: Reading Saul Friedländer Thirty-five Years After the Publication of Metahistory.” History and Theory, Theme Issue 47, 25–53. Keßler, Eckhard (1982). “Das rhetorische Modell der Historiographie.” R. Koselleck, H. Lutz & J. Rüsen (eds.). Formen der Geschichtsschreibung. München: dtv, 37– 85. Koselleck, Reinhart ([1979] 1985). Futures Past. On the Semantics of Historical Time. Cambridge: MIT Press.

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Lippert, Julia (2010). Ein kognitives Lesemodell historio(bio)graphischer Texte. Georg III. – Rezeption und Konstruktion in den britischen Medien (1990–2006). Trier: WVT. McIntosh-Varjabédian, Fiona (2010). Écriture de l’histoire et regard rétrospectif. Clio et Épiméthée. Paris: Champion. Megill, Alan (1995). “‘Grand Narrative’ and the Discipline of History.” F. Ankersmit & H. Kellner (eds.). A New Philosophy of History. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 151–173, 263–271. Mink, Louis O. (1978). “Narrative Form as Cognitive Instrument.” R. H. Canary & H. Kozicki (eds.). The Writing of History. Literary Form and Historical Understanding. Madison: U of Madison P, 129–149. Mommsen, Theodor (1905). “Rede bei Antritt des Rektorats. 15. Oktober 1874.” Th. M. Mommsen. Reden und Aufsätze. Berlin: Weidmann, 3–16. Nitz, Julia & Sandra Harbert Petrulionis (2011). “Towards a Historiographic Narratology: Résumé.” SPIEL 30.1, 1–6. Nünning, Ansgar (1999). “‘Verbal Fictions?’ Kritische Überlegungen und narratologische Alternativen zu Hayden Whites Einebnung des Gegensatzes zwischen Historiographie und Literatur.” Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 40, 351–380. Philips, Mark Salber (2013). On Historical Distance. New Haven: Yale UP. Ricœur, Paul ([1983–85] 1984–88). Time and Narrative. 3 vols. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Rigney, Ann (1990). The Rhetoric of Historical Representation. Three Narrative Histories of the French Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Rüth, Axel (2005). Erzählte Geschichte. Narrative Strukturen in der französischen Annales-Geschichtsschreibung. Berlin: de Gruyter. Schmid, Wolf ([2003] 2010). Narratology. An Introduction. Berlin: de Gruyter. Simmel, Georg ([1916] 2003). “Das Problem der historischen Zeit.” Gesamtausgabe. Vol 15: Goethe. Deutschlands innere Wandlung. Das Problem der historischen Zeit. Rembrandt. U. Kösser, H.-M. Kruckis, O. Ramstedt (eds.). Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 289–304. White, Hayden (1973). Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP. – ([1974] 1978). “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact.” H. White. Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 81– 100. – (1999). “Literary Theory and Historical Writing.” H. White. Figural Realism. Studies in the Mimesis Effect. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1–26, 176–182. – (2013). “Historical Discourse and Literary Theory. On Saul Friedländer’s Years of Extermination.” N. Frei & W. Kansteiner (eds.). Den Holocaust erzählen. Historiographie zwischen wissenschaftlicher Empirie und narrativer Kreativität. Göttingen: Wallstein, 51–78.

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5.2 Further Reading Eckel, Jan (2007). “Der Sinn der Erzählung. Die narratologische Diskussion in der Geschichtswissenschaft und das Beispiel der Weimargeschichtsschreibung.“ J. Eckel & Th. Etzemüller (eds.). Neue Zugänge zur Geschichte der Geschichtswissenschaft. Göttingen: Wallstein, 201–229. Munslow, Alun (2007). Narrative and History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pier, John & Philippe Roussin, eds. (2012). “Écritures de l’histoire, écritures de la fiction” – Dossier issu du colloque 16 au 18 mars 2006, Paris. http://narratologie.ehess.fr/index.php?447 Roberts, Geoffrey, ed. (2001). The History and Narrative Reader. London: Routledge.

Identity and Narration Michael Bamberg

1 Definition Identity designates the attempt to differentiate and integrate a sense of self along different social and personal dimensions such as gender, age, race, occupation, gangs, socio-economic status, ethnicity, class, nation states, or regional territory. Any claim of identity faces three dilemmas: (a) sameness of a sense of self over time in the face of constant change; (b) uniqueness of the individual vis-à-vis others faced with being the same as everyone else; and (c) the construction of agency as constituted by self (with a self-toworld direction of fit) and world (with a world-to-self direction of fit). Claims to identity begin with the continuity/change dilemma and from there venture into issues of uniqueness and agency; self and sense of self begin by constructing agency and differentiating self from others and then go on to navigate the waters of continuity and change. Engaging in any activity requires acts of self-identification by relying on repertoires that identify and contextualize speakers/writers along varying socio-cultural categories, often compared to mental or linguistic representations (Emmott & Alexander → Schemata) that are less fixed depending on context and function. Narrating, a speech activity that involves ordering characters in space and time, is a privileged genre for identity construction because it requires situating characters in time and space through gesture, posture, facial cues, and gaze in coordination with speech. In addition, narrating, whether in the form of fictional or factual narration (Schaeffer → Fictional vs. Factual Narration), tends toward “human life”—something more than what is reportable or tellable (Baroni → Tellability), something that is life- and live-worthy (Taylor 1989). Thus, narrating enables speakers/writers to disassociate the speaking/writing self from the act of speaking, to take a reflective position vis-à-vis self as character (Jannidis → Character).

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2 Explication Taking a reflective position on self as character has been elaborated in the narratological differentiation between author (Schönert → Author), narrator (Margolin → Narrator), and character. The reflective process takes place in the present but refers to past or fictitious time-space, making past (or imagined) events relevant for the act of telling, pointing toward the meaningfulness of relationships and worthwhile lives, and exemplifying “the human good” (Aristotle 1996: 1461a). It is against this backdrop that narrating in recent decades has established itself as a privileged site for identity analysis—a new territory for inquiry (cf. Ricœur [1990] 1992; Strawson 2004). Designing characters in fictitious timespace has the potential of opening up territory for exploring identity, reaching beyond traditional boundaries, and testing out novel identities. Narratives rooted in factual past-time events, by contrast, are dominated by an opposite orientation. The delineation of what happened, whose agency was involved, and the potential transformation of characters from one state to another serve to demarcate the identity of the reflective self under investigation. If pasttime narration is triggered by the question “Who am I?,” having the narrator’s quest for identity or sense of self as its goal, the leeway for ambiguity, transgression of boundaries, or exploration of novel identities is more restricted: the goal is rather to condense and unite, to resolve ambiguity, and to deliver answers that lay further inquiry into past and identity to rest. However, the reduction of identity to the depiction of characters and their development in a story leaves out the communicative space within which identities are negotiated in interaction with others. Limiting narratives to what they are about restricts identity to the referential or cognitive level of speech activities and disregards real life, where identities are under construction, formed, performed, and change over time. It is within the space of everyday talk in interaction with others that narration plays its constitutive role in the formation and navigation of identities as part of everyday practices and that the potential for orientation toward human values takes form. When considering the emergence of identity, the narrating subject must be regarded: (a) as neither locked into stability nor drifting through constant change, but rather as something that is multiple, contradictory, and distributed over time and place, held together contextually and locally; (b) in terms of membership positions vis-à-vis others that help to trace the narrator’s identity within the context of social relationships, groups, and institutions; and (c) as the active and agentive locus of control, though simultaneously

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attributing agency to outside forces that are situated in a broader sociohistorical context. Along these lines, identity is not confined by just one societal discourse but open to change. Identity is able to transform itself and adapt to the challenges of growing cultural multiplicities in increasingly globalizing environments. Based on the assumption that narration at its origin was a verbal act performed locally in interactional contexts and from there evolved toward other, differently constituted and contextualized media (writing, electronic, and digital media, etc.; cf. Ryan 2006), the function of narration in identity formation processes cannot be reduced to the verbal means used or to the messages conveyed. Rather, the local interactional environments in which narrative units emerge form the foundation for inquiry into identity formation and the sense of self. While transformations from oral to written forms of expression have been studied (e.g. Ong 1982) and text-critical analysis has been undertaken from the perspective of the hermeneutic circle, work with transcripts from audio recordings is relatively new. More recent are concerted efforts to record narratives audio-visually and to analyze the way they emerge in interaction, including the sophisticated ways in which they are performed. Audio-visual material, of course, can be more fully (micro-analytically) scrutinized in terms of the contextualized coordination of narrative form, content, and performance features (Berns → Performativity) in the service of identity formation processes. Recently, this type of micro-analytic analysis has been applied to identity as achieved in narration under the heading of “positioning analysis” (Bamberg 1997, 2003; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou 2008) in order to focus more effectively on the situated nature of identification processes that emerge from the three identity dilemmas mentioned above. Navigating and connecting temporal continuity and discontinuity, self and other differentiation, and the direction of fit between person and world, take place in the small stories told on everyday occasions in which tellers affirm a sense of who they are. It is precisely this sense of self and identity grounded in sequential, moment-by-moment interactive engagements, largely undertheorized and often dismissed in traditional identity inquiry, that operates on verbal texts or cognitive representations (Herman → Cognitive Narratology).

3 History of the Concept and its Study Self and identity are traditionally bound up with what is taken to be the essence of the individual person which continues over time and space in

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phylo- as well as in socio- and onto-genetic terms. However, this overlooks how conceptions of self and identity have evolved historically and culturally and also how each individual’s personal ontogenesis undergoes continuous change. In addition, essentialist views of self and identity camouflage the links between these concepts and their counterparts in narration and narrative practices. Section 3.1 will further explore the connection between self and identity dilemmas (b) and (c), while section 3.2 will be devoted to identity and dilemma (a). 3.1 Self and Narration Although self, like “I” and “me,” are highly specific morphological items of the English lexicon, they are commonly assumed to refer universally to corresponding concepts in other languages—an assumption that has been contested, however. A closer look reveals that these concepts most often have a history of their own that varies in illuminating ways (cf. Heelas & Lock eds. 1981; Triandis 1989). Modern notions of self and individuality (cf. Elias [1987] 1991; Gergen 1991) are taken to be closely intertwined with the emergence of local communities, nation states, new forms of knowledge and reflection (“rationalization”), feeling, and perception—all in conjunction with increasing interiorization and psychologization. In this process of becoming individualized, self-narration (autobiography, life-writing, autofiction) springs to the fore as the basic practiceground for marking the self off from “I” as speaker/agent and “me” as character/actor (cf. the narratological distinctions between “narrating self” and “narrated self” and between narrator and protagonist). Acts of thematizing and displacing the self as character in past time and space become the basis for other self-related actions such as self-disclosure, self-reflection and self-criticism, potentially leading to self-control, self-constraint, and self-discipline. What further comes to light in this process is an increasing differentiation between (and integration of) “I” and “me” (James [1890] 1989), and simultaneously between “I-we-us” and “them-other” (Elias [1987] 1991). Thus, self, apparently, is the product of an “I” that manages three processes of differentiation and integration: (a) it can posit a “me” (as distinct from “I”); (b) it can posit and balance this “I-me” distinction with “we”; and (c) it can differentiate this “we” as “us” from “them” as “other.” This process of differentiation must be taken into account when talking about “self” as different from “other” and viewing self “in relation to self” (as in self-reflection and self-control). Self, as differentiated from other by developing the ability to account for itself (as agent or as undergoer), to self-reflect,

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and to self-augment, can now begin to look for something like temporal continuity, unity, and coherence, i.e. identity across a life (cf. Ricœur [1990] 1992). 3.2 Identity and Narration: Biography and Life-Writing The ability to conceive of life as an integrated narrative forms the cornerstone for what Erikson ([1950] 1963) called “ego identity.” The underlying assumption here is that life begins to co-jell into building blocks that, when placed in the right order, cohere: important moments tie into important events, events into episodes, and episodes into a life story. It is this analogy between life and story—or better: the metaphoric process of seeing life as storied (in narratological terms: story and discourse) that has given substantive fuel to the narrative turn. The strength of how scholars (and laypeople) in the past have made use of this connection, though, varies: on the one hand, there is a relatively loose connection according to which we tell stories of lives by using particular narrative formats. Lives can be told as following an epic script or as if consisting of unconnected patches. Most often, though, lives are told by depicting characters and how they develop. Character, particularly in modern times, rests on an internal and an external form of organization. The former is typically a complex interiority, a set of traits organizing underlying actions and the course of events as outcomes of motives that spring from this interiority. The latter, an external condition of character development, takes plot as the overarching principle that lends order to human action in response to the threat of a discontinuous and seemingly meaningless life by a set of possible continuities (often referred to by cognitive narratologists as “schemata” or “scripts”; cf. Herman 2002: chap. 3). This interplay of human (and humane) interiority and culturally available models of continuity (plots) gives narrative a powerful role in the process of seeing life as narrative. It also should be noted that the arrangement of interiority as governed by the availability of plots gives answers—at least to a degree—to the “direction-of-fit” or “agency” identity dilemma. With narration thus defined, life transcends the animalistic and unruly body so that narration gains the power to organize “human temporality” (Punday 2003; see also Ricœur [1985] 1990): the answer to non-human, a-temporal, and discontinuous chaos. Another, and probably stronger reason for employing the narrative metaphor for life starts with the assumption of a “narrative mode of thinking.” Bruner (1986) and Polkinghorne (1988) similarly vie for the

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argument that there is a particular cognitive mode of making sense of the (social) world which is organized “narratively” (an important theme in cognitive psychology; cf. Herman 2002, 2009). Freeman’s (1993) and Mishler’s (1986) work with autobiographical memories focuses particularly on the interrelationship between memory, autobiographical memory, and narrative. Mishler early on propagated the use of autobiographic narrative interview data in the form of a “contextual approach” which is not limited to recording data about human experience or to looking “behind” the author, but that focuses on interaction and relationships. McAdams (1985), building on narrative theorists such as Bruner, Polkinghorne, and Sarbin, has turned the assumption of selves plotting themselves in and across time into a life-story model of identity. His model clearly states that life stories are more than recapitulations of past events and episodes, that they have a defining character: “our narrative identities are the stories we live by” (McAdams et al. 2006: 4). McAdams’ efforts to connect the study of lives to life stories is paralleled in a wider turn to biographic methods in the social sciences, leading to Lieblich & Josselson’s eleven-volume series titled The Narrative Study of Lives. The origins of these efforts stretch across a wide range of disciplines including psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Goodson and Sikes (2001: 129) date the origins of life history methods in the form of autobiographies back to the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, life history methods have spread from the study of attitudes in social psychology to community studies in sociology, particularly within the Chicago School, and forty years later back into psychology. Retrospectively, it can be argued that the early studies by the members of the Chicago School, and in particular “oral history” popularized by the works of Studs Terkel, lacked the analytic component of modern day narrative inquiry. However, without these origins and the works of Bertaux (1981) and Plummer (1983), the foundation of the Research Committee on Biography and Society (within the International Sociological Association) would have been unthinkable. The methodological principles were laid out in the early work by Schütze (1977) and later picked up and refined in current narrative interview approaches by Fischer-Rosenthal & Rosenthal (1997). Thanks to these developments, it is clearer how the relatively massive turn in the social sciences toward biography and life writing was able to gain ground as a new approach to identity research. It emerged as a concerted attempt to wed self-differentiation (self that can reflect upon itself) and narration (plotting a sense of characterhood across

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time)—in narratological terms: “narrating self” and “narrated self”— into an answer that addresses the three dilemmas of identity laid out earlier. A teller accounts for how s/he (a) has emerged (as character) over time, (b) as different from others (but same), and simultaneously (c) how s/he views her-/himself as a (responsible) agent. Managing these three dilemmas in concert is taken to establish what is essential to identity. Consequently, life-writing and biography, preferably as autobiography or life story, become privileged arenas for identity research. 3.3 Problems of Linking Life, Narration, and Identity The link between life and narration and the exploration of lives (including selves and identity) through the exploration of narratives have traditions going back to Freud ([1900] 1913), Allport (1937), and Murray (1938). However, this close connection between life and narrative is said to require a particular retrospectiveness that values “life as reflected” and discredits “life as lived.” Sartwell (2000) has questioned (a) whether life really has the purpose and meaningfulness that narrative theorists metaphorically attempt to attribute to it and (b) whether narratives themselves have the kind of coherence (Toolan → Coherence) and telic quality that narrative theorists often assume. The problem Sartwell sees in this kind of approach is that the lived moment, the way it is “sensed” and experienced, is said to gain its life-worthy quality only in light of its surrounding moments. Rather than empowering the subject with meaning in life, Sartwell argues, narrative, conceived this way, drains and blocks him or her from finding pleasure and joy in the here-and-now. The subject is overpowered by narrative as a normalizing machine. Another difficulty resulting from the close linkage between life, narration, and identity consists in what Lejeune ([1975] 1989) termed “the autobiographical pact.” According to Lejeune, what counts as autobiography is somewhat blurry, since it is based on a “pact” between author and reader that is not directly traceable down into the textual qualities. Thus, while a life story can employ the first-person pronoun to feign the identity of author, narrator, and character, use of the third-person pronoun may serve to camouflage this identity (cf. narrative unreliability; Shen → Unreliability). Autobiographical fiction thrives on the blurring of these boundaries. Of interest here are “the perennial theoretical questions of authenticity and reference” (Porter 2008: 25) leading up to the larger issue of the connection between referentiality and narration (cf. Genette’s 1990 distinction between fictional narrative and factual narrative).

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While most research on biography has been quite aware of the situated and locally occasioned nature of people’s accounts (often in institutional settings) and the problems this poses for claims with regard to the speaker/narrator’s sense of self or identity, a number of researchers have launched a large-scale critique of the biographic turn as reducing language to its referential and ideational functions and thereby overextending (and simplifying) narration as the root metaphor for the person, (sense of) self, and identity. At the core of these voices is the call for a much “needed antidote to the longstanding tradition of ‘big stories’ which, be they in the form of life stories or of stories of landmark events, have monopolized the inquiry into tellers’ representations of past events and themselves in light of these events” (Georgakopoulou 2007: 147; cf. Strawson 2004). 3.4 Narration as Identity Formation in Narrative Practice Attempts to transport interactional context and performance-oriented aspects of narration into the analysis of identities reach back to Burke (1945) and Goffman (1959) and have been reiterated repeatedly by others in the field of biography research (e.g. Mishler 1986; Riessman 2008). More recent attempts to integrate this acknowledgment into empirical analysis center around a number of key positions. First is the proposal to resituate narration as performative moves (cf. Langellier & Peterson 2004), calling for the analysis of embodied practices and material conditions of narrative productions. Similarly, Gubrium and Holstein (2008) argue for a narrative ethnography—one that is able to analyze the complex interplay between “experience, storying practices, descriptive resources, purposes at hand, audiences, and the environments that condition storytelling” (250). Georgakopoulou (2006, 2007) and Bamberg (1997, 2003; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou 2008) have tried to develop an alternative approach to big story narrative research that takes “narratives-in-interaction,” i.e. the way stories surface in everyday conversation (small stories), as the locus where identities are continuously practiced and tested out. This approach allows for exploring self at the level of the talked-about and at the level of tellership in the here-and-now of a storytelling situation. Both of these levels feed into the larger project at work in the global situatedness within which selves are already positioned, i.e. with more or less implicit and indirect referencing and orientation to social positions and discourses above and beyond the here-and-now. Placing emphasis on small stories allows for the study of how people as agentive actors position themselves—and in doing so become

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positioned. This model of positioning affords the possibility of viewing identity constructions as two-fold: analyzing the way the referential world is constructed, with characters (self and others) emerging in time and space as protagonists and antagonists. Simultaneously, it is possible to show how the referential world (what the story is about) is constructed as a function of interactive engagement, i.e. the way the referential world is put together points to how tellers “want to be understood,” how they index their sense of self. Consequently, it is the action orientation of the participants in small story events that forms the basic point of departure for this functionalist-informed approach to narration and, to a lesser degree, what is represented or reflected upon in the stories told. This seems to be what makes this type of work with small stories crucially different from work with big stories: the aim is to analyze how people use small stories in their interactive engagements to construct a sense of who they are, while big story research analyzes the stories as representations of world and identities within them. Behind this way of approaching and working with stories is an action orientation that urges the analyst to look at constructions of self and identity as necessarily dialogical and relational, fashioned and refashioned in local interactive practices (cf. Antaki & Widdicombe eds. 1998; Shepherd → Dialogism). At the same time, it recognizes that small story participants generally attune their stories to various local, interpersonal purposes, sequentially gauging themselves to prior and upcoming talk, continuously challenging and confirming each others’ positions. It is in and through this type of relational activity that representations in the form of content, i.e. what the talk is intended to be about, are brought off and come into existence. By contrast, story analyses that remain fixated on the represented contents of the story in order to conclude from there how the teller reflects on him-/herself miss out on the very interactive and relational constructedness of content and reflection. Furthermore, this kind of analysis aims at scrutinizing the inconsistencies, ambiguities, contradictions, moments of trouble and tension, and the tellers’ constant navigation and finessing between different versions of selfhood and identity in local interactional contexts. However well-established the line of identities-in-interaction may be in the context of the analysis of conversational data, this emphasis still contrasts with the longstanding privileging of coherence by traditional approaches to narrative theory. Through the scrutiny of small stories in a variety of sites and contexts, the aim becomes to legitimize the management of different and often competing and contradictory positions as the mainstay of identity through narrative. A final aim is to advance a project of documenting identity as a process of constant change that,

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when practiced over and over again, has the potential to result in a sense of constancy and sameness, i.e. big stories that can be elicited under certain conditions.

4 Topics for Further Investigation (a) Whether narratives actually constitute a privileged territory for inquiry into life and identity requires further theoretical and empirical inquiry. Usually, this question is decided on the basis of a pretheoretical, epistemological (if not ontological) stance. But the question itself may be open to different interpretations. (b) The use of narrative methods in the exploration of hybrid or hyphenated identities constitutes an interesting new development in recent trends of social science research in a turn to questions of citizenship, cultural exclusion, imagined communities, symbolic representations of belonging, and even general processes of globalization. (c) Illness and traumatic experiences are typically viewed as disruptions of continuity and coherence, posing challenges to the formation of a sense of self and (biographic) identity as well as to our sense of agency. Recent discussions about the plottypes employed in illness narratives and how patients’ narrative accounts can be made use of more productively in narrative medicine bring up interesting questions with regard to the construction of paths and trajectories of experiences, their inherent action potential, and the relationship to mapping out possible reconstructions from being reactive to becoming pro-active in the construction of patients’ “healing dramas.” (d) The increasing diversification into different narrative methods and approaches (content/thematic vs. structural/formal methods, now joined by discursive/performative approaches) has led to the question whether there is still a common core to the original “narrative approach” as an alternative to the study of subjectivity, self, and identity—the way, in retrospect, it seemed to have begun about thirty-five years ago.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Allport, Gordon W. (1937). Personality: A Psychological Interpretation. New York: Holt. Antaki, Charles & Sue Widdicombe, eds. (1998). Identities in Talk. London: Sage.

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Aristotle (1996). Poetics. Tr. M. Heath. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics. Bamberg, Michael (1997). “Positioning between Structure and Performance.” Journal of Narrative and Life History 7, 335–342. – (2003). “Positioning with Davie Hogan: Stories, Tellings, and Identities.” C. Daiute & C. Lightfoot (eds.). Narrative Analysis: Studying the Development of Individuals in Society. London: Sage, 135–157. – & Alexandra Georgakopoulou (2008). “Small Stories as a New Perspective in Narrative and Identity Analysis.” Text & Talk 28, 377–396. Bertaux, Daniel (1981). Biography and Society: The Life History Approach in the Social Sciences. London: Sage. Bruner, Jerome (1986). Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Burke, Kenneth (1945). A Grammar of Motives. New York: Prentice-Hall. Elias, Norbert ([1987] 1991). The Society of Individuals. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Erikson, Erik H. ([1950] 1963). Childhood and Society. New York: Norton. Fischer-Rosenthal, Wolfram & Gabriele Rosenthal (1997). “Narrationsanalyse biographischer Selbstrepräsentation.” R. Hitzler & A. Horner (eds.). Sozialwissenschaftliche Hermeneutik. Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 133–164. Freeman, Mark P. (1993). Rewriting the Self. History, Memory, Narrative. London: Routledge. Freud, Sigmund ([1900] 1913). The Interpretation of Dreams. New York: Macmillan. Genette, Gérard (1990). “Fictional Narrative, Factual Narrative.” Poetics Today 11, 755–774. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra (2006). “The Other Side of the Story: Towards a Narrative Analysis of Narratives-in-Interaction.” Discourse Studies 8, 265–287. – (2007). Small Stories, Interaction and Identities. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Gergen, Kenneth (1991). The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. New York: Basic Books. Goffman, Erving (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City: Doubleday. Goodson, Ivor F. & Pat Sikes (2001). Life History Research in Educational Settings: Learning from Lives. Buckingham: Open UP. Gubrium, Jaber F. & James A. Holstein (2008). “Narrative Ethnography.” S. B. HesseBiber & P. Leavy (eds.). Handbook of Emergent Methods. New York: Guildford P, 241–264. Heelas, Paul & Andrew Lock, eds. (1981). Indigenous Psychologies: The Anthropology of the Self. London: Academic P. Herman, David (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. – (2009). Basic Elements of Narrative. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. James, William ([1890] 1900). Principles of Psychology. Vol. I. New York: Holt & Co. Langellier, Kristin M. & Eric E. Peterson (2004). Storytelling in Daily Life: Performing Narrative. Philadelphia: Temple UP. Lejeune, Philippe ([1975] 1989). On Autobiography. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. McAdams, Dan P. (1985). Power, Intimacy, and the Life Story: Personological Inquiries into Identity. New York: Guildford P.

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et al. (2006). “Introduction.” D. P. McAdams et al. (eds.). Identity and Story. Washington: American Psychological Association, 1–11. Mishler, Elliot G. (1986). Research Interviewing. Context and Narrative. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Murray, Henry A. (1938). Explorations in Personality. New York: Oxford UP. Ong, Walter (1982). Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen. Plummer, Kenneth (1983). Documents of Life. London: Allen & Unwin. Polkinghorne, Donald (1988). Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences. Albany: State U of New York P. Porter, Roger J. (2008). “Introduction to World Narrative.” M. Fuchs & C. Howes (eds.). Teaching Life Writing Texts. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 23–31. Punday, Daniel (2003). Narrative Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Narratology. New York: Palgrave. Ricœur, Paul ([1985] 1988). Time and Narrative. Vol. 3. Chicago: U of Chicago P. – ([1990] 1992). Oneself as Another. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Riessman, Catherine Kohler (2008). Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2006). “Narrative, Media, and Modes.” M.-L. Ryan. Avatars of Story. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 3–30. Sartwell, Crispin (2000). End of Story. Toward an Annihilation of Language and History. Albany: State U of New York P. Schütze, Fritz (1977). Die Technik des narrativen Interviews in Interaktionsfeldstudien dargestellt an einem Projekt zur Erforschiung von kommunikativen Machtstrukturen. Universität Bielefeld: Department of Sociology. Strawson, Galen (2004). “Against Narrativity.” Ratio n.s. 17, 428–452. Taylor, Charles (1989). Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Triandis, Harry Ch. (1989). “The Self and Social Behavior in Differing Contexts.” Psychological Review 96, 506–520.

5.2 Further Reading Bamberg, Michael, ed. (2007). Narrative—State of the Art. Amsterdam: Benjamins. – et al., eds. (2007). Selves and Identities in Narrative and Discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Brockmeier, Jens & Donal Carbaugh, eds. (2001). Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Fina, Anna de et al., eds. (2006). Discourse and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Holstein, James A. & Jaber F. Gubrium (2000). The Self We Live By: Narrative Identity in a Postmodern World. New York: Oxford UP. McAdams, Dan P. et al., eds. (2006). Identity and Story. Washington: American Psychological Association.

Ideology and Narrative Fiction Luc Herman & Bart Vervaeck

1 Definition In the context of narrative fiction, ideology may be defined as the frame of values informing the narrative. This frame installs hierarchical relationships between pairs of oppositional terms such as real vs. false, good vs. bad, and beautiful vs. ugly. These preferences may be explicitly stated in the text or remain more or less implicit. The reader can engage with the frame in variety of ways: he or she can make it explicit (and thus engage with the hierarchy discovered in the text), construct it only partially, or disregard it completely. It is always the reader who pieces together the ideology of the fiction at hand, but relevant choices invariably emerge from an interaction between three elements: reader, context and text. Theories of ideology can be categorized according to the element they stress: psychological approaches are mostly concerned with the reader, sociological analyses tend to highlight the context (including the author), and discursive inquiries focus on the actual text. Any aspect of narrative form can lead to multiple ideological interpretations on the part of the reader, but some narrative scholars (esp. in gender and postcolonial studies) have wanted to associate formal characteristics such as voice and focalization with a specific ideological meaning.

2 Explication Ideological analysis is relational, since ideology is typically defined in terms of the relation between one domain considered to be the expression of the ideology (consciousness, art, fiction) and another domain considered as the source (the unconscious, the social and economic infrastructure). The sociologist Mannheim regards the study of ideology as part of a broader sociology of knowledge that connects ideas to the social systems in which they arise. His “relationism” (Mannheim [1936] 1968) finds a middle ground between determinism (ideas are

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caused by social conditions) and relativism (Eagleton [1991] 2007: 107–110). In general, three main approaches to ideology can be discerned (see 3.1), though they intertwine and overlap. As a collective set of beliefs, ideology can be approached from a sociological angle (with a stress on the collective element) or from a psychological perspective, ranging from traditional Freudian psychoanalysis (focusing on the subconscious undercurrent of the beliefs) to present-day cognitive studies that focus on the mental schemata involved in the set of beliefs (van Dijk 1998; Emmott & Alexander → Schemata). A third tradition focuses on language and discourse and, more generally, on semiotic systems as the centers of ideological enunciation. Some representatives of these three traditions zoom in on narrative fiction to study the workings of ideology (see 3.2). As a result of the socalled ethical turn (Eskin 2004), philosophers and literary scholars alike have studied the reading of narrative fiction as a form of moral engagement with the textual other. Famous examples include Nussbaum ([1990] 1992) and Miller (1987). While the former stresses the need for a humanist, “loving” and respectful approach to the laws contained in the text, the latter highlights the inevitable relativism of the norms developed in the act of reading. Within the discipline of narratology (see 3.3.), attention to the ideological dimension of narrative fiction has involved a wide variety of approaches, ranging from textually oriented efforts (e.g. structuralism) over pragmatic proposals (e.g. rhetorical narratology) to broad contextualizations (e.g. feminist and postcolonial narratologies). The disputes between the various general approaches to ideology center on (1) the kind of deep structure (e.g. sociological or psychoanalytical); (2) the nature of the relation between deep and surface level (e.g. deterministic or dialectical); (3) the concrete form of ideology: negative (dissimulation, illusion) or positive (social function of collectivization), small (ideology restricted to some forms of [false] consciousness linked to specific classes) or large (ideology as general worldview not tied up with particular classes). In the broadest sense, ideology is close to common sense, doxa (Bourdieu [1980] 1992: 68), and lived experience.

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3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 Ideology in General The term ideology was coined at the end of the 18th century by the French philosopher Destutt de Tracy, who systematized its usage in the various volumes of Éléments d’Idéologie ([1801–15] 1827). He used the term to indicate a new science of ideas, fulfilling the empiricist (and in his case, revolutionary political) ideals of the Enlightenment, even turning ideology into a part of zoology (Larrain [1979] 1980: 27). The most influential sociological theory of ideology is found in Marxism. However, there is no consensus on the exact meaning of ideology in the Marxist tradition. Marx himself changed his view. The German Ideology (1845–46), the early study with Engels, conceptualizes ideology as a false form of consciousness that legitimizes and dissimulates the fundamental divisions of society grounded in the division of labor and entailing such dualisms as thinkers vs. doers, capitalists vs. laborers. From 1858 (Grundrisse) onwards, Marx described the workings of ideology through the theory of reification: capitalist commodities negate the process that produced the goods and that are responsible for their value, namely the relations of production and the surplus value added by the work of the laborer. Ideology presents goods as valuable in their own right and thereby excludes the economic process creating that value. This ideology is inherent in the capitalist mode of production and can therefore no longer be restricted either to a form of false consciousness or to the realm of the superstructure. Marx’s commentators highlight diverse aspects of his concept of ideology, ranging from positivist and deterministic materialism to relativist and dialectical historicism, and including many in-between positions. These interpretations also differ as to the degree of coercion involved in ideology. Bourgeois ideology may be seen as a forcefully imposed tool of indoctrination in class struggles, but it may also appear as a self-imposing process. Gramsci’s idea of hegemony typically involves non-coercive adherence to the dominant worldview via all kinds of institutions belonging to the “civil state, such as the family, youth movements, and television.” Ideology, “used in its highest sense of a conception of the world,” may be a factor facilitating this adherence (Gramsci [1971] 2005: 328). Next to sociology, psychoanalysis is another field that has made notable contributions to the study of ideology. In Freudian psychoanalysis, the ideological process is captured in terms of mechanisms such as sublimation and suppression which make unconscious urges (governed

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by the pleasure principle) acceptable while adapting them to the reality principle. Freud’s studies of religion (esp. [1928] 1961) provide a good example of this approach. In the same tradition, Reich ([1933] 1970) approached fascist ideology with reference to the suppression of the pleasure principle, a mechanism in which the family plays a central role. Lacanian psychoanalysis has become the main source of ideological study and critique in the work of Žižek, who inverts the traditional sociological view: “The fundamental level of ideology, however, is not that of an illusion masking the real state of things but that of an (unconscious) fantasy structuring our social reality itself” ([1989] 2008: 30). The third tradition describes ideology in linguistic, discursive and semiotic terms. Structuralist linguistics may have the reputation of studying language in isolation, but it has generated a lot of attention to ideology as well. In structuralist anthropology, Lévi-Strauss ([1962] 1966) places ideology in the frame of mythical or “savage thinking,” which he does not regard as a failed but as an exaggerated form of rationality: it installs rational relations (e.g. of cause and effect) between objects and subjects that have no such links (as in fetishism). This rationalization is a defense against arbitrariness; it brings about harmonious relations between opposed elements. As a result, social tensions are dissimulated. Lévi-Strauss tends to study this mechanism as an innate capacity of the mind. Godelier (1977), on the other hand, focuses on the social and political conditions of this capacity. He uses Marx’s theory of reification to ground mythical thinking such as fetishism in social relations. As Williams (1977: 21–44) shows, early Marxism paid little attention to language and usually reduced it to an ideological dissimulation of economic tensions. One positive exception is Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, a two-volume study by Vološinov ([1929–30] 1973). Vološinov did not reduce language to a misleading representation and application of a fundamental structure, but underscored its practical and creative nature. Instead of being an abstract, fixed and arbitrary signifier, the linguistic sign is a concrete, changing and conventional sign that derives its meaning and function from the social relations in which it is used. In this dialectical and never-ending interaction between language and society, consciousness and ideology develop hand in hand: “The logic of consciousness is the logic of ideological communication, of the semiotic interaction of a social group. If we deprive consciousness of its semiotic, ideological content, it would have absolutely nothing left” ([1929–30] 1973: 13). Language can only function as long as it is social and ideological. There is no abstract or nonideological language. And vice versa, for there can be no ideology

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without a sign system: “Everything ideological possesses meaning: it represents, depicts, or stands for something lying outside itself. In other words, it is a sign. Without signs there is no ideology” (9). Language-oriented approaches that do not pay attention to material conditions tend to look at ideology as a rhetorical effect of language that turns words into realities. The analyses of Yale critic de Man define ideology as the power to present linguistic reality as the reality: “What we call ideology is precisely the confusion of linguistic with natural reality, of reference with phenomenalism” (de Man 1986: 11). Quite often, theories of ideology combine two (or even all three) of the traditions mentioned above. Habermas links the Marxist tradition with a discursive, communicational approach. Communicative structures may become distorted in such a systematic way (related to tensions in the social economic system) that it looks as if it were the right and only way. As a result, it seems impossible to communicate and think outside the distorted system, which thereby becomes accepted as the dominant, normative and natural “universe of discourse” (Habermas [1981] 1984–87). Ideology is that process of naturalization whereby the dominant discourse becomes the only one (Eagleton [1991] 2007: 133). Van Dijk’s multidisciplinary approach to ideology involves “cognitive and social psychology, sociology and discourse” ([1998] 2003: 4). He defines ideology neutrally as “socially shared beliefs that are associated with the characteristic properties of a group, such as their identity, their position in society, their interests and aims, their relations to other groups, their reproduction, and their natural environment” (1998: 12). His approach is in no way Marxist, but he does confine ideology to social groups (to distinguish it from generally shared and uncontested beliefs), which he studies in the framework of social psychology and discursive mechanisms that separate one group from another. A Marxist version of such an approach can be found in the work of Zima (1981: 83–89), who sets up two links between language and social classes. First is the “sociolect,” which refers to the lexical and semantic structure of a language typical of a certain social class. Second is the “discourse” of that group, which for Zima comes down to a specific use of syntactic structures. Together, these two aspects infuse language with the ideology of social classes. Another Marxist slant on discourse analysis is provided by Laclau, who combines Gramsci’s notion of hegemony with a focus on aspects of discourse. Ideology produces “the belief that there is a particular social arrangement which can bring about the closure and transparency of the community. There is ideology whenever a particular content shows itself as more than itself” (Laclau 1997: 303). Ideology dissimulates the

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openness and undecidability inherent in discourse and blocks the endless struggle for hegemony between the various discourses. Althusser combines (post)structuralism with Marxism, Lacan with Gramsci. Ideology suppresses certain unconscious “problematics” and imposes typical answers to problems that are allowed to surface (Eagleton [1991] 2007: 137). Ideology is not a theory or a false consciousness, but a lived experience of social relations, an experience replete with the Lacanian “imaginary” confusion of subject and object. To Althusser, ideology “expresses the way [people] live the relation between them and their conditions of existence: this presupposes both a real relation and an ‘imaginary,’ ‘lived’ relation” (Althusser [1965] 2006: 233–234). Central to the modern organization of these relations is the State and its ideological apparatuses such as family, church and the media. The State acts as a Subject (comparable to Lacan’s Other)—a model for becoming a subject. 3.2 Ideology in Narrative Since the novel became popular during the period of the rise of the bourgeoisie, when the term ideology was coined, and since the novel has often been studied as the bourgeois genre par excellence (e.g. Lukács [1950] 2002; Jameson 1981: 152–154), it is not surprising that the study of narrative fiction and of ideology have often met. In general, literary studies of ideology aim at uncovering the connection between, on the one hand, the literary field (involving narrative techniques, but also authors and publishing houses), and on the other hand, psychological or socio-economic domains and aspects such as unconscious fantasies or class and gender. 3.2.1 The Marxist Tradition Williams links “narrative stance” (e.g. the choice of an omniscient narrator) to social mechanisms and “conventions of selection and exclusion […], involving radical social assumptions of causation and consequence” (1977: 176). Goldmann’s (1964) genetic structuralism links literature with the social realm through the mediation of class worldview: the successful author elaborates, systematizes and renders explicit the vision du monde that remains implicit in the non-artistic class members. For the Frankfurt school, this view of literature focuses too much on worldview and content. Benjamin’s ([1934a] 1998/2003) study of the author as producer highlights literary technique as the progressive and

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critical way to relate literature to social and economic production techniques. Traditional techniques reproduce bourgeois ideology, whereas new techniques disrupt that ideology and may contribute to political innovation: “technical progress is, for the author as producer, the basis of his political progress” (95). This is not a cause and effect relation, but a dialectical interaction between literature and society. It makes literature political, and politics literary. Benjamin ([1936] 2010) summarizes this as “politicizing art” (as opposed to the fascist estheticization of politics), referring to this as “the literarization of the conditions of living” ([1934b] 2005: 742). To Adorno ([1970] 1998) the critical power of literature resides in its negativity: it refuses (in the sense that it says no to) the capitalist mode of production. In capitalism, mass produced goods are not only interchangeable, but their value is thought to reside in their exchange value (basically their translatability into money), which is disconnected from the surplus value created in the labor process. Literary works of art, on the contrary, are unique, not interchangeable and hence not subjected to the logic of exchange value. This way, they run counter to capitalist ideology. Without negativity, cultural products are subjected to the industrial logic of capitalism, forming part of what Adorno and Horkheimer ([1947] 2007) labeled “the culture industry.” 3.2.2 Psychological Approaches Psychological studies of ideology in narrative rarely stress the critical powers of fiction. In line with the Freudian theory of the writer as a day-dreamer, fiction is often regarded as an imaginary form of consolation and even escapism. Davis links the ideological potential of novels with their power to transport the reader to another world: “Novels are not life, their situation of telling their stories is alienated from lived experience, their subject matter is heavily oriented towards the ideological, and their function is to help humans adapt to the fragmentation and isolation of the modern world” (1987: 12). For Davis, ideology consists of “public ideas wedded to collective and personal defenses” (15). The ideological effect of fiction resides in its defense mechanisms (such as projection, identification and denial; 20–21) which enable readers to find illusory solutions to social, political and personal tensions. As ideological instruments, novels invite this escapism on the level of spatial location, characterization, narration and speech representation. Davis’s analyses reveal these aspects of narrative fiction to be ideological and defensive refractions of social and political structures: thus “[fictional] locations are intertwined with ideological explanations for the posses-

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sion of property” (54)—explanations derived from, e.g. colonialism (colonizing space) and monetary economics (acquiring space). 3.2.3 Discursive Approaches Early language-oriented approaches to ideology in literature were developed within the “Baxtin Circle” (Holquist in Baxtin 1981: xxii). Baxtin himself continues Vološinov’s approach. He studies the novel’s dialogic and polyphonic narrative as a deviation from monologic and hegemonic bourgeois discourse (Shepherd →Dialogism). The novel’s disruptive ideology is comparable to the ‘carnivalesque’ disruption of the social order. Ideology to Baxtin is a general and neutral term, coming close to “idea-system.” In that sense, ideology is inherent to every form of discourse and every utterance. Hence, “The speaking person in the novel is always, to one degree or another, an ideologue, and his own words are always ideologemes” (Baxtin 1981: 333). Uspenskij explicitly aligns his work on “point of view” in fiction with Vološinov and Baxtin ([1973] 1983: 5–6). He uses “ideological” as a synonym of “evaluative (understanding by ‘evaluative’ a general system of viewing the world conceptually)” (8). He does not defend one ideology over the other, but develops a typology that neutrally systematizes various points of view, such as the monologic versus the dialogic. His system links up the ideology of a work of fiction at the phraseological level (e.g. the phrasing of the narratorial ideology vs. the style used to describe a character’s perspective), the spatiotemporal level (e.g. the authorial camera viewpoint involving no clear spatial and temporal coordinates vs. the localized viewpoint of a character) and the psychological level (e.g. the internal perspective of a character vs. the external stance of an invisible narrator). Interestingly, Uspenskij does not use the term ideology when he mentions that the phrases used to name and describe characters (e.g. princes vs. peasants) “reflect absolute social norms of a class society” (24). 3.2.4 Combined Approaches Both in sociological and discursive approaches, literary ideology is regularly described as a form of closure. Jameson analyses the ideological process in Conrad’s early novels as an attempt “to seal off the textual process” (1981: 216) from the economic and social context that infuses it, described in Jameson’s Marxist terminology as “late nineteenth-century rationalization and reification” (266). A comparable view is propounded by Eagleton, who sets out to investigate “the most

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potent of all ideological forms—that of narrative. For narrative is certainly a paradigm case of closure” (1979: 71). However, Eagleton does not go on to analyze narrative, but simply uses it as a metaphor for a closed (ideological) system. In his view, Christianity is a narrative while Marxism is not, since the latter disrupts linear and closed models. Jameson, like Althusser, studies ideology from a combined psychological and sociological perspective. He focuses on the social, political and cultural frames that influence the act of literary interpretation while remaining at the level of the subconscious. Such a focus on the dynamic and transformative mediation between the literary and the non-literary goes against ideology defined as “strategies of containment” (Jameson 1981: 53): the prevailing strategies of interpretation (re)produce boundaries (e.g. between literary form and political struggle) and thereby ensure “ideological closure” (52). Jameson’s alternative comprises three interpretative stages. The first reads the individual text as a symbolic act, a symbolization of (unconscious) political tensions. In the second phase, the text is studied as discourse and linked with “collective and class discourses” (76). The text is placed in the social context, loses its individuality and becomes an ideologeme, “that is, the smallest intelligible unit of the essentially antagonistic collective discourses of social classes” (ibid.). The third stage expands the context (political in the first, social in the second) to “the horizon of human history as a whole,” thus broadening the perspective (symbol in the first, discourse in the second) to sign systems. The work is now seen as a textual form of production interlacing various sign systems that are linked with various “modes of production” in the Marxist sense of the term (ibid.). Macherey adapts Althusser’s ideology theory to the study of literature. Althusser regards ideological power as an appeal that is made by a powerful institution (a Subject) and that creates adherence in the subjects identifying with it. From this perspective, Macherey studies subjects in the literary domain, namely authors, characters and readers ([1966] 1978/2006: 40). In their case, the process of adherence and identification comes about through language. The language of literature plays with everyday language and the “everyday ideology” (72) it embodies. The evocation of a storyworld invariably evokes (i.e. confirms) and parodies (i.e. contests) everyday ideology (68–69). In this double nature, it presents and makes explicit the contradictions and distinctions that are at the basis of language and ideology but that usually go unnoticed. Reproduction and contestation of ideology are at the heart of literature. As a result, literature is neither autonomous nor a reflection of social reality.

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3.3 Ideology and Narratology Before the breakthrough of postclassical narratology, ideology in fiction was most often studied as the “range of cultural stereotypes or accepted knowledge” (Culler [1975] 1994: 141) contained within the narrative and accepted by the reader as natural and self-evident. In Barthes’ S/Z, ideology forms part of the “cultural code” that refers to a body of cultural knowledge activated by the narrative ([1970] 1974: 19–20). To Genette, the founder of classical structuralist narratology, the ideology of a narrative can be found in the “body of maxims and prejudices that make up both a world-view and a system of values” ([1969] 1979: 73, our translation) and that incite the reader to accept the storyworld as plausible and credible. Ideology, in other words, founds the narrative’s verisimilitude or vraisemblance. Cultural conventions are turned into natural and self-evident givens. To represent this ideological process in a simple way, Jameson (1981: 46–49) turns to Greimas’s semiotic square (1970: 136–138), which lays bare the oppositions and values that ground the storyworld. This line of reasoning is developed by Tambling (1991). When studying narratives, he investigates “the everyday life beliefs that operate through a culture” (3) and that are present in the ideological, seemingly natural system pervading the narrative. The system consists of “oppositions, which seem natural and seem to dictate their own terms,” though, in fact, they “are cultural, part of a conventional way of thinking that is so automatic […] that they are passed off as natural and spontaneous ways of thinking” (25). Successful narratives present these oppositions in a way that convinces and seduces the reader. This may take many forms: the narrative may be a faithful and one-dimensional embodiment of the prevailing cultural system, or it may be multi-voiced and critical of that system. There is not one ‘correct’ recipe to get the ideology across to the reader, for there are many different types of readers. French structuralism quickly became the starting point for a broader approach of ideology in narrative. At the outset, this tradition, initiated by Hamon (1984), continued to hold on to the text itself as the source of “the ideology-effect.” That effect was supposedly “inscribed in the text,” namely as a normative and often contradictory system of values (9). In the narratological work of Korthals Altes (1992), Greimas and Hamon are combined with an ever-growing attention to the role played by the reader. In her earlier analysis of the narrative’s “value-effect,” Korthals Altes focuses on the text influencing the reader, whereas her more recent work (1999) reverses the hierarchy. Jouve (2001), influ-

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enced by Korthals Altes’s early studies, sticks to the former position in his study of the “value-effect.” That effect is inscribed in the conscious organization of the text (e.g. plot organization, characterization and speech representation), whereas the “ideological effect” operates on a subliminal level (11). In postclassical narratology, the rhetorical paradigm provides the most common framework for an approach to ideology. This line of inquiry studies narrative as a form of communication between sender (author, implied author and/or narrator) and receiver (narratee and/or reader). A guiding light here is Booth, who introduced the implied author as the source and locus of the narrative’s ideological norms and choices ([1961] 1983: 70–77) (Schmid → Implied Author). The implied author is not only used to study the ideology of the text, but also to evaluate the reader’s response: readers that go against the implied author violate the text’s norms and as a result refuse the “friendship” (Booth 1988: 175) offered by the narrative. From the rhetorical perspective, Phelan and Rabinowitz have paid attention both to the ideological workings of a text and to the moral judgments readers continually make (Phelan → Narrative Ethics). Ideology is part of the thematic component of the text, to be distinguished from the mimetic (reference to the real world) and the synthetic (reference to the artificial construct) elements (Phelan 2005a: 20). Reading always entails making ‘narrative judgments’ concerning not just narrative elements such as actions, but also ethical and aesthetic values of the narrated world and the narration (Phelan [2005b] 2008: 324). Moral judgments are part of what Doležel calls the narrative’s “axiological component” (1998: 123–125). To Rabinowitz, such judgments follow ‘the rules of signification’ (1987: 84–93), one of four set rules of reading involving a process of linking textual aspects to the reader’s everyday way of making sense of the world. Characters and narrators play a central role in the formation of moral judgments, but all narrative elements have a part to play. In combining the world of the text with the realm of the reader, rhetorical narratology tries to reconcile the claims of the text (typically imposed by the authority of the implied author) with the freedom of the narrative audience. Consequently, the reader’s response is at the same time linked with the ethics of everyday life (Gregory 2009) and phrased in terms of respect for the textual offerings (Chambers 1984: 146–148). The “narrative ethics” developed by Newton combines this rhetorical approach with the philosophy of Levinas concerning the appeal that the other (in this case, the text) makes to us. Newton (1995: 17–18) situates the ethical workings of narratives on three levels: a narrational ethics

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(focusing on form, i.e. narration), a representational ethics (focusing on content, esp. the characters) and a hermeneutic ethics, which pertains to the reader’s “response as responsibility” (21). The intimate link between narratology and (moral) philosophy is part of what Eskin (2004: 557) called “the Double ‘Turn’ to Ethics and Literature”: this involves “a ‘turn to ethics’ in literary studies and, conversely, a ‘turn to literature’ in (moral) philosophy.” The issue of Poetics Today he edited (2004) provides a representative selection of philosophical and narratological approaches to the manifold relations between ethics and esthetics, ideology and narrative. Fludernik’s ([1996] 2005) natural narratology broadens the link (inherent in rhetorical narratology) between narrative and everyday life, and as such provides a general frame which can accommodate critical and political approaches of ideology such as gender and postcolonial theories (358–370). The unnatural narratology advocated by Richardson (2006) unravels the ideology of natural narratives by focusing on the critical transformations of that ideology in narratives that ostentatiously defy mimetic and natural presuppositions. As such, it sides with “ideological critique” which, according to Elias “examines the ways in which subjects both incorporate and resist definitions of life-world and selfhood structured by hegemonic social powers” (2010: 281). A critical type of narratology looks beneath “the said” in a narrative and “reveals the political unsaid of both the text and the social conditions that produced it” (ibid.). The best-known examples of this critical tradition are provided by the narratologies inspired by feminism (Lanser → Gender and Narrative) and postcolonial theory. Since the 1980s, feminist narratology has highlighted the central role played by gender, sex and sexuality in the construction and interpretation of narrative fiction. Working against the limitations of structuralist narratology and its mostly male practitioners, scholars such as Lanser (1986, 1992) and Warhol (1989, 1999, Warhol in Herman et al. 2012) have insisted that “even the broadest, most obvious elements of narration are ideologically charged and socially variable, sensitive to gender differences in ways that have not been recognized” (Lanser 1992: 23), arguing that in fact all “politically significant and historically grounded differences” (Warhol in Herman et al. 2012: 11) should be placed at the center of narratological inquiry. While feminist narratology has long since moved beyond the early “presupposition that the speaker’s gender can explain the form of the narrative” (Page 2003: 53) and instead holds that “gender is produced through narrative processes” (Robinson 1991: 4), it does not fail to foreground issues related to (the resistance against) patriarchy, ranging from a

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“communal voice” (Lanser 1992) to the incorporation of male uncertainty in the (biblical) construction of woman (Bal 1987). In Prince’s concise definition, postcolonial narratology “is sensitive to matters commonly, if not uncontroversially, associated with the postcolonial (e.g. hybridity, migrancy, otherness, fragmentation, diversity, power relations); it envisages their possible narratological correspondents; and it incorporates them” (2005: 373). Attention to these matters may lead to richer accounts of narrative diversity, e.g. by focusing on “immediate discourses […] issuing from a group” (377) or by including the narrator’s status as colonizer or formerly colonized as an element on the same level as his intrusiveness or self-consciousness. Prince is convinced, in other words, that working with the toolbox of classical narratology on “postcolonial” texts will have implications for the theory. In earlier contributions, Fludernik (1999), Gymnich (2002) and Birk and Neumann (2002) seemed more interested in the ideological relevance of this application. According to Birk and Neumann, “it is the task of postcolonial narratology to describe the narrative strategies that help to construct stereotypical representations of the Other, and also to analyze their function” (123–124, our translation). For Sommer, both feminist and postcolonial narratology constitute a persuasive example of “contextualism” in the study of narrative fiction. Seeing their potential for the future place of the discipline, he argues on behalf of an “intercultural” narratology which would “combine structuralist descriptions of textual features with cognitive insights into narrative comprehension, within an overall interpretive framework of intercultural concepts” (Sommer 2007: 62). An excellent early example of such an encompassing narratological approach can be found in Sternberg’s study of biblical narrative as governed by “three principles: ideological, historiographic, and aesthetic” (1987: 41). These principles “join forces to originate a strategy of telling that casts reading as a drama, interpretation as an ordeal that enacts and distinguishes the human predicament” (46). The biblical emphasis on knowledge centers on the limitations of man, with various narrative strategies “twisting, if not blocking, the way to knowledge” (47). The audience, however, is not entirely lost when it comes to developing the “proper” attitude to characters and events. Thus the reader’s orientation is helped by “the rule that complexity of representation is inversely proportioned to that of evaluation: the more opaque (discordant, ambiguous) the plot, that is, the more transparent (concordant, straightforward) the judgment” (54).

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4 Topics for Further Investigation To determine the ideological workings of a narrative, it is vital to clarify the exact role played by the text (its so-called force or appeal) and the reader (his or her disposition, including frames and scripts). Empirical and/or sociological research might throw light on the interaction between the two, which remains vague in existing approaches. In addition, discovery procedures that point to relevant textual signs of ideology are still waiting to be formulated.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Adorno, Theodor ([1970] 1998). Aesthetic Theory. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. – & Max Horkheimer ([1947] 2007). Dialectic of Enlightenment. Palo Alto: Stanford UP. Althusser, Louis ([1965] 2006). For Marx. London: Verso. Bal, Mieke (1987). Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Barthes, Roland ([1970] 1974). S/Z. New York: Hill and Wang. Baxtin, Mixail M. (Bakhtin, Mikhail M.) (1981). The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: U of Texas P. Benjamin, Walter ([1934a] 1998/2003). “The Author as Producer.” W. Benjamin. Understanding Brecht. London: Verso, 85–104. – ([1934b] 2005). “The Newspaper.” W. Benjamin. Selected Writings, Volume 2: Part 2: 1931-1934. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 741–742. – ([1936] 2010). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Scottsdale: Prism Key P. Birk, Hanne & Birgit Neumann (2002). “Go-between: Postkoloniale Erzähltheorie.” A. Nünning & V. Nünning (eds.). Neue Ansätze in der Erzähltheorie. Trier: WVT, 115–152. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P. – (1988). The Company We Keep. Berkeley: U of California P. Bourdieu, Pierre ([1980] 1992). The Logic of Practice. Palo Alto: Stanford UP. Chambers, Ross (1984). Story and Situation. Narrative Seduction and the Power of Fiction. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Culler, Jonathan ([1975] 1994). Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature. London: Routledge. Davis, Lennard J. (1987). Resisting Novels: Ideology and Fiction. New York: Methuen. de Man, Paul (1986). The Resistance to Theory. Manchester: Manchester UP. Destutt de Tracy, Alain ([1801–15] 1827). Éléments d’idéologie. Paris: Chez Madame Lévi Libraire.

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Dijk, Teun A. van ([1998] 2003). Ideology and Discourse: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. Barcelona: Pompeu Fabra U. Doležel, Lubomír (1998). Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Eagleton, Terry (1979). “Ideology, Fiction, Narrative.” Social Text 2, 62–80. – ([1991] 2007). Ideology. An Introduction. London: Verso. Elias, Amy J. (2010). “Ideology and Critique.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Teaching Narrative Theory. New York: MLA, 281–294. Eskin, Michael (2004). “Introduction: The Double ‘Turn’ to Ethics and Literature?” Poetics Today 25, 557–572. Fludernik, Monika ([1996] 2005). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. – (1999). “‘When the Self is an Other’: Vergleichende erzähltheoretische und postkoloniale Überlegungen zur Identitätskonstruktion in der (exil)indischen Gegenwartsliteratur.” Anglia 117, 71–96. Freud, Sigmund ([1928] 1961). “The Future in an Illusion.” J. Strachey et al. (eds.). The Standard Edition of the Complete Works. London: The Hogarth P & The Institute of Psychoanalysis, vol. 21, 5–56. Genette, Gérard ([1969] 1979). Figures II. Paris: Seuil. Godelier, Maurice (1977). Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Goldmann, Lucien (1964). Pour une sociologie du roman. Paris: Gallimard. Gramsci, Antonio ([1971] 2005). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Gregory, Marshall (2009). Shaped by Stories: The Ethical Power of Narratives. Paris: U of Notre Dame P. Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1970). Du sens. Essais sémiotiques. Paris: Seuil. Gymnich, Marion (2002). “Linguistics and Narratology: The Relevance of Linguistic Criteria to Postcolonial Narratology.” M. Gymnich et al. (eds.). Literature and Linguistics: Approaches, Models, and Applications. Trier: WVT, 61–76. Habermas, Jürgen ([1981] 1984–87). The Theory of Communicative Action. 2 vols. Boston: Beacon P. Hamon, Philippe (1984). Texte et idéologie. Valeurs, hiérarchies et évaluations dans l’œuvre littéraire. Paris: PUF. Herman, David et al. (2012). Narrative Theory: Core Concepts & Critical Debates. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Jameson, Fredric (1981). The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. New York: Cornell UP. Jouve, Vincent (2001). Poétique des valeurs. Paris: PUF. Korthals Altes, Liesbeth (1992). Le salut par la fiction? Sens, valeurs et narrativité dans ‘Le Roi des Aulnes’ de Michel Tournier. Amsterdam: Rodopi. – (1999). “Le tournant éthique dans la théorie littéraire: impasse ou ouverture?” Études littéraires 31, 39–56. Laclau, Ernesto (1997). “The Death and Resurrection of the Theory of Ideology.” MLN: Modern Language Notes 112, 297–321. Lanser, Susan (1986). “Toward a Feminist Narratology.” Style 20, 341–363.

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(1992). Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Larrain, Jorge ([1979] 1980). The Concept of Ideology. London: Hutchinson. Lévi-Strauss, Claude ([1962] 1966). The Savage Mind. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Lukács, Georg ([1950] 2002). Studies in European Realism. New York: Howard Fertig. Macherey, Pierre ([1966] 1978/2006). A Theory of Literary Production. London: Routledge. Mannheim, Karl ([1936] 1968). Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Miller, J. Hillis (1987). The Ethics of Reading: Kant, de Man, Eliot, Trollope, James, and Benjamin. New York: Columbia UP. Newton, Adam Zachary (1995). Narrative Ethics. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP. Nussbaum, Martha C. ([1990] 1992). Love’s Knowledge. Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP. Page, Ruth (2003). “Feminist Narratology? Literary and Linguistic Perspectives on Gender and Narratology.” Language and Literature 12(1), 4–56. Phelan, James (2005a). Living to Tell about It. A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – ([2005b] 2008). “Narrative Judgments and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative: Ian McEwan’s Atonement.” J. Phelan & P. Rabinowitz (eds.). A Companion to Narrative Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 322–336. Prince, Gerald (2005). “On a Postcolonial Narratology.” J. Phelan & P. Rabinowitz (eds.). A Companion to Narrative Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 372–381. Rabinowitz, Peter J. (1987). Before Reading. Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Reich, Wilhelm ([1933] 1970). The Mass Psychology of Fascism. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Richardson, Brian (2006). Unnatural Voices. Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Robinson, Sally (1991). Engendering the Subject: Gender and Self-Representation in Contemporary Women’s Fiction. Albany: State U of New York P. Sommer, Roy (2007). “‘Contextualism’ Revisited: A Survey (and Defence) of Postcolonial and Intercultural Narratologies.” Journal of Literary Theory 1, 61–79. Sternberg, Meir (1987). The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Tambling, Jeremy (1991). Narrative and Ideology. Milton Keynes: Open UP. Uspenskij, Boris ([1973] 1983). A Poetics of Composition. The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of a Compositional Form. Berkeley: U of California P. Vološinov, Valentin N. (Voloshinov) ([1929–30] 1973). Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Warhol, Robyn (1989). Gendered Interventions: Narrative Discourse in the Victorian Novel. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP. – (1999). “Guilty Cravings: What Feminist Narratology Can Do For Cultural Studies.” D. Herman (ed.). Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 341–355. Williams, Raymond (1977). Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP.

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Zima, Peter (1981). Literatuur en maatschappij. Inleiding in de Literatuur- en Tekstsociologie. Assen: Van Gorcum. Žižek, Slavoj ([1989] 2008). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.

5.2 Further Reading Adorno, Theodor W. ([1974] 1998). Noten zur Literatur. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Herman, Luc & Bart Vervaeck (2007). “Ideology.” D. Herman (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 217–230. Korthals Altes, Liesbeth ([2005] 2008). “Ethical Turn.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 142–146. Mieth, Dietmar (2000). Erzählen und Moral. Narrativität im Spannungsfeld von Ethik und Äthetik. Tübingen: Attempto. Williams, Patrick ([2005] 2008). “Ideology and Narrative.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 235–236. Zima, Peter (1977). Textsemiotik als Ideologiekritik. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.

Illusion (Aesthetic) Werner Wolf

1 Definition Aesthetic illusion is a basically pleasurable mental state that frequently emerges during the reception of representational texts, artifacts or performances. These representations may be fictional or factual, and in particular include narratives (2.3 and 4). Like all reception effects, aesthetic illusion is elicited by a conjunction of factors that are located (a) in the representations themselves, (b) in the reception process and the recipients, and (c) in framing contexts, e.g. cultural-historical, situational and generic ones. Aesthetic illusion consists primarily of a feeling, with variable intensity, of being imaginatively and emotionally immersed in a represented world and of experiencing this world in a way similar (but not identical) to real life. At the same time, however, this impression of immersion is counterbalanced by a latent rational distance resulting from a culturally acquired awareness of the difference between representation and reality.

2 Explication 2.1 The Nature of Aesthetic Illusion Aesthetic illusion is distinguished from real-life hallucinations and dreams in that it is induced by the perception of concrete representational artifacts, texts or performances. Moreover, it is distinct from delusions in that it is neither a conceptual nor a perceptual error, but a complex phenomenon characterized by an asymmetrical ambivalence. This ambivalence derives from the positioning of aesthetic illusion on a scale simultaneously influenced to varying (increasing or decreasing) degrees by its two poles of total rational distance (disinterested “observation” of an artifact as such [Walton 1990: 273]) and complete immersion (“psychological participation” [240–289]) in the represented world. Typical aesthetic illusion maintains a position that is closer to

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the pole of immersion rather than to the pole of distance. While aesthetic illusion is not restricted to an effect of works of art, the term “aesthetic” is justified by the fact that it etymologically gestures towards a quasi-perceptual quality of the imaginative experience involved and implies an awareness, typical of the reception of art, that “illusion” is triggered by an artifact rather than (an, e.g., magic) reality. The etymological presence of ‘playfulness’ in “in-lusio” also contributes to foregrounding this important facet. Thus the term “aesthetic illusion” is arguably more satisfactory than the various synonyms used in research: “absorption” (Cohen 2001: 258); “recentering” and “immersion” (Ryan 1991: 21–23; cf. also Schaeffer 1999: 243 passim); “involvement” and “psychological participation” (Walton 1990: 240–289); “transportation” (Gerrig 1993: 12 passim); “effet de réel” (Barthes 1968). Strictly speaking, it is even erroneous to call aesthetic illusion simply “illusion” or “immersion” except by way of abbreviation, since by this—as in all of these alternative terms (and also in the misleading attempt to regard aesthetic illusion as a form of magic; Balter 2002)—the rational distance induced by the underlying awareness of the non-natural character of representation would be disregarded. Illusion, to the extent it is aesthetic, presupposes the implicit acceptance of a “reception contract,” one of whose stipulations Coleridge described as “the willing suspension of disbelief for the moment” ([1817] 1965: 169). Aesthetic illusion thus involves several mental/psychic spheres and simultaneously operates within two dimensions (cf. also Walton 1990: 273): (a) in the background as a latent, rational awareness “from without,” namely that the illusion-inducing artifact is a mere representation; and (b) in the foreground as a mainly intuitive mental simulation where this awareness is bracketed out in favor of an imaginary experience of represented worlds “from within.” This simulation involves emotions and sensory quasi-perceptions (including, but not restricted to, visual imagination), but also reason to the extent that a certain rationality is required to make sense of the represented world. Owing to its dual nature, aesthetic illusion is gradable according to the degrees of immersion or distance present in given reception situations and is thus unstable. Immersion, which in many cases seems to be the default option during the reception process of representations and therefore continues to hold on subsequent readings (Walton 1990: 262–263), can be suspended or undermined at any given moment by the actualization of the latent consciousness of representationality. This “willing construction of disbelief” (Gerrig 1993: 230) can be triggered not only by the recipient, but also by the work itself, thanks to metalepsis (Pier → Metalepsis) and to other illusion-breaking devices employed by

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metafictionality (Neumann & Nünning → Metanarration and Metafiction), or due to interference by contextual factors. Since illusionist works provide a simulation of real-life experience, aesthetic illusion always has a quasi-experiential quality about it and sometimes, in addition, a referential dimension: the tendency to credit illusionist representation with having indeed taken place in the real world. This referential aspect is not always at issue, however, for fantasy or science fiction, which make no pretense at referring to reality, can nevertheless induce a powerful aesthetic illusion. In all cases, aesthetic illusion implies the subjective impression of being experientially “recentered” in a represented world, whether factual or fictional, an impression that amounts to a “side-participant stance” (Gerrig 1993: 108, 239) rather than to identification with a character (Jannidis → Character), the latter being a special case of feeling re-centered. Functionally, aesthetic illusion constitutes one of the most effective ways of ensuring the reception of representations, since it can cater to various human desires and offers vicarious experience without serious consequences. The general attractiveness of aesthetic illusion also qualifies it as a vehicle of persuasion for didactic, advertising or propaganda purposes. A persuasive purpose may be seen also at work in the potential of aesthetic illusion to make the recipient accept more readily the tendency of aesthetic representations to introduce an unrealistic surplus of coherence and meaning, i.e. to present worlds whose closure and meaningfulness, through such devices as the use of coincidence, poetic justice, etc., may be regarded as deviating from the contingency of life. From a historical point of view, the persuasiveness of aesthetic illusion may even be regarded as related to the process of secularization in the Western world, for the relevance of illusion as an effect of texts and artworks created according to the principle of “matching” them “convincing[ly]” with life-like appearances appears to have increased proportionally as belief in the self-evident meaningfulness of the world has decreased alongside the “making” of schematic artifacts according to the principle of efficient readability (cf. Gombrich 1960: 131, 99). It seems that with the increase of credibility invested in individual works, “aesthetic” belief has progressively filled the place occupied by philosophical and religious beliefs as tacit basis of meaning, even though, outside deconstructionist and postmodernist circles, belief in the power of representation as such persists.

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2.2 Factors Contributing to Aesthetic Illusion Aesthetic illusion is produced by several factors, described by Gombrich (1960: 169) as elements contributing to a “guided projection.” Such projection takes place in the mind of the recipient. When it is in a state of aesthetic illusion, however, the mind’s activity is not freefloating, but rather guided by the illusionist representation, both recipient and representation being influenced by contexts which in turn also contribute to the illusionist projection. Thus the representation, the recipient and the context (situational, cultural, etc.) must all be taken into account as factors in a theory of illusion. The individual representation is the guiding “script” that provides the raw material for what will appear on the mental “screen” and serves to trigger aesthetic illusion. Owing to the quasi-experiential nature of this state of mind, successful illusionist representations furnish formal analogies to the structures and features of real-life experience. Moreover, they offer contents that correspond to the objects and scripts encountered in, or applicable to, real-life experience, at least to a certain extent. Generally, illusionist representations are accessible with relative facility. They offer potential recipients with material to lure them into the represented worlds and create a sense of verisimilitude, a prerequisite for the emergence of aesthetic illusion, although generic conventions may serve to counteract improbable elements. While the illusionist representation provides the script, the recipients are called on to act as its (mental) “directors” or “producers,” using it along with their own world-knowledge and empathetic abilities for “projection” onto their mind’s “screen.” This activity, as well as the nature of the mental screen, results in the recipients and the reception process becoming decisive, albeit problematic, factors in the production of aesthetic illusion. For even if it is conceded that the principal precondition of aesthetic illusion (namely the human ability to mentally dissociate oneself from the here-and-now and imagine being somewhere else, someone else, in some other time) is an anthropological constant, a recipient’s illusionist response to an artifact remains heavily dependent on individual factors. These include range of experience, age, gender, interests, cultural background, and the ability to read works of art aesthetically, but also the situation of reception and, of course, the recipient’s willingness to “participat[e] psychologically in [a] game of make-believe” (Walton 1990: 242). As for the latter factor, immersion seems to satisfy a powerful psychological predisposition, even enabling one, under the influence of generic conventions, to inte-

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grate into the reception such blatantly non-realistic phenomena as nondiegetic film music (Cohen 2001: 254). As for cultural and historical contexts—the “rooms” in which potentially illusionist scripts are originally located and the locations where guided projections take place—a plurality of such contexts must always be assumed, although to a lesser degree when a text, its author and its reader are contemporary and form part of the same culture. This context dependence has significant consequences, for it means that aesthetic illusion can be conceived of as the effect of a relative correspondence or analogy between a representation and essential culturally and historically induced concepts of reality and schemata of perception. It is these schemata and epistemic frameworks together with certain experiential contents that govern verisimilitude as a prime condition of aesthetic illusion. Since there is no universally valid perception and experience of reality, let alone a worldview that is generally acknowledged to be natural, any disparities between the contexts of production and those of reception may substantially affect aesthetic illusion. Verisimilitude— and with it aesthetic illusion—is therefore to a large extent a historical and cultural variable. Another relevant and equally variable contextual factor is the set of frames, including generic conventions, that rule the production and reception of the arts and media in a given period. Most important, however, is the question of the extent to which aesthetic illusion itself and an aesthetic approach to artworks that implies aesthetic distance are practiced or known in a given culture or period or whether, for instance, a worldview that favors magic enchantment prevails, owing to which specific artifacts are regarded as numinous realities. With the two variables recipient and context in mind, everything that can be said about the core of all text-centered approaches to aesthetic illusion, namely illusionist representation itself, becomes problematic. For these variables make it difficult, if not impossible, to decide on the actual illusionist effect of a given work, text, technique, etc. for all periods and all individuals. However, this does not mean that nothing at all can be said about the factor artifact or text, for given similar recipients and similar reception contexts, representations will appear as more or less illusionist according to intra-compositional factors. One essential similarity among recipients, contributing to the theoretical construct of an “average” recipient, can in fact be postulated, namely that the recipient is prepared and able to “willingly suspend disbelief” when confronted with illusionist artifacts, but remains distanced enough not to become enmeshed in experiential or referential delusion. Historically and culturally, the average recipient or reader (Prince → Reader) as a factor in a theory of illusion can be assumed to have exist-

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ed at least over the past few centuries of Western culture, during which the evolution of aesthetic verisimilitude and responses to illusionist art are comparatively well documented. In fact, Western cultural history of this period offers an extensive corpus of primary works that continue to be read as illusionist, in contrast to works that obstruct illusionist access such as radically experimental postmodernist fictions. With this illusionist corpus and its features in mind, a number of points regarding the illusionist potential of a given representation can in fact be made. If, in the following argument, terms such as “characteristics” and “principles” are employed, they are not meant to function in the illusionist reception process as essences with fixed effects. Rather, the characteristics and principles of illusionist representation are to be regarded as deriving from prototypes that possess a particularly high degree of illusionist potential according to aesthetic theory and testimonies of reception of the past and/or of personal experience. 2.3 Typical Characteristics of Illusionist Representations and the Principles of Illusion-making: The Case of Narrative Fiction Aesthetic illusion can be elicited by a broad range of texts and works. There is no restriction as to their being factual or fictional, narrative or descriptive (a fact often overlooked in narratological treatments of immersion, as e.g. in Schaeffer & Vultur 2005), and they may occur in a wide variety of media and genres. Aesthetic illusion is therefore a transmedial, transmodal and transgeneric phenomenon. There is only one general proviso, namely that it be triggered by a representation. It thus is relevant to narrative fiction, drama, lyric poetry (Wolf 1998; Müller-Zettelmann 2000: chap. 3.2.6; Hühn & Kiefer 2005), painting, sculpture, photography, film, and contemporary virtual realities such as computer games (Ryan 2006: 181–203), while excluding (most) instrumental music from the range of potentially illuding media (Ryan 2001: 15, Bernhart 2013 is less sure in this respect). Since describing aesthetic illusion in the various media would require, at least in part, a media-specific theory in each case and also because, as will become clear below, verbal narratives are characterized by a special affinity to aesthetic illusion, the following discussion will focus on certain features and principles at work in illusionist representations with reference to narrative fiction. In the history of prose fiction, one illusionist prototype is the 19thcentury realist novel, a genre that has always been credited with a particularly high potential for eliciting illusionist immersion. Realist novels draw their readers into their worlds by maintaining a feeling of

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verisimilitude and experientiality while minimizing aesthetic distance. Considering illusionist texts such as these, it is possible to single out illusion-relevant textual features and link them to principles of fictional illusion-making which contribute to producing these features through specific narrative devices. In narratological terms, typically illusionist novels (e.g. Eliot’s Adam Bede or Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles) display the following four characteristic features (Wolf 1993a: chap. 2.3): (a) their content or story level is the central text level, as their storyworlds are characterized by a certain extension and complexity, are consistent, tend to be life-like in their inventory and thus elicit the interest of the (contemporary) reader; (b) their transmission or discourse level remains comparatively inconspicuous and ‘transparent,’ serving mainly to depict the storyworld and to enhance the tellability (Baroni → Tellability), consistency and life-likeness of the story; (c) the content and its transmission tend to be serious; (d) illusionist texts are predominantly heteroreferential. As not all of these traits are self-explanatory, some comment is required. Highlighting of the content level (a) can be explained by the attempt to portray (facets of) a represented world in which recipients can become experientially immersed. A certain textual extension is typical of illusionist worlds because aesthetic illusion is a state that emerges during a process in which a transition must occur from the perceptions normally experienced in everyday life to aesthetic reception. If this process is too short owing to a minimal text basis, immersion may fail to take place. This factor also accounts for the relative complexity of typical illusionist worlds. Although this may seem a special feature of realist fiction only, it is in fact in keeping with the general illusionist effect of re-centering the recipient in a world whose quality as “world” is enhanced by both extension and complexity. The consistency and life-likeness (or probability) of realistic narratives are actually facets of a more general quality of illusionist worlds, namely their accessibility. Represented worlds can provide different degrees and types of accessibility (Ryan 1991: 32–33). It is obvious that enhanced accessibility facilitates illusionist immersion and that illusionist works therefore tend to lower the threshold of access as much as possible. In realism, this tendency is manifest in the construction and presentation of fictional worlds that seem to be an extension of the recipients’ real world in terms of spatial, temporal (contemporary) and social settings but also, for instance, in terms of norms, ideals and epistemological preconceptions about the “readability” of reality.

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The relative inconspicuousness of the transmission level (b), which is responsible for the mediality (Ryan → Narration in Various Media) but also for the artificiality of representation and thus for potentially distance-creating factors, corresponds to the centrality of the content level and is closely related to the tendency of illusionist immersion to predominate over aesthetic distance. Therefore, typically illusionist works, and in particular realist novels, usually keep distancing elements to a minimum. The shunning of aesthetic distance can also be witnessed in a no less typical tendency of illusionist works toward seriousness (c), although this does not exclude the comic from illusionism entirely. Comedy and laughter imply emotional distance, which runs counter to the strong affinity between emotional involvement and aesthetic illusion. The interrelation between illusion, emotions and seriousness can be seen not only in realist fiction, but also in drama: tragedy tends toward aesthetic illusion (Aristotle’s catharsis presupposes empathetic immersion), while comedy frequently suspends illusion. The predominant hetero-referentiality of realist fiction (d) is a consequence of the general fact that all illusionist artifacts, even those that ultimately play with illusion, are representational: they evoke or “represent” (elements of) a world that seems to exist outside the artifact, and they appear to refer to something other than the works in question. As a special, historical kind of mimesis, the realistic novel is in fact strongly hetero-referential. This does not mean, however, that mimesis alone guarantees the emergence of aesthetic illusion, nor that all illusionist texts must be either realistic (they may also be modernist) or mimetic in the sense of imitating a slice of life (science fiction, in defiance of such imitation, can also be illusionist). The basic characteristics found at the textual level of illusionist fiction can be linked to a number of intra-compositional principles of illusion-making, the cumulative effect of which is to produce its typical features of illusion-making as detailed above. These principles regulate the predominant immersive facet of illusionist works, while the latent distance also implied in aesthetic illusion is usually regulated by framing devices (e.g. the paratextual or metatextual marking of a novel as such [Wolf 2006]). Owing to the extra-compositional factors involved in the emergence of aesthetic illusion, however, these principles can only be regarded as tendencies that enhance a potential of aesthetic illusion but cannot guarantee its realization per se. The following four principles, which shape the material, coherence and presentation of an illusionist world, plus two additional principles that contribute to the

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persuasiveness peculiar to the rhetoricity of illusionist texts, must be distinguished (Wolf 1993a: chap. 2.2; 2004). (a) The principle of access-facilitating, detailed world-making. The main function of this principle is to provide the inventory or repertoire of an illusionist world with activating concepts, schemata and scripts stored in the recipient’s mind, stemming mostly from previous real-life experience. These schemata (Emmott & Alexander → Schemata) are bound mainly to concrete phenomena (story existents in the case of narratives) rather than abstract ones. This principle also ensures easy access to the worlds thus constructed and facilitates imaginative immersion by maintaining a certain balance between familiarity and novelty (cf. principle (e)) as well as by providing graphic details about this world. (b) The principle of consistency of the represented world. Illusionist works enhance the probability of their worlds by linking their inventory according to abstract “syntactic” concepts (in narratives this includes chronology, causality, etc.) on the basis of fundamental logical and epistemological rules that are compatible with, or identical to, the rules that (appear to) govern real life. All of this produces the impression of consistency and invites meaningful interpretations while avoiding contradictions (the “natural” quality of the resulting representations is what renders the level of transmission relatively inconspicuous). Thus the overall tendency is to ensure a fundamental analogy between the illusionist world and the perception of the real world. Consistency operates according to Ryan’s “principle of minimal departure” (1991: 51): it is a default option, although departures are possible and may even remain compatible with illusion, provided they are explained or linked to generic conventions, for example, thus obtaining a secondary kind of plausibility. (c) The principle of life-like perspectivity. The experientiality and probability of illusionist representations, which tend to provide recipients with “deictic centers” as a vantage point from which to experience the represented worlds (Zwaan 1999: 15), are the result of other principles as well. Motivated by the perspectivity of everyday experience—i.e. the inevitable limitation of perception according to the point of view (Niederhoff → Perspective – Point of View) and the horizon of the perceiver—one of the noteworthy characteristics in the history of illusionism (in both

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painting and literature) is the development and perfection of techniques that imitate this perspectivity. In Western fiction, this development has resulted in the increasing use of internal focalization (Niederhoff → Focalization) since the 18th-century first-person epistolary novel and later in modernist third-person “figural narration” with its covert narrators and effect of immediacy. On the other hand—and this illustrates the fact that aesthetic illusion is frequently the result of a fine balance between the various principles of illusion—extreme curtailment of overt narrators can also threaten textual coherence. In this way, the principle of perspectivity may come into conflict with the principle of consistency. (d) The principle of respecting and exploiting the potentials of the representational macro-frames, media and genres employed. Representations rely on semiotic macro-frames (typically narrative and descriptive ones), and they also employ specific media and genres. All of these basic frames of individual representations have particular potentials and limits. The principle under discussion is responsible for keeping illusionist representations within these limits in order to ensure easy accessibility and avoid self-reflexive foregrounding of the means of transmission, for instance. As a result, illusionist narratives show the basic features of narrativity (Abbott → Narrativity) and employ descriptions in a way that is compatible with both the medium and the narrative macro-frame. Again, certain deviations may remain illusion-compatible, but going too much against the grain of these basic frames of representation (as in the hypertrophy of description in the French nouveau roman, for example) would highlight mediality as such and foreground the conventionality of narrative or of certain narrative genres. As a result, the reader’s focus would shift from the represented world as the center of aesthetic illusion to the conditions and means of its construction and transmission, thereby activating aesthetic distance and undermining immersion. (e) The principle of generating interest, and in particular emotional interest, in the represented world. This is an active rhetorical principle resulting from the use of various devices of persuasio that render representations attractive and keep distance at a minimum. It imitates real-life perception in that perception is usually motivated by certain interests. The means by which the recipient’s interest is elicited are highly variable. They often include moderate departures from conventions and expectations as men-

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tioned in connection with other illusionist principles, and they may range from catering to recipients’ desires by providing certain inventory-elements (e.g. sex and crime and otherwise sensationalist representations) to topical references and discursive devices intended to create suspense. In accordance with the importance of feelings for illusionist immersion, one particular area of this principle is appeal to the recipient’s emotions. This principle is also responsible for the scarcity, in typically illusionist representations, of elements such as carnivalesque comedy, as this tends to reduce emotional involvement. (f) The principle of celare artem. The tendency of illusionist fiction to minimize aesthetic distance and the inconspicuousness of its discourse is regulated mainly by a principle which, in accordance with the rhetoric of antiquity and post-medieval aesthetics, may be called the principle of celare artem. Similarly to other illusionist principles, celare artem contributes to forming an analogy with a condition of real-life perception, namely the tendency to disregard the fact that perception is limited owing to its inevitable mediacy. This principle favors immersion by concealing the mediacy and mediality of representation, but also, where applicable, fictionality by avoiding paradox-creating devices such as (non-naturalizable) metalepsis and abstaining from overly intrusive metatextual elements and, generally, from devices that lay bare scripts and clichés as constituents of the represented world (although in some cases authenticityenhancing metatextual devices may be illusion-compatible).

3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 History of the Term In Latin, illusio (from illudere [in+ludere]: “make fun of,” “jeer,” “deceive”) has both a negative sense (“deceit,” “jeering”) and a neutral or positive sense, notably in classical rhetoric, where illusio is an acceptable device sometimes used as a synonym of “irony.” The negative sense acquires Christian overtones in post-classical times, as in illusiones diaboli (the devil’s deceits), and retains this negative meaning through Medieval Latin, Old French and Middle English to Shakespeare. A neutral or positive meaning re-emerges only in the 17th century, as can be seen in the title of Corneille’s comedy L’Illusion comique (1636). Shortly afterwards, the term can be encountered as an aesthetic notion

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denoting dramatic illusion in French aesthetic theory (e.g. in Abbé d’Aubignac’s Pratique du théâtre, 1657). In French 18th-century aesthetic theory from Dubos to Marmontel and Diderot, illusion becomes a much discussed term, and it is also in the 18th century that the term begins to be used in an aesthetic sense in German (often equated with Schein; Oelmüller ed. 1982). In English, Henry Home, Lord Kames called illusion an “ideal presence” (Home [1762] 1970), but Coleridge began to use the term “Dramatic Illusion” ([1804/05] 1960, vol. 1: 176). In the 20th century, it is the art historian Gombrich who, owing to his magisterial Art and Illusion (1960), perhaps, has done most to disseminate the term. It continues to be used in spite of Brinker’s plea that the “concept” (he actually means “term”) be “eliminate[d] from aesthetic theory” (1977/78: 191). Nowadays, “immersion” is often used in place of illusion. 3.2 History of the Concept The beginnings of the Western tradition of aesthetic illusion (“illusionism”) were located by Gombrich (1960: 108) for the visual arts in the so-called “Greek revolution” which took place between the 6th and the 4th centuries B.C. The transition from the magical and religious use of artworks (in which representational meaning was to be “read” without recourse to an illusionist “matching” to real-life appearance) to aesthetic objects which aimed at persuasive life-likeness inaugurated the Western tradition of illusionist representation. The famous anecdote of the illusionist contest between the trompe-l’œil painters Parrhasios and Zeuxis is a good illustration of this new approach to art. With reference to literature, Aristotle’s theory of tragedy, which hinges on the notion of mimesis in conjunction with the triggering of the emotional effects of eleos and phobos, also points toward aesthetic illusion while further evidence of literary illusion can be found in the form of the playful incursions in classical Greek comedy. Most important, however, is Plato’s hostility toward the mimetic arts due to the illusory nature of artistic representation. Indications of aesthetic illusion in the Middle Ages are rare (for a discussion of medieval immersion see Wolf 1993b and Bleumer ed. 2012). Among such indications an intriguing testimony of immersive (narrative) reception concerning both reading and the viewing of pictures from Li Bestiaires d’Amours by Richart de Fournival (1201–1259/60) is worth mentioning: “When one sees painted a story, whether of Troy or something else, one sees the noble deeds which were done in the past exactly as though they were still present. And it is the same thing with reading a text, for when one

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hears a story read aloud, listening to the events one sees them in the present.” (Richart de Fournival 1957: 5, quoted from, and translated by Carruthers 1990: 314). During the Renaissance, aesthetic illusion became a consciously produced effect in literature and was even the object of metatextual commentary (although not under this term), as can be seen in Cervantes’s Don Quixote and in Shakespeare (Wolf 1993b). In the history of fiction, Don Quixote is a particularly remarkable milestone, owing to its illusionist ambivalence (Wolf 1993a: chap. 4; Alter 1975): the novel is informed by both pro-illusionist elements (thanks to its realistic opposition to the improbable chivalric romances it parodies) and playful anti-illusionism (resulting from its obtrusive metafictional dimension). It can thus be said to inaugurate two antagonistic traditions: the great tradition of illusionist fiction, which found its peak in the 19th-century realist novel, and an anti-illusionist counter-tradition in which various devices of “defamiliarization” (ostrananie) were developed, notably in Romanticism (in texts characterized by romantic irony), in modernism and in the experimentations of radical postmodernism, the hitherto unsurpassed climax of anti-illusionism. In contemporary post-postmodernist fiction, a compromise seems to have been achieved in which an often ironic return to illusionism is combined with moderate illusion-breaking devices in double-layered ambivalent texts. 3.3 Influential Positions Ever since it has been cognized as such, aesthetic illusion has been accompanied by controversial evaluations, the first manifestation of which can be seen in the differing stances taken by Plato and Aristotle toward immersion as an effect of mimesis. From the 17th to the end of the 19th century, the pro-illusionist position prevailed with the aesthetics of sensibility (represented inter alia by Diderot) and with realism (endorsed inter alia by Henry James) propagating an illusionism that was fuelled by an emphasis on the emotional and moral effects of literature and art as well as on a probabilistic persuasiveness rivaling nonfictional discourses. The illusion-critical position was motivated by equally diverse factors. With reference to literature, one factor was concern for the aesthetic appreciation of literature as an art (in his entry on “Illusion” in the Encyclopédie, Marmontel opposes Diderot’s ideal of complete illusion); another factor was distrust of complacent passivity in the reception of literature, which was thought to prevent its political efficiency (cf. Brecht)—a position overlooking the fact that all reception is an active process. Yet another factor was the Romantic and, lat-

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er, postmodernist diffidence with regard to the pre-condition of all aesthetic illusion, namely representation. It does not come as a surprise, however, that despite fierce opposition, particularly in recent cultural history, aesthetic illusion seems to be more alive than ever and continues to influence the development of contemporary (digital) technology for, in particular, commercial representations (resulting, e.g., in the enhanced life-likeness of films on blu-ray 3 D discs with dolby 5.1 surround sound), since immersion appears to cater well to a fundamental human need for imaginary experience. Both aesthetic illusion and anti-illusionism (often designated by other terms such as “realism” and “immersion” for illusion, and “metafiction” for anti-illusionism) have been discussed from various angles. Up to the 1990s, historical approaches (e.g. in part, Gombrich 1960; Strube 1971; Alter 1975), phenomenological and reader-response approaches (e.g. Lobsien 1975; Smuda 1979; Nell 1988) as well as text-centered approaches (Wolf 1993a) prevailed. More recently, aesthetic illusion has been viewed from the perspective of possible-worlds theory (Ryan 1991, 2001) as well as in the context of emotion research (Mellmann 2002, 2006; Opdahl 2002), a focus which also informs part of empirical reader response research (Miall 1995) and cognitive and/or psychological approaches (Walton 1990; Gerrig 1993; Anderson 1996; Zwaan 1999; Bortolussi & Dixon 2003). In addition, aesthetic illusion is increasingly discussed with reference to arts and media other than literature (Hedinger ed. 2010; Cammack 2007; Krüger 2011; Wolf, Bernhart & Mahler eds., 2013). 3.4 Relevance for Narratology Aesthetic illusion is not restricted to narratives, as illustrated by important forms of non-narrative illusionist painting (portraits, still lives, genre scenes, landscape painting, etc.). However, there is a special relationship between aesthetic illusion and narrative and, consequently, a special relevance of this phenomenon to narratology. The link between illusion and narrative resides in the quasi-experiential quality of all aesthetic illusion and the characteristic experientiality of typical narratives. It is true that experience can relate merely to space, a moment in time or a static state, but that movement and change, especially if unexpected, have a particular affinity to experience (as the German Erfahrung suggests, containing fahren, “to move,” “to ride”), pointing to narrative as the most important cognitive macro-frame man has developed to make sense of experience in and of time. Experientiality has therefore justly been viewed as one of the fundamental elements of narrativity (Fluder-

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nik 1996). Another link, closely related, is that aesthetic illusion provides life-like experience and that illusionist works provide analogies to structures and contents of real-life experience, while life is in turn often experienced according to narrative patterns. If there is indeed a special but not necessary relationship between narrative and aesthetic illusion, the question arises with reference to fiction as to which aspect or part of narrator-transmitted stories is most important for providing spaces for the “projection” of illusion. It has been claimed that this is the narrating process and thus the narrator (Nünning 2000, 2001). While in some cases this may be true (e.g. in Tristram Shandy), privileging the narrator in this general way would render stories with covert narrators or narratives without narrators (drama, film) less prone to illusion, which is clearly not the case. We may experience a single voice (including a narrator’s voice), yet a whole world usually has a higher potential of experientiality, in particular if it is a narrative world with a high degree of tellability, and this shows that the primary center of illusion in narratives is the story, i.e. characters and events (Hühn → Event and Eventfulness), rather than narration.

4 Topics for Further Investigation In spite of the fact that aesthetic illusion is an extremely widespread phenomenon in the reception of artistic representations, it has received amazingly scant attention in research, leaving open several areas for additional research. Investigations could focus on a broader systematic search for historical evidence of aesthetic illusion, its nature and functions in the various media (narrative as well as descriptive media), and also on empirical testing of illusion-creating principles (3.3) by collecting responses of contemporary readers to certain representations and determining to what degree they reflect these principles. Cognitive psychology, together with empirical enquiries, also seems to provide a promising approach to aesthetic illusion, particularly if it is focused on the link between immersion and emotion and the analogy between reallife experience and the experience provided by illusionist works. Last but not least, owing to the dependency of immersion on the semiotic macro-frames of narrative and description as well as on the media and the genres used, a desideratum for future research is certainly interdisciplinary cooperation, not only between narratologists and cognitive psychologists, but also, and closer to aesthetic concerns, between narratology and drama theory, art history and film studies. For aesthetic illu-

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sion is a transmedial, transmodal and transgeneric phenomenon (Wolf, Bernhart & Mahler, eds. 2013), and if this is taken into account, a still better understanding of it will be achieved, ultimately leading, perhaps, to a general theory of aesthetic illusion that transcends individual genres, modes of representation and media.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Alter, Robert (1975). Partial Magic: The Novel as a Self-Conscious Genre. Berkeley: U of California P. Anderson, Joseph D. (1996). The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP. Balter, Leon (2002). “Magic and the Aesthetic Illusion.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytical Society 50, 1163–1196. Barthes, Roland (1968). “L’Effet de réel.” Communications No. 11, 84–89. Bernhart, Walter (2013). “Aesthetic Illusion in Instrumental Music?”. Werner Wolf, Walter Bernhart & Andreas Mahler, eds. (2013). Immersion and Distance: Aesthetic Illusion in Literature and Other Media. Studies in Intermediality 6. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 365–380. Bleumer, Hartmut, ed., in collaboration with Susanne Kaplan (2012). Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 167. Special volume Immersion im Mittelalter. Bortolussi, Marisa & Peter Dixon (2003). Psychonarratology: Foundations for the Empirical Study of Literary Response. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Brinker, Menachem (1977/78). “Aesthetic Illusion.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 16, 191–196. Cammack, Jocelyn (2007). “Cinema, Illusionism and Imaginative Perception”. Silke Horstkotte, Karin Leonhard, eds. Seeing Perception. Newcastle; Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 270–291. Carruthers, Mary J. (1990). The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Cohen, Annabel J. (2001). “Music as a Source of Emotion in Film.” P. N. Juslin & J. A. Sloboda (eds.). Music and Emotion: Theory and Research. Oxford: Oxford UP, 249–272. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor ([1804/05] 1960). Elements of Shakespearean Criticism, 2 vols. Ed. Th. Middleton Raysor. London: Dent. – ([1817] 1965). Biographia Literaria. Ed. G. Watson. London: Dent. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. Gerrig, Richard J. (1993). Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven: Yale UP. Gombrich, Ernst H. (1960). Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Oxford: Phaidon.

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Hedinger, Bärbel, ed. (2010). Täuschend echt: Illusion und Wirklichkeit in der Kunst. Munich: Hirmer. Home, Henry, Lord Kames ([1762] 1970). Elements of Criticism. Ed. R. Voitle. Hildesheim: Olms. Hühn, Peter & Jens Kiefer (2005). The Narratological Analysis of Lyric Poetry: Studies in English Poetry from the 16th to the 20th Century. Berlin: de Gruyter. Krüger, Klaus (2011). Unveiling the Invisible: Image and Aesthetic Illusion in Early Modern Italy. New York: Zone Books. Lobsien, Eckhard (1975). Theorie literarischer Illusionsbildung. Stuttgart: Metzler. Mellmann, Katja (2002). “E-Motion: Being Moved by Fiction and Media? Notes on Fictional Worlds, Virtual Contacts and the Reality of Emotions.” PsyArt: A Hyperlink Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts. Article 020604 (accessed March 23, 2006). – (2006). “Literatur als emotionale Attrappe: Eine evolutionspsychologische Lösung des ‘paradox of fiction’.” U. Klein et al. (eds.). Heuristiken der Literaturwissenschaft. Paderborn: Mentis, 145–166. Miall, David S. (1995). “Anticipation and Feeling in Literary Response: A Neuropsychological Perspective.” Poetics 23, 275–298. Müller-Zettelmann, Eva (2000). Lyrik und Metalyrik: Theorie einer Gattung und ihrer Selbstbespiegelung anhand von Beispielen aus der englisch- und deutschsprachigen Dichtkunst. Heidelberg: Winter. Nell, Victor (1988). Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure. New Haven, CT: Yale UP. Nünning, Ansgar (2000). “‘Great Wits Jump’: Die literarische Inszenierung von Erzählillusion als vernachlässigte Entwicklungslinie des englischen Romans von Laurence Sterne bis Stevie Smith.” B. Reitz & E. Voigts-Virchow (eds.). Lineages of the Novel: Essays in Honour of Raimund Borgmeier. Trier: WVT, 67–91. – (2001). “Mimesis des Erzählens: Prolegomena zu einer Wirkungsästhetik, Typologie und Funktionsgeschichte des Akts des Erzählens und der Metanarration.” J. Helbig (ed.). Erzählen und Erzähltheorie im 20. Jahrhundert: Festschrift für Wilhelm Füger. Heidelberg: Winter, 13–47. Oelmüller, Willi, ed. (1982). Kolloquium Kunst und Philosophie. Vol. 2: Ästhetischer Schein. Paderborn: Schöningh. Opdahl, Keith M. (2002). Emotion as Meaning: The Literary Case for How We Imagine. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP. Richart de Fournival (1957). Li Bestiaires d’Amours. Ed. Cesare Segré. Milan: Riccardi. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP. – (2001). Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – (2006). Avatars of Story. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Schaeffer, Jean-Marie (1999). Pourquoi la fiction? Paris: Seuil. – & Ioana Vultur (2005). “Immersion.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 237–239.

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Smuda, Manfred (1979). Der Gegenstand in der bildenden Kunst und Literatur: Typologische Untersuchungen zur Theorie des ästhetischen Gegenstands. München: Fink. Strube, Werner (1971). Ästhetische Illusion: Ein kritischer Beitrag zur Geschichte der Wirkungsästhetik des 18. Jahrhunderts. PhD Diss. U of Bochum. Walton, Kendall L. (1990). Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Wolf, Werner (1993a). Ästhetische Illusion und Illusionsdurchbrechung in der Erzählkunst. Theorie und Geschichte mit Schwerpunkt auf englischem illusionsstörenden Erzählen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. – (1993b). “Shakespeare und die Entstehung ästhetischer Illusion im englischen Drama.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, n.s. 43, 279–301. – (1998). “Aesthetic Illusion in Lyric Poetry?” Poetica 30, 251–289. – (2004). “Aesthetic Illusion as an Effect of Fiction.” Style 38, 325–351. – (2006). “Introduction: Frames, Framings and Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media.” W. Wolf & W. Bernhart (eds.). Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1–40. – Walter Bernhart & Andreas Mahler, eds. (2013). Immersion and Distance: Aesthetic Illusion in Literature and Other Media. Studies in Intermediality 6. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Zwaan, Rolf A. (1999). “Situation Models: The Mental Leap into Imagined Worlds.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 8, 15–18.

5.2 Further Reading Burwick, Frederick & Walter Pape, eds. (1990). Aesthetic Illusion: Theoretical and Historical Approaches. Berlin: de Gruyter. Grabes, Herbert (1978). “Wie aus Sätzen Personen werden ... Über die Erforschung literarischer Figuren.” Poetica 10, 405–428. Grau, Oliver (2003). Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion. Cambridge: MIT P. Pape, Walter & Frederick Burwick, eds. (1995). Perception and Appearance in Literature, Culture and the Arts. Berlin: de Gruyter. Strube, Werner (1976). “Illusion.” J. Ritter & K. Gründer (eds.). Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Darmstadt: WBG, vol. 4, 204–215. Walsh, Dorothy (1983). “The Non-Delusive Illusion of Literary Art.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 23, 53–60. Wolf, Werner (2008). “Is Aesthetic Illusion ‘illusion référentielle’? ‘Immersion’ and its Relationship to Fictionality and Factuality.” Journal of Literary Theory 2.1, 99– 126, 171–173.

Implied Author Wolf Schmid

1 Definition The concept of implied author refers to the author-image evoked by a work and constituted by the stylistic, ideological, and aesthetic properties for which indexical signs can be found in the text. Thus, the implied author has an objective and a subjective side: it is grounded in the indexes of the text, but these indexes are perceived and evaluated differently by each individual reader. We have the implied author in mind when we say that each and every cultural product contains an image of its maker. The implied author is therefore not a category specific to verbal narration; nevertheless, it is most often discussed in relation to verbal texts, particularly in narratological contexts.

2 Explication Introduced by Booth in 1961 in connection with his conceptualization of the unreliable narrator (Shen → Unreliability; Yacobi 1981), the implied author has become a widespread term for a concept referring to the author evoked by, but not represented in a work. The concept appears in various forms. Many users treat it as a term for an entity positioned between the real author and the fictive narrator in the communication structure of narrative works. Those adopting a critical stance, on the other hand, use it as a term for a reader- generated construct without an equivalent pragmatic role in the narrative work. In neither of these usages is it claimed that authors have the intention of creating an image of themselves in their works. Instead, the image is understood as one of the by-products that, in the sense of Bühler’s expressive function of language ([1934] 2011), necessarily accompanies each and every symbolic representation. Any of the acts that produce a work can function as an indexical sign bearing this indirect form of self-expression. In particular, these acts include the fabrication of a represented world; the invention of a story with situations, characters, and actions; the selec-

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tion of a particular action logic with a more or less pronounced worldview; the deployment of a narrator and his or her perspective; the transformation of the story into a narrative with the aid of techniques such as flattening simultaneous events into a linear progression and rearranging the order of episodes; and finally, the presentation of the narrative in particular linguistic (or visual) forms. Some of these acts can also serve as indexical signs expressing the narrator. The question of to which of the two entities the indexes should be applied is a hermeneutical problem which can be answered only with very general remarks. The representation of a story and of a narrator to present it are a matter for the author. The selection of the elements of the happenings, their combination into a story, their evaluation and naming are operations that fall into the ambit of the narrator, who is revealed in them. All acts that express the narrator also function ultimately as indexes for the author, whose creation the narrator is. The concept of implied author has provoked questions above all because it has two dissimilar aspects. On the one hand, it has an objective component: the implied author is seen as a hypostasis of the work’s structure. On the other hand, it has a subjective component relating to reception: the implied author is seen as a product of the reader’s meaning-making activity. The relative importance of these two aspects varies depending on how the concept is used: essentialists insist on the importance of the work’s structure in defining the implied author, whereas constructivists highlight the role played by the freedom of interpretation. At any rate, it must be remembered that, like the readings of different recipients, the various interpretations of a single reader are each associated with a different implied author. Each single reading reconstructs its author. Depending on the function a work is believed to have had according to a given reading, the implied author will be reconstructed as having predominantly aesthetic, practical, or ideological intentions.

3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 Russian Formalism, Czech and Polish Structuralism The concept of the implied author was first formulated systematically against the background of Russian formalism. The formalist Tynjanov ([1927] 1971: 75) coined the term “literary personality,” which he used to refer to a work’s internal abstract authorial entity. Vinogradov, a scholar of language and style with links to the formalist movement, be-

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gan developing the concept of the author’s image (obraz avtora) in 1926 (Čudakov 1992: 237–242; Gölz 2009). He later defined this image as “the concentrated embodiment of the essence of the work,” as “drawing together the entire system of the linguistic structures of the characters in their correlation with the narrator or narrators, and thereby being the conceptual stylistic centre, the focus of the whole” (Vinogradov 1971: 118). In the 1970s, Russian thought on the idea of the author in the text was taken further by Korman (Rymar’ & Skobelev 1994: 60–102). Drawing on Vinogradov’s concept of the author’s image and Baxtin’s theory of dialogic interaction between different evaluative positions, Korman (1977) developed a method he described as “systemically subject-based.” At its center lies the study of the author as the “consciousness of the work.” Korman’s approach differs from the theory of his predecessors in two ways. In Vinogradov’s writings, the author’s image is described stylistically and presented as the product obtained when the different styles brought into play in a work are drawn together; Korman, on the other hand, concentrates primarily on the relations between the various centers of consciousness in the work. And whereas Baxtin’s interest in the problem of the author’s image is primarily philosophical and aesthetic in nature, Korman’s deliberations are dominated by poetics. For Korman, the author in the work, which he calls the “conceived author,” is realized “in the correlation of all the constituent textual elements of the work in question with its subjects of speech, i.e. those subjects to whom the text is attributed, and the subjects of consciousness, i.e. those subjects whose consciousnesses are expressed in the text” (120). In the context of Czech structuralism, Mukařovský (1937: 353) spoke of the author in the work as an “abstract subject that, contained in the structure of the work, is merely a point from which it is possible to survey the entire work at a glance.” In any given work, Mukařovský adds, it is possible to find indications pointing to the presence of this abstract subject, which must never be identified with an actual individual such as the author or the recipient. He writes that the subject of the work “in its abstraction […] merely makes it possible to project these personalities into the internal structure of the work” (353). Taking the ideas of his teacher as his starting point, the secondgeneration Czech structuralist Červenka suggested that the “subject of the work,” or “personality” (the entity that Mukařovský called the “abstract subject”) is the “signified,” the “aesthetic object” of the literary work, the work itself being treated as an index in the Peircean sense (Červenka [1969] 1978). For Červenka, the “personality” thus defined

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embodies the principle by which all the semantic levels of the work are dynamically united, without forcing us to suppress the inner richness and personal color that points back to the concrete author. At the beginning of Polish research on the subject of the work we find Sławiński (1966, [1967] 1975), whose writings reflect the ideas of Vinogradov and Mukařovský. Where Vinogradov introduces the concept of the “author’s image,” Sławiński refers to the “subject of the creative acts” or the “maker of the rules of speech.” Balcerzan (1968) uses the term “internal author” to refer to the same entity. “Subject of the work” is the name given to the work’s authorial entity in the framework of literary communication outlined by Okopień-Sławińska (1971). Fieguth (1975: 16), Okopień-Sławińska’s German translator and commentator, describes it as the “subject of the use of literary rules in the work.” 3.2 Approaches in the West In Western narratology, the introduction of the implied author concept was linked to work on the notion of the unreliable narrator, in other words, the axiological disconnection of the narrator from the horizon of values against which a work operates. The paradigmatic form of the concept was developed by Booth ([1961] 1983), an American literary scholar belonging to the Chicago School (Kindt & Müller 1999, 2006a, 2006b). Since Flaubert and in the Anglo-American sphere, particularly with Henry James, there had existed a view according to which authors should be objective, that is to say neutral and dispassionate. Booth, in contrast, underlined the inescapable subjectivity of the author: “As he writes, [the real author] creates not simply an ideal, impersonal ‘man in general’, but an implied version of ‘himself’ that is different from the implied authors we meet in other men’s works. […] the picture the reader gets of his presence is one of the author’s most important effects. However impersonal he may try to be, his reader will inevitably construct a picture of the [author] who writes in this manner” (Booth [1961] 1983: 70–71). These words have been understood by some as referring to a self-image intentionally created by the author. However, it is more likely that Booth’s rather imprecise formulation was meant to capture the idea that the creator of every product is inevitably and involuntarily represented through the indexical properties inherent in the product. According to Booth, the implied author embodies the work’s “core norms and choices” (74). Booth, who subscribed to the criticism of the “intentional fallacy” presented by Wimsatt and Beardsley ([1946]

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1976), hoped to sidestep two tenets of the New Criticism with the help of the implied author concept: the doctrine of autonomy and insistence on the need to concentrate solely on the work itself. As Booth (1968: 112–113) objected, the New Criticism’s fight against a string of “fallacies” and “heresies” served to rule out not just the author but also the audience, the “world of ideas and beliefs,” and even “the narrative interest” itself. The concept of authorship in the work was meant to provide a way around these obstacles so as to make it possible to talk about a work’s meaning and intention without falling afoul of the criminal heresies. Booth’s approach has subsequently been taken up and refined on many occasions (cf. in particular Iser [1972] 1974; Chatman 1978: 147– 149; Rimmon-Kenan [1983] 2002: 87–88). Equivalent concepts have also been introduced, some closely associated with Booth’s, others less so. Eco (1979) speaks of the “model author,” which he treats as an interpretive hypothesis of the empirical reader, and Easthope (1983: 30–72) draws on the linguistic work of Benveniste in suggesting the term “subject of enunciation.” Building on the Slavic origins of the concept, Schmid (1973) introduced the term “abstract author” (taken up by, e.g., Link 1976: 40; Lintvelt [1981] 1989: 17–22; Hoek 1981), which he has subsequently defended against criticism (Schmid 1986: 300–306; cf. also the revision in Schmid [2005] 2008: 45–64; 2010: 36–51). 3.3 The Implied Author Debate The concept of the implied author has given rise to heated debate. Hempfer (1977: 10) passed categorical judgment over the concepts of the implied (in his words “implizit,” i.e. “implicit”) author and reader, writing that the two entities “not only seem to be of no theoretical use but also obscure the real fundamental distinction, that between the speech situation in the text and that outside it.” Over two decades later, Zipfel (2001: 120) presented a similar indictment of the implied author, condemning the concept as “superfluous to narrative theory,” “hopelessly vague,” and “terminologically imprecise.” Bal has established herself as a bitter opponent of both Booth’s implied author and Schmid’s abstract author. These “superfluous” concepts (1981a: 208– 209), she believes, have fostered the misguided practice of isolating authors from the ideologies of their works. The implied author, she believes, is a deceptive notion that promised to account for the ideology of the text. “This would have made it possible to condemn a text without condemning its author and vice versa—a very attractive proposition to the autonomists of the ’60s” (1981b: 42).

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More balanced criticism has been put forward in many forms. The objections raised can be summarized as follows: (a) unlike the fictive narrator, the implied author is not a pragmatic agent but a semantic entity (Nünning 1989: 33, 1993: 9); (b) the implied author is no more than a reader-created construct (Rimmon-Kenan [1983] 2002: 87; Toolan [1988] 2001: 64) and as such should not be personified (Nünning 1989: 31–32); (c) despite repeated warnings against an overly anthropomorphic understanding of the implied author, Chatman (1978: 151) puts forward a model in which the implied author functions as a participant in communication—which is, according to Rimmon-Kenan ([1983] 2002: 89), precisely what the implied author is not; (d) in so far as it involves a semantic rather than a structural phenomenon, the concept of the implied author belongs to the poetics of interpretation rather than the poetics of narration (Diengott 1993: 189); (e) Booth and those who have used the concept after him have not shown how to identify the implied author of any given text (Kindt & Müller 2006b: 167–168). These criticisms are perfectly legitimate, but they are not sufficient to justify excluding the implied author from the attention of narratology. Many critics continue to use the concept, clearly because no better term can be found for expressing that authorial element whose presence is inferred in a work. It is also striking that those who advocate abandoning the implied author have put forward few convincing alternatives. Nünning, e.g., who believes that it is “terminologically imprecise,” “theoretically inadequate,” and “unusable in practice,” suggests replacing it with the “totality of all the formal and structural relations in a text” (1989: 36). In a chapter “In Defense of the Implied Author,” Chatman (1990: 74– 89) suggests a series of alternatives for readers uneasy with the term implied author: “text implication”; “text instance”; “text design”; or simply “text intent.” Finally, Kindt and Müller (1999: 285–286) identify two courses of action. We should, they suggest, either replace the term implied author with that of “author” itself (which would attract familiar objections from anti-intentionalistic quarters); or, if a nonintentiona-listic concept of meaning is to be retained, we should speak instead of “text intention.” (Since texts as such do not have intentions, the latter term brings with it an undesirable metonymic shift from maker to product.) The case of Genette sheds light on the double-sided view of the implied author concept held by many theorists. Genette did not cover the implied author in his Narrative Discourse ([1972] 1980), which led to a certain amount of criticism (e.g., Rimmon 1976: 58; Bronzwaer 1978: 3); he then devoted an entire chapter to it in Narrative Discourse Revi-

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sited ([1983] 1988: 135–154). Detailed analysis in the latter work leads to a conclusion that is not at all unfavorable to the implied author. Genette observes first that, because it is not specific to the récit, the auteur impliqué is not the concern of narratology. His answer to the question “is the implied author a necessary and (therefore) valid agent between the narrator and the real author?” (139; original emphasis) is ambivalent. The implied author, he says, is clearly not an actual agent, but is conceivably an ideal agent: “the implied author is everything the text lets us know about the author” (148). But we should not, Genette warns, turn this “idea of the author” into a narrative agent. This places Genette in a position not so different from that of the proponents of “full-blown models” of narrative communication to which he refers (Schmid 1973; Chatman 1978; Bronzwaer 1978; Hoek 1981; Lintvelt [1981]1989), none of whom intended to make the implied author a narrative agent. That the debate over the existence and utility of the concept of the implied author has not yet come to a standstill is attested by a special issue of Style (Vol. 45, 2011) Implied Author: Back from the Grave or Simply Dead Again? This question was formulated by Richardson who, examining cases in which “the values, sensibility or beliefs of the implied author differ radically from those of the actual author” (2011: 6), comes to three conclusions: 1) “the implied author does not communicate”; 2) “we can predicate values of an inferred author based on the material of a given text”; 3) “the implied author remains a very useful heuristic construct” (7). Shen (2011) also argues in favor of the concept, making clear its relevance and significance in today’s critical context. Ryan (2011) proposes a critique of the three functions assigned to the implied author: “1) The implied author is a necessary parameter in the communicative model of literary narrative fiction. 2) The implied author is a design principle, responsible for the narrative techniques and the plot of the text. 3) The implied author is the source of the norms and values communicated by the text.” Her conclusion is that if an author figure reveals itself through a text, it is as the manifestation of a real person that this figure attracts the interest of the reader. Lanser (2011) formulates “An Agnostic’s Manifesto” containing eight propositions that are meant to “speak to theorists on both sides of the implied author divide” (153). She concludes by calling for an empirical inquiry into whether and how belief in an implied author might affect the poetic or hermeneutic enterprise: “We will learn more about implied authorship by testing out how readers process a sense of the author than by continued debate” (158).

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3.4 Towards an Impartial Definition The implied author can be defined as one of the correlates of the indexical signs in a text that a recipient, depending on his or her conception of the work’s intention, may interpret as referring to the author of that text. These signs mark out a specific world-view and aesthetic standpoint. The implied author is not an intentional creation of the concrete author and differs categorically in this respect from the narrator, who is always an implicitly, or even explicitly, represented entity. The implied author belongs to a different level of the work; the implied author stands for the principle behind the fabrication of a narrator and the represented world in its entirety, the principle behind the composition of the work (note here Hühn’s “subject of composition” [1995: 5], a development of Easthope’s “subject of enunciation” [1983]). The implied author has no voice of its own, no text. Its word is the entire text with all its levels. Its position is defined by both ideological and aesthetic norms. The implied author has only a virtual existence in the work and can be grasped only by turning to the traces left behind in the work by the creative acts of production, taking concrete shape only with the help of the reader. The implied author is a construct formed by the reader on the basis of his or her reading of the work. If the process of construction is not to simply confirm to the meanings that readers want to find in the first place, it must be based on the evidence in the text and the constraints this places on the freedom of interpretation. It would therefore be more appropriate to speak of “reconstruction” instead of “construction.” The implied authors of various works by a single concrete author display certain common features and thereby constitute what we might call an œuvre author, a stereotype that Booth (1979: 270) refers to as a “career author.” There are also more general author stereotypes that relate not to an œuvre but to literary schools, stylistic currents, periods, and genres. Contrary to the impression given by the term “author’s image,” the relation between the implied author and the real author should not be pictured in such a way that the former becomes a reflection or copy of the latter. And despite the connotations of the German impliziter Autor (implicit author, which brings with it a shift from the reception-based orientation of implied to an ontologizing concept), the implied author cannot be modeled as the mouthpiece of the real author. It is not unusual for authors to experiment with their world-views and put their beliefs to the test in their works. In some cases, authors use their works to de-

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pict possibilities that cannot be realized in the context of their real-life existence, adopting in the process standpoints on certain issues that they could not or would not wish to adopt in reality. In such cases, the implied author can be more radical than the real author ever really was or, more circumspectly, than we imagine him or her to have been on the basis of the evidence available. Such radicalization of the implied author is characteristic, e.g., of Tolstoj’s late works. The late Tolstoj was much less convinced by many of his ideas than his implied authors; the latter embodied, and took to extremes, one particular dimension of Tolstoj’s thought. Conversely, it is also possible for the ideological horizons of the implied author to be broader than the more or less markedly ideologically constrained ones of the real author. An example of this is Dostoevskij, who in his late novels developed a remarkable understanding of ideologies that he vehemently attacked as a journalist. Dostoevskij’s last novel, The Brothers Karamazov, shows another phenomenon, a split of the implied author: whereas ‘Dostoevskij I’ designs the novel as a modern theodicy, ‘Dostoevskij II’ undermines this intention by a subliminal critique of God. The whole novel is characterized by a restless oscillation between the “Pro” of the intending and controlling Dostoevskij I and the “Contra” of its subversive antagonist Dostoevskij II. 3.5 Relevance to Narratology Why should a semantic entity that is neither a pragmatic participant in communication nor a specific component of the narrative work be the concern of narratology at all? Recall here Rimmon (1976: 58), who points out that “without the implied author it is difficult to analyze the ‘norms’ of the text, especially when they differ from those of the narrator.” Similarly, Bronzwaer (1978: 3) notes that “we need an instance that calls the extradiegetic narrator into existence, which is responsible for him in the same way as he is responsible for the diegesis.” Chatman (1990: 76) points out another advantage of the concept when he writes that “positing an implied author inhibits the overhasty assumption that the reader has direct access through the fictional text to the real author’s intentions and ideology.” The concept of the implied author is particularly useful in textual interpretation because it helps us describe the layered process by which meaning is generated. The existence of the implied author, not part of the represented world but nonetheless part of the work, casts a shadow over the narrator, who often appears as master of the situation and seems to have control over the semantic order of the work. The pres-

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ence of the implied author highlights the fact that narrators, their texts, and the meanings expressed in them are all represented. Only on the level of the implied author do these meanings acquire their ultimate semantic intention. The presence of the implied author in the work, above the characters and the narrator and their associated levels of meaning, establishes a new semantic level arching over the whole work: the authorial level.

4 Topics for Further Research (a) Where systematic considerations and practical applications are concerned, there is a pressing need to identify the indexical signs that refer to the implied author, and to distinguish between author- and narratorspecific indexes. (b) The manifestation of the implied author in different periods, cultural spheres, text types, and genres has yet to be examined in detail. (c) The presence of the implied author in non-verbal narratives is an important issue.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Bal, Mieke (1981a). “The Laughing Mice, or: on Focalisation.” Poetics Today 2, 202– 210. – (1981b). “Notes on Narrative Embedding.” Poetics Today 2, 41–59. Balcerzan, Edward (1968). “Styl i poetyka twórczości dwujęzycznej Brunona Jasińskiego.” Z zagadnień teorii przekładu. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolinskich, 14–16. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: Chicago UP. – (1968). “‘The Rhetoric of Fiction’ and the Poetics of Fictions.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 1, 105–117. – (1979). Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism. Chicago: Chicago UP. Bronzwaer, Wilhelmus J. M. (1978). “Implied Author, Extradiegetic Narrator and Public Reader.” Neophilologus 62, 1–18. Bühler, Karl ([1934] 2011). Theory of Language. The Representational Function of Language. Tr. by D. F. Goodwin. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Červenka, Miroslav ([1969] 1978). “Das literarische Werk als Zeichen.” Der Bedeutungsaufbau des literarischen Werks. München: Fink, 163–183. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP.

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(1990). Coming to Terms. The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Čudakov, Aleksandr (1992). “V. V. Vinogradov i ego teorija poėtiki.” Slovo―vešč’―mir. Moskva: Sovremennyj pisatel’, 219–264. Diengott, Nilli (1993). “Implied Author, Motivation and Theme and Their Problematic Status.” Orbis Litterarum 48, 181–193. Easthope, Antony (1983). Poetry as Discourse. London: Methuen. Eco, Umberto (1979). The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Fieguth, Rolf (1975). “Einleitung.” R. Fieguth (ed.). Literarische Kommunikation. Kronberg: Scriptor, 9–22. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – ([1983] 1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Gölz, Christine (2009). “Autortheorien im slavischen Funktionalismus.” W. Schmid (ed.). Slavische Narratologie. Russische und tschechische Ansätze. Berlin: de Gruyter, 187–237. Hempfer, Klaus W. (1977). “Zur pragmatischen Fundierung der Texttypologie.” W. Hinck (ed.). Textsortenlehre – Gattungsgeschichte. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1–26. Hoek, Leo H. (1981). La marque du titre. La Haye: Mouton. Hühn, Peter (1995). Geschichte der englischen Lyrik, vol. 1. Tübingen: Francke. Iser, Wolfgang ([1972] 1974). The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Kindt, Tom & Hans-Harald Müller (1999). “Der implizite Autor. Zur Explikation und Verwendung eines umstrittenen Begriffs.” F. Jannidis et al. (eds.). Rückkehr des Autors. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 273–287. – (2006a). The Implied Author. Concept and Controversy. Berlin: de Gruyter. – (2006b). “Der implizite Autor. Zur Karriere und Kritik eines Begriffs zwischen Narratologie und Interpretationstheorie.” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 48, 163– 190. Korman, Boris (1977). “O celostnosti literaturnogo proizvedenija.” Izbrannye trudy po teorii i istorii literatury. Iževsk: Izd. Udmurtskogo un-ta, 119–128. Lanser, Susan (2011). “The Implied Author: An Agnostic’s Manifesto.” Style 45, 153– 160. Link, Hannelore (1976). Rezeptionsforschung. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Lintvelt, Jaap ([1981] 1989). Essai de typologie narrative. Le “point de vue”. Théorie et analyse. Paris: Corti. Mukařovský, Jan (1937). “L’individu dans l’art.” Deuxième congrès international d’esthétique et de la science de l’art. Paris: F. Alcan, vol. 1, 349–354. Nünning, Ansgar (1989). Grundzüge eines kommunikationstheoretischen Modells der erzählerischen Vermittlung. Trier: WVT. – (1993). “Renaissance eines anthropomorphisierten Passepartouts oder Nachruf auf ein literaturkritisches Phantom? Überlegungen und Alternativen zum Konzept des ‘implied author’.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 67, 1–25.

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Okopień-Sławińska, Alexandra ([1971] 1975). “Die personalen Relationen in der literarischen Kommunikation.” R. Fieguth (ed.). Literarische Kommunikation. Kronberg: Scriptor, 127–147. Richardson, Brian (2011). “Introduction. Implied Author: Back from the Grave or Simply Dead Again?” Style 45, 1–10. Rimmon, Shlomith (1976). “A Comprehensive Theory of Narrative: Genette’s Figures III and the Structuralist Study of Fiction.” PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 1, 33–62. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith ([1983] 2002). Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Methuen. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2011). “Meaning, Intent, and the Implied Author.” Style 45, 29–47. Rymar’, Nikolaj & Vladislav Skobelev (1994). Teorija avtora i problema chudožestvennoj dejatel’nosti. Voronež: Logos-Trast. Schmid, Wolf (1973). Der Textaufbau in den Erzählungen Dostoevskijs. Amsterdam: Grüner. – (1986). “Nachwort zur zweiten Auflage. Eine Antwort an die Kritiker.” W. Schmid. Der Textaufbau in den Erzählungen Dostoevskijs. Amsterdam: Grüner, 299–318. – ([2005] 2008). Elemente der Narratologie. Berlin: de Gruyter. – (2010). Narratology. An Introduction. Berlin: de Gruyter. Shen, Dan (2011). “What is the Implied Author?” Style 45, 80–98. Sławiński, Janusz (1966). “O kategorii podmiotu lirycznego. Tezy referatu.” J. Trzynadłowski (ed.). Wierz i poezja. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolinskich, 55–62. – ([1967] 1975). “Die Semantik der narrativen Äußerung.” Literatur als System und Prozeß. München: Nymphenburger, 81–109. Toolan, Michael J. ([1988] 2001). Narrative. A Critical Linguistic Introduction. London: Routledge. Tynjanov, Jurij ([1927] 1971). “On Literary Evolution.” L. Matejka & K. Pomorska (eds.). Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views. Cambridge: MIT P, 66–78. Vinogradov, Viktor (1971). “Problema obraza avtora v chudožestvennoj literature.” O teorii chudožestvennoj reči. Moskva: Izd. Vysšaja škola, 105–211. Wimsatt, William K. & Monroe C. Beardsley ([1946] 1976). “The Intentional Fallacy.” D. Newton-de Molina (ed.). On Literary Intention. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1– 13. Yacobi, Tamar (1981). “Fictional Reliability as a Communicative Problem.” Poetics Today 2, 113–126. Zipfel, Frank (2001). Fiktion, Fiktivität, Fiktionalität. Berlin: Schmidt.

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5.2 Further Reading Booth, Wayne C. (2005). “Resurrection of the Implied Author. Why Bother?” J. Phelan & P. Rabinowitz (eds.). A Companion to Narrative Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 75–88. Díaz Arenas, Angel (1986). Introduccion y Metodología de la Instancia del Autor/Lector y del Autor/Lector abstracto-implícito. Kassel: Edition Reichenberger. Kahrmann, Cordula et al. ([1977] 1996). Erzähltextanalyse. Weinheim: Beltz. Schmid, Wolf (2008). “Zum ‘Autor im Text’ – eine Replik auf Willem Weststeijn am Beispiel Dostoevskijs.” E. de Haard et al. (eds.). Literature and Beyond. Festschrift for Willem G. Weststeijn on the Occasion of his 65. Birthday. Amsterdam: Pegasus, 701–712. Schönert, Jörg (1999). “Empirischer Autor, Impliziter Autor und Lyrisches Ich.” F. Jannidis et al. (eds.). Rückkehr des Autors. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 289–294. Weststeijn, Willem (1984). “Author and Implied Author. Some Notes on the Author in the Text.” J. J. van Baak (ed. ). Signs of Friendship. To Honour A.G.F van Holk, Slavist, Linguist, Semiotician. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 553–568.

Implied Reader Wolf Schmid

1 Definition The term “implied reader,” coined by Booth ([1961] 1983) as a counterpart of the implied author (Schmid → Implied Author), designates the image of the recipient that the author had while writing or, more accurately, the author’s image of the recipient that is fixed and objectified in the text by specific indexical signs. Alternative terms are Prince’s (1973: 180) “lecteur virtuel” and Schmid’s ([1973] 1986: 23– 25) “abstrakter Leser.”

2 Explication The implied reader is a function of the work, even though it is not represented in the work. An “intended reader” (in the terminology of Link 1976: 28 and of Grimm 1977: 38–39), who is not fixed in the text but exists merely in the imagination of the author and who can be reconstructed only with the latter’s statements or extra-textual information, does not form a part of the work. Such a reader belongs exclusively to the sphere of the real author, in whose imagination he or she exists. The relationship between implied author and implied reader is not a symmetrical one, for there is no symmetry between the ways in which the two implied entities are formed. The implied reader is ultimately one of the attributes of the concrete reader’s reconstructed implied author. It follows that the implied reader is no less dependent on the reader’s individual acts of reading, understanding, and reconstructing than the implied author whose attribute it is (Schmid 2010: 51–52).

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3 Aspects of the Concept and History of its Study 3.1 Implied Reader as Presumed Addressee and Ideal Recipient Two manifestations of the reconstructed implied reader must be distinguished on the basis of the functions they can be thought to have (cf. Schmid 1974: 407; Lintvelt [1981] 1989: 18). First, the implied reader can function as a presumed addressee to whom the work is directed and whose linguistic codes, ideological norms, and aesthetic ideas must be taken into account if the work is to be understood. In this function, the implied reader is the bearer of the codes and norms presumed in the readership. The addressee of Dostoevskij’s later novels, e.g., is conceptualized as a reader who can not only read Russian and who knows how to read a novel, but who also has a command of all the language’s registers, possesses a developed sense for the stylistic expression of evaluative positions, has at his or her disposal a good knowledge of Russian literature and a high level of intertextual competence, knows the dominant philosophical positions of the century, has an overview of the history of ideas in Europe and is familiar with the social discourses of the period. Of course, authors may very well err in the assumptions they make about the norms and abilities of their readerships. They may be mistaken about the prevailing philosophical and ideological positions of their contemporaries, overestimate the ability of their readers to decode metaphorical statements or overestimate the public’s understanding of aesthetic innovation. It is not unusual for authors to fail in addressing the intended public due to being mistaken about the language, values and norms of that public or to being unable to encode their message correspondingly. Second, the abstract reader functions as an image of the ideal recipient who understands the work in a way that optimally matches its structure and adopts the interpretive position and aesthetic standpoint put forward by the work. Booth ([1961] 1983: 137–144) called this entity the “postulated reader,” Prince (1973: 180) the “lecteur idéal,” distinguishing it both from the “lecteur virtuel” and the “narrataire” (Schmid → Narratee). The attitude of the ideal recipient, his relation to the norms and values of the fictive entities, are more or less specified by the acts of creation objectified in the work. If contradictory evaluative positions are found in a work, the ideal recipient will identify with the entity that is highest in the hierarchy. The position of the ideal recipient is thus more or less pre-determined by the work; the degree of ideological certainty, however, varies from author to author. Whereas works

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with a message demand a specific response, the spectrum of readings permitted by the work is wider with experimental or questioning authors. With Tolstoj, the spectrum of positions permitted by the work is undoubtedly narrower than, e.g., with Čexov. The difference between the two functions, the presumed addressee and the ideal recipient, is all the more relevant the more specific the work’s ideology is and the more it calls for a way of thinking that does not correspond to what is generally accepted in a society. In Tolstoj’s later work, the ideal reader is clearly very distant from the presumed addressee. Whereas the latter is conceptualized with very general characteristics—such as command of the Russian language, knowledge of the social norms of the late 19th century and the ability to read a literary work—the former is distinguished by a series of specific idiosyncrasies and Tolstojan evaluative positions. The concept of the implied reader as an ideal recipient (as put forward in Schmid 1971, [1973] 1986) has encountered objections. In his workbooks of the 1960s and 1970s, Baxtin, commenting on an excerpt from Schmid (1971), expressed criticism of the concept of the ideal recipient current in literary studies at the time: “Today’s literary scholars (in the majority structuralists) usually define the listener inherent to the work as an all-understanding ideal listener, and as such he has been postulated in the work. Naturally, this is not the empirical listener and not the psychological idea, the image of the listener in the soul of the author. It is, rather, an abstract ideal construction. It is the counterpart of an equally abstract ideal author. In this conception, the ideal listener is a mirror image who is the equivalent of the author, which duplicates him or her” (Baxtin 2002: 427). Baxtin criticizes the idea that the ideal reader conceptualized in this way does not contribute anything of himself, anything new, to the work and that he lacks “otherness,” a prerequisite of the author’s “surplus” (427–428). Of course, the concept of the implied reader as an ideal recipient does not mean that an ideal meaning must be contained in the work and has only to be correctly grasped by the reader. The concept does not mean in any way that the concrete reader’s freedom is constrained, nor does it require any kind of presuppositions with regard to the legitimacy of the meanings actually assigned to the work, as critics of the concept (e.g., Lintvelt [1981] 1989: 18; van der Eng 1984: 126–127) have argued. The co-creative activity of the recipient can take on a degree and pursue a direction that is not provided in the work. Readings that fail to achieve or that even deliberately resist a reception designed in the work may well broaden the work’s meaning. However, it must be conceded that every work contains, to a greater or lesser degree of am-

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biguity, signs pointing to its ideal reading. This ideal reading is seldom a specific meaning. Only in rare cases does it consist of a concrete ascription of meaning. As a rule, the ideal reception comprises a variable spectrum of functional attitudes, individual concretizations and subjective ascriptions of meaning. In extreme cases, the ideal reading can exist precisely as a contradiction to any predetermined attitude or seemingly overt meaning if an author demands of his or her reader the rebuttal of evaluative positions suggested by the narrator. Examples are Tolstoj’s “Kreutzer Sonata” and Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground, narrative monologues proclaiming provocative positions whose relativization or refutation is required from the ideal recipient. A famous example from American literature of a narration to be refuted is Henry James’ “The Figure in the Carpet” (cf. Iser [1976] 1978, 3–10). Essentially, any unreliable narration (Shen → Unreliability) establishes an ideal reader who corrects the narrator’s story. 3.2 Implied Reader as Presumed Addressee vs. Fictive Addressee The implied reader as author’s addressee is to be sharply distinguished from the fictive narrator’s addressee, called “narratee” (Prince 1971; 1985), “fictive reader” (Schmid [1973] 1986: 28) or, more accurately, “fictive addressee” (Schmid 2007: 175–180). Implied reader and fictive addressee never coincide, as is assumed by Genette ([1972] 1980), who identifies the “extradiegetic narratee” (i.e., the addressee addressed by an “extradiegetic narrator”) with the implied reader. Genette later ([1983] 1988: 138) embraces this supposed coincidence as a small simplifying measure “to the delight of our master Ockham.” But this economy is only possible on the basis of Genette’s system, where the extradiegetic narrator does not appear as a fictive entity, but rather takes the place of the absent implied author. Genette ([1983] 1988: 132–133) states: “the extradiegetic narrator merges totally with the author, whom I shall not call ‘implied’, as people too often do, but rather entirely explicit and declared.” For Bal (1977: 179), distinguishing implied and fictive reader is “semiotically insignificant,” while the Russian linguist Padučeva (1996: 216), referring to Toolan ([1988] 2001), explains that there is no need for such a duplication: “The narrator’s addressee is not a representative of the reader but the reader himself.” Of course, the more closely the fictive narrator is associated with the implied author, the more difficult it is to separate clearly the ideological positions of the fictive reader and implied reader. Even so, their difference remains absolutely in force. The border between the fictive world, to which every narrator belongs, no matter how neutrally, objectively or

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“Olympic” s/he may be constituted, and the reality to which, for all his or her virtuality, the implied reader belongs cannot be crossed, barring some structural paradox such as metalepsis (Pier → Metalepsis). There is yet another essential difference to be considered between the fictive addressee and the implied reader as ideal recipient. Works that are predisposed to function in a predominantly aesthetic way call for a reading which is sensitive to the demands of this predisposition: such works accomplish this by presupposing an ideal recipient who adopts an aesthetic attitude towards the text. By adopting an aesthetic attitude, the reader will not react to the work as s/he would to a situation in everyday life, but rather regard the work’s fabric and structure and, notwithstanding any ethical or ideological reactions to the story, derive pleasure from the interplay of the narrative levels (Pier → Narrative Levels) and artistic devices which constitute the work. An aesthetic attitude can also be suggested to the fictive addressee if, for instance, the narrator sees himself as an artist ascribing aesthetic value to his own narration. However, to the extent that the narrator is dissociated from the author in this regard, the fictive addressee will remain distinct from the implied reader in the attitude adopted towards the narrative. 3.3 Russian, Polish, and Czech Formalism and Structuralism In the Slavic area, which has made significant contributions to the study of literary communication that remain largely unknown in the West, the text’s addressee was first systematically described by the Polish literary scholar Głowiński ([1967] 1975) as the “virtual recipient.” The virtual recipient was not postulated as a pragmatic entity, but as a potential role laid out by the text. For Głowiński, the most important question was “how the structure of the […] work configures the role of the addressee” ([1967] 1975: 97). He drew a distinction between the addressee of the author and the addressee of the narrator, the former of which breaks down into two differing attitudes to the work’s meaning: that of the “passive reader,” who needs to reckon only with obvious meanings that emerge from the work; and that of the “active reader,” called on to reconstruct meanings encrypted in specific techniques. Głowiński’s approach was adopted and refined by OkopieńSławińska ([1971] 1975: 145), who distinguished the “work’s addressee,” or the addressee to whom the author speaks, and the “narration’s addressee,” the addressee to whom the narrator speaks (cf. Fieguth 1975). Whereas the narrator’s addressee can be endowed with personal traits, the work’s addressee is characterized only by the use of a specific code: “The work’s structure dictates the whole area of his decoding

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tasks, and these are the only properties that can be ascribed to him” (142). Červenka, the second-generation Czech structuralist, defined the image of the addressee evoked by the work following Mukařovský’s (1937) category of the “subject of the work,” used to designate the implied author: “If the subject of the work was the correlate of the totality of the acts of creative choice, then the overall meaning of the work’s addressee is the totality of the interpretive abilities required: the ability to use the same codes and develop their material analogously to the creative activity of the sender, the ability to transform the potentiality of the work into an aesthetic object” ([1969] 1978: 174–175). In Russia, Korman ([1977] 1992: 127) paired the “author as bearer of the work’s concept” with the corresponding entity of the “reader as postulated addressee, ideal principle of reception”: “The method of reception is the process of transforming the real reader into the ideal, conceived reader.” In this definition, however, the different roles of the implied reader as presumed addressee and ideal recipient are merged. Following on from Korman, Rymar’ and Skobelev (1994: 119–121) continue to use the term “conceived reader.” 3.4 Approaches in the West Booth’s concept of the implied author was influenced by Gibson’s “mock reader” (1950). After the formulation of the implied reader concept by Booth ([1961] 1983), the investigation of reader roles was deepened and concretized in the works of Iser ([1972] 1974, [1976] 1978). His German term, “impliziter Leser,” meaning “implicit reader,” is not completely equivalent to “implied reader” employed in the English editions. Whereas implied stresses the real reader’s inferring activity, implicit connotes an ontological definition, as though the image of the addressee were an entity independent of the reception process. The English term “implied reader” was not defined by Iser in an entirely unambiguous way and was left to fluctuate between the addressee of the work and the addressee of the narration. In the first German version of The Act of Reading, Iser describes the “implicit” reader as a “structure inscribed in the texts,” not having any real existence (1976: 60). He then goes on (to quote his subsequent English version of the text) to say that the implied reader “embodies all those predispositions necessary for a literary work to exercise its effect—predispositions laid down, not by an empirical outside reality, but by the text itself. Consequently, the implied reader as a concept has his roots firmly planted in the structure of the text; he is a construct and in no way to be identified with any real

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reader […] The concept of the implied reader is therefore a textual structure anticipating the presence of a recipient without necessarily defining him […] Thus the concept of the implied reader designates a network of response-inviting structures, which impel the reader to grasp the text” (Iser [1976] 1978: 34). (On Iser’s conception and a critique of it Prince → Reader, 746–747). A clear differentiation of the addressees was introduced by Grimm (1977: 38–39) who, alongside Wolff’s (1971) and Link’s (1976) “intended” reader (the author’s “objective”), placed an “imagined” reader (“the conception that the author has of his actual readership”) and a “conceived” reader (“the construction of a reader oriented on the text”). Eco (1979) paired the “model author” with the “model reader,” defining it analogously to Iser’s “implied reader” (Prince → Reader, 748). Drawing on Slavic theories, Schmid ([1973] 1986, 1974, 2007, 2010) has dealt with the implied reader under the name of “abstract reader,” a notion with affinities to Mukařovský’s concept of the “abstract” entities of the work.

4 Topics for Further Research (a) Similar to the topics mentioned for further research into the implied author, there is a need to identify the indexical signs that refer to the implied reader in its two manifestations. (b) The specific image of presumed addressees in different periods, cultural spheres, text types, and genres has yet to be examined in detail. (c) Also, the degree to which ideal recipients are designed by texts needs to be examined historically and culturally.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Bal, Mieke (1977). Narratologie. Les instances du récit. Essais sur la signification narrative dans quatre romans modernes. Paris: Klincksieck. Baxtin, Mixail (2002). “Rabočie zapisi 60-x–načala 70-x godov.” M. Baxtin. Sobranie sočinenij v semi tomax. Vol. 6. Moskva: Russkie slovari; Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury, 371–439. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Červenka, Miroslav ([1969] 1978). “Das literarische Werk als Zeichen.” M. Červenka. Der Bedeutungsaufbau des literarischen Werks. Ed. by F. Boldt & W.-D. Stempel. München: Fink, 163–183.

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Eco, Umberto (1979). The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Eng, Jan van der (1984). “Ästhetische Dominante und Fiktionalisierung. Wahrheitsanspruch und Intensivierung der Information. Autor und Leser.” J.-R. DöringSmirnov et al. (eds.). Text – Symbol – Weltmodell. Johannes Holthusen zum 60. Geburtstag. München: Sagner, 111–130. Fieguth, Rolf (1975). “Einleitung.” R. Fieguth (ed.). Literarische Kommunikation. Kronberg/Ts.: Scriptor, 9–22. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – ([1983] 1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Gibson, Walker (1950). “Authors, Speakers, Readers, and Mock Readers.” College English 11, 265–269. Głowiński, Michał ([1967] 1975). “Der virtuelle Empfänger in der Struktur des poetischen Werkes.” R. Fieguth (ed.). Literarische Kommunikation. Kronberg/Ts.: Scriptor, 93–126. Grimm, Gunter (1977). Rezeptionsgeschichte. Grundlegung einer Theorie. München: Fink. Iser, Wolfgang ([1972] 1974). The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – (1976). Der Akt des Lesens: Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung. München: Fink. – ([1976] 1978). The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Korman, Boris ([1977] 1992). “O celostnosti literaturnogo proizvedenija.” B. Korman. Izbrannye trudy po teorii i istorii literatury. Iževsk: Izd. Udmurtskogo un-ta, 119–128. Link, Hannelore (1976). Rezeptionsforschung. Eine Einführung in Methoden und Probleme. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Lintvelt, Jaap ([1981] 1989). Essai de typologie narrative. Le “point de vue” Théorie et analyse. Paris: José Corti. Mukařovský, Jan (1937). “L’individu dans l’art.” Deuxième congrès international d’esthétique et de la science de l’art. Vol. I. Paris, 349–350. Okopień-Sławińska, Aleksandra ([1971] 1975). “Die personalen Relationen in der literarischen Kommunikation.” R. Fieguth (ed.). Literarische Kommunikation. Kronberg/Ts.: Scriptor, 127–147. Padučeva, Elena (1996). “Semantika narrativa.” E. Padučeva. Semantičeskie issledovanija. Moskva: Jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 193–418. Prince, Gerald (1971). “Notes toward a Characterization of Fictional Narratees.” Genre 4, 100–106. – (1973). “Introduction à l’étude du narrataire.” Poétique 14, 178–196. – (1985). “The Narratee Revisited.” Style 19, 299–303. Rymar’, Nikolaj & Vladislav Skobelev (1994). Teorija avtora i problema xudožestvennoj dejatel’nosti. Voronež: Logos-Trast. Schmid, Wolf (1971). “Review of B. A. Uspenskij, A Poetics of Composition [in Russian, Moskva 1970].” Poetica 4, 124–134.

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([1973] 1986). Der Textaufbau in den Erzählungen Dostoevskijs. With an afterword: “Eine Antwort an die Kritiker”. Amsterdam: Grüner. – (1974). “Review of D. Janik, Die Kommunikationsstruktur des Erzählwerks. Ein semiologisches Modell.” Poetica 6, 404–415. – (2007). “Textadressat.” Th. Anz (ed.). Handbuch Literaturwissenschaft. Stuttgart: Metzler, vol. 1, 171–181. – (2010). Narratology. An Introduction. Berlin: de Gruyter. Toolan, Michael ([1988] 2001). Narrative. A Critical Linguistic Introduction. London: Routledge. Wolff, Erwin (1971). “Der intendierte Leser. Überlegungen und Beispiele zur Einführung eines literaturwissenschaftlichen Begriffs.” Poetica 4, 141–166.

5.2 Further Reading Suleiman, Susan R. & Inge Crosman (eds.) (1980). The Reader in the Text. Princeton: Princeton UP.

Mediacy and Narrative Mediation Jan Alber & Monika Fludernik

1 Definition The term “mediacy” was coined by Stanzel ([1955] 1971: 6) and describes the fact that the story is mediated by the narrator’s discourse in one of two ways. Either the story is openly transmitted through a narrator who functions as a teller of the tale (“teller mode”) or the mediation is apparently occluded by a direct,im-mediate presentation of the story through the consciousness of a reflector (character). In the reflector mode, we seem to see the storyworld through the eyes of a character and there seems to be no narratoroperating as a mediator. Since the introduction of Stanzel’s term, the fact of a mediate presentation of the story has become a general foundation in structuralist narratology. In Genette, mediation is two-fold on the levels of the discourse (récit) and the narrator’s act of telling (narration) ([1972] 1980: 27, [1983] 1988: 13); Prince ([1987] 2003: 58) defines narrative as always having a mediating narratorial level; and Chatman, who looks at film and nonverbal narratives like ballet, speaks of “narrative transmission” (1978: 22). In recent years, the emphasis on different media using narrative has resulted in the term mediation being applied to the way in which a story is told in film, drama, cartoons, ballet, music, pictures, hypertext narratives, and other genres and forms of narrative.

2 Explication Narratives can be mediated by narrators who tell and comment on the story or through agents who merely think, feel, or perceive. Stanzel discriminates between teller- and reflector-characters, arguing that they are “mediators of [...] fictional events” ([1979] 1984: 150). However, they mediate story material, i.e. event sequences, in different ways. Tellercharacters narrate, inform, and comment as if they were transmitting a piece of news or a message. Reflector-characters, on the other hand, do not narrate or transmit. Rather, the reader perceives the action through

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the eyes of the reflector character, and this veiled mediacy produces what Stanzel calls “the illusion of immediacy” (141). For Genette, the so-called “narrating instance” ([1972] 1980: 212) is the communicative act that initiates both the story and the narrative discourse that produces the story. More specifically, the narrating instance represents events and existents (story), and they are thereby mediated in a particular (verbal, visual, or audio-visual) sign system (narrative) ([1983] 1988: 13). Chatman speaks of the process of “narrative transmission” as “the source or authority for the story” (1978: 22). For him, the process of narrative transmission centrally concerns the relationship between story time and discourse time as well as issues of voice and point of view. Chatman discriminates between “overt narrators,” who communicate directly to the reader, and “covert narrators,” who remain more or less hidden in the narrative’s discursive shadows (1990: 115). Fludernik argues that all narrative is built on the mediating function of consciousness, a complex “natural” category with several available cognitive frames to choose from. She integrates Stanzel’s mediacy into a more general cognitive model of narrative transmission based on “real-life” schemata. Teller-mode narratives are mediated by the consciousness of a narrator; reflector-mode narratives by the consciousness of a protagonist; and neutral narratives by the reader who “views” and constructs narrative experience (1996: 50). Underlying the question of what constitutes narrative is the concept of mediacy. While most narrative theorists define narrative in terms of event sequences, Stanzel and Genette reject blanket uses of the term “narrative,” the latter defining narrative stricto sensu as a “verbal transmission” ([1983] 1988: 16). In Stanzel’s account, drama and film are im-mediate renderings of story, while (verbal) narrative is a mediated representation—mediated by the discourse of a narrator (openly mediated) or a reflector (obliquely mediated by presenting an illusion of im-mediacy). In contrast, Chatman also considers plays, movies, and cartoons to be narrative because they present stories (1990: 117). For him, there are “diegetic” and “mimetic” forms of narrative; narratives can be told or shown. Finally, Fludernik’s redefinition of narrativity on the basis of experientiality, i.e. “the quasi-mimetic evocation of ‘reallife experience’” (1996: 12), and its mediation through consciousness allows her to open up the field of narrative inquiry not only to drama and film, but also to oral storytelling and some kinds of poetry.

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3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 Mediacy from Plato to Stanzel Stanzel’s notion of mediacy has roots in the distinction between mimesis and haple diegesis in Plato’s Republic (cf. also Lubbock [1921: 62], Blackmur [1934: xvii–xviii], and Friedman [1955: 1161–1165]). In Plato’s diegetic or “pure” mode, the poet “himself is the speaker and does not even attempt to suggest to us that anyone but himself is speaking.” In the mimetic mode, however, the poet “delivers a speech as if he were someone else.” According to Plato, the poet may also combine these two modes and use the mixed mode, as in epic poetry (Plato 1937: 392c–95; cf. also Schaeffer & Vultur 2005: 309). Although Plato talks about speech representation (“pure” narrative and poetry vs. “pure” drama vs. narrative including dialogue insets), the Platonic mimesis/diegesis distinction as a dichotomy (rather than a triad) has been used to support both models of speech and thought representation (direct vs. free indirect speech) and the generic distinction between narrative and drama. Stanzel’s assignment of drama to the pole of immediacy (i.e. unmediated representation of story) therefore aligns immediacy with mimesis and mediacy with diegesis in the Platonic sense (McHale → Speech Representation). While for Plato (and later Stanzel) the term “diegetic” refers to narratorial discourse (i.e. the act of telling), Genette uses the term diégèse (adopted from Souriau 1951) to denote the fictional world of the characters ([1972] 1980: 27 n. 2, [1983] 1988: 17–18). Genette’s term diégèse has many affinities with Aristotle’s notion of mimesis. For Aristotle, “pure” narratives and direct representations are two varieties of what he calls mimesis because both represent a world (2002: 1448a). Similarly, Genette’s notion of diégèse refers to the primary story level, specifically excluding the narratorial discourse which is constitutive of both Plato’s and (in his wake) Stanzel’s understandings of diegesis. For Genette, “the diégèse is [...] the universe in which the story takes place” ([1983] 1988: 17). Despite this terminological disparity, however, Genette and Stanzel agree with regard to the constitutive narratorial mediation of narrative, even though for Genette this is achieved through the narrating instance. For him, the narrator’s speech act produces the story through the narrative discourse. Stanzel’s concept of mediacy is directed against Spielhagen’s prescriptive demand for “objectivity,” i.e. immediacy of presentation ([1883] 1967: 220). Stanzel seeks to counter the excessive demands of “neutralists” like Spielhagen, who argued that the narrator should re-

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main completely invisible throughout the narrative and thus wished to see every trace of a narrator erased. Stanzel’s proposal is closely related to Friedemann’s argument that the presence of a narrator in prose writings is in no way inferior to immediacy in drama, since the narrator is evocative of actual experience of the world. According to Friedemann, it is the narrator “who evaluates, who is sensitively aware, who observes” ([1910] 1965: 26), thus conveying an image of the world as s/he sees it, not as it is in a depersonalized objectivity. From the beginning, Stanzel presents the concept of mediacy as the linchpin for a definition of the term “narrative,” and he puts forth a sophisticated argument for mediacy as a gradable concept ([1955] 1971: 6). More specifically, he points out that mediacy is more or less foregrounded (as revealed by the presence or absence of comments by an authorial narrator), but its absence in the figural narrative situation is merely apparent. In the final version of his model, Stanzel revises the figural narrative situation by integrating it into the illusion of immediacy in order to constitute the reflector mode of narration, which is responsible for producing this illusion. In opposing the teller mode and the reflector mode, he significantly reformulates his original typology, dating from 1955, by instituting two basic types of mediacy: tellermode and reflector-mode mediacy. In this discussion, Stanzel proceeds from three pairs of oppositions arranged as scaled categories of person, perspective, and mode (mediacy). The first element of the narrative situation, person, is based on the relations between the narrator and the characters, and it ranges from identity (first-person reference) to non-identity (third-person reference) of the realms of existence of the narrator (Margolin → Narrator) and the characters (Jannidis → Character). Perspective directs the reader’s attention to the way in which s/he perceives the fictional world, extending from internal (perception located in the main character or within the events) to external (perception located at the periphery of the events) (Niederhoff → Perspective – Point of View). Finally, mode breaks down into “overt mediacy of narration [teller mode, J.A./M.F.]” and “covert [...] mediacy which produces the illusion of immediacy in the reader [reflector mode, J.A./M.F.]” (Stanzel [1979] 1984: 141). Stanzel regards the three narrative situations (first-person, authorial, and figural) as descriptions of basic possibilities of theorizing narration as mediacy. He also introduces a dynamic analysis into narrative transmission by demonstrating that narrative situations do not span entire novels uniformly. In his remarks on narrative dynamization, he discusses narrative profile and narrative rhythm. Although this dynamization is defined as a dynamization “of the narrative situation,” i.e. a study of

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“the variations of the narrative situation during the course of the narrative process,” the subsequent analysis actually focuses on the “relation of the narrative parts, that is, to dialogue and dramatized scene; specifically [on] their purely quantitative ratio and their distribution” ([1979] 1984: 63–67). Besides these proportions, the incidence of direct speech vs. indirect and free indirect speech and thought representation is also taken into account. The second term, narrative rhythm, concerns the distribution of narratorial emphasis in a specific novel and refers to the fact that in most novels, the narrator figure manifests him- or herself prominently at the beginning of the text and sometimes at the end, but then lapses into inactivity when the plot becomes exciting, resurfacing only at moments of narrative report, commentary, or description. The result of this configuration is a simultaneous “decrease in these authorial intrusions [which] parallels the increase of the hero’s ‘perspective solipsism’” ([1979] 1984: 69). Nevertheless, it must be noted that the introduction of the three axes (identity vs. non-identity of realms of existence; external vs. internal perspective, teller vs. reflector modes) and emphasis on the dynamization of the narrative situation tend to foreground “mode” (i.e. the distinction between tellers and reflectors) and to background “person” (Cohn 1981: 168). Cohn additionally points out that Stanzel’s category of perspective merges the “presentation of space (the visible outer world)” into the “presentation of consciousness (the invisible inner world)” (175). And since perspectives on fictional space and fictional minds do not always coincide (Uspenskij 1973: 105–107), Cohn considers this axis to be less unified than the other two (cf. also Cohn 1990). She therefore proposes to simplify Stanzel’s typological circle by subsuming the category of perspective under the heading of mode (1981: 179). 3.2 Mediacy in Genette and Chatman Genette considers Stanzel’s category of mode to be superfluous, as he finds it “easily reducible to our common category of perspective” ([1983] 1988: 116). In his view, Stanzel’s distinction between tellerand reflector-characters confuses the question of voice, or, more precisely, person (“who speaks?”) with that of mood or, more precisely, perspective (“who sees?”). He thus revises Cohn’s amendment of Stanzel by proposing a different taxonomy which “diversifies an initial typology that was [...] altogether too limited to the most frequent situations” (119). Genette’s model is based on the cross-tabulation of heterodiegetic and homodiegetic forms of narrating (“who speaks?”)

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and the three types of focalization (zero, internal, external) (“who sees?”) (21; [1972] 1980: 189–194, 245). Genette considers this taxonomy to be an improvement because it is more systematic and includes less common narrative forms such as Hemingway’s “The Killers,” a form of heterodiegetic narration with external focalization (the neutral subtype in Stanzel ([1955] 1971: 93), and Camus’s L’Étranger, a form of homodiegetic narration with external focalization. Stanzel’s mediacy is equivalent to what Genette calls “narrating act” and “narrative.” More specifically, Genette discriminates between “story (the totality of the narrated events), narrative (the discourse, oral or written, that narrates them), and narrating (the real or fictive act that produces that discourse—in other words, the very fact of recounting)” ([1983] 1988: 13). In this model, the narrating act shapes and transforms the story through the narrative discourse. Similarly, RimmonKenan uses the terms story, text, and narration ([1983] 2002: 3), while Bal modifies Genette’s terminology by arguing that it is by way of the text that the reader has access to the story, of which the fabula is a memorial trace that remains with the reader after the reading ([1985] 1997: 5). When Chatman introduced the principle of “narrative transmission,” he discriminated between “overt narrators,” “covert narrators,” and forms of “non-narration” for neutral narratives (1978: 22). Later, Chatman rejects the idea of non-narration by arguing that “every narrative is by definition narrated—that is, narratively presented” (1990: 115), but he maintains the distinction between overt and covert narrators, equivalent to Stanzel’s mediacy. His model is in close agreement with Stanzel’s, except that he includes drama and film among the narrative genres and therefore does not reduce narrative transmission or mediacy to the discourse of a narrative voice. Chatman provides a sliding scale from overt to covert narrators based on the linguistic markers of subjectivity, the presence of narratorial comments, and the use of evaluative phrases. Like Stanzel and Genette, he argues that all narratives have a narrator, so that all three theorists clearly oppose the Banfieldian “nonarrator” theory (1982), according to which certain sentences of fiction cannot possibly be enunciated by a narrator. Chatman argues that “narrative presentation entails an agent,” even when “the agent bears no signs of human personality” (1990: 115). The three authors agree that narratives always present a story which is mediated by a narrator’s discourse. Furthermore, Chatman stresses the conjunction of story and mediatory discourse by pointing out that “narrative entails movement through time not only ‘externally’ (the duration of the presentation of

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the novel, film, play), but also ‘internally’ (the duration of the sequence of events that constitute the plot)” (9). It is quite apparent that Stanzel’s teller mode corresponds to Chatman’s scale which ranges from overt to covert narration (i.e. from subjective and foregrounded tellers to “objective,” neutral, and backgrounded narration). By contrast, with regard to Stanzel’s reflectormode narrative, in which an illusion of immediacy is projected, Chatman (1978: 198) argues that a covert narrator expresses the thoughts of a character, while Genette ([1983] 1988: 115) describes such a scenario as heterodiegetic narration with internal focalization. What the two terminologies fail to take into account, however, is the prototypical absence of a foregrounded narrator in reflector-mode narratives or, to put it differently, the fact that in order to read an extended passage as internal focalization, a pronounced teller must not interfere because such a foregrounded narrative voice would impede a reading of the text from the character’s perspective. Stanzel shows that Modernist novels (e.g. Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) establish a representation of the narrative world which is (or seems to be) filtered through the consciousness of the protagonist (cf. also James [1909] 1934: 322– 325). This effect can only be achieved by completely backgrounding the narrative voice reporting on external events (for a critique of this claim, see Schmid 1968). By distinguishing between a teller and a reflector mode, however, the mere reduction of the narratorial voice to a default existence is not sufficient to characterize the reflector mode, since it is equally necessary to have a predominant internal perspective to produce the relevant effect. The reflector mode as mode only makes sense theoretically when one conceives of a different type of transmission through the character’s perspective or consciousness in contrast to the prominent (first- or third-person) teller-mode narrative which is mediated by an explicit transmitter. 3.3 Newer Developments Schmid (1982) puts forth an alternative model of narrative mediation by breaking down the story vs. discourse dichotomy into four terms: Geschehen (events); Geschichte (fabula or story); Erzählung (plot); Präsentation der Erzählung (narrative discourse). He goes on to posit three processes of transformation between these levels, all of which are accomplished by the narrator. According to Schmid, the mediating narrator first selects particular situations, characters, events, and qualities from the invented story material and transforms them into a story. The narrator then transforms the story into a narrative plot, going through a

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process that correlates with the linearization of simultaneous event sequences and the permutation of chronological story segments. And finally, the narrator presents the narrative by verbalizing it in a particular style. However, as Cohn argues, fictional narratives do not typically transform something pre-existent into a narrative, and they are thus plotted rather than emplotted (1990: 781). It is therefore worth noting that Schmid assumes an ideal-genetic perspective: the invented story material logically precedes the presentation of the narrative. Fludernik (1996) takes Stanzel’s concept of mediacy further by locating all mediation in narrative transmission through consciousness (which can surface on several levels and in different shapes). For her, all narratives operate through the projection of consciousness—the character’s, that of the narrative voice, or the reader’s. She also departs from the general tendency to identify narrativity (Abbott → Narrativity) with the presence of a story/plot transmitted in narrative discourse. While most narrative theorists define narrative through sequentiality or progression, Fludernik argues that there can be narratives without plot, but there cannot be narratives without a human experiencer of some sort at some narrative level. She redefines narrativity in terms of experientiality, with embodiment constituting the most basic feature of experientiality: embodiment evokes all the parameters of a real-life schema of existence which has to be situated in a specific time and space frame. In addition, she broadens the analysis to include a wide variety of narratives, following on from Chatman (1978: 96, 1990: 115) and Bal ([1985] 1997: 5). Fludernik proposes to expand the ways in which narrative transmission occurs, arguing that all mediacy (or mediation) occurs through cognitive schemata (Emmott & Alexander → Schemata) and that what is being mediated is not primarily a story (although in the vast majority of narratives such a series of events does indeed occur), but experientiality, a conjunction of reportability and point (Baroni → Tellability). “Reportability” characterizes the interest which tellers and listeners entertain in narratives while “point” refers to the motivations for telling the story. Since experience is closely associated with actions, event sequences underlie experientiality, with suspense fulfilling a prominent role. Other emotions or thoughts may be foregrounded, however, and some narratives (though few) actually operate without plot. Beckett’s short prose work “Ping” is an example of a plotless narrative. In this text, a disembodied voice presents us with repeated descriptions of the same strange world which is somewhat reminiscent of a prison scenario. The only thing we learn is that a body is trapped in a small, white container. This prose work lacks events, but it clearly depicts con-

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sciousness and might be read as the agonized ruminations of the body’s mind struggling with some kind of traumatic experience (Alber 2002). Mediacy is constituted by the following cognitive frames or schemata, all of which relate to our real-world knowledge (about telling, experiencing, viewing/observing, and reflecting) and provide us with access to the narrative: (a) the “telling” frame (narratives focusing on a teller figure); (b) the “experiencing” frame (narratives roughly corresponding to reflector-mode narratives); (c) the “viewing” frame (this frame occurs less frequently than (a) or (b), but relies on a basic witness position in relation to observed events); (d) the “reflecting” frame (when narratives project a ruminating consciousness). Consciousness mediates these frames in the reading process in which readers narrativize what they read as narrative, resorting to these four schemata but also to generic concepts and narratological tools as well as basic real-world knowledge (such as our understanding of intentionality as a goaloriented process) which is also stored in scripts and frames (Fludernik 1996: 12–52). On this basis, natural narratology moves away from the idea of the narrator or the illusion of narration to a wider spectrum of cognitive frames and processes on different levels which feed into the constitution of narrative and its reception. Like all cognitive approaches, this model is grounded in the real-world frames of everyday experience and is reader- rather than production-oriented (Alber 2005). The question of mediacy in narrative fiction has also been examined by Walsh, who argues quite provocatively that “the narrator is always either a character who narrates, or the author” (2007: 78). For him, “extradiegetic heterodiegetic narrators […], who cannot be represented without thereby being rendered homodiegetic or intradiegetic, are in no way distinguishable from authors” (84). Walsh suggests eradicating both “impersonal” and “authorial” narrators. While the first case aligns with Stanzel’s illusion of immediacy, the second differs radically from Stanzel’s distinction between authors and authorial narrators. Walsh maintains that the only way to account for the knowledge of an authorial narrator would be to take quite literally the figurative concept of omniscient narration: “in order to know rather than imagine, the (evidently superhuman) agent of narration must indeed have such power, or some lesser or intermittent version of it” (73). Thus, omniscience is not a faculty possessed by a certain class of narrators, but a quality of the author’s imagination. While some theoreticians infer from this an implied author (Schmid → Implied Author) (“an ideal, literary, created version of the real man” (Booth [1961] 1983: 75) as the mediating agent of narrative, Walsh speaks of “the author,” stating that “our idea of the author of a written narrative is no more than an interpretation” (2007: 84).

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Two things are worth noting here. First, the difference between Booth’s implied author and Walsh’s interpretation of the author is of course minimal or non-existent. Second, why should it be problematic to argue that third-person narrators can occasionally have “supernatural” (Ryan 1991: 67) or “unnatural” (Cohn 1999: 106) powers? 3.4 Mediacy and Narrative Media As pointed out in Nünning and Nünning (2002) and Wolf (2002), the definition of narrativity in reference to experientiality and the extension of mediacy to include an open list of cognitive frames, scripts, and schemata lead in the direction of transmedial and transgeneric narratology, as proposed in Fludernik (1996; Hühn & Sommer → Narration in Poetry and Drama; Ryan → Narration in Various Media). Many forays have recently been made into the area of narratological approaches to film, hypertext narrative, ballet, comic strips, drama, poetry, even painting and music (Ryan 2006, ed. 2004; Wolf 2002, 2003a, 2003b, 2004; Nünning & Nünning 2002). In this area, Chatman (1978, 1990) was an important innovator, for it was he who staked out a place for film in narratology (Kuhn & Schmidt → Narration in Film) and who also confronted narrative with other text-types, putting the concept of narrative under a new light. Chatman sees narrative transmission as media-related, and he therefore dissociates narrativity from the figure of a human narrator (1990: 116; cf. Ryan 2001, 2006). Although he reintroduces a so-called “cinematic narrator” for film, this figure is not a human or human-like narrator as in novels. Rather, the term denotes “the organizational and sending agency” (1990: 127) behind the film and fulfills a neutral or covert shower or arranger function. The notion is similar to what Jahn calls the “filmic composition device (FCD),”which refers to “the theoretical agency behind a film’s organization and arrangement” (2003: F4.1). Even so, the question of who (or what) mediates a film as a whole remains highly disputed. Bordwell, for one, argues that film has narration but no narrator, and that consequently cinematic narration is created by the viewer (1985: 61). On the other hand, Lothe (like Chatman) posits a cinematic or film narrator as “the superordinate ‘instance’ that presents all the means of communication that film has at its disposal” (2000: 30). And finally, theoreticians such as Gaut speak of an “implied filmmaker” who mediates the film (2004: 248). From the perspective of natural narratology, one can alternatively argue that film resorts more generally to the “viewing” frame than to the “telling,” “reflecting,” or “experiencing” frame.

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Like experimental literary narratives (Alber 2009), new media such as hypertext narratives or computer games require the introduction of new cognitive frames into the model proposed by Fludernik. From this perspective, mediacy does not refer to mediating through a (narrator’s) discourse, but mediation through consciousness. More specifically, we can gain access to these new media through the identification of consciousness. The verbal medium of a teller/narrator is only one possibility among many others; cognitive frames such as viewing, observing, experiencing, and reflecting (and maybe others) also play an important role. However, some of the media that have come into focus since the turn towards transmedial narratology are hard to analyze on the basis of narratological categories. As shown by Wolf (2002), paintings and music can only occasionally be narrativized. These aesthetic products lack crucial elements of experientiality in what they are able to represent (most types of music are perhaps not able to represent anything at all). With poetry, the situation is more vexed. On the one hand, there is narrative poetry (the epic, the ballad), a genre much neglected by narrative theory. On the other hand, many lyric poems exist that are also readable as narratives or contain narrative elements (Fludernik 1996: 304–310; Hühn 2002, 2005; Hühn & Schönert 2002; Müller-Zettelmann 2002, 2011; Schönert et al. 2007). All types of poetry (narrative and lyric) are mediated by a speaker. The lyric persona also clearly operates as a mediator on the “reflecting” frame. However, this does of course not turn lyric poetry into a narrative genre. Lyric poetry does not typically evoke experientiality, i.e. temporal and spatial parameters, and thus lacks the situatedness of narrative. In prototypical cases of lyric poetry, we are confronted with the musings of a disembodied voice about feelings or abstract ideas. Drama has long been a neglected object of narratological analysis. Drama was the focus not only of Aristotle’s discussion of mimesis and has thus become a subtext of all narrative theory, but like epic forms it is closely bound up with sequentiality and thus invites narratological analysis. Hence, Pfister (1977) undertakes a narrative analysis of drama, studying the relationship between story time and discourse time. Since then, Richardson (1987, 1988, 1991, 2006), Fludernik (1996, 2008), Jahn (2001), and Nünning and Sommer (2002, 2008) have started to focus on drama and its relation to narrative. Much of this work analyzes elements in drama which have to do with mediacy such as the introduction of teller figures (the Stage Manager in Wilder’s Our Town), first-person narrators (Henry Carr in Stoppard’s dream play Travesties), or the fictionalizing of stage directions to include psycho-

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narration, puns, or authorial commentary (Fludernik 2008). For the present purpose, these impositions of a teller figure on the plot level, the introduction of an extradiegetic frame into the play, or the narrativization of stage directions are not really relevant due to the fact that the mediacy of drama is constituted by other factors. Plays partake of the same stock of cognitive parameters and depend on the same reception frames as do other narratives. Since plays represent experientiality, they are narrative, irrespective of narrator figures or additional narrative techniques (such as the use of music). In other words, having a narrating character on stage, for example, is not required to bring plays within the domain of narrative. From this perspective, a problem very similar to that of film arises: what is the discourse level of drama? Here, the dramatic performance needs to be distinguished from the dramatic text (Berns → Performativity; cf. also Jahn 2001: 675). Does one treat only performances as drama in which performance is the discourse and the script merely the plot with instructions on how to perform? Or is performance a separate manifestation of the play and the play script the equivalent of the dramatic discourse? If one takes the text as central, it could be argued that an idealized abstract performance is sketched in it and that a unique center of origin can be posited for the performance: the text underwrites a singular “meaning” of the play that one might associate with “the implied author,” i.e. the real author’s “second self,” which, according to Booth, satisfies “the reader’s need to know where, in the world of values, he stands, that is, to know where the author wants him to stand” ([1961] 1983: 73). By contrast, if the performance is to be taken as the only acceptable discourse, there results a collaborative venture—as in film—for which the term “dramatic composition device,” in analogy with Jahn’s “filmic composition device” (2003: F4.1), might be appropriate. Most crucially, assuming performance to be the basic medium of drama requires taking account of the acoustic, visual, kinetic, and spatial aspects of a performance within narratological description. Jahn in fact argues that plays “are structurally mediated by a first-degree narrative agency which, in a performance may either take the totally unmetaphorical shape of a vocally and bodily present narrator figure [...] or remain an anonymous and impersonal narrative function in charge of selection, arrangement, and focalization” (2001: 674). This suggestion is of course reminiscent of Chatman’s distinction between overt and covert narrators. If only the script and a possible performative realization are focused on as the relevant medium of drama, then kinesis, lighting, and sound would acquire narratological significance only if they are explicitly grounded in the script. The performance level in

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drama is much more complicated than in film. Filming results in one fixed copy of the narrative, whereas with plays a variety of productions and different performances within each production occur, and none of them (unless videotaped) is accessible except in a viewer’s experience of watching the performance. It is obvious from these remarks that playscripts are much easier to handle for narratologists and that they allow a much clearer idea of how story and discourse are related to one another. Performance poses quite difficult problems for mediacy. In fact, one could enquire whether the notion of mediacy might here be an exclusively reception-oriented one. Is the story mediated to the audience through the experience of the performance? This question indicates that current research on mediacy has some distinct limits or horizons and that there are numerous matters waiting to be resolved by further research.

4 Topics for Further Investigation (a) The role of mediacy in drama and film remains open to study: does it make sense to posit a dramatic or cinematic narrator? Can one argue that they are mediated by the performance? Or should we assume that plays and films are mediated by an implied author or filmmaker? Or are all of these terms dispensable so that we can simply speak of the author or filmmaker (a larger group of professionals) as mediating instances (see also Alber 2010)? (b) One should also address the question of whether we can follow Walsh’s proposal to dispense with all extra- and heterodiegetic narrators in novels and short stories. In most cases, it certainly makes sense to discriminate between the author and the authorial or impersonal narrator. (c) It is also necessary to investigate the development of new cognitive frames of mediation in relation to experimental literary narratives and new media (hypertext narratives and computer games).

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Alber, Jan (2002). “The ‘Moreness’ or ‘Lessness’ of ‘Natural’ Narratology: Samuel Beckett’s ‘Lessness’ Reconsidered.” Style 36, 54–75 (reprinted in: Short Story Criticism 74, 2004, 113–124).

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(2005). “‘Natural’ Narratology.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 394–395. – (2009). “Impossible Storyworlds―And What To Do With Them.” Storyworlds 1, 79–96. – (2010). “Hypothetical Intentionalism: Cinematic Narration Reconsidered.” J. Alber & M. Fludernik (eds.). Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses. Columbus: The Ohio State UP, 163–185. Aristotle (2002). On Poetics. Tr. S. Benardete & M. David. South Bend: St. Augustine’s P. Bal, Mieke ([1985] 1997). Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Banfield, Ann (1982). Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Blackmur, Richard P. (1934). “Introduction.” H. James. The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces. New York: Scribner’s, vii–xxxix. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Bordwell, David (1985). Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Routledge. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – (1990). Coming To Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Cohn, Dorrit (1981). “The Encirclement of Narrative.” Poetics Today 2, 157–182. – (1990). “Signposts of Fictionality: A Narratological Approach.” Poetics Today 11, 775–804. – (1999). The Distinction of Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. – (2008). “Narrative and Drama.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 355–383. Friedemann, Käte ([1910] 1965). Die Rolle des Erzählers in der Epik. Darmstadt: WBG. Friedman, Norman (1955). “Point of View in Fiction: The Development of a Critical Concept.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 70, 1160–1184. Gaut, Berys (2004). “The Philosophy of the Movies: Cinematic Narration.” P. Kivy (ed.). The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics. Malden: Blackwell, 230–253. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – ([1983] 1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Hühn, Peter (2002). “Reading Poetry as Narrative: Towards a Narratological Analysis of Lyric Poems.” Ch. Todenhagen & W. Thiele (eds.). Investigations into Narrative Structures. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 13–27. – Peter (2005). “Plotting the Lyric: Forms of Narration in Poetry.” E. MüllerZettelmann & M. Rubik (eds.). Theory into Poetry: New Approaches to the Lyric. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 147–172. – & Jörg Schönert (2002). “Zur narratologischen Analyse von Lyrik.” Poetica 34, 287–305.

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Jahn, Manfred (2001). “Narrative Voice and Agency in Drama: Aspects of a Narratology of Drama.” New Literary History 32, 659–679. – (2003). “A Guide to Narratological Film Analysis.” . James, Henry ([1909] 1934). “Preface to The Ambassadors”. H. James. The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces. New York: Scribner’s, 307–326. Lothe, Jakob (2000). Narrative in Fiction and Film: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP. Lubbock, Percy (1921). The Craft of Fiction. New York: Scribner. Müller-Zettelmann, Eva (2002). “Lyrik und Narratologie.” V. Nünning & A. Nünning (eds.). Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär. Trier: WVT, 129–153. – (2011). “Poetry, Narratology, Meta-Cognition.” G. Olson (ed.). Current Trends in Narratology. Berlin: de Gruyter, 232–353. Nünning, Ansgar & Roy Sommer (2002). “Drama und Narratologie: Die Entwicklung erzähltheoretischer Modelle und Kategorien für die Dramenanalyse.” V. Nünning & A. Nünning (eds.). Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär. Trier: WVT, 105–128. – (2008). “Diegetic and Mimetic Narrativity. Some Further Steps Towards a Narratology of Drama.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin:de Gruyter, 331–354. Nünning, Vera & Ansgar Nünning (2002). “Produktive Grenzüberschreitungen: Transgenerische, intermediale und interdisziplinäre Ansätze in der Erzähltheorie.” V. Nünning & A. Nünning (eds.). Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär. Trier: WVT, 1–22. Pfister, Manfred ([1977] 1988). The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Plato (1937). The Republic. Tr. P. Shorey. Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library. Prince, Gerald ([1987] 2003). A Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Richardson, Brian (1987). “Time is Out of Joint: Narrative Models and the Temporality of the Drama.”Poetics Today 8, 299–310. – (1988). “Point of View in Drama: Diegetic Monologue, Unreliable Narrators, and the Author’s Voice on Stage.” Comparative Drama 22, 193–214. – (1991). “Pinter’s Landscape and the Boundaries of Narrative.” Essays in Literature 18, 37–45. – (2006). Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Postmodern Contemporary Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith ([1983] 2002). Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Methuen. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP. – (2001). “The Narratorial Functions: Breaking Down a Theoretical Primitive.”Narrative 9, 146–142. – (2006). Avatars of Story. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. – ed. (2004). Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln: U Nebraska P.

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Schaeffer, Jean-Marie & Ioana Vultur (2005). “Mimesis.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 309–310. Schmid, Wolf (1968). “Zur Erzähltechnik und Bewusstseinstechnik in Dostoevskijs ‘Večnyj muž’.”Die Welt der Slaven 13, 294–306. – (1982) “Die narrativen Ebenen ‘Geschehen,’ ‘Geschichte,’ ‘Erzählung’ und‘Präsentation der Erzählung.’” Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 9, 83–110. Schönert, Jörg et al. (2007). Lyrik und Narratologie: Text-Analysen zu deutschsprachigen Gedichten vom 16. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: de Gruyter. Souriau, Etienne (1951). “La structure de l’univers filmique et le vocabulaire de la filmologie.” Revue internationale de filmologie 7/8, 231–240. Spielhagen, Friedrich ([1883] 1967). Beiträge zur Theorie und Technik des Romans. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Stanzel, Franz K. ([1955] 1971). Narrative Situations in the Novel: Tom Jones, MobyDick, The Ambassadors, Ulysses. Bloomington: Indiana UP. – ([1979] 1984). A Theory of Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Uspenskij, Boris (Uspensky) (1973). A Poetics of Composition: The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of a Compositional Form. Berkley: U of California P. Walsh, Richard (2007). The Rhetoric of Fictionality: Narrative Theory and the Idea of Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Wolf, Werner (2002). “Das Problem der Narrativität in Literatur, bildender Kunst und Musik: Ein Beitrag zu einer intermedialen Erzähltheorie.” V. Nünning & A. Nünning (eds.). Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär. Trier: WVT, 23–104. – (2003a). “The Lyric—an Elusive Genre. Problems of Definition and a Proposal for Reconceptualization.” Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 28, 59–91. – (2003b). “Narrative and Narrativity: A Narratological Reconceptualization and itsApplicability to the Visual Arts.” Word & Image 19, 180–197. – (2004). “‘Cross the Border—Close that Gap’: Towards an Intermedial Narratology.”European Journal of English Studies 8, 81–103.

5.2 Further Reading Jahn, Manfred (2005). “Mediacy.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 292–293. Stivers, David (2007). “Witnessing the Invisible: Narrative Mediation in The Princess Casamassima. ” The Henry James Review 28, 159–173.

Metalepsis John Pier

1 Definition In its narratological sense, metalepsis, first identified by Genette, is a deliberate transgression between the world of the telling and the world of the told: “any intrusion by the extradiegetic narrator or narratee into the diegetic universe (or by diegetic characters into a metadiegetic universe, etc.), or the inverse […], produces an effect of strangeness that is either comical […] or fantastic” ([1972] 1980: 234–235). After reviewing a few examples, Genette observes that “[a]ll of these games, by the intensity of their effects, demonstrate the importance of the boundary they tax their ingenuity to overstep, in defiance of verisimilitude—a boundary that is precisely the narrating (or the performance) itself: a shifting but sacred frontier [or boundary] between two worlds, the world in which one tells, the world of which one tells. […] The most troubling thing about metalepsis indeed lies in this unacceptable and insistent hypothesis that the extradiegetic is perhaps always diegetic and that the narrator and his narratees—you and I—perhaps belong to some narrative” (236, original emphasis). Described as “taking hold of (telling) by changing level” (235, n. 51), narrative metalepsis combines the principle of narrative levels (Pier → Narrative Levels) with “author’s metalepsis,” a narrative figure with roots in the trope of metalepsis. Narrative metalepsis constitutes a “deliberate transgression of the threshold of embedding […]: when an author (or his reader) introduces himself into the fictive action of the narrative or when a character in that fiction intrudes into the extradiegetic existence of the author or reader, such intrusions disturb, to say the least, the distinction between levels,” producing an effect of “humor” or of “the fantastic” or “some mixture of the two […], unless it functions as a figure of the creative imagination” (Genette [1983] 1988: 88). These definitions, which remain foundational, providing the basis for a narrative category which, up to the early 1970s, had never been properly formulated, have been expanded, amended and refined by subsequent research, partly by Genette himself in his book Métalepses

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(2004), an exploration of the phenomenon not only in narrative fiction but also in theater, film, television, painting and photography. These developments have come about with the realization that metalepsis is not a mere localized stylistic device or oddity, but also that it occurs in various forms, thus calling for the elaboration of typologies, that it can be found in media other than language and is indeed a phenomenon which is not inherently bound by or restricted to narrative, and that its effects are not exclusively anti-illusionistic. A survey of the literature suggests that the criteria for determining the occurrence of metalepsis and the conditions of its extension are the focus of as much if not more attention than the various definitions that have been set forth.

2 Explication In addition to Genette’s “transgression” of levels or to Wagner’s (2002) “sliding” between levels, metalepsis has been characterized as “undermining the separation between narration and story” (Rimmon-Kenan [1983] 2002: 93); as a “strange loop” in the structure of narrative levels or a “short circuit” between the “fictional world and the ontological level occupied by the author” (McHale 1987: 119, 213); as a “narrative short circuit” causing “a sudden collapse of the narrative system” (Wolf 1993: 358); or as producing a “disruptive effect on the fabric of narrative” (Malina 2002: 1). Being the “embryo” or “outline” (esquisse) of a fiction, metalepsis triggers “a playful simulation of belief” (Genette 2004: 17, 25). As can be seen from the diversity of these characterizations (among others), current research cannot be neatly classified into clearly identified paradigms. Nevertheless, three partially overlapping conceptions do seem to stand out, all deriving more or less directly from the definitions of narrative metalepsis listed above, although with little reference to its connection with the trope of metalepsis: - Rhetorical vs. ontological metalepsis This distinction is contained implicitly in Genette’s definitions and examples but is not systematically elaborated. - Transmedial dimensions This approach expands investigations to include non-verbal and plurimedial manifestations of the phenomenon. A type of metareference, metalepsis, particularly in its ontological form, possesses a potential for self-reference and thus for laying bare the fictionality of the work in which it appears.

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- Metalepsis as paradox Recentering on the original definition of narrative metalepsis, this approach insists not on the rhetorical/ontological distinction but on the logically paradoxical movements between at least two hierarchically distinct text-internal narrative levels. On the whole, discussions support the idea that metalepsis appears only in fictional contexts. Essentially, it functions with varying dosages of three parameters: (a) illusion of contemporaneousness between the time of the telling and the time of the told; (b) transgressive merging of two or more levels; (c) doubling of the narrator/narratee axis with the author/reader axis. These features are illustrated by Balzac’s “While the venerable churchman climbs the ramps of Angoulême, it is not useless to explain […]”—a “minimal” metalepsis (cf. Pier 2005: 249–250) which, being incipiently transgressive, leaps the boundary between narrator and extradiegetic narratee on the communicative plane and puts story time on hold while the narrator, in a relative cohabitation with the character, intervenes with a metanarrative comment, demonstrating the latent metaleptic quality of narrative embedding in general. This example leads to the idea that fictional narrative is by nature metaleptic, that it is bound to the paradox of “a current presentation of the past” (Bessière 2005), that it betrays “at least the potential for narrative metalepsis” (Nelles 1997: 152).

3 History of the Concept and its Study It is important to bear in mind that although metalepsis has its roots in ancient rhetoric, narrative metalepsis is a recent concept in the history of poetics, with the practice itself, under different denominations, or none at all, reaching back to antiquity in both literary and visual forms, as copiously demonstrated by a recent anthology edited by Eisen and von Möllendorff (2013). The fact that metalepsis can now be theorized and applied according to definable criteria has opened up avenues of historical research that extend beyond the corpus of modernist and postmodernist works habitually taken into consideration in the study of the concept and the practice. 3.1 The Rhetorical Background The etymology of metalepsis is disputed, but its sense can readily be grasped from the word’s Latin equivalent—transumptio: “assuming one

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thing for another.” Metalepsis has a complex history in that it has been regarded either as a variety of metonymy, a particular form of synonymy, or both. As metonymy, it has been identified (a) in simple form as an expression of the consequent understood as the antecedent or vice versa and (b) as a chain of associations (“a few ears of corn” for “a few years,” the transfer of sense implying “a few harvests” and “a few summers”). Another possibility is to regard metalepsis in terms of an overlap between synonymy and homonymy in such a way as not to respect the semantic demarcation between distinct signifiers, resulting in the use of an inappropriate synonym: cano (“sing”) is a synonym of canto (“sing”) and canto (“repeat”) a synonym of dico (“relate”); therefore, cano is a synonym of dico (cf. Lausberg [1960] 1973: § 571; Morier 1961; Burkhardt 2001; Meyer-Minnemann 2005: 140–143; Roussin 2005: 41–44). From the perspective of narrative theory, two positions derive from the rhetoric of metalepsis. Genette (2004: 7–16), drawing on the first of the two types above, notes that metalepsis shares with metaphor and metonymy the principle of transfer of sense, and he considers it (following Dumarsais) a metonymy of the simple type; he then expands it (with Fontanier) beyond the single word to include an entire proposition. Metalepsis of antecedent and consequent, he argues, is implicitly metalepsis of cause for effect or effect for cause. From such causal relations he forges the notion of author’s metalepsis whereby an author “is represented or represents himself as producing what, in the final analysis, he only relates” (Fontanier). He also draws attention to the proximity for the two rhetoricians of metalepsis and hypotyposis (a figure in which the copy is treated, illusorily, as though it were the original, as in a present-tense description), but particularly to the fact that, with metalepsis, the narrator transgresses not merely the threshold of narrative but that of representation, resulting in a “reduced metadiegetic” or “pseudodiegetic” narrative in which, due to the lack of metadiegetic relay, the secondary narrator effectively takes the place of the primary narrator (see also Genette [1972] 1980: 236–237; a more radical form is “heterodiegesis,” which “gathers in one single universe the world of production, fiction and reception”; Rabau 2005: 60). There have also been proposals to refer narrative metalepsis back to metalepsis as use of an inappropriate synonym, notably by MeyerMinnemann (2005) and Schlickers (2005) (see also Nelles 1997: 152– 157). The emphasis here is not on authorial metalepsis as a type of metonymy, but on the transgression of boundaries, of which there are two main types: one at discourse level, with breaching of the “me-herenow” of enunciation (in verbis transgression), the other at story level,

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with violation of the coordinates of the enunciate (in corpore transgression) (see chap. 3.2.1 below). Recent research has taken a somewhat different view of the rhetorical heritage of narrative metalepsis. Thus, Nauta (2013a), re-examining the sources of metalepsis from antiquity to Dumarsais and Fontanier, delineates two strains, one concerned with allusion (following Quintilian), the other with narrative (metalepsis as metonymy of the preceding and the following). The latter, he maintains, is a trope in its own right, “operating on an expression signifying the act of representing a situation or action, in which such an expression is substituted by one signifying the act of creating or causing that situation or action” (477)—a conception which is close to the narratological definition: “any intrusion by the extradiegetic narrator or narratee into the diegetic universe (or by diegetic characters into a metadiegetic universe, etc.), or the inverse” (Genette [1972] 1980: 234–235). Yet, in his more recent work on the topic, Genette advocated a special case of metonymy in which cause is substituted for effect or effect for cause, proposing, accordingly, “to restrict the term ‘metalepsis’ from now on to a manipulation—at least figural, but sometimes fictional […]—of this particular causal relation which, in one way or another, connects the author to his work or, more broadly, the producer of a representation to this representation itself” (Genette 2004: 13–14). But from Nauta’s rhetorical perspective, “manipulation” of causal relation is not substitution of cause and effect, and it is, moreover, inconsistent with metalepsis as a reflexive relationship between narrative levels (2013a: 479–480; this position is also rallied to by Klimek 2010: 34–37). The connection between the metalepsis of ancient grammar and rhetoric and narrative metalepsis is “rather tenuous,” as Nauta observes. Nevertheless, important work has been undertaken in the study of the metaleptic features of ancient literatures such as de Jong’s (2009) seminal discussion of apostrophe, the blending of narrative voices and other techniques in Greek texts, Baumann’s (2013) study of metalepsis in ancient ekphrasis or Nauta’s (2013b) considerations on metalepsis and metapoetics in Latin poetry, but also Cornils’ (2005) essay on the metaleptic effects of evidentia, a specific form of phantasia (characterized by a persuasive function) in the Acts of the Apostles, to mention only a few sources. One major finding of these studies is that, unlike modern practices, metalepsis in ancient literatures is a serious technique which is used not for comic or anti-illusionistic effects, but rather as a means for increasing the narrator’s authority and intensifying the credibility of the narrative. This suggests the need for further work on the rhetorical

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dimension of metalepsis, possibly in conjunction with pragmatics and the theory of argumentation. 3.2 Principal Approaches 3.2.1 Rhetorical vs. Ontological Metalepsis One widely acknowledged group of theories, originally formulated by Ryan ([2004] 2006), consists in breaking metalepsis down into rhetorical (Genette) and ontological (McHale) forms. This represents an extension of Ryan’s theory of illocutionary and ontological boundaries, frames and stacks (cf. Pier → Narrative Levels, chap. 3.2.3) in so far as it incorporates the transgression of boundaries which, in principle, are inviolable in narrative. The distinction remains implicit in Genette, she notes, although his more recent “figural” vs. “fictional” metalepsis corresponds roughly to her own. The rhetorical variety “opens a small window that allows a quick glance across levels, but the window closes after a few sentences, and the operation ends up reasserting the existence of the boundaries” while the ontological type “opens a passage between levels that results in their interpenetration, or mutual contamination” (207). Taking a cue from McHale (1987: chap. 8), Ryan defines ontological metalepsis in accordance with Hofstadter’s (1979: 10, 621) Strange Loops and Tangled Hierarchies, and she further comments on the connection of the violation of narrative hierarchies with similar phenomena in logic, mathematics, language and science. As for Ryan’s rhetorical metalepsis, Klimek (2010: 65) finds this inappropriate, and, referring instead to Cohn’s ([2005] 2012) metalepsis at the discourse level and metalepsis at the story level, she proposes the term “discourse metalepsis.” Ryan’s distinction has been further broken down by Fludernik (2003). On scrutinizing Genette’s narrative metalepsis, she concludes that this is an umbrella term which contains an implicit four-term typology: (a) authorial metalepsis (Virgil “has Dido die”): a metafictional strategy that undermines mimetic illusion, foregrounding the inventedness of the story; (b) narratorial or type 1 ontological metalepsis (in Eliot’s Adam Bede, the narrator invites the narratee to accompany him to Reverend Irwine’s study): transgression from the extradiegetic to the intradiegetic level is illusionary, drawing a fine line between the reader’s immersion and lifting of the mimetic illusion; (c) lectorial or type 2 ontological metalepsis (in a story by Cortázar, the reader of a novel is [almost] killed by a character in that novel): implication of the narratee on the story level or passage of a character from an embedded to an

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embedding level (also occurs in second-person narration); (d) rhetorical or discourse metalepsis (simultaneity of time of the telling/time of the told; cf. Pier 2005: 249–250 on “minimal” metalepsis). A related group of theories, less focused on the rhetorical/ ontological divide, emphasizes what Wagner (2002) has termed “metaleptic movements.” Wagner divides these movements into three varieties: (a) from a higher to a lower level (extra- to intradiegetic or, jumping a level, intra- to metadiegetic; also intra- to metadiegetic: an author intervenes in her fiction); (b) from a lower to a higher level, proceeding in the opposite direction, as when a character transgresses the extradiegetic boundary; (c) “auto-intertextuality” between diegeses of the same level, thus confronting parallel heterogeneous fictive universes. He also takes up the question, largely neglected, of the compositional distribution of metalepses: their location, amplitude and frequency can have a significant impact on the strategy and readability of a narrative (on this point, see also Häsner 2001: 40–43). Two comments, however. First, although he does not use the term, Wagner implicitly adopts Bal’s “hypodiegetic” inversion levels, (a) being an ascending transgression for Genette and (b) a descending transgression (the latter dubbed “antimetalepsis” by Genette 2004: 27). Second, the metaleptic status of (c), later called “horizontal” metalepsis, has been contested, notably by Klimek (2010: 67–68; 2011), who considers this to be an issue of intertextuality or quotation. This phenomenon has been studied under the name of “transfictionality” (cf. Saint-Gelais 2011). Klimek herself is among those to subscribe to descending and ascending metalepsis (see chap. 3.2.3 below). But mention must also be made at this point of the model elaborated by Meyer-Minnemann (2005) and Schlickers (2005). Taking a cue from Genette, this model provides for metalepsis of enunciation (in verbis, at discourse level) and metalepsis of the enunciate (in corpore, at story level), where each functions either vertically (bottom-up or top-down) or horizontally, without change of level (dubbed “perilepsis” by Prince 2006: 628). To take only a few illustrations: (a) vertical metalepsis of enunciation (topdown) obtains when an extradiegetic narrator transgresses the intradiegetic boundary; (b) horizontal metalepsis of enunciation occurs with the juxtaposition of two communicative situations at the same level; (c) with transgression of the diegetic, ontological, spatial or temporal order there occurs a vertical metalepsis of the enunciate; (d) horizontal metalepsis of the enunciate is produced when, say, Woody Allen enters the world of Madame Bovary. In this system metalepsis is seen as producing an effect of strangeness, either comical or fantastic, but it is not considered a figure of fictionality in Genette’s (2004) sense. The Mey-

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er-Minnemann/ Schlickers model of metalepsis forms part of a larger theory of “paradoxical narration” in which devices are employed either to cancel out boundaries (syllepsis, epanalepsis, the latter type including mise en abyme) or to transgress boundaries (metalepsis, hyperlepsis, the latter equivalent to pseudodiegesis: metadiegetic narrative presented as though it were diegetic). For a typology, see Lang (2006). In an earlier model, Nelles (1997: 152–157) differentiates metalepsis as being either “unmarked” (occurring at discourse level) or “distinctly marked” (occurring at story level). The latter divides into “intrametalepsis” (movement from the embedding to the embedded level) and “extrametalepsis” (movement in the opposite direction), with each type possessing analeptic and proleptic forms on the temporal plane (for the related notions of “inward” vs. “outward” metalepsis, see Malina 2002: 46–50). Rather than the rhetorical (discourse) vs. ontological (story) distinction, Nelles, invoking epistemic (vertical) and ontological (horizontal) embedding, adopts epistemological or verbal metalepsis (knowledge of the other world) as opposed to ontological or modal metalepsis (physical penetration of the other world). However, this latter pair partly reduplicates and contradicts the other distinctions while the classification as a whole leaves little room for the transgressive or paradoxical nature of metalepsis. In a proposal that partly cuts across the above models, Pier (2005: 252–253) sets descending metalepsis off from ascending metalepsis. The former, which occurs in Fludernik’s authorial and narratorial (type 1 ontological) varieties, follows an intrametaleptic movement while the latter, found in the lectorial (type 2 ontological) variety, involves an extrametaleptic movement; as for discourse (or minimal) metalepsis, it remains poised, sometimes precariously, between the two movements. Moreover, intrametaleptic movements mark an affinity between narrator and narratee, and extrametaleptic movements an affinity between character and narratee. Finally, these movements pertain both in external metalepsis (between the extradiegetic and the intradiegetic levels) and in internal metalepsis (occurring between two levels within the story itself; cf. Cohn [2005] 2012). 3.2.2 Transmedial Dimensions Originally, metalepsis was formulated within the scope of languagebased narratives, and its study was largely reserved to works of high culture and the avant-garde. Rather quickly, however, it was realized that the phenomenon also extends to other media as well as to works of popular culture, particularly those involving plurimedial and/or non-

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narrative forms of representation. Examples can be found in Genette (2004) and in Pier and Schaeffer eds. (2005) but also in Kukkonen and Klimek eds. (2011), not to mention a host of other publications too numerous to mention here. (On transmediality, see Ryan → Narration in Various Media, Ryan ed. 2004.) One important step in this direction was taken by Wolf (2005) who, looking at examples from drama, film, comics and painting, laid the foundations for “exporting” metalepsis to media other than language. Four features are singled out that enable metalepsis to occur beyond verbal media: (a) it is found within artefacts/performances that represent possible worlds (cf. Ryan 1991: esp. chap. 9), but has no essential link with narrativity; (b) existence within these artefacts/ performances of distinct levels or possible (sub)worlds that differ from one another with reference to “reality” vs. “fiction” (the latter combining “fictio” as artefact and “fictum” as “invention without direct reference to reality”; Wolf 1993: 38–39); (c) actual transgression between or confusion of (sub)worlds; (d) paradoxical nature of the transgression with reference to a “natural” or conventional belief in the inviolability of these (sub)worlds in “normal” life and fiction. On this basis, metalepsis, in any medium, is defined as “a usually intentional paradoxical transgression of, or confusion between, (onto)logically distinct (sub)worlds and/or levels that exist, or are referred to, within representations of possible worlds” (Wolf 2005: 91, original emphasis). Note, however, should be made of the fact that this definition (as is the case with the partial redefinition in Wolf 2009: 50) is heavily weighted in favor of ontological (i.e. story level) metalepsis involving impossible physical transgressions, and that although rhetorical metalepsis is included in the discussion, the different types of metaleptic movements mentioned in the previous section are not taken into account. Also introduced is epistemological metalepsis, the “impossible” knowledge characters might have of their fictional status, the effect of which is to reflect the metareferential nature of metalepsis, although metareferential potential remains highest in the ontological form, laying bare the fictionality of the work (52–56). Exploring the transmedial dimensions of metalepsis poses the challenge of rethinking narrative metalepsis so as to accommodate the features of visual and performance media, for which the language-based story-discourse distinction is not well adapted. One option is of course to address the issues through ontological reconceptualization. Another possibility is to take into consideration so-called media affordances, i.e. how the various media influence and shape the forms of representation, but also how, in the different media environments, metalepsis interacts

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with representation. This is the avenue chosen by the contributors to Kukkonen and Klimek eds. (2011), a collection of essays on metalepsis in media-rich artifacts drawn from popular culture. In her introductory essay, Kukkonen (2011b) identifies the essential terms of metalepsis as worlds, boundaries and transgressions along with their types, effects and functions; she also provides a “basic matrix of types” applicable across media which allows for various combinations of the direction (ascending or descending) and mode (rhetorical or ontological) of metalepsis as well as for horizontal or intertextual metalepsis—a matrix that overarches the various models developed in the volume. On the basis of an exhaustive typology developed out of this matrix, Limoges (2011) demonstrates the strong potential of animation film for illusionistic extradiegetic transgressions, both ascending and descending. This is unlike comics, where the “gutter” between panels that governs the page layout offers possibilities of foregrounding such that a character might lift the corner of a page to hide an object in the image (or throw it out), thus highlighting the production process through ontological metalepsis (Kukkonen 2011a). Klimek (2011: 26–27) observes that if metalepsis in the performing arts has a potential for spilling over into the audience’s “real” world, this is not the case in narrative fictions, where it can occur only between levels within the artifact (on metalepsis in film, theater, the visual arts and picture books, see Klimek 2010: 73–75). Where Klimek considers horizontal “intertextual” transgressions not to be metaleptic, Feyersinger (2011), studying trans-world “crossovers” in TV series and spinoffs in which characters and situations are carried over from one show to another, sees crossovers and metalepses as two poles along a spectrum of world-connecting devices that share certain elements and effects. As shown by these and other essays, technical innovations brought in by the mass media and, more recently, by the digital technologies, have contributed significantly to the use of metalepsis and to the diversity of metaleptic effects in the popular culture corpus. 3.2.3 Metalepsis as Paradox At the heart of metalepsis is transgression of the “sacred boundary” between the world of the telling and the world of the told. In the logic of representation, levels of existence are distinct, and their violation constitutes a paradox. In literary theory such paradox is often understood in the everyday sense of a statement contrary to received opinion or belief, something “unnatural.” In the technically logical sense, however, paradox is an issue that arises in self-reference, as illustrated by the liar’s

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paradox, where the principle that a proposition cannot be both true and false at the same time is contradicted (Epimenides, a Cretan, says “All Cretans are liars”)—a mind-bender also conveyed visually by the Möbius strip, Klein’s bottle and Escher’s drawings. Hofstadter (1979) examines various manifestations of this paradox in modern mathematics and science, even providing a recursive dialogue (103–126) that illustrates the problem of metalepsis, although the term appears nowhere in the book. It is important to note that paradox has been integrated into the poetics of postmodernist fiction, a type of writing which, according to McHale (1987), “foregrounds ontological issues of text and world” (27). Adopting an ontology taken from possible worlds theory (33–36), McHale recasts Genette’s narrative levels in terms of ontological levels, and he goes on to describe metalepsis as “the ontological dimension of recursive embedding” (120). Metalepsis is characterized, on the one hand, as a “short circuit” between the “fictional world and the ontological level occupied by the author” (213), a special case which, as observed by Klimek (2010: 57), corresponds to Genette’s author’s metalepsis. On the other hand, the violation of narrative levels in more complex forms of metalepsis is identified with the “Strange Loop,” a phenomenon that occurs “whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through the levels of some hierarchical system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started,” and also with a subcategory of the Strange Loop, the “Tangled Hierarchy”: “when what you presume are clean hierarchical levels take you by surprise and fold back in a hierarchy-violating way” (Hofstadter 1979: 10, 691; qtd. in McHale 1987: 119). Conceptually speaking, however, short circuits and strange loops/tangled hierarchies are not of the same order. In a refinement of this model, Wolf (1993: 349–372), considering the forms of disturbance of mimetic illusion caused by the failure to observe ontological boundaries, sets the “contamination” of extrafictional reality with textually produced fiction off from that of innerfictional boundaries. Unlike in McHale (1987), where metalepsis, short circuit and strange loop are employed synonymously, here it is only the latter, inner-fictional form that gives rise to metalepsis, also called “narrative short circuit” by Wolf, a metafictional technique whose effect is to trigger “a sudden collapse of the narrative system” (358). Narrative short circuits appear punctually either (a) between the extradiegetic and the intradiegetic levels or (b) between the intradiegetic and one or more hypodiegetic levels, although no distinction is made between descending and ascending metalepsis as discussed in the previous section. To these simple forms of metalepsis is added a complex form in which the

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previous two types are combined, setting in motion a recurrent Möbiusstrip-like contamination of levels, as would be the case of a first-person narrator confronted with her own fictionality on reading a text about herself. It is against the backdrop of a critical discussion of McHale, Wolf and other authors that Klimek sets out a theory of metalepsis, not in terms of ontology but rather of paradox. All metalepses, she argues, are paradoxical, but not all forms of paradox (e.g. temporal, spatial) are metaleptic. The “short circuit” metaphor is rejected and with it the idea that metalepsis “collapses the narrative system,” thereby systematically disrupting aesthetic illusion. Klimek’s conception is in fact closely aligned with Genette’s original definition with which, not surprisingly, the expansion of metalepsis from “figure” to “fiction” (cf. “All fictions are woven through with metalepses”; Genette 2004: 131) is judged incompatible (Klimek 2010: 36). The typology of metalepsis developed out of these considerations makes no reference to the rhetorical vs. ontological paradigm or to the reality vs. fiction divide evoked by many of the transmedial approaches. Rather, three major types are identified: (1) descending metalepses, passing (a) from extradiegesis to intra- or hypodiegesis, or (b) from intradiegesis to hypodiegesis; (2) ascending metalepses, going in the opposite direction; (3) complex forms including (a) Möbius-strip narratives in which (1) and (2) fold recurrently onto one another, the intradiegesis turning out to be the extradiegesis and vice versa, and (b) tangled heterarchy, where the representing and the represented are not hierarchically ordered (in computer science heterarchy is “a structure in which there is no single ‘highest level’”; Hofstadter 1979: 134) (Klimek 2010: 69–72, 2011). It will be noted that with the introduction of complex forms this typology rules out horizontal metalepsis (e.g. Wagner 2002; MeyerMinnemann 2005; Schlickers 2005; Lang 2006). This is due to the fact that the representation of parallel worlds belonging to the same level entails no transgression between the world of the telling and the world of the told (Klimek 2010: 68). Moreover, the complex forms, although compatible with Genette’s original treatment of metalepsis, were not foreseen by him, or in any case they were nearly ruled out ([1983] 1988: 88). Finally, underlying Klimek’s system is an explicit theory of metareference which incorporates paradox: (a) gradated metareference demanding a strict separation of sign levels; (a.1) infinite metareference, a gradated and never-ending circular repetition; (a.2) recursive metareference, e.g. mirror within a mirror; (b) paradoxical metarefer-

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ence, as in Escher’s Drawing Hands (cf. Fricke 2003, 2011: 256–257; Klimek 2010: 51, 330–332). 3.3 Effects As research on metalepsis has advanced, so too has reflection on the conditions, diversity and nuances of its effects. Noted early on for the strangeness of its comic or fantastic effects or the mixing of humor and the fantastic and also as something “troubling,” metalepsis has been characterized as “a figure of the creative imagination” (see chap. 1 above). Between its deconstructive “mutinous nature as a narrative device that disrupts narrative structure” (Malina 2002: 132) and its immersive qualities there lies a store of positions on these issues. For a starter, it is more likely that metalepsis will be encountered in the baroque, in romanticism and in postmodernism than in classicism or realism, and also that it will be employed in the comic and fantastic genres more readily than in tragedy or in lyric poetry (Pier & Schaeffer 2005: 10–11). Moreover, the effects will vary widely according to the media and combinations of media in which metaleptic devices are employed (e.g. Wolf 2005; Kukkonen & Klimek eds. 2011). The anti-illusionistic quality of metalepsis has never been called into question. Even so, there remains the thorny question of knowing under what conditions it is illusion-breaking or illusion-building. Metalepsis has been described by Wolf as a radically disruptive metafictional device that prevents immersion and aesthetic illusion (Wolf 1993: 356– 358, 2005: 103; Wolf → Illusion (Aesthetic)). But in consideration of his work on metareference, he has more recently come to the view that similar metaleptic devices may, subject to “filter factors” such as the intracompositional makeup of the work, generic frames and habituation, produce different effects and possibly contribute to immersion: “the feeling of experientially participating in a representation” (Wolf 2013: 121). Schaeffer (2005) takes a different view of the matter. From a cognitive perspective, metalepsis, as a representational technique, is not incompatible with immersion but serves, rather, as an “emblem” of the “split state” of immersion: “the dynamics of immersion involves metaleptic mental operations in the most literal sense of the term” (333; for a critique, cf. Wolf 2013: 121, n. 14; on metalepsis and “double-scope” cognitive blending, see Feyersinger 2012). Klimek (2010), focusing on the device itself, looks at the issues in the context of descending and ascending metalepses. The former, both as production (cf. author’s metalepsis) and as reception (cf. reader immersion), tends toward aesthetic illusion (231–233) whereas the latter (when for instance a charac-

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ter bursts out of the fiction) postulates a higher and purely fictitious reality (247–249). It is also possible to consider the effects of metalepsis through the lens of defamiliarization. Metalepsis was never identified as such by the Russian formalists, but it can be associated with one of their key concepts: “laying bare the device.” Rather than a rhetorical figure, the violation of ontological boundaries or a paradox, and rather than culminating in the collapse of narrative categories or in the breaking of mimetic illusion, metalepsis conceived as laying bare the device enters the work’s composition via sjužet construction: more even than digressions, parallelisms, etc., it highlights the artificial relations between “form” and “material,” between sjužet and fabula, and thus supports the idea that art is “made” of devices. These principles were set out particularly in Šklovskij ([1921] 1990). This famous essay discusses the digressions and various techniques employed in Tristram Shandy for conflating narration and action in a conspicuous way so as to defamiliarize the objects of perception in the process of sjužet construction, compelling the reader to a heightened awareness of the constructedness of narrative (cf. Schmid 2005, [2005] 2010: 176–179). 3.4 Related Concept: Mise en abyme Mise en abyme is founded on a relation of similarity between the embedded and embedding stories—“simple,” “infinite” or “aporetic” reduplication or reflection, according to Dällenbach (1977)—rather than on transgression. Although both phenomena are dependent on levels, they must not be confused. Even so, there is a significant coincidence between the aporetic form (“fragment supposedly including the work in which it is included”; 51), or what Cohn ([2005] 2012) termed “pure mise en abyme,” and metalepsis. The two are bound together by the troubling effect produced on the reader by the “unacceptable and insistent hypothesis that the extradiegetic is perhaps always diegetic and that the narrator and his narratees—you and I—perhaps belong to the same narrative” (Genette [1972] 1980: 236). Such a mise en abyme, triggering a sense of vertigo, is the product of a Möbius-strip-like metalepsis, or paradoxical iteration occurring in the system of metareference (cf. Fricke 2003, 2011: 257).

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4 Topics for Further Investigation More than a rhetorical flourish, metalepsis raises the question of the porosity of levels and boundaries in narratives and in other cultural representations, but not their dissolution. Research in recent years has expanded the scope of the phenomenon considerably and contributed to significant refinement of scholarly understanding of its workings and modalities. Among topics requiring additional study are the following: (a) relative weight of local vs. global effects of metalepsis; (b) metalepsis and fictionality (breaking/intensification of mimetic illusion, immersion, etc.); (c) the role of metalepsis in trans-/intermediality with regard to multimedia and to popular culture; (d) metalepsis and related practices in historical poetics going back to ancient narrative as well as a historical inventory of artistic movements and corpuses employing these devices; (e) the rhetorical potential of metalepsis.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Baumann, Mario (2013). “Der Betrachter im Bild. Metalepsen in antiken Epphrasen.” U. E. Eisen & P. von Möllendorff (eds.). Über die Grenze. Metalepse in Textund Bildmedien des Altertums. Berlin: de Gruyter, 257–291. Bessière, Jean (2005). “Récit de fiction, transition discursive, présentation actuelle du récit, ou que le récit de fiction est toujours métaleptique.” J. Pier & J.-M. Schaeffer (eds.). Métalepses. Entorses au pacte de la représentation. Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 279–294. Burkhardt, Arnim (2001). “Metalepsis.” G. Ueding (ed.). Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik. Tübingen: Niemeyer, vol. 5, 1087–1099. Cohn, Dorrit ([2005] 2012). “Metalepsis and Mise en Abyme.” Narrative 20.1, 105– 114. Cornils, Anja (2005). “La metalepses dans les Actes des Apôtres: un signe de narration fictionnelle?” J. Pier & J.-M. Schaeffer (eds.). Métalepses. Entorses au pacte de la représentation. Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 95–107. Dällenbach, Lucien (1977). Le récit spéculaire. Essai sur la mise en abyme. Paris: Seuil. Eisen, Ute E. & Peter von Möllendorff, eds. (2013). Über die Grenze. Metalepse in Text- und Bildmedien des Altertums. Berlin: de Gruyter. Feyersinger, Erwin (2011). “Metaleptic TV Crossovers.” K. Kukkonen & S. Klimek (eds.). Metalepsis in Popular Culture. Berlin: de Gruyter, 127–157. – (2012). “The Conceptual Integration Network of Metalepsis.” R. Schneider & M. Hartner (eds.). Blending and the Study of Narrative: Approaches and Applications. Berlin: de Gruyter, 173–197.

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Fludernik, Monika (2003). “Scene Shift, Metalepsis, and the Metaleptic Mode.” Style 37, 382–400. Fricke, Harald (2003). “Potenzierung.” G. Baumgart et al. (eds.). Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschalft. Neubearbeitung der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, Band III. Berlin: de Gruyter, 144–147. – (2011). “Pop-Culture in History: Metalepsis and Metareference in German and Italian Music Theatre.” K. Kukkonen & S. Klimek (eds.). Metalepsis in Popular Culture. Berlin: de Gruyter, 252–267. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – ([1983] 1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – (2004). Métalepse. De la figure à la fiction. Paris: Seuil. Häsner, Bernd (2001). Metalepsen. Zur Genese, Systematik und Funktion transgressiver Erzählweisen. PhD Dissertation. Freie Universität Berlin. Hofstadter, Douglas (1979). Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic Books. Jong, Irene J. F. de (2009). “Metalepsis in Ancient Greek Literature.” J. Grethlein & A. Rengakos (eds.). Narratology and Interpretation: The Content of Form in Ancient Literature. Berlin: de Gruyter, 87–115. Klimek, Sonja (2010). Paradoxes Erzählen. Die Metalepse in der phantastischen Literatur. Paderborn: Mentis. – (2011). “Metalepsis in Fantasy Fiction.” K. Kukkonen & S. Klimek (eds.). Metalepsis in Popular Culture. Berlin: de Gruyter, 213–231. Kukkonen, Karin (2011a). “Metalepsis in Comics and Graphic Novels.” K. Kukkonen & S. Klimek (eds.). Metalepsis in Popular Culture. Berlin: de Gruyter, 213–231. – (2011b). “Metalepsis in Popular Culture: An Introduction.” K. Kukkonen & S. Klimek (eds.). Metalepsis in Popular Culture. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1–21. – & Sonja Klimek, eds. (2011). Metalepsis in Popular Culture. Berlin: de Gruyter. Lang, Sabine (2006). “Prolegómenos para una teoría de la narración paradójica.” N. Grabe, S. Lang & K. Meyer-Minnemann (eds.). La narración paradójica. “Normas narrativas” y el principio de la “transgresión.” Frankfurt a.M.: Vervuert, 21–47. Lausberg, Heinrich ([1960] 1973). Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik. Eine Grundlegung der Literaturwissenschaft. München: Hueber. Limoges, Jean-Marc (2011). “Metalepsis in the Cartoons of Tex Avery: Expanding the Boundaries of Transgression.” K. Kukkonen & S. Klimek (eds.). Metalepsis in Popular Culture. Berlin: de Gruyter, 196–212. Malina, Debra (2002). Breaking the Frame: Metalepsis and the Construction of the Subject. Columbus: Ohio State UP. McHale, Brian (1987). Postmodernist Fiction. London: Methuen. Meyer-Minnemann, Klaus (2005). “Un procédé narratif qui ‘produit un effet de bizarrerie’: la métalepse littéraire.” J. Pier & J.-M. Schaeffer (eds.). Métalepses. Entorses au pacte de la représentation. Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 133–150. Morier, Henri (1961). “Métalepse.” Dictionnaire de poétique et de rhétorique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 673–676.

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Nauta, Ruurd (2013a). “The Concept of ‘Metalepsis’: From Rhetoric to the Theory of Allusion and to Narratology.” U. E. Eisen & P. von Möllendorff (eds.). Über die Grenze. Metalepse in Text- und Bildmedien des Altertums. Berlin: de Gruyter, 469–482. – (2013b). “Metalepsis and Metapoetics in Latin Poetry.” U. E. Eisen & P. von Möllendorff (eds.). Über die Grenze. Metalepse in Text- und Bildmedien des Altertums. Berlin: de Gruyter, 223–256. Nelles, William (1997). Frameworks: Narrative Levels and Embedded Narratives. New York: Lang. Pier, John (2005). “Métalepse et hiérarchies narratives.” J. Pier & J.-M. Schaeffer (eds.). Métalepses. Entorses au pacte de la représentation. Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 247–261. – & Jean-Marie Schaeffer (2005). “Introduction. La métalepse, aujourd’hui.” J. Pier & J.-M. Schaeffer (eds.). Métalepses. Entorses au pacte de la représentation. Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 7–15. – & Jean-Marie Schaeffer, eds. (2005). Métalepses. Entorses au pacte de la représentation. Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS. Prince, Gerald (2006). “Disturbing Frames.” Poetics Today 27, 625–630. Rabau, Sophie (2005). “Ulysse à côté d’Homère. Interprétation et transgression des frontières énonciatives.” J. Pier & J.-M. Schaeffer (eds.). Métalepses. Entorses au pacte de la représentation. Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 59–72. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith ([1983] 2002). Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Routledge. Roussin, Philippe (2005). “Rhétorique de la métalepse, états de cause, typologie, récit.” J. Pier & J.-M. Schaeffer (eds.). Métalepses. Entorses au pacte de la représentation. Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 37–58. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP. – ([2004] 2006). “Metaleptic Machines.” Avatars of Story. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 204–30, 246–248. – ed. (2004). Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Saint-Gelais, Richard (2011). Fictions transfuges. La transfictionnalité et ses enjeux. Paris: Seuil. Schaeffer, Jean-Marie (2005). “Métalepse et immersion fictionnelle.” J. Pier & J.-M. Schaeffer (eds.). Métalepses. Entorses au pacte de la représentation. Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 323–334. Schlickers, Sabine (2005). “Inversions, transgressions, paradoxes et bizzareries. La métalepse dans les littératures espagnole et française.” J. Pier & J.-M. Schaeffer (eds.). Métalepses. Entorses au pacte de la représentation. Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 151–166. Schmid, Wolf (2005). “La métalepse narrative dans la construction du formalisme russe.” J. Pier & J.-M. Schaeffer (eds.). Métalepses. Entorses au pacte de la représentation. Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 189–195. – ([2005] 2010). Narratology: An Introduction. Berlin: de Gruyter.

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Šklovskij, Viktor (Shklovsky, Victor) ([1921] 1990). “The Novel as Parody: Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.” V. Šklovskij. Theory of Prose. Elmwood Park: Dalkey Archive P, 148–171. Wagner, Frank (2002). “Glissements et déphasages: note sur la métalepse narrative.” Poétique 33, No. 130, 235–253. Wolf, Werner (1993). Ästhetische Illusion und Illusionsdurchbrechung in der Erzählkunst: Theorie und Geschichte mit Schwerpunkt auf englischem illusionsstörenden Erzählen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. – (2005). “Metalepsis as a Transgeneric and Transmedial Phenomenon: A Case Study of the Possibilities of ‘Exporting’ Narratological Concepts.” J. Ch. Meister (ed.). Narratology beyond Literary Criticism: Mediality, Disciplinarity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 83–107. – (2009). “Metareference across Media: The Concept, its Transmedial Potential and Problems, Main Forms and Functions.” W. Wolf (ed.). Metareference across Media: Theory and Case Studies. Dedicated to Walter Bernhart on the Occasion of his Retirement. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1–85. – (2013). “‘Unnatural’ Metalepsis and Immersion: Necessarily Incompatible?” J. Alber, H. S. Nielsen & B. Richardson (eds.). A Poetics of Unnatural Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 94–141.

5.2 Further Reading Alber, Jan & Alice Bell (2012). “Ontological Metalepsis and Unnatural Narratology.” Journal of Narrative Theory 42.2, 66–92. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2005). “On the Theoretical Foundations of Transmedial Narratology.” J. Ch. Meister (ed.). Narratology beyond Literary Criticism: Mediality, Disciplinarity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1–23. – (2006). “Narrative, Media, and Modes.” Avatars of Story. Minneapolis/London: U of Minnesota P, 1–30. Thoss, Jeff (2011). “Unnatural Narrative and Metalepsis. Grant Morrison’s Animal Man.” J. Alber & R. Heinze (eds.). Berlin: de Gruyter, 189–209.

Metanarration and Metafiction Birgit Neumann & Ansgar Nünning

1 Definition Metanarration and metafiction are umbrella terms designating selfreflexive utterances, i.e. comments referring to the discourse rather than to the story. Although they are related and often used interchangeably, the terms should be distinguished: metanarration refers to the narrator’s reflections on the act or process of narration; metafiction concerns comments on the fictionality and/or constructedness of the narrative. Thus, whereas metafictionality designates the quality of disclosing the fictionality of a narrative, metanarration captures those forms of selfreflexive narration in which aspects of narration are addressed in the narratorial discourse, i.e. narrative utterances about narrative rather than fiction about fiction.

2 Explication The terms “metanarration” and “metafiction” are both based on the model of metalanguage, which designates a (system of) language positioned on a level above the ordinary use of words for referential purpose (Fludernik 2003: 15). Metanarration and metafiction therefore have one point in common, namely their self-reflexive or selfreferential character. However, these two types of narrative selfreflexivity differ greatly, and this difference has tended to be ignored in most existing typologies. Therefore, the widely-used umbrella term metafiction not only needs to be elaborated, but a clear distinction also has to be made between metanarration and other forms of self-reflexive narration. Metafiction describes the capacity of fiction to reflect on its own status as fiction and thus refers to all self-reflexive utterances which thematize the fictionality (in the sense of imaginary reference and/or constructedness) of narrative. Metafiction is, literally, fiction about fiction, i.e. fiction that includes within itself reflections on its own fictional

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identity (Hutcheon 1980). Thus, the term is a hypernym denoting all sorts of self-reflective utterances and elements of a fictional narrative that do not treat their referent as apparent reality but instead induce readers to reflect on the textuality and fictionality of narrative in terms of its artifactuality (Wolf 1993: 224). To characterize different forms of metafiction, Wolf introduces a distinction between fictio- and fictummetafiction (cf. ibid.: 247–248): Fictum-metafiction relates to a text’s potential truth status, that is, the feasibility of determining its truth. In contradistinction, fictio-metafiction refers to a text’s constructedness as well as the conditions of production and reception that contribute to the characterization of texts as fiction. Hence, fictio-metafiction refers to elements of construction that do not directly concern the feasibility of determining the truth status of the text. According to Wolf, the term metafiction can thus be defined as a form of discourse that draws the recipient’s attention to the fictionality and artifactuality of the narrative. Proposing an alternative categorization of self-reflexive utterances, Nünning (2004) introduces a distinction between metafiction and metanarration. Metanarrative comments are concerned with the act and/or process of narration, and not with its fictional nature. In contrast to metafiction, which can only appear in the context of fiction, types of metanarration can also be found in many non-fictional narrative genres and media. Metanarrative passages need not destroy aesthetic illusion (Wolf → Illusion (Aesthetic)), but may also contribute to substantiating the illusion of authenticity that a narrative seeks to create. It is precisely the concept of narratorial illusionism, suggesting the presence of a speaker or narrator, that illustrates that metanarrative expressions can serve to create a different type of illusion by accentuating the act of narration, thus triggering a different strategy of naturalization, viz. what Fludernik (1996: 341) has called the “frame of storytelling.” As a distinct form of narratorial utterance, metanarration displays a variety of textual functions (Prince [1987] 2003: 51). In contrast to Genette’s ([1972] 1980: 261–262) suggestion, it cannot be restricted to the narrator’s “directing functions,” i.e. to references thematizing the “internal organization” of the text. Rather, all comments which address aspects of narration in a self-reflexive manner as well as the narrator’s references (Margolin → Narrator) to his or her communication with the narratee on the discourse level can be subsumed under the term “metanarration.” Although such comments are detached from the narrated world, they do not possess a high degree of generality because they refer to one specific object: the act of narrating. Since such selfreflexive comments can be defined according to their reference to the act of narration, they make the reader (Prince → Reader) realize that

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what s/he is dealing with is a narrative. Fludernik (1996: 278) describes the accumulation of metanarrative expressions as “a deliberate metanarrative celebration of the act of narration.”

3 History of the Concept and its Study Research in the field of metafiction has been cultivated over decades and goes back well before 1970, when the term was first introduced in essays by Scholes (1970) and Gass (1970). Analyzing Laurence Sterne’s novel Tristram Shandy, Šklovskij ([1921] 1965), for instance, addresses the concept as a “device of laying bare the device,” namely as a device through which the storytelling itself is made part of the story told. Scholes (1970) coined the term “metafiction” to designate fiction that incorporates various perspectives of criticism into the fictional process, thereby emphasizing structural, formal, or philosophical problems. Since then, metafiction has become a major topic in narratological research, replacing the hitherto established and more narrowly defined terms “self-conscious narration” (Booth 1952) and “irony of fictionality.” In fact, metafiction has met with considerable academic interest both as a historical element of (narrative) fiction and as a hallmark of postmodernism, and book-length studies (Hutcheon 1980; Waugh 1984) have been devoted to it. The conceptualization of forms and functions of metafiction evolved from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, precisely when scholars were attempting to define postmodernism as an epoch and ethos (O’Donnell 2005). The first attempt to propose a comprehensive theory of metafiction was made by Hutcheon (1980). She understands metafictional narratives as “narcissistic” because they are fundamentally self-referring and auto-representational (1980: x). By mirroring their own process of fictional construction, metafictional texts, such as Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude or Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, draw the reader’s attention to the storytelling process and undermine the realism of the narrative. Metafictional strategies therefore often produce a hermeneutic paradox: readers are forced to acknowledge the fictional status of the narrative, while at the same time they become co-creators of its meanings. Hutcheon’s most crucial distinction is that between overt and covert forms of metafiction. While overtly metafictional texts disclose their self-awareness in “explicit thematizations […] of their diegetic or linguistic identity within the texts themselves,” covert forms “internalize” this process: They are “self-reflective but not necessarily self-conscious” (1980: 7). Similarly,

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Waugh (1984: 14) defines metafiction as fiction which “self- consciously reflects upon its own structure as language,” thereby ostentatiously parading the conventions and language of the realistic novel. Although Hutcheon’s and Waugh’s approaches have contributed to a better understanding of metafiction, they are problematic because they reduce its effects to anti-illusionism. A different approach is put forward by Wolf (1993, [1998] 2004) who focuses, firstly, on the formal variety of metafiction. To capture the different forms of metafiction and their potential effects, Wolf (1993: 220–265) develops a typology based on three dimensions: the form of mediation, the contextual relation, and the contents value. The first dimension refers to the level of narration on which the speaker engaged in metafictional reflections can be situated. Metafictional comments can be explicitly uttered by a character of the narrated world or by the narrator when reflecting on the fictional nature of the text (mode of telling). Alternatively, they can be conveyed implicitly through formal means, e.g. through contradictory and highly implausible elements which disrupt the mimetic illusion (mode of showing). According to the second criterion, contextual relation, various forms of metafiction can be distinguished depending on whether they appear in a central or marginal position and how deeply they are entangled with the narrated story. Using Wolf’s third criterion, contents value, one can differentiate between various forms of metafiction depending on whether metafiction refers to the “fictio or the fictum status” of a passage, whether it contains comments on the entire text or only on parts of it, and whether the commentary refers to the text itself, to literature in general, or to another text. While metafiction has often been perceived as a primary quality of postmodern literature, Wolf ([1998] 2004) stresses that (Western) narrative fiction has contained metafictional elements ever since its beginnings (cf. also Alter 1975 and Hutcheon 1980). From Homer to Salman Rushdie, from Don Quixote and Jacques le fataliste to The Remains of the Day, narratives have bared the conventions of storytelling and highlighted their constructed nature. However, its frequency and function vary depending on genres and epochs. The functions of metafiction range from undermining aesthetic illusion to poetological selfreflection, commenting on aesthetic procedures, the celebration of the act of narrating, and playful exploration of the possibilities and limits of fiction. Wolf’s detailed typology has also provided a sound basis for the analysis of metafiction in various other genres such as poetry, drama and music. In recent contributions, Wolf (2009) seeks to increase the

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transmedial applicability of metafiction by reconceptualizing it in a first step as a non media-specific concept, namely as “metareference.” According to Wolf (2009: 31), metareference can be defined as “a special, transmedial form of […] self-reference produced by signs or sign configurations which are (felt to be) located on a logically higher level, a ‘metalevel’, within an artefact or performance”. Metareference thus denotes a signifying practice that generates self-referential meaning and actualizes a secondary cognitive frame in the recipient, thus eliciting a “meta-awareness” (ibd.: 31). On the basis of this media-unspecific definition, one can examine individual media with respect to their specific metareferential capacities (cf. Wolf 2009; ed. 2011). Hence, the category metareference supplies a “heuristically motivated umbrella term for all meta-phenomena occurring in the arts and media” (Wolf 2009: 12). In contrast to metafiction, the terms “metanarration” or “metanarrative comment” have not become common categories of narratology, although they have been used in some narratological studies (e.g. Genette [1972] 1980; Hamon 1977; Prince 1982; Scheffel 1997; Cutter 1998). There are at least two reasons for this. Firstly, the term metafiction is so widely used in English for all sorts of anti-illusionistic techniques that forms of metanarration are generally subsumed under this umbrella. Secondly, in the few contributions in which the term metanarrative is used at all, it is commonly perceived as an English equivalent of grand récit (in Lyotard’s sense) and thus as synonymous with “master narrative” (e.g. Hutcheon [1989] 1996: 262). Due to the equation of metanarration with metafiction, narratological research has largely focused on metafictional forms of narrative self-reflexivity, giving little attention to such metanarrative phenomena as digressions and other self-reflexive narratorial interventions. The exception to the rule is Prince (1982: 115–128). A number of recent articles have redressed the balance, putting the subject of metanarrative on the map of narratological research (Nünning 2004; Fludernik 2003; Weidle 2009). They have provided a descriptive analysis of different types of metanarration as well as a survey of its changing functions in English novels from the 17th century to the present. Predicated on the assumption that metanarration is a distinct form of narratorial utterance, Nünning (2004), drawing on Wolf’s (1993) distinction between various forms of metafiction, develops a typology that identifies the most important sub-categories of metanarration. The typology is based on four basic aspects, which in turn give rise to subsidiary distinctions: (a) formal; (b) structural; (c) content-related; and (d) reception-oriented types of metanarrative.

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Firstly, a formal distinction can be made between diegetic, extradiegetic, and paratextual types of metanarration, depending on the level of communication at which the speaker of the metanarrative comments can be situated. Metanarrative comments typically occur on the discourse level, though intradiegetic character-narrators may also thematize narrative aspects. Secondly, structural types of metanarration can be differentiated according to the criterion of the quantitative and qualitative relations between metanarrative expressions and other parts of a narrated text as well as the syntagmatic integration of such metanarrative passages. Thirdly, depending on the subject area or the selection of topic, various types of metanarration can be distinguished on the basis of content. One important content-related criterion concerns the reference point of metanarrative expressions. Metanarrative reflections can be restricted to auto-referential comments on the narrator’s own act of narrating, they can thematize the narrative style of other authors and texts, or they can refer to the process of narration in general. Fludernik (2003) has coined the terms “proprio-metanarration,” “allo-metanarration” and “general metanarration” in order to distinguish between these different reference points. Fourthly, a typological differentiation arises as to the potential effects and functions of metanarration. This differentiation is based on the assumption that an accumulation of metanarrative commentaries contributes to foregrounding the narrative act and to creating the illusion of being addressed by a personalized voice or a “teller” (Fludernik 1996: 278). As in Tristram Shandy, the plethora of metanarrative often enhances the “mimesis of narrating” (Nünning 2001). The functions of metanarration differ according to a decreasing level of compatibility with diegetic illusion or to an increasing level of destruction of aesthetic illusion. These functions range from authenticating and empathyinducing functions (Keen → Narrative Empathy), which are fully compatible with mimetic aesthetic illusion, to parodic and anti-illusionistic types of metanarrative interventions. Of course, not only the forms but also the functions of metanarration are subject to historical variability. Whereas, for instance, in realistic 19th-century novels metanarration primarily serves to create a trust-inducing conversation between the explicit narrator and the narratee, in numerous novels from the second half of the 20th century it is functionalized in a metafictional way. In a recent article, Weidle (2009) has drawn attention to the various ethical functions, such as the promotion of empathy, that can be fulfilled by metanarration.

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Drawing on Nünning’s typology of metanarration, Fludernik (2003) suggests subdividing the category of metanarration into metadiscursive, metanarrational, meta-aesthetic and metacompositional elements, highlighting the extensiveness and historical variability of this narrative form. Moreover, she proposes an alternative schema which differentiates between metafiction, metanarrative and non-narrational selfreflexivity. To circumvent the potential ambiguity between metanarration and metafiction, she employs the term metanarrative exclusively with regard to self-reflexive statements referring to the discourse and its constructedness and limits the term metafiction to self-reflexive utterances about the inventedness of the story (i.e. to Wolf’s explicit metafiction). By introducing the category of non-narrational self-reflexivity (i.e. Wolf’s implicit metafiction), which comprises, e.g. mise-en-abyme or metaleptic plot configurations, Fludernik sets out to dissociate the mimesis of narration from a teller figure and highlights the contact zones between various self-reflexive devices across different genres and media. In a recent contribution, Rajewsky (2009) argues that metanarration is not restricted to “narrative texts proper” (2009: 137) but can be found in a range of other media. Thus attempting to capture the transmedial scope of this specific form of metaization, she introduces the category of “form-based metareference” (ibid).

4 Topics for Further Investigation Desiderata for narratological research still include differentiated investigations of the forms, functions, and diachronic development of metafiction and metanarration. One relatively unexplored issue is the development of metafiction and metanarration across different periods of literary history in different literary genres. In this context, Wolf’s (ed. 2011: 7) thesis of an ongoing increase in meta-elements within given works since the 1950s and “a current rage for metaization” (ibid.: 29) certainly warrants critical attention. Although recent research has examined forms of self-reference and meta-reference, respectively, in a range of genres and media, such as films, comics, music and computer games (cf. Nöth & Bishara eds. 2007; Grausam 2011; Bernhard & Wolf eds. 2010; Wolf ed. 2011), the various media-specific forms of metafiction and metanarration still await closer analysis. Moreover, there are hardly any studies concerning functions that may be fulfilled by certain forms of self-reflexive narration in different historical epochs and literary genres. Finally, it is also necessary to investigate the culture-specific forms and functions of metafiction and metanarration. In this respect, it would

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be interesting to provide comparisons between forms of narrative selfreflexivity or self-referentiality in Western and non-Western literature.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Alter, Robert (1975). Partial Magic: The Novel as a Self-Conscious Genre. Berkeley: U of California P. Bernhard, Walter & Werner Wolf, eds. (2010). Self-Reference in Literature and Music. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Booth, Wayne C. (1952). “The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction before Tristram Shandy.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 67, 163–185. Cutter, Martha J. (1998). “Of Metatexts, Metalanguages, and Possible Worlds: The Transformative Power of Metanarrative in C.P. Gilman’s Later Short Fiction.” American Literary Realism 31, 41–59. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. – (2003). “Metanarrative and Metafictional Commentary: From Metadiscursivity to Metanarration and Metafiction.” Poetica 35, 1–39. Gass, William H. (1970). Fiction and the Figures of Life. New York : Knopf. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Grausam, Daniel (2011). “Games People Play: Metafiction, Defense Strategy, and the Cultures of Simulation.” ELH, 507–532. Hamon, Philippe (1977). “Texte littéraire et metalanguage.” Poétique 31, 261–284. Hutcheon, Linda (1980). Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. New York: Methuen. – ([1989] 1996). “Incredulity toward Metanarrative: Negotiating Postmodernism and Feminisms.” K. Mezei (ed.). Ambiguous Discourse: Feminist Narratology and British Women Writers. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 262–267. Nöth, Winfried & Nina Bishara, ed. (2007). Self-Reference in the Media. Berlin: de Gruyter. Nünning, Ansgar (2001). “Mimesis des Erzählens: Prolegomena zu einer Wirkungsästhetik, Typologie und Funktionsgeschichte des Akts des Erzählens und der Metanarration.” J. Helbig (ed.). Erzählen und Erzähltheorie im 20. Jahrhundert: Narratologische Studien aus Anlass des 65. Geburtstags von Wilhelm Füger. Heidelberg: Winter, 13–47. – (2004). “Towards a Definition, a Typology and an Outline of the Functions of Metanarrative Commentary.” J. Pier (ed.). The Dynamics of Narrative Form: Studies in Anglo- American Narratology. Berlin: de Gruyter, 11–57. O’Donnell, Patrick (2005). “Metafiction.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narative Theory. London: Routledge, 301–302.

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Prince, Gerald (1982). Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. – ([1987] 2003). A Dictionary of Narratology. Aldershot: Scolar Press. Rajewsky, Irina O. (2009). “Beyond Metanarration: Form-Based Metareference as a Transgeneric and Trandmedial Phenomenon.” W. Wolf (ed.) in collaboration with Katharina Bantleon & Jeff Thoss. Metareference across Media. Theory and Case Studies. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 135–168. Scheffel, Michael (1997). Formen selbstreflexiven Erzählens: Eine Typologie und sechs exemplarische Analysen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Scholes, Robert (1970). “Metafiction.” Iowa Review 1, 100–115. Šklovskij, Viktor (Shklovsky, Victor) ([1921] 1965). “Sterne’s Tristram Shandy: Stylistic Commentary.” L. Lemon & M. Reis (eds.). Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 25–57. Waugh, Patricia (1984). Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. London: Methuen. Weidle, Roland (2009). “The Ethics of Metanarration: Emphaty in Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers, The Child in Time, Atonement and Saturday.” Anglistik & Englischunterricht 73, 57–72. Wolf, Werner (1993). Ästhetische Illusion und Illusionsdurchbrechung in der Erzählkunst: Theorie und Geschichte mit Schwerpunkt auf englischem illusionsstörenden Erzählen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. – ([1998] 2004). “Metafiktion.” A. Nünning (ed.). Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie. Stuttgart: Metzler, 447–448. – (2009). “Metareference across Media: The Concept, its Transmedial Potentials and Problems, Main Forms and Functions.” W. Wolf (ed.) in collaboration with Katharina Bantleon & Jeff Thoss. Metareference across Media. Theory and Case Studies. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1–85. – ed. (2011) in collaboration with Katharina Bantleon & Jeff Thoss. The Metareferential Turn in Contemporary Arts and Media. Forms, Functions, Attempts at Explanation. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

5.2 Further Reading Dupuy, Jean-Pierre (1989). "Self-reference in Literature." Poetics 18, 491–515. Peters, Joan D. (2002). Feminist Metafiction and the Evolution of the British Novel. Gainesville: UP of Florida. Quendler, Christian (2001). From Romantic Irony to Postmodernist Metafiction: A Contribution to the History of Literary Self-Reflexivity in its Philosophical Context. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang.

Multiperspectivity Marcus Hartner

1 Definition In the study of narrative the term ‘multiperspectivity’ is employed in a variety of different and often incongruous ways. Nevertheless, the arguably most common usages of the term refer to multiperspectivity either as a basic aspect of narration or as a mode of storytelling in which multiple and often discrepant viewpoints are employed for the presentation and evaluation of a story and its storyworld. In the contexts of both definitions, the perspectival arrangements in multiperspective narratives may fulfil a variety of different functions; mostly, however, they highlight the perceptually, epistemologically or ideologically restricted nature of individual perspectives and/or draw attention to various kinds of differences and similarities between the points of view presented therein. In this way, multiperspectivity frequently serves to portray the relative character of personal viewpoints or perspectivity in general.

2 Explication The idea of multiperspectivity, sometimes also called polyperspectivity, is conceptually related to the notion of perspective and point of view (Niederhoff → Perspective – Point of View). Most understandings imply a tacit definition of this underlying concept and consequently inherit the semantic vagueness, metaphoricity, and conceptual plurality generally connected with the notion of perspective. Correspondingly, a variety of different meanings has been assigned to the term multiperspectivity. Scholars who, for instance, discuss point of view as a fundamental condition or intrinsic design principle of storytelling also tend to perceive multiperspectivity as a general, inherent aspect of narration: As the presentation of a narrative invariably implies diverse choices of selection and projection on different levels, each choice potentially activates alternative perspectives; in this light, multiperspectivity is not seen as a mode of narration or presentation, but as a characteristic

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which is always at least potentially present in a narrative and can be foregrounded in various ways. Alternative definitions of the term, however, are directed at entirely different aspects of analysis. Regarding the level of narrative transmission in literary prose, for example, the concept can also be used in a narrower sense to refer to texts with multiple narrators (Margolin → Narrator) and/or reflector figures (= narrative perspective). In yet another understanding of multiperspectivity, the term is employed to specifically denote semantic clashes between different characters’ (Jannidis → Character) worldviews in drama, film and prose fiction (= character perspective); but it can also designate the overall orchestration of a narrative’s complete set of voices (including implied author, narrator etc.; Schmid → Implied Author) and their ideological stance, as discussed in Baxtin’s ([1963] 1984, 1981) influential work on the notions of polyphony and heteroglossia (Tjupa → Heteroglossia). Despite the different understandings of the concept, many narratologists tend to agree that any meaningful notion of the term has to go beyond the mere presence of several viewpoints (cf. Nünning & Nünning eds. 2000: 18–20). It is not a sufficient condition for a multiperspective narrative to feature more than one of the aforementioned types of perspectives, because such a definition would apply to most stories. For the notion to make sense pragmatically, its usage has to be restricted to cases where points of view interact in salient and significant ways and thus create multiperspectivity by, for instance, repeatedly portraying the same event from various different angles. In this context, Lindemann (1999: 54) sees the most important aspect in the emergence of semantic friction (“Reibungseffekt”) between the points of view employed. Iser ([1972] 1974: 57–80) already shows that such instances of tension draw the reader’s interest (Prince → Reader) both to the object presented and to the viewpoint presenting it, thereby implicitly foregrounding their epistemological relativity. The phenomenon of multiperspectivity thus proves to be conceptually related to the philosophy of perspectivism (e.g. Nietzsche, Ortega y Gasset; cf. Anderson 1998) and seems to be particularly suited to stage perceptual relativism and skepticism towards knowledge and reality. In this context, scholars have attempted to differentiate between basic types of the phenomenon and their differing epistemological and semantic implications. The most widely employed distinction is the one between ‘open’ vs. ‘closed’ forms (Pfister [1977] 1988) of multiperspectivity: it serves to differentiate between the presentation of entirely incompatible points of view and the depiction of perspectives which, despite their differences, can still be integrated into a coherent account

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of the story. Such ‘closed’ forms seem to be particularly suited to stage the relative or limited nature of individual viewpoints, while at the same time creating a dominant voice that provides an authoritative account of the narrated events. The form thus tends to ultimately support traditional philosophical notions of intersubjective truth, reality, or knowledge. ‘Open’ forms of multiperspectivity, on the other hand, are marked by an overall quality of dissonance, contradiction and dialogism (Shepherd → Dialogism). They usually feature discordant, sometimes kaleidoscopic arrangements of conflicting perspectives which cannot be resolved and therefore often possess an implicitly subversive or alienating quality. Yet, multiperspectivity is not limited to the questioning of truth and knowledge. As with all narrative structures and techniques, there is no single one-to-one mapping of form and function. Although perspectival plurality is indeed primarily associated with forms of aesthetic and epistemological self-reflection, Nünning and Nünning (eds. 2000: 28– 31) demonstrate that multiple interacting perspectives can also fulfill a broad range of other functions: inter alia, they can serve as a means of creating suspense, as a self-reflective way of foregrounding the process of narration, or as a method of endorsing a thematic aspect or a moral within the narrative by, for example, presenting it repeatedly from different standpoints. It is furthermore a general characteristic of multiperspective strategies of narration that they tend to force the reader “into much closer scrutiny of the text” (Hutchinson 1984: 35). Since each new perspective potentially provides a “different view on plot and character” (ibid.), the viewpoints employed have to be continually revised, re-evaluated and re-contextualized. Multiperspective narrative structures are therefore never semantically empty, but always contribute to the overall meaning of the text.

3 Forms of Multiperspectivity and the Study of the Concept 3.1 Forms of Multiperspective Narration From a historical point of view, multiperspectivity is not a recent phenomenon. Early examples can be found in Plato’s Symposium, the Edda (13th century), or Chaucer’s “Parliament of Fowls” (~1382) (cf. Frank ed. 1991). However, pre-modern forms of multiperspective narration remain relatively few and often fulfill primarily rhetorical functions. This situation changes with what Martin Klepper (2011) has called the

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“discovery of point of view” in the 18th and 19th centuries, i.e. the growing awareness of the problematic “relation between observation and narration” which triggered an increasing interest in the “link between observation, epistemology, power, narrative, perspective and aesthetics-at-large” (5). This concern with the conditions of perception and narration leads to a rising number of multiperspective texts across different genres—a development initiated by the epistolary novel of the 18th century such as Richardson’s Pamela (1740) or Tieck’s William Lovell (1795/96). In the 19th century the phenomenon becomes more widespread and polymorphous as a growing number of writers adopt various strategies of multiperspective narration in their work (e.g. Potocki’s The Manuscript Found in Saragossa [1805–15], Eliot’s Middlemarch [1871–72]). This trend continues in the 20th century, where various forms of multiperspectivity continue to feature in increasing numbers in the literatures of Modernism (e.g. Woolf’s The Waves [1931]) and Postmodernism (e.g. Saramago’s Blindness [1995], Pamuk’s Snow [2002]). Here they are often combined with other stylistic or artistic innovations, resulting in such literary classics as Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying (1930), or Rushdie’s Satanic Verses (1988). 3.1.1 The Novel If one attempts to distinguish different types of multiperspectivity, its perhaps most prominent form can be found in the novel narrated by multiple characters. The prototype of this version is the classic epistolary novel: Texts like Richardson’s Clarissa (1748), de Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782), or Smolett’s The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) are composed of a succession of letters from several correspondents and illustrate “how the same event may be viewed differently by different characters” (Mullan 2006: 56). The same strategy of “multiple narration” (Lonoff 1982: 143) is also frequently used in narratives about the investigation of a mystery or crime. In countless stories, from Collins’ classic detective fiction The Moonstone (1868) to Pamuk’s postmodern mystery novel My Name is Red (1998), the solution has to be pieced together from different witness accounts—a structure that implicitly suggests that “the only authentic approach to the problem of reality is one which allows multiple perspectives to be heard in debate with each other” (Schonfield 2009: 140). The usage of multiple narrators, however, is not the only way to portray an event from the vantage point of different fictional agents. Numerous techniques for presenting consciousness in narrative (cf. Her-

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man ed. 2011; Cohn 1978) enable texts to stage individual points of view for different reflector figures. In this way, tension between the perspectives of these characters and/or the narrator(s) can be created (e.g. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain [1995]). Similarly, framing devices and multiple narrative levels (Pier → Narrative Levels), as for instance in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), may also lead to multiperspectivity by establishing an array of differing points of view on the subject and the story presented (cf. Wolf 2000). Another strategy is the employment of montage- or collage-like structures. Novels like Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) or Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer (1925) interrupt and supplement their plot-lines with quotations, newspaper articles, posters, songs, or speeches. By enriching their narratives with such information, they succeed, among other effects, in creating a more multifaceted account of the figures, objects, or events portrayed. 3.1.2 Poetry, Drama, and Film Multiperspectivity is not only to be found in literary prose writing. A famous example is Browning’s narrative poem The Ring and the Book, which dramatizes a murder trial in a series of dramatic monologues. Lyric poetry, on the other hand, is seldom associated with the presentation of multiple perspectives. Nevertheless, the concept can also be applied to poems such as T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922), Coleridge’s “Kubla Kahn” (1797–98) or Shelley’s “Ozymandias” (1818) in which different images of an ancient tyrant are contrasted (cf. Menhard 2009: 30–31). Like poetry, dramatic texts are also rarely discussed with reference to the term multiperspectivity. Yet drama is intrinsically based on the audience’s reconstruction of the individual viewpoints of the dramatic figures on stage. Plays such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet unfold as each character in turn acts according to his/her plans, beliefs, and states of knowledge. Pfister ([1977] 1988) therefore defines the dramatic text as a “perspectival” and network-like “pattern of contrasting and corresponding figure-perspectives” (59), which he terms the text’s “perspective structure” (56, passim). The necessity of inferring and tracing characters’ mental states in order to make sense of their behavior also applies to the reception of film (cf. Eder 2008). Here, however, the notion of perspective is “not only a metaphor but often also a concrete perceptual fact, linked to the camera position” (Grodal 2005: 168). The analysis of point of view with respect to narration in film (Kuhn & Schmidt → Narration in Film) is thus largely concerned with the arrangement of camera angles

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and the range of “focussing strategies which select and control our perception as well as our emotional involvement” (Kuhn & Schmidt → Narration in Film, 396). Most motion pictures commonly considered as multiperspective (e.g. Kurosawa’s Rashomon [1950], Travis’ Vantage Point [2008], or Singer’s The Usual Suspects [1995]) use such audiovisual strategies of presentation in order to align the filmic action with the differing or shifting viewpoints of several characters in some form (cf. Griem 2000). This is particularly interesting in a film like Rashomon, in which the story of a crime is presented in four mutually incompatible testimonies, enabling the movie to question the presumably objective nature of the camera’s visual gaze (cf. Menhard 2009: 31). 3.2 Theoretical Approaches to Multiperspectivity Despite the ubiquity of multiperspectivity, there are still comparatively few narratological studies devoted to its research. One reason might lie in a skepticism towards the concept itself on grounds of its semantic vagueness. As Bode (2011: 199) points out, it is “necessary to ask whether the catch-all phrase ‘multiperspectivity’ does not in fact summarize very different phenomena in a dangerously sweeping way.” Another explanation could be that “the phenomena gathered under [this] umbrella term” have simply been studied under different labels, such as ‘character constellations’ or ‘narrative frames’ (ibid.). A final pragmatic reason may have to do with preference for the term ‘point of view’ over ‘perspective’ by narratologists in the English-speaking world. Here, unlike in the German academic context, the term multiperspectivity is rather unusual in academic discourse. As a result, multiperspective text structures are often either subsumed under the discussion of point of view or analyzed with reference to related theories like those of Mixail Baxtin (e.g. Townsend 2003). Historically, Baxtin’s (1929) work in fact constitutes one of the first scholarly discussions of the phenomenon. Although he does not use the label multiperspectivity, he assigns individual viewpoints to all entities involved in the act of narration: Narrator, protagonist, addressee and author, in his opinion, all possess a personal point of view which is determined by their social and ideological background and position. Baxtin’s ideas of ‘polyphony’ and ‘heteroglossia’ have been highly influential in the study of literature and narrative, as they take the discussion of perspective beyond questions of narrative transmission and structure and reveal narratives to be orchestrated compositions of numerous ‘voices.’ Despite this general influence, however, his concepts have

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only peripherally influenced early studies which explicitly address the notion of ‘multiperspectivity’. The first (and for three decades virtually only) monograph investigating this term is Neuhaus (1971), who identifies the phenomenon vaguely with multiple narration. Buschmann (1996) criticizes this definition for ignoring the potential of multiple focalization (Niederhoff → Focalization) to create distinct viewpoints. Furthermore, he suggests speaking of a multiperspective text only if a central “point of attention” is being portrayed from different vantage points (260). Taking up this discussion, Lindemann (1999) emphasizes that the epistemological relevance of the phenomenon hinges on the degree of dissonance between the employed perspectives. He thus changes the focus from the number of viewpoints to their semantic relationship—an idea that Vera and Ansgar Nünning (cf. eds. 2000; Nünning 2001) develop further. In their work, they turn the vague notion of multiperspectivity into a more precise narratological tool by drawing on the distinction between story and discourse and on Pfister’s ([1977] 1988) concept of ‘perspective structures’, which they employ as the conceptual basis for their discussion of multiperspectivity. Arguing that adequate terminology for the analysis of point of view on the level of narrative transmission already exists, their approach exclusively focuses on the semantic relationship between the perspectives of a text’s fictional entities, i.e. characters and overt narrators. In their view, multiperspectivity is the result of the arrangement of discrepant figural standpoints—a perspective structure which is prototypically produced by successive portrayals of the same event from various points of view. Although scholars have noted that this is not the only way of creating multiperspective discrepancy (cf. Bode 2011: 198–199), most recent studies have similarly focused on fictional agents and the various kinds of differences (psychological, ideological, perceptual, etc.) between their individual viewpoints. Surkamp (2003), for example, combines the concept of perspective structures with the theory of possible worlds (Ryan → Possible Worlds). Menhard (2009) analyses the relationship between multiperspectivity and narratorial unreliability (Shen → Unreliability), and demonstrates that both phenomena are often combined in literary texts, while Hartner (2012) draws on blending theory (Fauconnier & Turner 2002) to study the interaction of character perspectives from the vantage point of cognitive narratology (Herman → Cognitive Narratology). He suggests that there is no definable set of multiperspective text structures and that the phenomenon should be perceived as a readerly effect that can be triggered by a variety of narrative strategies.

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Despite the recent trend in narratology to investigate multiperspectivity by drawing on the concept of perspective structures, this approach has not remained without criticism (cf. Schmid 2011; Niederhoff → Perspective – Point of View). One of the major disadvantages of the focus on figural perspectives and their mutual differences is that this research strategy implies “a strong shift in the direction of the viewing subject” (Niederhoff → Perspective – Point of View, 701) and largely neglects the traditional analysis of point of view as a structural and relational phenomenon. As Schmid (2011) points out, perspectives are fundamentally determined by the way they are represented; consequently, he argues that the notion of figural viewpoints is incomplete as long as it is not related to the classic, relational study of narrative perspective (cf. 139). His own approach to the study of point of view (2010) is influenced by the work of Uspenskij ([1970] 1973), who argues that the phenomenon of perspective simultaneously exists on multiple levels (“planes”). Drawing on this idea, Schmid (2010) develops a more elaborated model which is based on the understanding of point of view as a complex of multiple conditions necessary for the comprehension and representation of narrative events (cf. 99). By distinguishing between five parameters of perspective (perception, ideology, space, time, and language) and combining them with the categories of narratorial and figural point of view, his model points to the intrinsic multiperspectivity of narration per se and thus provides an alternative angle of approach to the analysis of the phenomenon.

4 Topics for Further Investigation Most recent works on multiperspectivity emphasize that reception processes must play a crucial role in any attempt to understand the phenomenon. Although preliminary steps in this direction have been taken, many questions remain. In particular, the mechanisms of evaluation and the establishment of hierarchies among a text’s perspectives require further study. Similarly, the relevance and construction of potential individual perspectives for fictive or implied readers as well as implied authors has not been sufficiently addressed to date. Another important aspect concerns the intermedial dimension of multiperspectivity. So far, there have been no comparative analyses between multiperspective strategies of narration in different genres and media. Furthermore, research needs to be extended to study of the phenomenon in new media products (e.g. computer games). The same applies to the interplay of multiperspectivity with other modes, aspects, or

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functions of storytelling. Although some research has been conducted in this direction, there is yet no comprehensive account of the specific conditions for different types or facets of the phenomenon, or its impact on other stylistic devices and/or narrative strategies and functions.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Anderson, R. Lanier (1998). “Truth and Objectivity in Perspectivism.” Synthese 115, 1–32. Baxtin, Mixail (1929). Problemy tvorčestva Dostoevskogo. Leningrad: Priboj. – (Bakhtin, Mikhail) ([1963] 1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. – (Bakhtin, Mikhail) (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. by M. Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P. Bode, Christoph (2011). The Novel: An Introduction. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Buschmann, Matthias (1996). “Multiperspektivität – Alle Macht dem Leser?” Wirkendes Wort 46, 259–275. Cohn, Dorrit (1978). Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP. Eder, Jens (2008). Die Figur im Film. Marburg: Schüren. Fauconnier, Gilles & Marc Turner (2002). The Way We Think. New York: Basic Books. Frank, Armin Paul, ed. (1991). Frühe Formen multiperspektivischen Erzählens von der Edda bis Flaubert. Ein Problemaufriss. Berlin: Schmidt. Griem, Julika (2000). “Mit den Augen der Kamera? Aspekte filmischer Multiperspektivität in Bryan Singers The Usual Suspects, Akiro Kurosawas Rashomon und Peter Weirs The Truman Show.” A. Nünning & V. Nünning (eds.). Multiperspektivisches Erzählen: Zur Theorie und Geschichte der Perspektivenstruktur im englischen Roman des 18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts. Trier: WVT, 307–322. Grodal, Torben (2005). “Film Narrative.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 168–72. Hartner, Marcus (2012). Perspektivische Interaktion im Roman: Kognition, Rezeption, Interpretation. Berlin: de Gruyter. Herman, David, ed. (2011). The Emergence of Mind: Representations of Consciousness in Narrative Discourse in English. Lincoln: U of Nebrasca P. Hutchinson, Peter (1984). Games Authors Play. London: Methuen. Iser, Wolfgang ([1972] 1974). The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction From Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Klepper, Martin (2011). The Discovery of Point of View: Observation and Narration in the American Novel 1790–1910. Heidelberg: Winter.

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Lindemann, Uwe (1999). “Die Ungleichzeitigkeit des Gleichzeitigen: Polyperspektivismus, Spannung und der iterative Modus der Narration bei Samuel Richardson, Choderlos de Laclos, Ludwig Tieck, Wilkie Collins und Robert Browning.” K. Röttgers & M. Schmitz-Emans (eds.). Perspektive in Literatur und bildender Kunst. Essen: Die blaue Eule, 48–81. Lonoff, Sue (1982). “Multiple Narratives and Relative Truths.” Browning Institute Studies 10, 143–161. Menhard, Felicitas (2009). Conflicting Reports: Multiperspektivität und unzuverlässiges Erzählen im englischsprachigen Roman seit 1800. Trier: WVT. Mullan, John (2006). How Novels Work. Oxford: Oxford UP. Neuhaus, Volker (1971). Typen multiperspektivischen Erzählens. Köln: Böhlau. Nünning, Ansgar (2001). “On the Perspective Structure of Narrative Texts: Steps Toward a Constructivist Narratology.” W. van Peer & S. Chatman (eds.). New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. Albany: State U of New York P, 207–224. – & Vera Nünning, eds. (2000). Multiperspektivisches Erzählen: Zur Theorie und Geschichte der Perspektivenstruktur im englischen Roman des 18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts. Trier: WVT. Pfister, Manfred ([1977] 1988). The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Schmid, Wolf (2010). Narratology: An Introduction. Berlin: de Gruyter. – (2011). “Perspektive.” M. Martínez (ed.). Handbuch Erzählliteratur. Stuttgart: Metzler, 138–145. Schonfield, Ernest (2009). “Moonstone and ‘Mondgebirge’: Exile and Identity in Wilhelm Raabe and Wilkie Collins.” G. Dirk (ed.). Wilhelm Raabe: Global Themes – International Perspectives. London: Legenda, 138–148. Surkamp, Carola (2003). Die Perspektivenstruktur narrativer Texte: Zu ihrer Theorie und Geschichte im englischen Roman zwischen Viktorianismus und Moderne. Trier: WVT. Townsend, Alex (2003). Autonomous Voices: An Exploration of Polyphony in the Novels of Samuel Richardson. Oxford: Peter Lang. Uspenskij, Boris (Uspensky, Boris) ([1970] 1973). A Poetics of Composition: The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of a Compositional Form. Berkeley: U of California P. Wolf, Werner (2000). “Multiperspektivität: Das Konzept und seine Applikationsmöglichkeit auf Rahmungen in Erzählwerken.” A. Nünning & V. Nünning (eds.). Multiperspektivisches Erzählen: Zur Theorie und Geschichte der Perspektivenstruktur im englischen Roman des 18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts. Trier: WVT, 79–110.

5.2 Further Reading Guillén, Claudio (1971). “On the Concept and Metaphor of Perspective.” C. Guillén. Literature as a System: Essays Toward the Theory of Literary History. Princeton: Princeton UP, 283–371. Hartner, Marcus (2012). “Constructing Literary Character and Perspective: An Approach from Psychology and Blending Theory.” R. Schneider & M. Hartner (eds.). Blending and the Study of Narrative: Approaches and Applications. Berlin: de Gruyter.

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Herman, David (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Hönnighausen, Lothar (1980). “‘Point of View’ and Its Background in Intellectual History.” Comparative Criticism 2, 151–166. Hühn, Peter et al., eds. (2009). Point of View, Perspective, and Focalization: Modeling Mediation in Narrative. Berlin: de Gruyter. Mausfeld, Rainer (2011). “Intrinsic Multiperspectivity: Conceptual Forms and the Functional Architecture of the Perceptual System.” W. Welsch et al. (eds.). Interdisciplinary Anthropology: Continuing Evolution of Man. Berlin: Springer, 19– 54. Pätzold, Torsten (2000). Textstrukturen und narrative Welten: Narratologische Untersuchungen zur Multiperspektivität am Beispiel von Bodo Kirchhoffs Infata und Helmut Kraussers Melodien. Berlin: Peter Lang. Richardson, Brian (2006). “I Ecetera: Multiperson Narration and the Range of Contemporary Narrators.” B. Richardson. Unnatural Voices. Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 61–78.

Narratee Wolf Schmid

1 Definition The term “narratee,” coined by Prince (1971) following the French term “narrataire” (Barthes 1966: 10), designates the addressee of the narrator, the fictive entity to which the narrator directs his narration. The alternative term, “fictive reader” (Schmid [1973] 1986: 28), should be replaced with “fictive addressee” (Schmid 2007: 175–180), since only the image of the addressee is meant rather than the listening or reading figure.

2 Explication The narratee is to be divided into two entities which differ functionally or intensionally, even when they coincide materially or extensionally: the addressee and the recipient. The addressee is the narrator’s image of the one to whom the message is sent; the recipient is the factual receiver. The necessity of this distinction is clear: if, e.g., a letter is not read by the person who was the intended addressee, but by someone else into whose hands it happens to fall, misunderstanding and various unintended effects may ensue. The narratee, just like the fictive narrator, can be represented in two ways: explicitly or implicitly. Explicit representation occurs with the aid of pronouns and grammatical forms of the second person or with well-known forms of address such as “gentle reader,” etc. The image of the addressee created in this way can be characterized as having more or less concrete features. Implicit representation is based on the narrative text’s symptoms or indexes operating with the same indexical signs as the representation of the narrator and equally based on the expressive function of language (sensu Bühler [1934] 1990). All the actions that constitute narration participate in the indexical representation both of the narrator and of his image of his addressee. In general, the representation of the narratee is

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built up on the representation of the narrator insofar as the former is an attribute of the latter, similar to the way in which the image of the implied reader partakes of the characteristics of the implied author (Schmid → Implied Author).

3 Aspects of the Concept and History of its Study 3.1 Fictive Addressee and Fictive Recipient The fictive addressee of a secondary narrative (i.e., an inner or embedded story) may seem to coincide with one of the characters of the primary narrative (the frame story). For example, the sentimental narrator in Puškin’s “The Stationmaster,” to whom the abandoned title hero tells the story of his abducted daughter Dunja and who thus functions as a secondary fictive addressee, appears to coincide with the narrated self, that is, with the actor of the primary narrative. However, the equation fictive addressee in the secondary narrative = character in the primary narrative, an equation that forms the basis for many essays on this entity (cf. Genette [1972] 1980, [1983] 1988), simplifies the facts in an inadmissible way. The fictive addressee is nothing other than the schema of the narrator’s expectations and presumptions and therefore cannot coincide functionally with the figure who, in the primary narrative, acts as the recipient of the secondary narrative and who, possibly, is concretized with particular features by the primary narrator. The addressee to whom Puškin’s title hero narrates the story of his daughter does not coincide with the sentimental traveler who, as the narrated self, hears the story and, as the narrating self, reports it many years later. The addressee is a mere projection of the stationmaster, and the latter cannot know about his listener’s weakness for sentimental stories or have any idea about sentimentalist literature. This is why it is hard to agree with the distinction, made by Jedličková (1993), between the “fictive” and “projected” addressee: any addressee of a fictive narrator is both projected and fictive. To speak of a fictive reader or listener is meaningful only when a secondary narrator addresses a recipient who appears as a reader or listener in the primary narrative. However, the secondary fictive addressee coincides with this fictive recipient (the character in the primary narrative) only materially and not functionally, since being an addressee and being a recipient are separate functions. In Puškin’s tale, the stationmaster’s fictive recipient is endowed with completely different traits than he, the (secondary) narrator, can imagine in his addressee.

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Prince (1973: 183) assumes that the distinction between the “narrataire virtuel” and the “narrataire réel,” which he concedes could be made, would not be very fruitful. In contrast, Schmid (2010: 84–88) suggests that such a distinction in the concept of the narratee, often neglected in communication models, ought to be made nonetheless. When a narrator engages in dialogue with his counterpart, it is important to determine whether his interlocutor is merely imagined or whether he exists as an independent, autonomous character in an overarching story. Only in the second case, when the counterpart possesses autonomy and alterity, is it a true dialogue. In the former instance, we are dealing with a dialogic narrative monologue which, e.g., organizes some of Dostoevskij’s works. 3.2 Appeal and Orientation as Indexical Signs of the Narratee The markedness of the narratee depends to a decisive degree on the markedness of the narrator: the more marked the narrator, the more likely it is that he will evoke an image of the counterpart he addresses. However, the presence of a marked narrator does not automatically imply the presence of an addressee manifest to the same degree. In principle, every narrative creates a fictive addressee (just as every text creates an implied reader as assumed addressee or ideal recipient) (Schmid → Implied Reader), since the indexical signs that point to his existence, no matter how weak they may be, can never disappear completely (Prince 1973: 178, 1985: 302). Particularly relevant for the representation of the addressee are two indexical signs: appeal and orientation (Schmid [1973] 1986: 28). Appeal is a cue, usually expressed implicitly, to adopt a particular position in relation to the narrator, his narrative, the narrated world, or some of its characters. In itself, appeal is a mode of expressing the presence of an addressee. From its contents emerge the attitudes and opinions which the narrator assumes in the addressee and those which he considers possible. In principle, the appeal function can never reach absolute zero, for it is present even in statements with a predominantly referential function, even when in a minimal form: “Know that …” or “I just want you to know that …” One type of appeal is the impression. The narrator uses it to present himself to his counterpart in a particular way, to elicit a reaction that can take on either a positive form, such as admiration, or a negative one, such as contempt. (An intentional negative impression is characteristic of Dostoevskij’s paradoxical monologists, as in Notes from the Underground.)

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What is meant by orientation is the alignment of the narrator with the addressee, without which no comprehensible communication can occur. Clearly, orientation toward the addressee can be reconstructed only to the extent that it is bound to the mode of representation. Orientation refers, firstly, to the codes and norms it is presumed the addressee shares, which can be linguistic, epistemological, ethical and social. Conversely, the narrator need not share the norms assumed in the addressee, but he cannot but use language comprehensible to the addressee and must take into account the presumed scope of his knowledge. It is to this extent that every narrative contains implicit information about the image that the narrator has of the abilities and norms of his addressee. Second, the orientation can consist in the anticipation of the imagined addressee’s behavior. The narrator can imagine the addressee as a passive listener and obedient executor of his appeals or, alternatively, as an active interlocutor who independently judges what is narrated, poses questions, expresses doubts and raises objections. For no other author of Russian literature (and perhaps of any literature) does the narratee play so active a role as for Dostoevskij. In Notes from the Underground, in the novel A Raw Youth, and in the tale “A Gentle Spirit,” the narrator speaks literally every word “with a sidelong glance” (Baxtin [1929] 1984: 195–198), i.e. aligned on the fictive listener or hearer. The narrator, who wants to win his addressee’s admiration, leaves in the text traces of his appeal and of his orientation: he wants to present himself in a positive or negative way to the reader or listener (impression), pays attention to his counterpart’s reaction (orientation), guesses his critical replies (orientation), anticipates them (impression), attempts to rebut them (impression), and clearly recognizes (orientation) that he does not succeed in doing so (cf. Schmid 2010: 84–88). This type of narrative, where the addressee is imagined as an active interlocutor, is assigned by Baxtin, in his “metalinguistic” typology of discourse (181–204), to the type “active double-voiced word” (or “word with orientation toward someone else’s discourse”), i.e. a word in which two contradictory evaluative positions can be recognized simultaneously: that of the speaker and that of the anticipated evaluative position of the addressee. In contrast to the “passive variety of the double-voiced word,” where “the other person’s discourse is a completely passive tool in the hands of the speaker wielding it,” in the active variety “the other’s words actively influence the speaker’s speech, forcing it to alter itself accordingly under their influence” (197).

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3.3 History of the Concept and its Study After the implicit discovery of the narratee in Baxtin’s ([1929] 1984) “metalinguistic” model of voices, and before the advent of French structuralism, the notion was described in Polish narratology. Starting from German “Erzählforschung” (particularly Kayser 1956) and based on Polish phenomenological philosophy (Ingarden [1931] 1973), Jasińska (1965: 215–251) distinguished between the “real” reader and the “epic” reader, the latter corresponding to the narratee. The distinction between implied reader and fictive addressee was anticipated by Głowiński ([1967] 1975) when he contrasted a “recipient in the wider sense” with a “recipient in the narrow sense.” In her five-level model of roles in literary communication, Okopień-Sławińska ([1971] 1975: 125) associates the “author” with the “concrete reader,” the “transmitter of the work” with the “recipient of the work” (identified with the “ideal reader”), and the narrator with the “addressee of the narrative.” The true narratological career of the narratee starts with Prince (1971), when it takes on an English name. Shortly after this, the narratee appears in its French appellation in Genette ([1972] 1980), who refers to Barthes’ “narrataire” (1966) and to Greimas’ “destinataire” ([1966] 1983) as his sources. In his influential article, Prince (1973) discusses the “signaux du narrataire” insofar as these signals go beyond the “degré zéro du narrataire.” This zero status was the object of such fierce criticism by Pratt (1982) (cf. Prince 1985) that Prince (1982) eventually renounced it. On the other hand, Prince (1985: 300) dismisses as “trivial” another valid argument, notably that the supposed “signaux du narrataire” could just as well be seen as the “characteristics of the narrator” (Pratt 1982: 212). Most important in Prince (1973: 192–196) is the examination of the narratee’s functions: the narratee constitutes a “relay station” between narrator and reader, helps determine the frame of the narration, serves as a means to characterize the narrator, highlights certain themes, advances the plot and becomes the spokesman of the work’s moral. In his Narratology, Prince (1982: 16– 26) examines the “signs of the ‘You’” and the “narratee-character,” discusses varying forms of the narratee’s “knowledge,” its representation as a group, and the “hierarchy of narratees” in narratives in which there is more than one narratee.

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4 Topics for Further Research Particularly interesting are active narratees whose real or imagined presence exerts an influence on the narrator, leading to a double-voiced narration in Baxtin’s sense. It would be tempting to trace existing influence lines in the genre of dialogic narrative monologue (similar to the one examined by Głowiński {[1963] 1973} from Dostoevskij to Camus’ La Chute and from there to Polish postwar prose). It may be worthwhile to observe the relationship of those narratees with the philosophies of their authors, cultures, and epochs. Another topic for further research would be the genre-specific manifestations of narratees in poetry or in dramatic monologue.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Barthes, Roland (1966). “Introduction à l’analyse structurale des récits.” Communications 8, 1–27. Baxtin, Mixail (Bakhtin, Mikhail) ([1929] 1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Bühler, Karl ([1934] 1990). Theory of Language. The Representational Function of Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – ([1983] 1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Głowiński, Michał ([1963] 1973). “Narracja jako monolog wypowiedziany.” M. Głowiński. Gry powieściowe. Szkice z teorii i historii form narracyjnych. Warszawa: PWN, 106–148. – ([1967] 1975). “Der virtuelle Empfänger in der Struktur des poetischen Werkes.” R. Fieguth (ed.). Literarische Kommunikation. Kronberg/Ts.: Scriptor, 93–126. Greimas, Algirdas Julien ([1966] 1983). Structural Semantics: An Attempt at Method. U of Nebraska P. Ingarden, Roman ([1931] 1973). The Literary Work of Art. Evanston: Northwestern UP. Jasińska, Maria (1965). Narrator w powieści przedromantycznej (1776–1931). Warszawa: PIW. Jedličková, Alice (1993). Ke komu mluví vypravěč? Adresát v komunikační perspektivě prózy. Praha: ÚČL AV ČR. Kayser, Wolfgang (1956). “Das Problem des Erzählers im Roman.” The German Quarterly 29, 225–38. Okopień-Sławińska, Aleksandra ([1971] 1975). “Die personalen Relationen in der literarischen Kommunikation.” R. Fieguth (ed.). Literarische Kommunikation. Kronberg/Ts.: Scriptor, 127–147.

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Pratt, Mary Louise (1982). “Interpretive Strategies/Strategic Interpretations: On AngloAmerican Reader Response Criticism.” Boundary 2, 201–231. Prince, Gerald (1971). “Notes toward a Characterization of Fictional Narratees.” Genre 4, 100–105. – (1973). “Introduction à l’étude du narrataire.” Poétique 14, 178–196. – (1982). Narratology. The Form and Functioning of Narrative. The Hague: Mouton. – (1985). “The Narratee Revisited.” Style 19, 299–303. Schmid, Wolf ([1973] 1986). Der Textaufbau in den Erzählungen Dostoevskijs. With an afterword: “Eine Antwort an die Kritiker”. Amsterdam: Grüner. – (2007). “Textadressat.” Th. Anz (ed.). Handbuch Literaturwissenschaft I. Stuttgart: Metzler, S. 171–181. – (2010). Narratology. An Introduction. Berlin: de Gruyter.

5.2 Further Reading Piwowarczyk, Mary (1976). “The Narratee and the Situation of Enunciation: A Reconsideration of Prince’s Theory.” Genre 9, 161–177. Suleiman, Susan Rubin (1981). “Of Readers and Narratees: The Experience of Pamela.” L’Esprit Créateur 21, 89–97.

Narration and Narrative in Legal Discourse Greta Olson

1 Definition Narration plays a central role in legal discourse and permits law to be communicated, adjudicative acts to be justified, and their principles to be explained (Fludernik 2010). Documents such as charges of indictment, formal disciplinary complaints, legal briefs, appellate judgments, and legal commentaries contain narrative elements, as do orally transmitted opening and closing statements, cross-examinations, and judges’ announcements of the sentence. Legal narratives are moreover the subject of law; in common, civil, and mixed legal systems, the re-construction of what happened to whom or to what is central to a given sequence of events’ being adjudged in juristic terms. Applying an abstract legal norm to a particular case in the civil law tradition requires that an interpretive process is undertaken that involves recourse to methods of narrative analysis such as differentiating between the frame of the telling, the telling, and the told, naming functions of narrative structures, and identifying types of tellers. Since the advent of “legal studies after the cultural turn” (Moran 2012), law has been regarded as narratively based and culturally embedded, suggesting the benefits of a narratologically literate approach to legal discourse.

2 Explication “Narration” in legal discourse most commonly denotes the contest of stories that transpires in adversarial or, with different actors, in inquisitorial trials. “Adversarial” refers to legal systems in which the prosecution and defense produce evidence that is evaluated during the course of the trial; in inquisitorial systems, trials take place without juries and judges play a larger role in determining the proceedings, examining the witnesses, and adjudging cases’ outcomes. On the discourse level, the act of narrating is central to legal proceedings: the facts of a case are

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related with varying rhetorical intensity depending on the type of trial and legal system and the stage of the trial in which the narrational act occurs. “Narrative” in legal discourse can also be used to describe a legal concept’s or a statute’s development: from precedent to new judgment in common law systems; in commentaries on legal concepts and their jurisprudential developments in codified ones. According to a leading proponent of a narrative approach to law: “Law, one might say, needs a narratology” (Brooks [2005] 2008: 425). Brooks argues that law perpetually attempts to hide its storytelling qualities in the interest of preserving its autonomy from other disciplines and defending its seemingly exclusive reliance on abstract norms and logical reasoning. Uncovering the narrative qualities of legal texts and judgments, including their sequencing and causal presentation of events as well as their investments in prescriptive assumptions about correct behavior, is accordingly vital to understanding how law operates, under what premises, and with what contingencies. The study of narration and narrative in legal discourse comprises several subtypes. It includes investigations into legal narration as a contest of narratives (3.1.1), and examinations of law in narrative literature or as rhetoric (3.1.2). Another approach juxtaposes personal accounts of marginalized individuals with dominant legal narratives to advocate rights and critique hegemonic legal practices (3.1.3). A fourth area of study analyses the narrational qualities of legal discourse and interpretation (3.1.4). Allowing for a more metaphorical definition of narrative, the interface between legal and cultural narrative has gained critical interest, and describing this field will reveal meta-level issues concerning narrative studies of the law (3.2).

3 Aspects of the Phenomena 3.1 Subtypes of Research on Narration and Narrative in Legal Discourse

3.1.1 Legal Narration as a Contestation of Narratives The study of narration understood in the narrow sense as the act of telling a story centers on investigations of witness testimony and statements by the prosecution and the defense and has primarily focused on adversarial Anglo-American trials. Yet this research is also applicable to codified law and civil law system procedures. Jackson (1988a, 1988b, 1990) points out that the pragmatics of how the micro-narratives

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that make up a given case are narrated, by whom, and under what authority influences the outcome of adversarial trials. Like Brooks (1996), Jackson describes the criminal courtroom’s “contest between competing narratives, which will be resolved on the criteria of relative similarity to narrative typification” (1996: 28, original emphasis). Narrative typification refers to evaluative judgments based on their perceived likeness to collective, prototypical images of criminals (1996: 32–33), as well as other narratively organized forms of social knowledge (Jackson n.d.). Such differentiations allow Jackson to distinguish between the micro-narratives related within a trial and the macro-narrative of the trial itself (1996: 33). The perceived completeness of stories recited in trials and their apparent compliance with norms of legal reasoning determine whether they will be regarded as plausible. In the common law tradition, this involves the principle of stare decisis; in the civil law tradition, plausibility is based on the perceived clarity, consistency, and coherence with which the code is applied. Brooks argues that law has implicitly recognized the power of storytelling in the courtroom through “formulas by which the law attempts to impose form and rule on stories” (1996: 19). Rules about what is considered to be relevant narration in the courtroom include the degree of detail and presumed objectivity of witness testimony and prohibitions concerning admissible narratives. Assumptions about what makes testimony valid influence the telling and retelling of the events that trials seek to narrate conclusively. Further, as Coombe points out, the contest of narratives begins much earlier than in the dramatic setting of the jury courtroom with the selection of evidence that contributes to the narratives presented in courtrooms (2001: 46). Similarly, in inquisitorial systems, the state attorney’s assessment of the illegality of the accused’s actions determines whether a case will be tried; her or his narration of the facts in a dossier influences the judge’s “master narrative” (Grunewald 2013: 382). Courtroom exchanges are also subject to generic restrictions. Künzel posits a preference for the norms of realist narratives, with their appearance of verisimilitude, that may be detrimental to perceptions of victims’ testimony in rape trials. Due to the traumatic nature of their experiences, victims may testify in an affective, non-linear, and dissociative mode—qualities resembling norms of avant-garde or Modernist texts— hence appearing suspect to those who adjudge these trials (2003: 249– 254). Other scholars have also conducted genre-based narrative interrogations of law. With recourse to Frye’s archetypal criticism, West compares the “jurisprudential traditions [of] natural law, legal positivism, liberalism, and statism” to the genres of “romance, irony, comedy, and

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tragedy,” respectively ([1954] 1993: 347); and Sarat (2002) diagnoses the melodramatic elements that underlie US American trials and are employed to justify capital punishment. Although these differentiations might appear to pertain only to the courtroom, Sternberg argues with recourse to biblical law that the legal code represents a form of narration involving if-plots, ordering, and turn-taking, and is infinitely generative of further storytelling: “law […] incorporates the narrativities of repetition and quotation among its makings, workings, aids to processing and understanding” (2008: 38). Accordingly, the story of codified law consists of the reconstruction of events and the filling-in of narrative gaps. Similarly, semiotic interpretations of law suggest that “legal practice is a narrative endeavour” that occurs “within legal discourse as a complex economy of signs” (Broekman 2011: 3), regardless of whether it is practiced in a civil or common law system. The predominance of narrative studies concerning courtroom discourse may be explained by the adversarial trial’s dramatic structure and the prosecution and defense’s reliance on conflicting arguments about the alleged perpetrator’s actions. Thus courtroom discourse resembles the structures of oral narratives (von Arnauld 2009; Fludernik → Conversational Narration – Oral Narration). Yet researchers’ emphasis on competing courtroom stories may also be due to the medial dominance of representations of Anglo-American adversarial trials. Discussions of how defense lawyers have to disrupt the prosecution’s narration of events recited in past tense with counter narratives focusing on the present is typical of this type of research (Amsterdam & Hertz 1992: 55). Since in civil law systems the judge or judges and lay assessors determine the description of previous events on the basis of accumulated evidence, witness questioning, and argument, the metanarrative of a case has to be reproduced in a written protocol of judgment, which employs persuasive narrative strategies (Vismann 2011: 98–111). 3.1.2 Law and Literature, Law as Rhetoric “Law and Literature” developed in a critical response to the law-aseconomics movement that predominated in US American legal training during the 1970s and which sought to institutionalize a rational-choice approach to adjudication (Kayman 2002; Peters 2005; Olson 2010, 2012). Law and Literature interfaces legal protocols with literary narratives to demonstrate the contingent nature of justice. Accordingly, one type of research, called “law-in-literature,” critiques legal processes

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using the alternative ethics that are suggested by literary texts; another type, called “law as literature,” analyzes law as rhetoric and reads legal texts using philological means. One ethical-rhetorical approach dates from the work of White (1973). For White (1995), adjudication is indivisible from rhetoric; ideally, it transforms the communities into which it is received as did Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela’s texts. White’s performative legal rhetoric attempts to restore an ethics to law and legal education through the imaginative and transformative use of language. Although his work is more often associated with the trajectory of Law and Literature that examines how law is critiqued in “fictions about law” (Weisberg 2011: 50), Weisberg also looks for “textual standards of [legal] conduct” in literature (1988: 145). He describes how “good code” can be provided by law when it is interpreted by “good interpreters” (Weisberg 2011: 52), and “resentful code” can be combated by “just individuals” (53); and both types can be illuminated using literary narrative. Legal and literary rhetoric thus intersect with the ethics of interpretation. Emerging out of a different tradition altogether, Postmodernist Jurisprudence combines semiotics, psychoanalysis, and rhetorical analysis to demonstrate English law’s metaphoricity, narrativity, and literariness. Goodrich’s (1987) rhetorical analysis of law is employed to highlight law’s pretentions to rational authority. Most pertinently, in terms of its potential for narratological research, Goodrich has argued that the basis of law as a science and an autonomous discipline can be found in the medieval philological interpretation and preservation of the Corpus Iuris Civilis (1987: 33). In essence, the establishment of law as a science involved a disregard for the context in which legal texts were created. Goodrich contends that the still dominant positivist approach to legal interpretation, based on Kelsen’s and Hart’s work, has mirrored developments in structuralist approaches to language, thus suggesting that the recent history of jurisprudence has followed developments in linguistics: “The specific context of contemporary legal science, which is to form the subject of the present chapter, is co-extensive with linguistics itself” (1987: 34). This argument is not dissimilar from Fludernik’s observation that narratology has developed in line with linguistics ([2005] 2008: 48). The critical rhetorical approach to law that Goodrich advocates “begins by throwing the possibility and status of law into question” (1987: 211), demonstrating law’s anything but unique discursiveness.

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3.1.3 Legal Narrative and the Recognition of Minoritarian Experience Critical legal studies has brought the narrative qualities of law to the fore in an effort to undermine law’s service to the entitled and to force legal practitioners to acknowledge the experiences of the underrepresented. Challenging law’s autonomy as a rational system, critical legal studies has grown into a plurality of approaches that focus on law’s narrativity and contingent relations to forms of subordination: this includes critical race studies and storytelling, feminist jurisprudence, queer theory, and intersectional legal analysis. Within the US American context, stories that display a high degree of experientiality about being materially disadvantaged and institutionally excluded have provided counter-punctual arguments to the assumption that the legal subject is a white, propertied man. In advocacy of this type of storytelling, Delgado asserted that: “Many, but by no means all, who have been telling legal stories are members of what could be loosely described as outgroups, groups whose marginality defines the boundaries of the mainstream, whose voice and perspective—whose consciousness—has been suppressed, devalued, and abnormalized” (1989: 2412). Delgado’s argument departs from the assumption that reality and group identity are constructed and mediated through acts of narration (cf. Bruner 1991) (Bamberg → Identity and Narration). Accordingly, one field of narrative legal scholarship concerns reciting alternative stories to those related in hegemonic legal contexts. This has included introducing literary narratives about race to the US legal classroom, as in Derrick Bell’s fictions or Patricia Williams’ autobiographical writings. Feminist critique uncovers how acts of domestic abuse do not cohere with legal models which assume that violence takes place between men in public places, and how rape complaints are consistently discredited if their stories do not comply with this model—if the assailant was not a stranger, did not use a weapon, and did not attack a woman outside her home. This entails bringing attention to law’s lacunae. Personal testimonies to experiences unattended to by legal code and legislation have become vehicles for raising public notice of how rape and sexual slavery are employed as systematic tools of oppression during wartime. The rights of indigenous peoples have been rendered tangible through personal narrative; and these narratives have contributed to challenging the legal status quo. Commenting on how such narratives function as forces for legal emancipation, Schaffer and Smith write: “Emergent in communities of identification marginalized within the nation, such movements

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embolden individual members to understand personal experience as a ground of action and social change” (2004: 4). 3.1.4 Legal Narrative as Narration, and Narrative Issues in Legal Interpretation Somewhat underrepresented in narrative approaches to legal discourse is research that invokes structuralist work on narration and deals specifically with categories of temporality, tense, internality or externality, and reliability. Legal decisions are often composed without a narrative presence or an overt voice, thus belying the existence of a person or persons behind the text, as in: “IT IS ORDERED that […] the law license of Brenda Gloria Christian, State Bar Card Number 04226500, heretofore issued by the Court, be cancelled” (Supreme Court of Texas 1994: 1). In German statutes one finds similarly impersonal narration about anonymous agents involved in a sequence of hypothetical actions, e.g.: “(1) By a purchase agreement, the seller of a thing is obliged to deliver the thing to the buyer and to procure ownership of the thing for the buyer. The seller must procure the thing for the buyer free from material and legal defects” (Div. 8 Sec. 433 of the German Civil Code [2012]). Depending on how wide or narrow their definition of narrative is, some narratologists will argue that this law does not meet the minimum requirements of experientiality, eventfulness, human-like agency, etc. This pattern differs considerably in preambles, where allusions are made to political collectives as a strategy of legitimation (von Arnauld 2009: 13). Particularly in constitutions, narrative authority is evoked through references to a common historical narrative, as in the US Constitution’s “We the people” or in Art. 1 sub 2 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany: “The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human right as the basis of every human community, of peace and justice in the world” (2010). Noting the rhetorical differences between impersonally and personally narrated legal texts and their ideological effects can be achieved through attention to the specific narrative qualities of law. Most pressingly, the issue of how to deal with narrative arises in legal interpretation. This entails the application of codified law or precedent judgments to the case at hand according to competing rules of application and it raises issues of narrative intentionality. In the US, debate continues about whether the Constitution should be interpreted according to the presumptive original intentions of those who composed it, the exact semantic meanings of the words at the time an act or

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amendment was enacted, or according to the general purpose of the enactment, which has to be viewed contextually. This debate has enduring political consequences, as recent US Supreme Court decisions regarding campaign financing and healthcare have amply shown. Legal interpretation concerning European Community law functions differently, as does the application of codified law in civil law systems. On the basis of treaties, regulations and directives are issued and may be enacted as laws by national legislatures; they are subsequently translated into the community’s twenty-three languages, rendering the issue of lexical or ‘plain’ meaning of words moot (McLoughlin & Gardner 2007: 101). Decisions regarding the scope of EU legislation are made by comparing the wording of the texts into which a law has been translated or through recourse to its “purposiveness,” the law’s coherence with guiding principles of the union and its achievement of a desired end (Rösler 2012). Further, “whenever one of the member states submits a proposal for new supranational legislation, it does so inescapably from its own context” (Gaakeer 2012: 259). Thus recent efforts to homogenize European law and rules of application interface with narratological concerns, as methods of interpreting narrative texts may be variously based on intrinsic textual signals, linguistic concerns, extratextual realities, or historical contingencies. 3.2 Legal Narrative as Cultural Narrative The insight that legal discourse is not autonomous but inextricably bound to its historical context can be attributed to many sources including Friedman (1969), who argued that a legal system is indivisible from the legal culture through which it is understood, and Cover (1983). Cover contended that while law may give the appearance of autonomy and rationality, it is never free from the narratives that lend it sense: “No set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning. […] Once understood in the context of the narratives that give it meaning, law becomes not merely a system of rules to be observed, but a world in which we live” (Cover 1983: 4–5). On the one hand, law is rendered comprehensible through narrative. On the other hand, law is embedded in the cultural narratives that frame it. Hence legal prescriptions cannot be separated from the narratives that situate, explain, and legitimize their prerogative. As a consequence, Cover argues that not only do trials represent contests between narratives, but so do all legal texts as they are interpreted, reinterpreted, and applied over time. Arguments for a given interpretation

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then rest on founding myths about whence the law derives its authority to enact the state’s rule or violence (Cover 1986). Narratives of law also extend into the future in normative projections of their effects. As Cover writes: “A nomos, as a world of law, entails the application of human will to an extant state of affairs as well as toward our visions of alternative futures” (1983: 7). Legal decisions can represent corrective counterfactual readings of the present as in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which deemed the regular practice of segregating school children on the basis of race unconstitutional. Accordingly, the legal precept “separate but equal” that had authorized segregation until Brown can be understood as part of the ongoing history of US American race laws, extending from Colonialist prohibitions of interracial unions to current disputes about the scope of affirmative action and the protection of voting rights. Constructing the historical narrative of a given body of law depends on the legal system in which it transpires and on the sociocultural factors that inform its historicization. Narrative approaches to law go beyond the courtroom to examine histories of statutes and the developments of legal systems: social contract theory can, for example, be understood as the study of the story element that enables participants to understand how their legal collective came to be (Tait & Norris 2011). Foundational legal narratives legitimate a given legal system’s normative status by establishing resemblances between themselves and other master plots in a process not dissimilar from what Butler (1990) has called performativity. Another form of narrative analysis investigates how literary narratives and their forms participate in altering legal processes. This work has concentrated mostly on the 18th and 19th centuries; it unites genre investigations with narratology and historical investigations of legal procedures. Thus Bender (1987) argues that the English novel anticipated the end of public executions; Grossman (2002) contends that forensic novels occasioned a new awareness of the courtroom as a site for relating individual, clashing stories. Scholars such as Miller (1988), Thomas (1987, 2007), and Gladfelder (1997) demonstrate how protocols of law and citizenship have intersected with novelistic prose and its representation of consciousness. Their work demonstrates that narrative techniques overlap with changing procedures as well as readers’ notions of self, corroborating Cover’s thesis that legal narratives are embedded in cultural ones.

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4 Relevance for Narratology While assuming that law has much to gain through the scrutiny of the narrative principles that underlie its texts and procedures, Wolf’s (2011) caveat about the dangers of narratology’s cannibalizing other disciplines should be heeded: legal practitioners remain skeptical of constructivist, sometimes poorly informed efforts of those who pursue narrative inquiries into the law (Posner [1988] 2009). Further, a narratologically informed investigation of law may alter the manner in which narrative and narrativity are understood. Just as investigations of games, visual phenomena, and music have demonstrated the limitations of structuralist models, the analysis of narration and narrative in legal discourse may expose some narratological concepts’ investments in institutions and discourses of power.

5 Topics for Further Investigation Narrative studies of legal discourse favor texts with overtly narrational elements such as appellate and Supreme Court opinions. Yet the norms transported through legal narratives are disseminated through symbols and images as well as language. Thus the integration of narrative approaches to law with “Law and Semiotics” and “Law and Visual Culture” needs to occur. From a narratological standpoint, open questions include: how does the framing of legal narratives through interpretive schemata and generic conventions differ from that of other types of narratives? How do legal hypotheticals and possible worlds theory relate? Might narrator unreliability be better understood through recourse to assessments of witness reliability? What differing narrative premises underlie various legal systems’ justifications of judgments and interpretive procedures? And will such premises change as legal systems become increasingly hybridic?

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6 Bibliography 6.1 Works Cited Amsterdam, Anthony G. & Randy Hertz (1992). “An Analysis of Closing Arguments to a Jury.” New York Law School Law Review 37, 55–122. Arnauld, Andreas von (2009). “Was war, was ist – und was sein soll: Erzählen im juristischen Diskurs.” C. Klein & M. Martínez (eds.). Wirklichkeitserzählungen. Stuttgart: Metzler, 14–50. Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany in the revised version published in the Federal Law Gazette Part III, classification number 100–1, as last amended by the Act of 21 July 2010 (Federal Law Gazette I, p. 944). Bender, John (1987). Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Chicago: Chicago UP. Broekman, Jan M. (2011). “Introduction.” J. M. Broekman & F. J. Mootz III (eds.). The Semiotics of Law in Legal Education. Heidelberg: Springer, 2–4. Brooks, Peter (1996). “The Law as Narrative and Rhetoric.” P. Brooks & P. Gewirtz (eds.). Law’s Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law. New Haven: Yale UP, 14–22. – ([2005] 2008). “Narrative in and of the Law.” J. Phelan & P. J. Rabinowitz (eds.). A Companion to Narrative Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 415–426. Bruner, Jerome (1991). “The Narrative Construction of Reality.” Critical Inquiry 18, 1–21. Butler, Judith (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Coombe, Rosemary (2001). “Is there a Cultural Studies of Law?” T. Miller (ed.). A Companion to Cultural Studies. Cambridge: Blackwell, 36–62. Cover, Robert M. (1983). “The Supreme Court, 1982 Term – Foreword: Nomos and Narrative.” Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 2705, 4–68. http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/2705 – (1986). “Violence and the Word.” Yale Law Journal 95, 1601–1029. Delgado, Richard (1989). “Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative.” Michigan Law Review 87, 2411–2441. Fludernik, Monika ([2005] 2008). “Histories of Narrative Theory (II): From Structuralism to the Present.” J. Phelan & P. J. Rabinowitz (eds.). A Companion to Narrative Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 36–59. – (2010). “Erzählung aus narratologischer Sicht.” B. Engler (ed.). Erzählen in den Wissenschaften: Positionen, Probleme, Perspektiven. Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 5–22. Friedman, Lawrence M. (1969). “Legal Culture and Social Development.” Law & Society Review 4, 29–44. Gaakeer, Jeanne (2012). “Iudex translator: The Reign of Finitude.” P. G. Monateri (ed.). Methods of Comparative Law. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 252–269.

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German Civil Code (2012). Trans. Langenscheidt Translation Service & N. Mussett. Saarbrücken: Juris GmbH. http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_bgb/ Gladfelder, Hal (1997). “Criminal Trials and Narrative Realism, 1650–1750.” Prose Studies 20.3, 21–48. Goodrich, Peter (1987). Legal Discourse: Studies in Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Legal Analysis. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Grossman, Jonathan (2002). The Art of Alibi: English Law Courts and the Novel. London: Johns Hopkins UP. Grunewald, Ralph (2013). “The Narrative of Innocence, or, Lost Stories.” Law & Literature 25, 366–389. Jackson, Bernard S. (1988a). Law, Fact and Narrative Coherence. Merseyside: Deborah Charles Publications. – (1988b). “Narrative Models in Legal Proof.” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 1, 225–246. – (1990). “Narrative Theories and Legal Discourse.” C. Nash (ed.). Narrative in Culture. London: Routledge, 23–50. – (1996). “‘Anchored Narratives’ and the Interface of Law, Psychology and Semiotics.” Legal and Criminal Psychology 1, 17–45. – (n.d.). “An Outline of Greimasian Semiotics”. Semiotics of Law. http://semioticsoflaw.com/site/firstschool.php Kayman, Martin A. (2002). “Law-and-Literature: Questions of Jurisdiction.” B. Thomas (ed.). REAL: Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 18: Law and Literature. Tübingen: Narr, 1–20. Künzel, Christine (2003). Vergewaltigungslektüren: Zur Codierung sexueller Gewalt in Literatur und Recht. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus. McLoughlin, Kate & Carl Gardner (2007). “When Is Authorial Intention not Authorial Intention.” EJES: European Journal of English Studies 11, 93–105. Miller, D. A. (1988). The Novel and the Police. Berkeley: U of California P. Moran, Leslie J. (2012). “Legal Studies after the Cultural Turn: A Case Study of Judicial Research.” S. Roseneil and S. Frosh (eds.). Social Research after the Cultural Turn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 124–143. Olson, Greta (2010). “De-Americanizing Law-and-Literature Narratives: Opening up the Story.” Law & Literature 22, 338–364. – (2012). Reprint of “De-Americanizing Law and Literature Narratives” (With an Expanded Ending). H. Porsdam & T. Elholm (eds.). Dialogues on Justice: European Perspectives on Law and Humanities. Berlin: de Gruyter, 15–43. Peters, Julie Stone (2005). “Law, Literature, and the Vanishing Real: On the Future of an Interdisciplinary Illusion.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 120, 442–453. Posner, Richard ([1988] 2009). Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Rösler, Hannes (2012). “Interpretation of EU Law.” J. Basedow et al. (eds.). Max Planck Encyclopaedia of European Private Law, Vol. II. Oxford: Oxford UP, 979–982.

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Sarat, Austin (2002). When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition. Princeton: Princeton UP. Schaffer, Kay & Sidonie Smith (2004). Human Rights and Narrated Lives: The Ethics of Recognition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Sternberg, Meir (2008). “If-Plots: Narrativity and the Law-Code.” J. Pier & J. A. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 29–108. Supreme Court of Texas (1994). “Court Order in the Matter of Brenda Gloria Christian.” MISC. DOCKET NO. 94–9072. http://www.supreme.courts.state.tx.us/miscdocket/94/94-9072.pdf Tait, Allison & Luke Norris (2011). “Narrative and the Origins of Law.” Law and Literature 5, 11–22. Thomas, Brook (1987). Cross-Examinations of Law and Literature: Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, and Melville. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. – (2007). Civic Myths: A Law-and-Literature Approach to Citizenship. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P. Vismann, Cornelia (2011). Medien der Rechtsprechung. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer. Weisberg, Richard H. (1988). “Coming of Age Some More: ‘Law and Literature’ Beyond the Cradle.” Nova Law Review 13, 107–124. – (2011). “Law and Literature as Survivor.” A. Sarat et al. (eds.). Teaching Law and Literature. New York: MLA, 40–60. West, Robin ([1954] 1993). Narrative, Authority, and the Law. Michigan: U of Michigan P. White, James B. (1973). The Legal Imagination: Studies in the Nature of Legal Thought and Expression. Boston: Little Brown. – (1995). Acts of Hope: Creating Authority in Literature, Law, and Politics. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Wolf, Werner (2011). “Narratology and Media(lity): The Transmedial Expansion of a Literary Discipline and Possible Consequences.” G. Olson (ed.). Current Trends in Narratology. Berlin: de Gruyter, 145–180.

6.2 Further Reading Fludernik, Monika (2014). “A Narratology of the Law? Narratives in Legal Discourse.” Critical Analysis of Law: Critical Analysis of Law and the New Interdisciplinarity 1.1, 87–109. Gearey, Adam ([2005] 2008). “Law and Narrative.” D. Herman et al. (eds). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 271–275. Hastie, Reid & Nancy Pennington (1993). “The Story Model for Juror Decision Making.” R. Hastie (ed). Inside the Juror: The Psychology of Juror Decision Making. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 192–221. Reichman, Ravit (2010). “Narrative as Rhetoric.” A. Sarat et al. (eds). Law and the Humanities: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 377–397. Richland, Justin B. (2013). “Jurisdiction: Grounding Law in Language.” Annual Review of Anthropology 42, 209–226.

Narration in Film Markus Kuhn & Johann N. Schmidt

1 Definition Film, in general, is a narrative medium, or, at least, a medium of many narrative capacities. Nearly every film, except specific types of experimental films and documentaries, includes at least a few basic narrative structures. This applies especially, but not only, to feature films. If we take the representation of a change of state as a basic necessary condition for narrativity—and thus follow a broad definition of narrativity— moving pictures have at least two basic possibilities of narrative representation: a) to represent motions (and therefore changes) within one shot; b) to confront two (or more) comparable states through the combination of shots into sequences (i.e. the process of editing or montage in terms of classical film theory). Both modes of narrative representation have a visual and an auditive dimension, as virtually every sound film has a visual and an auditory channel addressing the spectator’s sense of vision and sense of hearing. The general proposition of a narrow definition of narrativity that there is no narrative without a narrator (Margolin → Narrator) poses particular problems when applied to narration in feature films. Though almost all feature films abound in storytelling capacities and thus belong to a predominantly narrative medium, their specific mode of plurimedial presentation and their peculiar blending of temporal and spatial elements set them apart from forms of narrative that are principally language-based. The narratological inventory, when applied to cinema, is bound to incorporate and combine a large number of “co-creative” techniques “constructing the storyworld for specific effects” (Bordwell 1985: 12) and creating an overall meaning only in their totality. Instead of a single, language-based narrator, the concept of a more complex “visual” or “audiovisual narrative instance” was introduced (Deleyto 1996: 219; Kuhn 2009, 2011: 87–89), mediating the paradigms of overtly cinematographic devices (elements relating to camera, editing, sound) and the mise en scène (arranging and composing the scene in front of the camera).

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On the other hand, the most solid narrative link between verbal and visual representation is sequentiality, since literary and filmic signs are apprehended consecutively through time, mostly (though not always) following a successive and causal order. It is this consecutiveness that “gives rise to an unfolding structure, the diegetic whole” (Cohen 1979: 92). Both media, narrative literature and film, have a “double chronology” or “double temporal logic,” i.e. an external movement (“the duration of the presentation of the novel, film […]”), and an internal movement (“the duration of the sequence of events that constitute the plot”) through time (Chatman 1990: 9). The main features of narrative strategies in literature can also be found in film, although the characteristics of these strategies differ significantly. In many cases, it seems to be appropriate to speak of “analogies” between literary and filmic storytelling. These analogies are far more complex than is suggested by any mere “translation” or “adaptation” from one medium into another.

2 Explication Broadly speaking, there are two different outlooks on cinema that divide the main camps of narratological research. If the medium itself and its unique laws of formal representation serve as a starting-point, many of its parameters either transcend or obscure the categories that have been gained in tracking narrative strategies of literary texts. Thus Metz states that film is not a “language” but another kind of semiotic system with “articulations” of its own (Chatman 1990: 124). Though some of the analogies between literary and filmic narrative may be quite convincing (the establishing shot of a panoramic view can be approximately equated with what Genette [1972] 1980 calls zero focalization), many other parallels must necessarily abstract from a number of diverse principles of aesthetic organization before stating similarities in the perception of literature and film. Despite the fact that adapting literary texts into movies has long since become a conventional practice, the variability of cinematographic modes of narrative expression calls for such a number of subcategories that the principle of generalization (inherent in any valid theory) becomes jeopardized. If, however, narratological principles sensu stricto move to the fore of analysis, the question of medial specificity seems to be less important. Narratologists of a strongly persistent stance regret that connotations of visuality are dominant even in terms like point of view (Niederhoff → Perspective – Point of View) and focalization (Niederhoff → Focalization), and they maintain that the greatest divide between

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verbal and visual strategies is in literature, not in film (Brütsch 2011). They further hold that narratological categories in film and literary studies differ much less than most scholars would suggest. Since Genette’s ([1972] 1980) model presents a primarily narratological, transliterary concept (albeit close to novel studies), mediality is seen as affecting “narrative in a number of important ways, but on a level of specific representations only. In general, narrativity can be constituted in equal measure in all textual and visual media” (Fludernik 1996: 353). The two approaches depend on which scholarly perspective is preferred: either how far narrative principles can be limited to questions of narrativity alone, or whether the affordabilities of the medium have conclusive consequences for its narrative capacities. It is our view that the position most suitable for a narrative theory of film lies in between these approaches. Approaches that put their main focus on mediaunbound narrative strategies should be confronted with questions of mediality. Furthermore, approaches that concentrate overwhelmingly on questions of mediality should match their results with general narrative theories. If, for example, we take established narratological concepts such as focalization, order or diegetic level as a point of departure to develop a systematic model for narratological film analysis, we have to discuss the potentials and limitations of each category in terms of mediality and modify these concepts accordingly (Kuhn 2011: 7–9). Consistently, due to the hybrid and multimodal nature of film, an approach that examines narrative in film is per se more complex than a theory of literary narration (9).

3 Development of Film Narration and History of the Study of Film Narration Film as a largely syncretistic, hybrid and multimodal form of aesthetic communication and bears a number of generic characteristics which are tied to the history and capacities of its narrative constituents. 3.1 Development of Film Narration 3.1.1 The Plurimedial Nature of Cinema The conventional separation of “showing” and “telling” and (on a different level) of “seeing” and “reading” does not do justice to the plurimedial organization of cinema. Earlier attempts at defining film exclusively along the lines of visualization were meant to legitimize it as

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an art form largely independent of the established arts. However much meaning can be attributed to the visual track of the film, it would be wrong to state that it is “narrated visually” and little else. Such approaches ignore the plurimedial nature of cinema which draws on multiple sources of temporal and spatial information and its reliance on the visual and auditive senses. This peculiarity makes it difficult to sort out the various categories that are operative in its narration. Like drama, it seems to provide “direct perceptual access to space and characters” (Grodal 2005: 168); it is “performed” within a similar frame of time and experienced from a fixed position. Unlike drama, however, a film is not produced in quasi-lifelike corporal circumstances; rather, its sequences are bound together in a technically unique process (“postproduction”) to conform to a very specific perceptual and cognitive comprehension of the world (Grodal 2005: 169). Similar to literary narration, it can influence the viewing positions of the recipient and dispose freely of location and temporal sequences as long as it contains generic signals of shifts in time and space. 3.1.2 Technical Strategies of Storytelling Films are generally made by a large group of people, aside from the very few exceptions where the team is reduced to an extremely small group (thus in Fassbinder’s In a Year of Thirteen Moons, 1978, the director is producer, camera operator, sound expert and actor all at the same time). Film, in short, is the result of collective authorship (Gaut 1997; Sellors 2007; Kuhn 2011: 115–117). It derives its impact from a number of technical, performative and aesthetic strategies that combine in a syncretizing, largely hybrid medium, establishing interlocking conventions of storytelling. As an industrial product, it also reflects the historical state of technology in its narrative structure, whether it is a silent film with intertitles or a film using high-resolution digital multitrack sound, whether a static camera is turned on the scene or a modern editing technique lends the images an overpowering kinetic energy, etc. Not only the mode of production but also the reception of highly varied formats in film history have altered narrative paradigms that had formerly seemed unchangeable. It has thus long been a rule that the speed and the sequentiality of a film’s projection is mechanically fixed so that the viewer has no possibility of interrupting the “reading” to “leaf” back and forth through the scenes or of studying the composition of a single shot for longer than the actual running time. In the auditoriumspace, the spectator lacks any manifest control over the screen-space. It was with the introduction of video and DVD that the viewer could con-

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trol speed variations, play the film backwards, view it frame by frame and freeze it and (as in DVD and Blu-ray) use the digitalized space of navigation to interact, select menus and “construct” a new film with deleted scenes, an unused score and alternative endings (cf. Distelmeyer 2012). 3.1.3 Narrative Modes in the History of Cinema Silent movies from 1895 onward lacked not only verbal expression but also narrative structures beyond the stringing together of stage effects, arranged tableaux and sensationalist trick scenes. What was then perceived as the only striking narrative device consisted in showing these scenes within a framed space and against the common laws of temporal continuity. But on the whole, these movies were still very much indebted to the 19th-century apparatus in which the process of seeing as a perceptual and motoric element was closely connected with precinematic “spatial and bodily experiences” (Elsaesser 1990: 3). This early “cinema of attractions” (Gunning 1986) gradually made way for “narrativization” (233) from 1907 to about 1913, when films began to move from funfair and vaudeville to the first nickelodeons and Ladenkinos (Paech 1988: 25–27) through the process of structural organization of cinematic signifiers and the “creation of a self-enclosed diegetic universe” (Gunning 1986: 233). The result, initiated by David Wark Griffith in particular, was an “institutional mode of representation,” also known as “classical narration” (Schweinitz 1999: 74), “continuity editing” or “découpage classique.” The filmic discourse was to create a coherence of vision without any jerks in time or space or other dissonant and disruptive elements in the process of viewing. The basic trajectory of the classical Hollywood ideal (also taken over by UFA and other national film industries) involves establishing a cause-and-effect logic, a clear subject-object relation, and a cohesive effect of visual and auditive perception aimed at providing the story with an “organic” meaning, however different the shots that are sliced together might be. A “seamless” and consecutive style serves to hide “all marks of artifice” (Chatman 1990: 154) and to give the narrative the appearance of a natural observing position. The “real” of the cinema is founded at least as much on the real-image quality of its photography as it is on the system of representation that shows analogies to the viewer’s capacity to combine visual impressions with a “story.” The reason for the latter is that by watching films the spectator becomes more and more used to conventions of classical narration and genre-stereotypes.

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Modernist cinema and non-canonical art films, especially after 1945, repudiate the hegemonic story regime of classical Hollywood cinema by laying open the conditions of mediality and artificiality or by employing literary strategies not as an empathetic but as an alienating or decidedly modern factor of storytelling. They disrupt the narrative continuum and convert the principle of succession into one of simultaneity by means of iteration, frequency (Kurosawa’s Rashômon, 1950, repeating the same event from different angles) and dislocation of the traditional modes of temporal and spatial representation (Resnais’ L’année dernière à Marienbad, 1961). In each of these films, there is an everwidening gap between story and discourse. Modern cinema also made possible the flash-forward as the cinematographic equivalent of the prolepsis (Losey’s The Go-Between, 1970); it used jump cuts (Godard’s À bout de souffle, 1960) and non-linear collage, blurred the borders between “objective” diegetic reality and subjective perception (Polanski’s Le locataire, 1976) or reality and dream (Dead of Night, 1945, diverse directors), broke with the narrative convention of character continuity, as when a central protagonist disappears in the course of events (Antonioni’s L’Avventura, 1960) or used ironic forms of interplay of verbal and audiovisual narration (Truffaut’s Jules et Jim, 1962). All of these assaults on traditional narration nevertheless “depend upon narrativity” (or our assumptions about it) and “could not function without it” (Scholes 1985: 396). Even within the context of Hollywood cinema one can find more complex forms of narration, partly, but not exclusively due to influences and directors from Europe, as in the classical period of film noir (Siodmak’s The Killers, 1946; Dassin’s The Naked City, 1948), in the work of Orson Welles (Citizen Kane, 1941; The Touch of Evil, 1958), or in films that are ascribed to New Hollywood in a broader sense (Nichols’ The Graduate, 1967; Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, 1976). Postclassical cinema, responding to growing globalization in its world-wide distribution and reception, enhances the aesthetics of visual and auditory effects by means of digitalization, computerized cutting techniques, and a strategy of immediacy that signals a shift from linear discourse to a renewed interest in spectacular incidents (see chap. 3.5). 3.1.4 Editing as a Narrative Device Editing is one of the decisive cinematographic processes for the narrative organization of a film: it connects montage (e.g. the splitting, combining and reassembling of visual segments) with the mix of sound elements and the choice of strategic points in space (angle, perspective).

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The most prominent examples in the early history of filmic narrativization are as follows: (a) the simple cut from one scene to another, thus eliminating dead time by splitting the actual footage (ellipsis); (b) cross-cutting, which alternates between shots of two spaces, as in pursuit scenes; (c) parallel montage to accentuate similarity and opposition; (d) the shot-reverse-shot between two persons talking to each other; (e) the “cut-in,” which magnifies a significant detail or grotesquely distorts certain objects of everyday life. Continuity editing aims primarily at facilitating orientation during transitions in time and space. One basic rule consists in never letting the camera cross the line of action (180-degree rule), thus respecting geometrical orientation within a given space. Whereas continuity editing presupposes a holistic unity in a world which is temporarily in conflict but finally homogenized, Ėjzenštejn’s collision editing accentuates stark formal and perceptual contrasts to create new meanings or unusual metaphorical links (Grodal 2005: 171). For other directors (e.g. Pudovkin), narration in film concentrates not on events being strung together in chronological sequence but on the construction of powerful situations and significant details presented in an antithetical manner of association. “Internal editing,” as advocated by André Bazin, avoids visible cuts and creates deep focus (depth of field), making foreground, middle ground and background equally sharp and thus establishing continuity in the very same take, as is the case in the work of Orson Welles (e.g. Citizen Kane, 1941). 3.1.5 Time and Space in Cinema To evoke a sense of the “real,” film creates a temporal and spatial continuum whose components can be separated only for heuristic purposes. “[I]n their succession and fusion they [images] permit the appearance of temporally extended events in their total concrete development” (Ingarden [1931] 1973: 324). The temporally organized combination of visual and acoustic signs corresponds to the unmediated rendering of space, albeit on a two-dimensional screen. The realization of a positioned space lies in movement, which imposes a temporal vector upon the spatial dimension (Lothe 2000: 62). Panofsky describes the result as “a speeding up of space” and a “spatialization of time” ([1937] 1993: 22). This also explains the inherent dialectic of film as the medium that appears closest to our perception of the real world, and yet deviating from real-life experience by its manifold means of mediating and establishing a “second world” of fantasy, dream and wish fulfillment. Time can be either stretched out in slow motion or compressed in fast motion;

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different spaces may be fused by double exposure or by a permanent tension between external and internal time sequences. Thus narration in cinema has to deal both with the representational realism of its images and its technical devices in order to integrate or dissociate time and space, image and sound, depending on the artistic and emotional effect that is to be achieved. 3.1.6 Narrative Functions of Sound Fulton emphasizes the role of sound in film: “[It] is one of the most versatile signifiers, since it contributes to field, tenor and mode as a powerful creator of meaning, mood and textuality” (Fulton 2005: 108). It amplifies the diegetic space (thus Bordwell [1985: 119] speaks of “sound perspective”) and emphasizes modulation of the visual impact through creating a sonic décor or sonic space. Language, noises, electronic sounds and music, whether diegetic or (like most musical compositions) non-diegetic, help not only to define the tonality, volume, tempo and texture of successive situations but also to orchestrate and manipulate emotions and heighten the suggestive expressivity of the story. Sound can range from descriptive passages to climactic underlining and counterpointing what is seen. Again, what was once considered as a complete break with narrative rules has become a convention, so that when off-camera sounds are used before the scene they are related to, they serve as a “springboard” between sequences. As Elsaesser and Hagener point out, there is a potential dissociation between body and voice as well as between viewing and hearing which can be used for comic purposes, but which also stands “in the service of narration” (2007: 172–173). A voice may have a specific source in the diegetic space, although separate from the images we see (“voice-off”), or it can be heard beyond the diegetic limits (“voice-over”) (Kuhn 2011: 187–189). Irritating effects can be achieved when the interplay of voice and vision is used in an unconventional way, as when in a long narrative passage in mainstream cinema the words of an (extra- or intradiegetic) voice are not supported by images at all. Thus Chion, for example, speaks of a “specifically cinematic” event “when the screen doesn’t show what the words evoke, and instead the camera remains exclusively with the talking face of the storyteller and the reactions of onscreen listeners” (2009: 399–400, original emphasis). New technologies such as multi-track sound with high digital resolution (e.g. Dolby Surround) negate the directional coherence of screen and sound source, thus leading to tension between the aural and the visual. While the im-

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age can be fixed, sound comes into existence from the moment it is perceived. 3.2 The Narrating Agency in Cinema One of the most controversial issues in film narratology concerns the role of the narrator as an instrument of narrative mediation. This reflects the difficulty of specifying the narrative process in general and, more than any other question, reveals the limits of literary narrativity when applied to film studies. 3.2.1 Film as Sign System With the exception of the character narrator and the cinematic device of the voice-over, the traces of a narrating agency are virtually invisible, so that the term “film narrator” is employed as hardly more than a metaphor. Disagreements over terminology sprung up from the beginnings of film theory. Thus the term “film language,” if not used for a system of signs as was done by the formalists, bore the implication that there must also be a “speaker” of such a language. Modeling cinema after literature in this way, however, runs counter to cinema as an independent art form. For this reason, Ėjxenbaum transferred the structuring of cinematographic meaning to “new conditions of perceptions”: it is the viewer who moves “to the construction of internal speech” ([1926] 1973: 123). The first systematic interest in narratology came from the semiotic turn of film theory starting in the 1960s, notably with Metz’s construct of the grande syntagmatique (1966). In order to overcome the restriction to small semiotic units (e.g. the single shot in cinema), the concept of “code” was used to encompass more extensive syntagmata in film such as sequences and the whole of the narration. In Metz’s phenomenology of narrative, film is “a complex system of successive, encoded signs” (Lothe 2000: 12). Metz’s position was criticized by Heath (1986), who saw in it a neglect of the central role of the viewer in making meaning (Schweinitz 1999: 79). By excluding the subject position of the spectator, a predominantly formalistic approach overlooks the potentially decisive impact of affectivity and subconscious processes. For this reason, psychoanalytic theories concentrated on the similarities that exist between film and dream, hallucination and desire, as important undercurrents of the realist surface. Feminist theories dealt with the gendered gaze that is applied not only in the film itself, but also cast on the film by the viewer, thus creating a conflict between vo-

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yeurism and subjugation to the power of images. Studies of popular culture, finally, examined the functioning of cinematic discourse within a wider cultural communicative process which is conveyed by a host of visual signs. 3.2.2 The Act of Audiovisual Narration Whether one follows the notion of film narrator or not, and whether or not one emphasizes the role of the spectator in the process of making meaning, the act of audiovisual narration is to be described as an interplay of different visual, auditive and language-based sign systems or codes. Not only the moving picture within one shot (i.e. the process of selection, perspective and accentuation by the camera, or cinematography), but also the combination of shots into sequences (through the process of editing) is of crucial importance for the act of audiovisual narration. When cinematic narration is realized through showing, there is no categorical separation between what the camera shows within a shot and what the editing reveals through the combination of various shots. Quite often the difference from one shot to another is the only indication of a change of state. However, aspects of the mise en scène are also part of the act of narration. Camera parameters as well as parameters of the montage mediate the narrative events and the mise en scène. Thus shot composition, lighting and set design can contribute significantly to audiovisual narration. The same holds true for all elements of sound (see chap. 3.1.7). The same change of state (e.g. a collapsing building) can be represented within one shot (hence mediated through the parameters of the camera) or through a combination of two (or more) edited shots (hence mediated through the process of montage). This extends to more complex chains of events. The normal case is a combination of camera and montage supported by other auditive and visual elements of the mise en scène (Lohmeier 1996: 37; Kuhn 2011: 72–74). Coherent actions and events are often, but not always, separated into different shots, as in shot-reverse-shot sequences to represent a conversation or in crosscutting sequences to represent a car chase (see chap. 3.1.5), although there is no necessity to do so. Many events, such as movements of characters within space or even highly eventful incidents like a murder, can be represented within one shot. Complex camera movements can show many connected or episodic actions within one single shot, as in long-lasting sequence shots like the famous opening of Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958), or in forms of “internal montage” (see chap. 3.1.5). Extreme sequence shots can be found in movies that consist of only one or

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very few shots, like Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) or Sokurov’s Russkij kovcheg (2002). In contrast, a conventional feature film usually has more than 300 shots. This explains why any approach that takes the camera as narrator—as in the so called invisible-observer models—is as one-sided as the opposite position that overestimates the role of montage or editing in the act of audiovisual narration. 3.2.3 Film Narration―Film Narrator In the 1980s, the more systematic narrative discourse of the Wisconsin School resorted to a cognitive and constructivist approach, defining the narrative scheme as an optional “redescription of data under epistemological restraint” (Branigan 1992: 112). Its main interest lies in a strictly rational and logical explication of narrative and in mental processes that render perceptual data intelligible. Whereas Chatman’s concept of narration is still anchored in literary theory (Booth, Todorov), seeing the visual concreteness of cinema as its basic mark of distinction from literature, Branigan and Bordwell abandon straightaway the idea of a cinematic narrator or a narrative voice. They hold that the construct of the narrator is wrapped up in the “activity of narration” itself, which is performed on various levels: “To give every film a narrator or implied author is to indulge in an anthropomorphic fiction” (Bordwell 1985: 62). The author as an “essential subject” who is in possession of psychological properties or of a human voice is replaced by the notion of narration understood as a process or an activity in comparison to narrative and which is defined as “the organization of a set of cues for the construction of a story” (62) presupposing an active perceiver of a message but no sender. According to Bordwell and Branigan, cinematographic narratives cannot be understood within a general semiotic system of narrative but only in terms of historically variant narrative structures that are perceived in the act of viewing. It follows from this that certain prerequisites of filmic narration are not “natural” or taken from literary models, but have been conventionalized: such is the case when a character’s walk from A to B is shortened to the points of departure and arrival with a sharp cut in between, or when a flashback bridges vast leaps of time, or when non-diegetic music forms no part of the story proper even though it may reflect the inner state of a character or establish a certain mood. The same holds true for the almost imperceptibly varying amount of information that is shared by characters and audience alike. The effacement of the narrator and the idea that film seems to “narrate itself” stand in contrast to the impression that all visual and audi-

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tive modes impart an authorial presence or an “enunciator,” however impersonal. Many different terms and theoretical constructs have been introduced to overcome the logical impasse of having a narration without a narrator in the narrow sense (cf. Griem & Voigts-Virchow 2002: 162; Steinke 2007: 64): “camera,” “camera eye,” “invisible observer” (cf. Bordwell 1985: 9–11); “intrinsic narrator” (Black 1986); “ultimate narratorial agency” or “supra-narrator” (Tomasulo 1986: 46); “cinematic narrator” (Chatman 1990: 124–126); “‘camera’” in a metaphoric sense (Schlickers 1997); “film narrator” (Lothe 2000: 27–29); “meganarrator” (Gaudreault 2009: 81–83); “audiovisual/visual narrative instance” (Kuhn 2011: 83–85), etc. Kuhn (ibid.) suggests, as a heuristic step in the process of analyzing the narrative structure of feature films, differentiating between “(audio)visual narrative instances” and “verbal narrative instances,” preceding a description of their interplay in the process of audiovisual narration. What is common to most definitions is the existence of some overall control of visual and sonic registers where the camera functions as an intermediator of visual and acoustic information. The invisible observer theory even maintains that it is the camera that narrates (the French director Alexandre Astruc coined the famous phrase “caméra stylo”). This view, however, ignores the impact of editing, non-diegetic sound and aspects of the mise en scène to the act of audiovisual narration (cf. chap. 3.2.2). The few experimental films that construct events “through the eyes” of the main character (e.g. Montgomery’s The Lady in the Lake, 1947), thus creating an unmediated presence by means of internal ocularization (cf. chap. 3.3.1), make the viewer painfully aware of the impersonal and subjectless apparatus of the camera which alienates them from the character rather than drawing them into his ways of seeing and feeling. In recent years there have been more convincing examples for “point-of-view-camera films” that ground the limitations of the apparatus in a specific thematic constellation, as when the subjective camera is to represent the subjective perception of a locked-in syndrome patient (Schnabel’s Le scaphandre et le papillon, 2007) or the perception of a disembodied consciousness (Sokurov’s Russkij kovcheg, 2002) (see Kuhn 2011: 177–179). 3.2.4 Unreliability of Film Narration Though there are filmic devices to give a scene the appearance of unreliability or deception, the “visual narrator” in film cannot tell a downright lie that is visualized at the very same moment unless the veracity of the photographic image is put into question (cf. the fabricated, hence

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“untrue” flashback in Stage Fright, 1950, which director Alfred Hitchcock considered a failure). However, there can be various types of fictional contracts with the audience that transcend the postulate of narrative verisimilitude, allowing even a dead person to tell his story as a “character narrator” (Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, 1950; Mendes’ American Beauty, 1999), or when a film is built around a puzzle, putting into question any form of reliable narration (a summary of “unreliable situations” in cinema is given in Liptay & Wolf eds. 2005, passim; Helbig ed. 2006, passim; Laass 2008, passim; Shen → Unreliability). Recent cinema has seen a variety of forms that can be subsumed under the term of unreliability in a broad sense, e.g. films that make use of the tension between verbal and visual narration, between what Genette calls internal and zero focalization or between different diegetic levels in order to achieve different effects of unreliability. Very often such films get along without misreporting in terms of “lying pictures” (i.e. pictures that provide erroneous information about the storyworld) by using forms of irritating, ambivalent or misleading editing or different types of underreporting. However, nowadays one can also find forms of unreliable narration that contain “lying pictures” such as those used by Hitchcock in Stage Fright but that are embedded in more complex narrative structures, such as the multi-level flashback structure of The Usual Suspects that creates a tension between what Kuhn (2011) calls intradiegetic, homodiegetic verbal and extradiegetic, heterodiegetic visual narration. 3.3 Point of View Point of view (POV) clearly becomes the prime starting point for narratology when applied to film. Although it has been defined as “a concrete perceptual fact linked to the camera position” (Grodal 2005: 168), its actual functions in narrative can be far more flexible and multifarious than this definition suggests. As Branigan states, point of view can best be understood as organizing meaning through a combination of various levels of narration which are defined by a “dialectical site of seeing and seen” or, more specifically, the “mediator and the object of our gaze” (1984: 47). Branigan offers a model of seven “levels of narration” which allows for constant oscillation between these levels, from extra-/heterodiegetic and omniscient narration to adapting the highly subjective perception of a character. Fulton speaks of a “multiple focalisation” that is “realized by different camera angles that position us to see the action from a number of different viewpoints” (2005: 114). Yet there are many more focusing strategies which select and control our

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perception as well as our emotional involvement such as deep-focus, the length and scale of a shot, specific lighting, etc. The prerequisite for any POV analysis, however, is the recognition that everything in cinema consists of “looks”: the viewer looks at characters who look at each other; or s/he looks at them, adopting their perspective of the diegetic world, while the camera frames a special field of seeing; or the viewer is privileged to look at something out of the line of vision of any of the characters. Thus the very question “Who sees?” involves a categorization of different forms of POV that organize and orient the narrative from a visual and spatial standpoint and that also include cognitive processes based on a number of presuppositions about a proper perspective, not to speak of auditory information. Therefore, in almost every narratological model of focalization and narrative perspective, the camera perspective (in a technical sense) is not understood as the only factor for determining focalization and/or narrative perspective (focalization/narrative perspective ≠ camera perspective). To analyze focalization, one has at least to take into account the complex interplay between camera parameters, montage and auditive elements. The question of focalization in film becomes even more sophisticated in the case of voice-over narration, as there is the possibility of different forms of interaction and/or tension between verbal and audiovisual narration. 3.3.1 Focalization and Ocularization POV has been understood as an optical paradigm or, quite literally, as visual point (or “eyepoint”): it is “ocularization” that is believed to determine both the position of the camera and the “look” of a character. Schlickers speaks in this respect of a “double perspectivation” (2009). In many cases it seems almost impossible to come to a clear conclusion whether the camera imitates the eyepoint of a character (i.e. the literal viewpoint as realized in “eye-line matches”) or whether it observes “from outside” in the sense of narrative mediation. So we may see something “with the eyes” of a character whose back is visibly turned to us (“over-shoulder shot”) or of a character who tries to grasp a tangible object that dissolves in the air like a hallucination, as is the case in Lang’s Die Nibelungen (1924) when the Nibelung treasure appears to Siegfried on a rock. Jost suggests distinguishing between internal focalization and zero focalization ([1987] 1989: 157) whereas Bal differentiates between focalization on “perceptible” objects and focalization on “imperceptible” objects ([1985] 1997: 153). Both alternatives, however, neglect the possibility of the blurring of the two types of focalization. Moreover, it makes a difference whether we are to gain an impression

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of what a character feels and thinks or whether the film seeks to present “objective” correlatives of the mental and emotional dispositions of a protagonist. The possible mingling of “real” and mental aspects makes it difficult to differentiate. Focalization can shift all around its diegetic world (Fulton 2005: 111) without any noticeable breaks in the narration or any unconventional narrative techniques. Though narratology possesses tools for analyzing these shifts, the categories used for film analysis seem to be far more complicated than those employed for literary narration. Kuhn (2011) developed a model for fine-grained analysis of focalization, ocularization and auricularization on the macro- and micro-levels. He understands focalization in terms of knowledge, i.e. the relation of knowledge between (audiovisual and verbal) narrative instance and character, and separates it from questions regarding perception in a narrower sense. In the context of the visual aspects of perception (seeing), he uses the term ocularization, and for the auditory aspects (hearing), the term auricularization. Based on the models by Jost ([1987] 1989) and Schlickers (1997), but with more differentiated categories, Kuhn (2011: 122–124) defines each internal, external and zero focalization, ocularization and auricularization, describes the main types that can be found in feature films and relates different forms of internal ocularization to Branigans model of point of view structures (Branigan 1984: 103ff.; Kuhn 2011: 140–142). To reveal the capacities to represent subjectivity and mental processes in film, i.e. the possibility of character introspection in film, Kuhn identifies several forms of “mindscreen” and proposes categories such as mental metadiegesis, mental projection, mental overlay and mental metalepsis as heuristic tools (149–151). 3.4 The Interplay between Audiovisual and Verbal Narration Films and audiovisual artifacts such as Fassbinder’s epilogue to Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) are characterized by a complex interplay of different audiovisual and verbal narratives or, in terms of a communication model, by an interplay of different narrative instances or agents. Next to visual narration, various verbal narratives are employed on the extradiegetic level (in the form of various voice-overs, intertitles, and text captions). Every extradiegetic verbal narrative instance can be either heterodiegetic or homodiegetic in its relation to the diegetic world. Each of them can focalize differently and be in opposition to the audiovisual focalization. There is, in general, no categorical relation of dominance between visual and verbal narration in film, no primacy of the image. The verbal

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narrative is not automatically superior to the visual narrative or vice versa. A bulk of different relations is possible: the reliable extraheterodiegetic visual narrative instance can, for example, uncover the unreliable extra-homodiegetic verbal narrative instances (Mankiewicz’s All about Eve, 1950). However, the visual narrative instance might also be unreliable (Fincher’s Fight Club, 1999), or its reliability can be called into question with the help of verbal narrative instances (Kurosawa’s Rashômon, 1950). An extradiegetic verbal narrative instance possibly dominates the visual narrative instance and reduces it to an illustrating function (the opening of Anderson’s Magnolia, 1999); however, it can also just serve to structure what the visual narrative instance shows, order it in time and space or summarize the back story (expository voice-overs, intertitles indicating the action’s setting in silent movies). The relation can be alternating and ironical, as in Truffaut’s Jules et Jim (1962), or ambivalent, as in Resnais’ L’année dernière à Marienbad (1961). In silent movies this interplay is also encapsulated in a complex way because of different methods of speech representation, such as reports by a narrator or quoted direct speech in intertitles. To illustrate the interplay of verbal narration and visual images in film, Kozloff (1988: 103) suggests “a continuous graph” comprising three areas: “disparate,” “complementary,” “overlapping.” She does not introduce either binary or clearly delimited categories, speaks rather of the “degree of correspondence between narration and images”—a reasonable proposal because distinct boundaries cannot be drawn. Kuhn (2009: 265–266; 2011: 98–100) has suggested some new and useful modifications to Kozloff’s categories so as to develop a model for describing the dynamic relations between visual and verbal narrative instances as contradictory, disparate, complementary, meshing, polarizing, illustrating or paraphrasing. 3.5 Complex Forms of Narration in Contemporary Feature Films Since the mid-1990s an increasing number of popular mainstream films have made use of several special devices of audiovisual narration in order to achieve dense and complex narratives and/or create suspense through narrative discourse rather than through their storylines: the conventions of classical filmic narration are subverted and/or become the subject of a self- and media-reflexive game through the use of multiple narrative levels (Amenábar’s Abre los ojos, 1997; Jonze’s Adaptation, 2002), different forms of narrative unreliability (Singer’s The Usual Suspects, 1995), sudden final twists (Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, 1999), creative use of genre conventions (Tarantino’s Pulp Fic-

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tion, 1994); and/or intertwined film-in-film and narrative-in-narrative structures (Almodóvar’s La mala educación, 2004), etc. Encapsulated and fast-changing processes of focalization are used to build puzzle and mystery structures (Marcks’ 11:14, 2003) or to deceive the recipient (Colombani’s À la folie … pas du tout, 2002). A “real” diegetic character turns out to be a mental metalepsis at the end of the film (Fincher’s Fight Club, 1999; Howard’s A Beautiful Mind, 2001); two diegetic levels (realty vs. dream) are being reappraised during the film (Amenábar’s Los otros, 2001); the circumstances of production are simulated within the film in a self-reflexive manner (Kraume’s Keine Lieder über Liebe, 2005). When discussing these forms of narration in feature films of the 1990s and 2000s, one should not forget that movies with self-reflexive, paradoxical and ambivalent narrative structures are not entirely new (cf. § 3.1.3). However, the frequency with which many of these narrative experiments are found in popular feature films nowadays—and also increasingly in popular TV series (Lost, Breaking Bad)—cannot be denied (Helbig 2005: 144). 3.6 Toward a Historical Film Narratology What is pointed out in the previous section also holds true for many narrative phenomena that can be regarded as trends in recent cinema and TV. For instance, we can find the phenomenon of metalepsis in films like McTiernan’s Last Action Hero (1993), where a character of the diegetic storyworld happens to get into a metadiegetic action film and returns back to diegetic reality accompanied by the action hero of this film-within-a-film, or in Gary Ross’s Pleasantville (1998), where characters of a contemporary diegetic world get lost in a metadiegetic black-and-white TV series of the 1950s. These kinds of structures have forerunners in film history: as early as 1924, in Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr., the main character, a film projectionist, “dreams himself into” the movie he projects. In Allen’s classic The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), a metadiegetic character jumps out of the screen to live within the diegetic world (Pier → Metalepsis). The same applies to phenomena of mental representations (“mindscreen,” mental projections, mental metadiegeses, etc.). Creative forms of representations of subjectivity that nowadays appear in the micro-structure of movies like Jeunet’s Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001) or in the macro-structure of movies like Nolan’s Inception (2010) can be compared with examples throughout film history: in Murnau’s classic Der letzte Mann (1924) one can trace specific forms of representing dreams and hallucinations

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due to heavy use of alcohol; memory and dream sequences are as typical of Bergman’s Smultronstället (1957) as hallucinatory sequences of Liebeneiner’s Liebe 47 (1949) or ambivalent delusions of Polanski’s Le locataire (1976). Given these and (many) other examples, hypotheses on narrative “trends” in recent cinema and TV should be modified with regard to historical development. A historical film narratology will seek to identify these narrative forms and devices throughout the history of the film on the basis of existing systematizations and classifications and describe their geneses. The international influence of classical Hollywood cinema (Bordwell et al. 1985) was one of the main reasons that for quite a long time of film history, narrative experiments that are regarded as innovative even today could hardly be found in US-American and European mainstream cinema. On the one hand, many prototypes of experimental and complex narration, as used in recent feature films, also appear in earlier periods of film history beyond the Hollywood cinema (even quite early in the history of the feature film). On the other hand, however, there are numerous new possibilities for achieving narrative effects with the help of film and computer technology, notably the creation of visual effects using digital devices. Digital effects are more than just a surprising “gimmick” when being functionalized for different aspects of narration (cf. Kuhn 2012a). This is not the only reason why more innovative narrative forms have come to be regarded as verisimilar; another reason is the increasing speed and flexibility of recent filmic narration, which is currently a major trend. Due to developments in media convergence, transmedia storytelling, digital cinema and so-called quality or complex TV, the narrative capacities of film and audiovisual media are by no means exhausted.

4 Topics for Further Investigation (a) Film portrays a story unfolding in time according to the possibilities and constraints of the medium. Various levels of structuring, perception and cognition, many of them rooted in convention, are related to a logic of combination which determines the basic qualities of filmic narration. This paves the way for two approaches which should be tried in fruitful competition. Either the complexity of paradigms can be reduced to a model of abstraction, which makes it possible to compare narrative processes in literature, film, and other media; or there must be an attempt to analyzethe multiple forms of interplay that stem from the mediality of filmic narration, the double vantage points of seeing and being seen,

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sight and sound, spatial and temporal elements, moving images and movement within the images. (b) If narrative is a fundamental issue in filmic signification, its logic must be re-examined with new ways of storytelling in cinema that play games or lead the viewer into a maze of ontological uncertainties. Narrativity, spectator engagement and inventive techniques of presentation combine to produce a “filmic discourse” which a synchronic formal analysis of narrative strategies can grasp only up to a certain point. A diachronic approach should discuss current forms of filmic narrative against the background of the historical developments of film narration, inseparably interwoven with the achievements and capacities of the medium (cf. chap. 3.6). (c) Film is not bound to cinema, at least since TV became popular enough to reach a mass audience. Nowadays one finds audiovisual forms of narration in many different kinds of distribution (videotape, DVD, online-stream, Blu-ray; cf. chap. 3.1.2) embedded into different media environments (homepages, YouTube and other video platforms, Facebook, etc.). New, genuine online-based forms of audiovisual narration are being developed such as specific YouTube genres or web series (see Kuhn 2012b). Accompanying the proliferation of user-generated content, numerous creative audiovisual micro-narratives have been published (e.g. mash up clips on video platforms that narrate in a dense and highly intermedial way). Computer games increasingly make use of audiovisual sequences (so called cutscenes as in Heavy Rain). Not least, filmic forms are essential elements of huge transmedial storyworlds in which the central storylines are not developed within one but across multiple media (this is, for example, the case of the web series Lost: Missing Pieces that complements the transmedial storyworld of the TV series Lost, surrounded by a vast storytelling universe encompassing different media).

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Bal, Mieke ([1985] 1997). Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Black, David A. (1986). “Genette and Film: Narrative Level in the Fiction Cinema.” Wide Angle 8.3–4, 19–26.

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Bordwell, David (1985). Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: U of Wisconsin P. – et al. (1985). The Classical Hollywood Cinema. Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia UP. Branigan, Edward R. (1984). Point of View in the Cinema. A Theory of Narration and Subjectivity in Classical Film. Berlin: Mouton. – (1992). Narrative Comprehension and Film. London: Routledge. Brütsch, Matthias (2011). Traumbühne Kino. Der Traum als filmtheoretische Metapher und narratives Model. Marburg: Schüren. Chatman, Seymour (1990). Coming to Terms. The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Chion, Michel (2009). Film, a Sound Art. New York: Columbia UP. Cohen, Keith (1979). Film and Fiction: The Dynamics of Exchange. New Haven: Yale UP. Deleyto, Celestino (1996). “Focalisation in Film Narrative.” S. Onega & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Narratology. London: Longman, 217–233. Distelmeyer, Jan (2012). Das flexible Kino: Ästhetik und Dispositiv der DVD & Bluray. Berlin: Bertz + Fischer. Ėjxenbaum, Boris (Eikhenbaum) ([1926] 1973). “Literature and Cinema.” St. Bann & J. Bowlt (eds.). Russian Formalism: A Collection of Articles and Texts in Translation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 122–127. Elsaesser, Thomas (1990). “Film Form: Introduction.” Th. Elsaesser (ed.). Early Cinema: Space―Frame―Narrative. London: BFI, 11–30. – & Malte Hagener (2007). Filmtheorie zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. Fulton, Helen (2005). “Film Narrative and Visual Cohesion.” H. Fulton et al. (eds.). Narrative and Media. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 108–122. Gaudreault, André (2009). From Plato to Lumière: Narration and Monstration in Literature and Cinema. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Gaut, Berys (1997). “Film Authorship and Collaboration.” R. Allen & M. Smith (eds.). Film Theory and Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon P, 149–172. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Griem, Julika & Eckhart Voigts-Virchow (2002). “Filmnarratologie: Grundlagen, Tendenzen und Beispielanalysen.” V. Nünning & A. Nünning (eds.). Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär. Trier: WVT, 155–183. Grodal, Torben (2005). “Film Narrative.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 168–172. Gunning, Tom (1986). “The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator, and the Avant-Garde.” Ph. Rosen (ed.). Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. A Film Theory Reader. New York: Columbia UP, 229–235. Heath, Stephen (1986). “Narrative Space.” Ph. Rosen (ed.). Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. A Film Theory Reader. New York: Columbia UP, 379–420. Helbig, Jörg, ed. (2006). “Camera doesn’t lie”: Spielarten erzählerischer Unzuverlässigkeit im Film. Trier: WVT. Ingarden, Roman ([1931] 1973). The Literary Work of Art. Evanston: Nortwestern UP.

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Jost, François ([1987] 1989). L’œil-caméra. Entre film et roman. Lyon: PU de Lyon. Kozloff, Sarah (1988). Invisible Storytellers. Voice-over Narration in American Fiction Film. Berkeley: U of California P. Kuhn, Markus (2009). “Film Narratology: Who Tells? Who Shows? Who Focalizes? Narrative Mediation in Self-Reflexive Fiction Films.” P. Hühn et al. (eds.). Point of View, Perspective, and Focalization: Modeling Mediacy in Narrative. Berlin: de Gruyter, 259–278. – (2011). Filmnarratologie. Ein erzähltheoretisches Analysemodell. Berlin: de Gruyter [Paperback: Berlin: de Gruyter 2013]. – (2012a). “Digitales Erzählen? Zur Funktionalisierung digitaler Effekte im Erzählkino.” H. Segeberg (ed.). Film im Zeitalter Neuer Medien II: Digitalität und Kino. München/Paderborn: Fink, 283–321. – (2012b). “Zwischen Kunst, Kommerz und Lokalkolorit: Der Einfluss der Medienumgebung auf die narrative Struktur von Webserien und Ansätze zu einer Klassifizierung.” A. Nünning et al. (eds.). Narrative Genres im Internet. Theoretische Bezugsrahmen, Mediengattungstypologie und Funktionen. Trier: WVT, 51–92. Laass, Eva (2008). Broken Taboos, Subjective Truths. Forms and Functions of Unreliable Narration in Contemporary American Cinema. A Contribution to Film Narratology. Trier: WVT. Liptay, Fabienne & Yvonne Wolf, eds. (2005). Was stimmt denn jetzt? Unzuverlässiges Erzählen in Literatur und Film. München: edition text + kritik. Lohmeier, Anke-Marie (1996). Hermeneutische Theorie des Films. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Lothe, Jakob (2000). Narrative in Fiction and Film. Oxford: Oxford UP. Metz, Christian (1966). “La grande syntagmatique du film narratif.” Communications 8, 120–124. Paech, Joachim (1988). Literatur und Film. Stuttgart: Metzler. Panofsky, Erwin ([1937] 1993). Die ideologischen Vorläufer des Rolls-Royce-Kühlers & Stil und Medium im Film. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus. Schlickers, Sabine (1997). Verfilmtes Erzählen: Narratologisch-komparative Untersuchung zu ‘El beso de la mujer araña’ (Manuel Puig/Héctor Babenco) und ‘Crónica de una muerte anunciada’ (Gabriel Garcia Márquez/Fraqncesco Rosi). Frankfurt a. M.: Vervuert. – (2009). “Focalization, Ocularization and Auricularization in Film and Literature.” P. Hühn et al. (eds.). Point of View, Perspective, and Focalization: Modeling Mediacy in Narrative. Berlin: de Gruyter, 243–258. Scholes, Robert (1985). “Narration and Narrativity in Film.” G. Mast et al. (eds.). Film Theory and Criticism. New York: Oxford UP, 390–403. Schweinitz, Jörg (1999). “Zur Erzählforschung in der Filmwissenschaft.” E. Lämmert (ed.). Die erzählerische Dimension: eine Gemeinsamkeit der Künste. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 73–87. Sellors, Paul C. (2007). “Collective Authorship in Film.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65.3, 263–271. Steinke, Anthrin (2007). Aspekte postmodernen Erzählens im amerikanischen Film der Gegenwart. Trier: WVT.

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Tomasulo, Frank P. (1986). “Narrate and Describe? Point of View and Narrative Voice in Citizen Kane’s Thatcher Sequence.” Wild Angle 8.3/4, 45–52.

5.2 Further Reading Bach, Manuela (1999). “Dead Men―Dead Narrators: Überlegungen zu Erzählern und Subjektivität im Film.” W. Grünzweig & A. Solbach (eds.). Grenzüberschreitungen: Narratologie im Kontext / Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Context. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 231–246. Burgoyne, Robert (1990). “The Cinematic Narrator: The Logic and Pragmatics of Impersonal Narration.” Journal of Film and Video 42, 3–16. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Cordes, Stefan (1997). Filmerzählung und Filmerlebnis: Zur rezeptionsorientierten Analyse narrativer Konstruktionsformen im Spielfilm. Münster: Lit Verlag. Fleishman, Avrom (1992). Narrated Films. Storytelling Situations in Cinema History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Hurst, Matthias (1996). Erzählsituationen in Literatur und Film. Ein Modell zur vergleichenden Analyse von literarischen Texten und filmischen Adaptionen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. – (2001). “Mittelbarkeit, Perspektive, Subjektivität: Über das narrative Potential des Spielfilms.” J. Helbig (ed.). “Camera doesn’t lie”: Spielarten erzählerischer Unzuverlässigkeit im Film. Trier: WVT, 233–253. Metz, Christian ([1968] 1974). Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. New York: Oxford UP. Ryan, Marie Laure (2005). “On the Theoretical Foundations of Transmedial Narratology.” J. Ch. Meister (ed.). Narratology beyond Literary Criticism. Mediality, Disciplinarity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1–23. Tolton, C. D. E. (1984). “Narration in Film and Prose Fiction: A Mise au point.” University of Toronto Quarterly 53, 264–282. Wilson, George M. ([1988] 1992). Narration in Light. Studies in Cinematic Point of View. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.

Narration in Medicine Rishi Goyal

1 Definition Narration in medicine is concerned with the function and analysis of the multiple narratives produced in the context of clinical care and the healing of illness. The study of medicine and narrative can be described along three general lines: narration in the medical case history as an epistemological basis for medical cognition and clinical care; formal analysis of patient narratives of illness; research on the uses of narrative as a clinical treatment or model for medical care.

2 Explication The medical case history (the physician’s account of a patient’s disease) and the illness narrative (usually a patient’s first-person account of his or her illness experience) are the two forms of discourse most relevant to the study of medicine and narration. The medical case history inscribes a patient’s story of illness within a framework of pathophysiologic processes, contextualizes current symptoms in a broader health history, interprets data from the physical exam and laboratory studies, and narrates a diagnostic process. This case history represents the process of clinical reasoning as a narrative of discovery and justifies a particular prognosis and treatment strategy. Specific elements of the case history suggest that narrative can be seen as central to the ways that physicians think about disease, make diagnoses and offer treatments that take into account patients’ expectations and individual needs. Illness narratives and their study have become more prominent in recent years. Illness constitutes a disruption, sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent, in an ongoing life. Illness narratives most often represent this disruption as a threat to the integrity of the self and identity. They are usually written by patients and sometimes by family members or even physicians, but unlike medical case histories, they are

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generally concerned with the experience of suffering as opposed to the biomedical concept of disease. Illness narratives attempt to convey an intimate knowledge of suffering, to make sense of illness in the context of a larger life history, to offer integration of an identity, especially in the case of chronic illnesses, and to connect the sufferer with others who have the same or similar illness. Besides the analysis of illness narratives and medical case histories, the study of medicine and narration has led to direct clinical interventions. Narrative medicine suggests that the therapeutic relationship between doctor and patient may be improved by urging a form of the encounter that is more narratively engaged and competent. Through a series of procedures or movements (attention, representation and affiliation), a physician trained in narrative competency will deliver care that is more effective and humane. And the very act of writing or telling a story can be healing in certain cases. While this has a long tradition in psychoanalysis, recent research suggests that this work may have broader applications in somatic illnesses such as ameliorating the effects of chronic pain (Brown et al. 2010) or in providing a continuous narrative of the self after brain trauma (Morris 2004).

3 Dimensions of Narration in Medicine 3.1 Narration and the Medical Case History The standard medical case history, or anamnesis (chief complaint, history of present illness, past medical history, past surgical history, allergies, family history, social history, review of symptoms, physical exam, assessment and plan), has had a relatively stable form for at least a century (Klemperer [1898] 2010). The written case history typically follows a medical interview, which can take place in an outpatient clinic, a physician’s office, an emergency room or a hospital bed. The patient recounts what led him or her to seek medical attention (the ‘chief complaint’), narrating the sequence of events and experiences that constitute his or her illness (some histories, as in the case of a comatose or non-communicative patient, will be heteroanamnestic, i.e. narrated by a person other than the patient). The first part of this ‘history’ is the most overtly narrative and can be elicited through questioning, both openended (e.g., “What is wrong?”) and close-ended (e.g., “How long has it been hurting?”). Following the history of the present illness, the physician asks a series of questions aimed at understanding the patient’s global health history (past medical history, past surgical history, aller-

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gies, etc.). The medical interview ends with the physical exam, during which the physician examines the patient, laying particular emphasis on specific systems that correlate with symptoms. The physician then records the encounter, transforming the patient’s story of illness and physical examination into a medical case history. In formulating an assessment, diagnosis and treatment strategy, the physician ideally engages in two complementary but distinct modes of thought, as described by Bruner (1986): the paradigmatic or logicoscientific, and the narrative. The paradigmatic is the mode of science and deals in generalities, principles, hypothesis testing, and it ultimately rests on the empirical verifiability of its concepts. Physicians clearly rely on non-narrative data like vital signs and laboratory values as well as on pathophysiologic principles to support a diagnosis and treatment plan that leads to a positive outcome in the world of the patient. But they also engage in Bruner’s narrative mode, which deals in unique human intentions, contingencies and vicissitudes, constructing a believable as well as a verifiable account. The physician’s diagnosis depends heavily on the story he or she hears from the patient, since it relates to a temporal structure and a change of state (usually from health to sickness). A ‘good‘ medical story (one that makes causal connections clear, includes relevant information and interests the listener) makes diagnosis easier by eliciting the physician’s empathy: recent research suggests that clinical empathy may actually be an important determinant of diagnostic accuracy (Halpern 2012). The patient’s story must also captivate the physician’s curiosity (curiosity, not generally considered a crucial attribute of the physician, is one of Sternberg’s three ‘master forces’ of narrative [1978] and may be clinically relevant [Fitzgerald 1999]). An appropriate and acceptable treatment plan will often have to take account of a patient’s life experiences and history, the nature of his or her individual suffering and the ways that individuals imbue their illness with meaning. Drawing on empirical data, rhetorical argumentation and narrative elements, the physician considers biomedical principles and compares the case at hand to a store of prior cases in order to reach a diagnosis and plan, a process described by Sebeok as a “[g]estalt-yielding composite of reported (subjective) symptoms and observed (objective) signs” (1991). In order to make sense of signs and symptoms, the case history must incorporate objective material data and descriptions while relying considerably on the patient’s unique narrative of illness. It is a means of communication (most often with other physicians and healthcare workers), an anamnestic reconstruction of the patient’s experience of illness in terms of a biomedical model of disease, a cognitive tool for the inter-

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pretation of symptoms and signs, and a hypothesis-generating formulation of diagnosis, prognosis and therapy that suggests certain futuredirected actions. 3.1.1 Perspective, Voice, and the Medical Interview Perspective describes the narrator’s position in relation to the narrative (to what he narrates, the content, etc.) as it is told; it is the way the representation is influenced by the narrator’s position, assumptions and interests. Theoretical writing on perspective in narration has underscored the complexity of the term, with an emphasis on questions of ‘voice’ (first-person versus third-person) and knowledge (omniscience versus camera mode), although more recent work has also been concerned with ideology and the narrators’ social and psychological positioning (Niederhoff → Perspective – Point of View). In the medical case history, the perspective or point of view adopted is most thoroughly that of the physician or scientist while the object viewed is the patient or the disease. In addition to this spatial or topographic fact of distance, this situation also implies a figurative distance based on interpretation and evaluation. In his analysis of the medical interview, sociolinguist Mishler (1984) offers a critique of biomedicine in terms of a limited definition of perspective, what he distinguishes as the ‘voice of medicine’ and the ‘voice of the lifeworld’. For Mishler, ‘voice’ is both a literal and a figurative term. Literally, ‘voices’ refer to the voices of patients and physicians that Mishler transcribes from recorded medical interviews. More figuratively, voices refer both to a perspective and to a normative order. Mishler does not, however, distinguish between ‘voice’ and ‘perspective’, but treats them as interchangeable, regarding perspective as ideological position. Borrowing from Silverman and Torode (1980), Mishler defines voice as a “particular assumption about the relationship between appearance, reality and language, or more generally, a ‘voice’ represents a specific normative order” (63). In Mishler’s terms, the ‘voice of medicine’ represents the perspective of a physician as “applied bioscientist” with a technical bioscience orientation (10), while the ‘voice of the lifeworld’ is defined as “the patient’s contextually-grounded experiences of events and problems in her life […] expressed from the perspective of a ‘natural attitude’” (104). Analyzing a corpus of medical interviews, Mishler argues that the selection, strategic placement, form and order of questions reinforce the physician’s control and the dominance of the ‘voice of medicine’ over the ‘voice of the lifeworld.’ However,

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these are matters more of argumentation and rhetoric than they are of voice. Perspective in the medical case history is more than just a question of ideology and should be pursued in future research. While the case history, especially the history of present illness which recounts the patient’s story, is written in the third person, the ‘chief complaint’ is often written in the patient’s own words, suggesting a variable point of view. This is further complicated by the reality that the medical case history is often one document among many in a medical chart. The plurality of voices in the form of consults, case histories, social work notes, nursing assessments, and even occasionally the patient’s words represents the diversity of “social speech types” (Baxtin [1934/35] 1981: 262) and may reflect the unique concerns and competencies of distinct professional groups (Poirier & Brauner 1990). 3.1.2 Story and Discourse Most theories of narrative discriminate between ‘story’, a sequence of actions or events independent of their discursive presentation, and ‘discourse’, the particular narrative representation of these events (Genette [1972] 1980). This distinction appears crucial to an understanding of the practice of medicine in that the purpose of the case history is to reconstruct a temporal sequence of events from a patient’s narrative. However, both the patient’s narrative account elicited through the medical interview and the medical case history are narrated discourse. Both accounts already order, select, and present events in narration. The distinction between story and discourse allows the case history to be posited as a provisional form. In the case of a young woman presenting either to a clinic or to an emergency room (the place or context will influence the kind of narratives developed) with right flank and upper abdominal pain, it can be assumed that there is a true medical condition that causes her symptoms and that should be treated. But whether or not the physician arrives at the most effective treatment will be determined by which story elements he highlights (e.g., “the pain started after I ate lunch today”) and which he intentionally chooses to under-emphasize (e.g., “I have been urinating more frequently for the last two weeks”). While the diagnostic evaluation suggested by the medical case history is predicated on the assumption that prior events have occurred, it is also itself deterministic of those events. This may be seen as a case of what Culler calls the “double logic” of narrative: on the one hand, the priority of events determines their signification, while on the other it is

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structures of signification that determine events (1981: 178). The case history attempts to reconstruct an original sequence of events that will lead to a diagnosis, but that diagnosis is determined by the specific narrative case history. The case history is a teleological form that attempts to point to a particular diagnosis or diagnostic and treatment strategy. It hopes to make the particular end chosen seem inevitable. Different narratives will be constructed by dilating certain events, deleting others and suggesting specific causal chronologies. Whether the young woman with abdominal pain has cholecystitis or pyelonephritis will not be determined by the presentation of the case history, but the particular case history will determine the specific diagnostic evaluation. 3.1.3 Sequence and Causality Hunter also distinguishes between “events and the order of their telling” in medical narration, but she uses the terms ‘story’ and ‘plot’ to refer respectively to the patient’s subjective account of symptoms and the medical case history (1991: 61–62). While she acknowledges the constructedness of the patient’s account (patients often suggest circumstantial etiologies and offer interpretations of their symptoms), she is more interested in the ways that physicians reorder and reconstruct the patient’s story of illness to plot a medical narrative of causality, discovery and treatment for a specifically medical audience. From the patient’s story of illness, the physician reorders details to construct a second narrative of causality. The case history is not merely a vehicle for the truth-out-there, but a formal and generic structure that that makes clinical reasoning possible: the physician must interpret signs and symptoms and fit them into the patient’s account of illness so as to form a coherent plot. The medical case history, unlike a conventional biography, does not begin at the beginning, but with the patient’s request for medical care. It then pursues a retrospective account of the illness until it is conterminous with the extended present. The life events in the patient’s story and the medical case history are experienced as differing chronologies. The patient’s presentation for medical care occurs in the midst of an ongoing life and is a central event in a chronological sequence beginning with the onset of an illness and preceding through diagnosis and treatment. In the medical plot, the initial presentation subordinates both past and future, while represented time is the “plotted time of medical discovery” (1991: 65). The medical case history is then a narrative both of the medical detection process and the patient’s story of illness.

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Hunter compares the work of the physician with that of Sherlock Holmes who also begins at the end, with a crime or a puzzle, and must work backwards to construct a parsimonious narrative embodiment of causality. Like a detective story, the plot is at once a revelation and a narrative of that revelation in a causal sequence. One of the tasks of the physician is to differentiate between what Barthes called the confusion between consecutiveness and consequence or the logical fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc (Barthes [1966] 1975: 248; cf. Pier 2008: 109– 140). The physician distinguishes between ‘kernels’ and ‘satellites’ (Chatman 1978: 53–56), i.e. between elements that are critical to a particular plot and those that are not, and rearranges the patient’s story to provide a narrative logic of causality that fits other such stories and pathophysiologic principles. Unlike fictional plots, however, the physician’s plot of a particular illness story must result in diagnosis, therapy and resolution of suffering—processes facilitated and enabled by the presentation of illness in narrative. 3.1.4 Schemata and Scripts Schemata, and the related terms, frames, scripts and scenarios, offer another way to approach medical case histories (Emmott & Alexander → Schemata; Herman → Cognitive Narratology). Although schemata are commonly employed in medicine, they are rarely explicitly taken into account. A schema is a mental structure appropriate for representing generic concepts as opposed to facts (Stein & Trabasso 1982). Schemata allow a vast amount of information to be stored in memory, organized and made easily retrievable. Most experienced physicians have multiple patient schemata at their disposal such as ‘a young woman who presents in a coma’ or ‘an old man with shortness of breath’. Schemata provide a template that allows for rapid evaluation and diagnosis, a consideration of exceptions, causes and prognoses. For the ‘old man with shortness of breath,’ specific questions like smoking history or heart disease, the presence or absence of a fever, and the particular appearance of a chest x-ray would allow a rapid diagnosis that dispenses with a complete consideration of all pathophysiologic principles. These generic templates are built up from a store of experience and the reading or hearing of similar cases. They are usually stable over time and shared among a group. When a schema offers a specific time-sequence, it is referred to as a script. Feltovich and Barrows (1984) describe illness script theory in terms of a general or abstract ‘illness script’ made up of an enabling condition, a fault and a consequence. Enabling conditions are contex-

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tual and patient-dependent factors, while the fault is a pathophysiologic process which results in the consequences or complaints, signs and symptoms that bring the patient to medical attention. The difference between case history and illness script is that while case histories are specific and individualized instances, illness scripts are general and abstract. Case histories can be compared against scripts, allowing for missing or omitted information to be filled in and re-ordered. In addition to their use in clinical care, scripts and schemata play a potent pedagogical role, serving as mnemonic devices and potential educational constructs that allow the typical course or plot of an illness to be remembered and compared to the particular instance at hand. 3.2 Illness Narratives Efforts to recontextualize the meaning of health and sickness in patientspecific terms are the basis for what Greenhalgh and Hurwitz (1998) call Narrative Based Medicine. The contextualization of medical discourse has generated an interest in patients’ accounts of illness that has often been framed in narrative terms. The increasing visibility of patient narratives (Broyard 1992; Mairs 1993; Brookes 1994), what Frank calls the “self-stories that proliferate in post-modern times” (1995: 68), noting their use as teaching vehicles in medical schools (Kumagi 2008), seems to parallel recent interests in memoir, autobiography and lifewriting (Bamberg → Identity and Narration). Hawkins has resurrected Freud’s term “pathography” to define the genre of narrative descriptions of illness, most often now used to designate patients’ first-person accounts (1984: 232). For Hawkins, the construction of a pathography is an interpretive and narrative act that gives coherence, unity and form to an event or experience that never had it to begin with. Authors of illness narratives use a kind of fictional technique to select and arrange material from the life world or from lived experience to give meaning and value to their illness. They use established forms, genres and narrative strategies to make their illnesses narratively visible. Tracing the sociocultural metaphors that invade and consecrate medical narrative, Hawkins argues that these personal and public metaphors enable patients to achieve ‘transcendence’ over their illness. Hawkins explicitly compares illness narratives to spiritual autobiographies, although the ‘transcendence’ envisioned by the latter is hardly achievable in the context of embodied illness. Hawkins’ pathographies can be described in Frank’s terms as quest narratives in which the hero gains a special insight as a result of the trials of his or her illness (1995: 115–136); however, they are not the

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only kinds of illness narratives told. In addition to the quest narrative, Frank describes two other kinds: the restitution narrative (75–96) and the chaos narrative (97–114). The restitution narrative focuses on the restoration of health while the chaos narrative describes an experience of illness that is incomprehensible, unpredictable and almost untellable. The differing storylines also suggest an important aspect of the self in relation to illness. In the restitution narrative, the illness is a temporary alteration or impairment, and the self remains intact and unchanged. By contrast, the self in the chaos storyline is fragmented as identity is threatened and disrupted by illness. Finally, the quest narrative depicts an identity that has been altered, usually positively, by the experience of illness. Illness narratives can also have other purposes and motivations. In some cases, they serve to express anger, either at the illness or at society or at the medical establishment for its perceived failures. Some illness narratives are pedagogical, motivated by an attempt to help others in a similar situation. Finally, illness narratives are most often testimonial, attempts to bear witness to an experience and to come to terms with change and suffering (McLellan 1997: 618) 3.3 Narrative as a Clinical and Therapeutic Mode Starting from prior analytical work, internist and literary scholar Charon defined narrative medicine as the “competence to recognize, absorb, interpret and be moved by stories” (2006: vii). Charon shifts the focus from the narrative analysis of medicine to a practice of medicine that is narratively engaged and competent. By understanding how narratives are built, transmitted, received and function in the world, Charon argues that we will be able to deliver healthcare which is more humane, empathetic, respectful and sensitive. Narrative medicine derives its mandate from an ethical and imaginative impulse to inhabit and be with the other through the movements of attention, representation and affiliation (Charon 2005: 263). Specifically, Charon suggests that in listening to patients’ narratives of illness, physicians should attend to questions of temporality, singularity, plot and perspective. Listening is then followed by representation, usually in the case of writing the medial case history. The fact of bearing witness implicit in the attention paid to medical stories of illness combined with its representational reconstruction in medical narratives results in the final movement: affiliation. Affiliation registers the ethical impulse to act on the patient’s behalf generated by the narrative competencies expected of attention and representation.

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The narrative work of recounting stories of illness might itself result in healing in certain cases (Brody 1988). That telling one’s story of his or her sickness to a trained witness can result in the resolution of symptoms is the cornerstone of Freud’s ‘talking cure’ (Redekur; Breuer & Freud [1895] 1955). The “storying” of illness provides a truth claim about its reality that purges the psychological fears of uncertainty and ambiguity; and knowing that the story is told to someone who will undertake actions to remedy one’s condition and relieve pain can alleviate distress. Mattingly (1998) contends that narratives can be especially helpful in occupational therapy as a way for patients with disabilities to understand their experience and for therapists to connect their interventions with what outcome patients most desire. Finally, Hunter (1991) argues that for the narrative act to be truly therapeutic, the medical reconstruction or story must be returned to the patient, not just in terms of diagnosis and therapy, but as a mixed narrative that accounts for both the patient’s and the physician’s understanding of illness and recontexualizes it in the whole of the patient’s life, which is never just the story of disease (1991: 13).

4 Topics for Further Investigation Future research in the field of narration and medicine may want to take up the relation between narrative accounts and non-narrative data in the arena of the clinical case history. How are the two distinguished and how are they combined in the formulation of a treatment plan and strategy? What are their respective contributions to the actual diagnosis? Are certain medical specialties more narrative-friendly than others? Future research should investigate the typology of medical narratives with respect to narrativity, i.e. some medical narratives such as ‘case histories’ have low degrees of narrativity while others such as ‘illness narratives’ may have a high degree of narrativity (Abbott → Narrativity). Population-based research, which has often eschewed local and anecdotal experience, has been a dominant framework for medical diagnostics and therapeutics, but advances in genome-based medicine suggest that medical care may be beginning to target the particular and individual biological realities and destinies of unique patients. As the risk of contracting an illness becomes almost synonymous with having an illness, research into narratives that precede the specific medical event of becoming or feeling ill (Wexler 1996) may provide valuable insights.

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5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Baxtin, Mixail M. (Bakhtin, Mikhail M.) ([1934/35] 1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. M. Holquist (ed.). Austin: U of Texas P. Barthes, Roland ([1966] 1975). “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative.” New Literary History 6.2, 237–272. Breuer, Joseph & Sigmund Freud ([1895] 1955). Studies on Hysteria. Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. II. London: Hogarth Press. Brody, Howard (1988). Stories of Sickness. New Haven: Yale UP. Brookes, Tim (1994). Catching my Breath: An Asthmatic Explores his Illness. New York: Times Books. Brown, Cary A. et al. (2010). “How do you write pain? A preliminary study of narrative therapy for people with chronic pain.” Diversity in Health and Care 7.1, 43– 56. Broyard, Analtole (1992). Intoxicated by My Illness and Other Writings on Life and Death. New York: Fawcett Columbine. Bruner, Jerome (1986). “Two Modes of Thought.” Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 11–43. Charon, Rita (2005). “Narrative Medicine: Attention, Affiliation, Representation.” Narrative 13.3, 261–270. – (2006). Narrative Medicine. Oxford: Oxford UP. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Culler, Jonathan (1981). “Story and Discourse in the Analysis of Narrative.” The Pursuit of Signs. Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 169–187. Feltovich, Paul J., & Howard S. Barrows (1984). “Issues of generality in medical problem solving.” H. G. Schmidt & M. L. de Volder (eds.). Tutorials in problembased learning: New directions in training for the health professions. Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 128–142. Fitzgerald, Faith T. (1999). “On Being a Doctor: Curiosity.” Annals of Internal Medicine 130.1, 70–72. Frank, Arthur (1995). The Wounded Storyteller. Chicago: Chicago UP. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Greenhalgh, Trisha & Brain Hurwitz (1998). “Why Study Narrative?” Narrative Based Medicine. T. Greenhalgh & B. Hurwitz (eds.). London: BMJ Books, 3–16. Halpern, Jodi (2012). “Gathering the Patient’s Story and Clinical Empathy.” The Permanente Journal 16.1, 52–54. Hawkins, Anne (1984). “Two Pathographies: A study in Illness and Literature.” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. 9, 231–252. Hunter, Kathryn Montgomery (1991). Doctor’s Stories: The Narrative Structure of Medical Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton UP.

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Klemperer, George ([1898] 2010). The Elements of Clinical Diagnosis. Charleston, SC: Nabu Press. Kumagi, Arno (2008). “A Conceptual Framework for the Use of Illness Narratives in Medical Education.” Academic Medicine 83.7, 653–658. Mairs, Nancy (1993). Ordinary Time: Cycles in Marriage, Faith and Renewal. Boston: Beacon Press. Mattingly, Cheryl (1998). Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. McLellan, M. Faith (1997). “Literature and Medicine: Narratives of Physical Illness.” Lancet 349, 618–620. Mishler, Elliot (1984). The Discourse of Medicine: Dialectics of Medical Interviews. Norwood: Ablex. Morris, S. Daniel (2004). “Rebuilding Identity through Narrative Following Traumatic Brain Injury.” Journal of Cognitive Rehabilitation 22.2, 15–21. Pier, John (2008). “After this, therefore because of this.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 109–140. Poirier, Suzanne & Daniel J. Brauner (1990). “The Voice of the Medical Record.” Theoretical Medicine 11, 29–39. Sebeok, Thomas (1991). “Vital Signs.” Semiotics in the United States. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 119–138. Silverman, David & Brian Torode (1980). The Material World. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Stein, Nancy L. & Thomas R. Trabasso (1982). “What’s in a Story: An Approach to Comprehension and Instruction.” Advances in the Psychology of Instruction. Volume 2. R. Glaser (ed.). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 213–268. Sternberg, Meir (1978). Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Wexler, Alice (1996). Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family, Risk and Genetic Research. Berkeley: U of California P.

5.2 Further Reading Cassell, Eric J. (1976). The Healer’s Art: A New Approach to the Doctor-Patient Relationship. New York: Lippincott. Davis, Lennard J. (1995). Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. New York: Verso. Herman, David (2003). “Stories as a Tool for Thinking.” Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences. D. Herman (ed.). Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), 163–192. Hydén, Lars-Christer (2005). “Medicine and Narrative.” Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 293–297. Jurecic, Ann (2012). Illness as Narrative. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P. King, Lester S. (1982). Medical Thinking: A Historical Preface. Princeton: Princeton UP.

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Kleinman, Arthur (1988). The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human Condition. New York: Basic Books. Leder, Drew (1990). “Clinical Interpretation: The Hermeneutics of Medicine.” Theoretical Medicine 11, 9–24. Lembert-Heidenreich, Alexandra & Jamila Mildorf, eds. (2013). The Writing Cure: Literature and Medicine in Context. Münster: LIT Verlag.

Narration in Poetry and Drama Peter Hühn & Roy Sommer

1 Definition Narration as a communicative act in which a chain of happenings is meaningfully structured and transmitted in a particular medium and from a particular point of view underlies not only narrative fiction proper but also poems and plays in that they, too, represent temporally organized sequences and thus relate “stories,” albeit with certain genrespecific differences, necessarily mediating them in the manner of presentation. Lyric poetry in the strict sense (and not only obviously narrative poetry like ballads or verse romances) typically features strings of primarily mental or psychological happenings perceived through the consciousness of single speakers and articulated from their position. Drama enacts strings of happenings with actors in live performance, the presentation of which, though typically devoid of any overt presenting agency, is mediated e.g. through selection, segmentation and arrangement. Thanks to these features characteristic of narrative, lyric poems as well as plays performed on the stage can be profitably analyzed with the transgeneric application of narratological categories, though with poetry the applicability of the notion of story and with drama that of mediation seems to be in question.

2 Explication Transgeneric narratology proceeds from the assumption that narratology’s highly differentiated system of categories can be applied to the analysis of both poems and plays, possibly opening the way to a more precise definition of their respective generic specificity, even though (lyric) poems do not seem to tell stories and stories in dramas do not seem to be mediated (but presented directly). As far as poetry is concerned, the following argument concentrates on lyric poetry in the narrow sense: that narratological categories are generally applicable to narrative verse is obvious.

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If narration is defined as the representation of chains of happenings in a medium by a mediating agent, then the three traditional genres, prose fiction, poetry (Schönert 2004) and drama, can be differentiated semiotically by the extent to which they utilize the range of possible modes and levels of mediation. While novels, short stories, etc. typically make use of all available levels and modes of mediation (superordinate narrator, subordinate character’s utterance, various modes of focalization), lyric and dramatic texts can be reconstructed as reduced forms in which the range of instances of mediation varies in each case. Seen in this way, lyric texts in the narrower sense (i.e. not just verse narratives or ballads) are distinguished by a characteristic variability in the extent to which they use the range of levels and modes of mediation. Like prose narratives, they can instantiate the two fundamental constituents of the narrative process, temporal sequentiality and mediation, equally well. Similarly to the enacted utterances of characters in dramatic texts, however, they can also seemingly efface the narrator’s level and create the impression of performative immediacy of speaking. As a result, the speaker’s voice is felt to emanate from simultaneously occurring experience and speech. What a narratological approach to poetry is able to provide are a specific method of analyzing the sequential structure as well as a more precise instrument for differentiating the levels and modes of mediation in lyric poems (both of which in conventional manuals of poetry analysis are usually lacking). In dramatic texts in performance, on the other hand, the sequence of happenings is presented directly, corporeally, in the form of live characters interacting and communicating on stage, without an overt mediator (such as a narrator (Margolin → Narrator)) and seemingly without any mediation whatsoever. Nevertheless, selection, segmentation, combination and focus of the scenes presented imply the existence of a superordinate mediating instance (Jahn 2001; Weidle 2009) or, in other terms, of the abstract author (Schmid → Implied Author). In addition, narrative elements and structures do normally occur at the intradiegetic level of the characters’ utterances, but can also be introduced at the extradiegetic level, such as prologues and epilogues and comments by stage managers or overt narrators. A narratological approach to drama can systematically account for the use of such narrative devices and offer new perspectives on the relationship between dialogue and stage directions and the status of the secondary text (Fludernik 2008; Nünning & Sommer 2008). A transgeneric narratology is, however, by no means restricted to applying narrative theories and terminologies to other genres for analytical purposes. This approach may have repercussions on classical narra-

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tology itself in that it highlights the need to reconsider current theories of narrative with their traditional focus on narrative fiction by emphasizing the performative aspects of storytelling, the realization or transmission of narrative content in different media, and the cognitive activities involved in narrative comprehension.

3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 Dimensions of the Transgeneric Approach to Poetry The following survey focuses specifically on lyric rather than on narrative poetry such as ballads, verse narratives or verse romances. The latter lend themselves readily to the concepts generally employed for prose fiction, albeit with certain differences like the added structuring device of versification (Kinney 1992; McHale 2005, 2010). A transgeneric application of narratology to lyric poetry is of relatively recent vintage, the earliest examples dating back only to the 1980s. For the following discussion, such approaches will be ordered according to the dimension(s) of the poem qua narrative text to which narratological categories are applied. These basic dimensions are the levels of the happenings and of their mediation in the form of the poetic text, in particular the modality of its mediation and the organization of its sequential structure, as well as the act and process of articulation. According to a traditional view, which remains widespread even today, the generic specificity of lyric poetry as distinct from the epic and dramatic genres is grounded in its particular form of representation or mediation: its supposedly unmediated quality—direct, unfiltered communication of experience by an author identified with a speaker as the subject of this experience. It is this traditional notion of poetic immediate subjectivity that several early narratological approaches to lyric poetry address and try to remedy. Bernhart (1993: 366–368) draws on Stanzel’s distinction between dramatized and withdrawn narrators (i.e. between overt and covert narration) to describe two degrees of the perceptibility of mediation in poetry, the effect of which is either to foreground mediation or to background the mediator and produce the illusion of immediacy. The merit of Bernhart’s argument is its insistence on the ineluctably mediate quality of poetry and on the existence, as in fiction, of an organizing and shaping consciousness, whether visible or invisible. Owing to his adoption of Stanzel’s one-dimensional modeling of mediacy, however, Bernhart refers merely to the variable perceptibility of the narrator, neglecting other modes of mediating such as the var-

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ious facets of focalization (e.g. perceptual, psychological or ideological). Seemann (1984: 535–538), likewise rejecting the notion of poetic immediacy, derives a much more differentiated hierarchy of levels of mediation from narrative and drama theory. He distinguishes five “levels of communication”: (a) characters; (b) narrator/speaker; (c) implied author; (d) author as the creator of the work in question; (e) author as a biographical person. He points out that the “lowest” level, the utterances of characters, is often unrealized in poetry and that the “highest” level, the real author, is usually irrelevant for understanding a work. Of particular interest is his distinction between speaker and implied author, based on textual signals in the composition of the work, opening the way to clearer differentiations in the analysis of perspective, not only in satiric verse and dramatic monologues, but more generally, even in cases where these levels appear to collapse into one another. In a similar manner, Kraan (1991) distinguishes empirical author, implied author and what he calls “lyric subject,” stressing the historical variability in the distinctness of these three mediators, e.g. their implicit identity in Romanticism or clear differentiation in modernism (222–223). Subsequent and more comprehensive proposals add further specifications to such approaches to modeling mediation in lyric poetry by drawing more extensively on the particularly elaborate inventory of terms offered by narrative theory. Dismissing conventional views of the all-embracing emotionality and self-contained artificiality of poetry that preclude rational analysis, Müller-Zettelmann (2002: 130–131) programmatically advocates a systematic transfer of the results of narratology to raise the theoretical level both of reflection on poetry and of poetry criticism (139−148). As for the dimension of mediation, she concentrates on one singular aspect of lyric poetry: its generic subjectivity (142–144), which she identifies as part of the larger phenomenon of “aesthetic illusion” and analyzes (drawing on Wolf 1998) as the intended effect of various techniques simulating the general positionboundedness of human experience as manifest in the spatial, temporal, cognitive, emotional and ideological restriction of perception and consciousness. This effect of aesthetic illusion, she argues, is further heightened by self-referential artificiality in poems where the speaker presents himself as a creative poet. In Genette’s terms, this phenomenon could be classified as the coincidence of speaker’s voice with internal focalization and simultaneous narration. Despite her initial comprehensive claim, Müller-Zettelmann refrains from exploring the wide range of poetic mediation with the various possible constellations of voice, focalization and time of narration, singling out one special albeit significant case: generic subjectivity.

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A systematic all-encompassing application of narratology, differentiating two basic aspects of mediation, agents or instances and levels of mediation and types of perspective, is outlined by Hühn and Schönert (2002: 295−298) and Hühn (2004: 147−151). Firstly, the four agents located on four hierarchical levels largely coincide with those named by Seemann and Kraan: biographical author; abstract (or implied) author; speaker/narrator; protagonist or character in the happenings. Secondly, the two types or modes of perspective are voice (a narrator’s or a character’s verbal utterance, their language) and focalization (the position that determines perception and cognition, the deictic center of the perceptual, cognitive, psychological and ideological focus on the happenings). For the notoriously tricky problem of distinguishing speaker and abstract author and of relating focalization to agent (e.g. whether to speaker or character), they introduce the operation of “attribution” performed by the reader in accordance with his particular understanding of the text. These two sets of differential categories, in conjunction with the operation of attribution, allow for a more precise analysis of lyric poems in their individual, historical and cultural variations than do traditional methods. Hence the seemingly unmediated self-expression of the poet in a simultaneously ongoing experience characteristic of many Romantic poems, for example, can be re-described as the manipulated collapse of the agents/instances and levels of protagonist, speaker and author as well as the contrived congruence of voice and focalization, thus creating the effect of unmediated subjectivity. A special aspect of mediation in lyric poetry concerns the unreliability of the speaker (Shen → Unreliability), a problem frequently discussed with respect to narrative fiction since Booth ([1961] 1983) introduced the term, but rarely taken up in the analysis of poetry. Hühn (1998) offers an early systematic description of the problem arguing that any first-person speaker in lyric poetry is―because of human situatedness―ineluctably limited and biased in his perspective on the world and on himself, which causes partial self-intransparency as to his own motives, desires, and anxieties. Unreliable speaker-narrators are specifically characteristic of the “dramatic monologue” as invented and practised by Victorian poets. In her comprehensive study of this poetic sub-genre Rohwer-Happe (2011) analyzes unreliability as the dissociation or discrepancy between two instances of poetic mediation―those of the speaker and an external superior perspective, often circumscribed as the “implied author” (Booth ([1961] 1983)), a construct rejected by Rohwer-Happe in favor of a combination of textual signals and the reader’s frame of reference. The other dimension of the poetic text, sequentiality, has hitherto been widely neglected in traditional approaches to poetry analysis, even

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though it constitutes a central part of a poem’s meaning. For the transgeneric approach to poetry, investigation of this dimension in its temporal organization is essential, since it forms the basis for the application of narratology in the first place. Contrary to mediation with the highly differentiated system of relevant categories already developed by narratology, the dimension of sequentiality lacks a broadly accepted narratological terminology. Because of this, critics are left to develop categories of their own or to draw on a variety of sources from elsewhere. Stillinger (1985: 98–99) sketches five concrete types of plot in Romantic poetry: conflict between binary forces (mostly of a mental kind) and its resolution; journeys or quests; confrontation between imagination and reality with resultant disillusionment; violation and its consequences; competition between spatial divisions. From these he abstracts two general patterns: (a) progress from a state of equilibrium to disturbance to a final resolution; (b) encounter of a protagonist’s desire or goal with resistance and its resolution. This is an early and rudimentary attempt, loosely inspired by action models applied to prose fiction (Propp, Bremond), in need of further refinement and adaptation. Weststeijn (1989), in another early proposal, advocates application of the concept of plot to lyric poems and provides a demonstration, highlighting two features specific to poetry: the preference for mental actions and the omission (deliberate or not) of the social, spatial and temporal particulars of situation, character and action. Müller-Zettelmann (2002: 133–135), in a programmatic plea for the general transfer of narratological categories to poetry analysis, also mentions these two features, but without further specification, merely referring to the applicability of frame (or schema) theory (149–150). This same concept was earlier proposed by Semino (1995) as a practical instrument for the detailed analysis of poetry, without, however, linking it to narrative. Schema theory, derived from cognitive psychology, explains the reader’s comprehension of texts as an operation of activating and applying relevant prior knowledge. According to this theory, knowledge is shown to be organized into patterns called schemata: flexible and dynamic structures which texts may confirm or modify in the course of “schema reinforcement” and “schema refreshment” respectively (85– 87). The concept of schema facilitates precise description of the sequential dimension of poetic texts. A systematic approach to modeling sequentiality combining schema theory with Lotman’s concept of sujet (in the sense of transgression of a boundary or deviation from a norm) is put forward by Hühn and Schönert (2002), Hühn (2004, 2005) and Hühn and Kiefer (2005). The

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notion of cognitive schemata, especially in the further distinction between frames (stereotypical knowledge about settings, situations and themes) and scripts (knowledge about stereotyped series of actions and processes), allows for differentiated analysis of the sequential structure of poems and their thematic significance with direct reference to the cultural, social and historical context, since such schemata (Emmott & Alexander → Schemata) are always formed by and dependent on experience within a particular society and culture. Because of the poetic convention of brevity, abstractness and situational and personal indeterminacy, poems are usually less circumstantial than prose fiction in presenting textual triggers for activating frames and scripts, thus requiring greater effort on the reader’s part to infer the relevant schemata. Combining schema theory with Lotman’s model provides a means for identifying the turning point in a poem, a decisive or merely inferable change from one state (attitude, view, emotion, etc.) to another signaled by deviation from the conventional and predictable pattern of one or more schemata which constitutes the “point” of the text, its raison d’être (Baroni → Tellability). Events are ascribed to a figure, an agent who undergoes a decisive change. According to the level of the poetic text at which the figure is located and at which the decisive turn takes place, three basic event types or planes of eventfulness can be distinguished (Hühn & Kiefer 2005: 7, 246–251): (a) “events in the happenings,” ascribed to storyworld incidents with the protagonist or persona as agent; (b) “presentation events,” located at the discourse level with the speaker/narrator as agent enacting a “story of narration”; in addition, “mediation events” can be marked off as exceptional variants of the presentation event in cases where the decisive change is brought about by a shift in the manner of mediation, e.g. by modification or replacement of schemata, attributable not to the speaker but to the abstract author (as when the speaker’s lament about his artistic sterility is mediated in the form of a perfect poem); (c) “reception events,” which take place during the reading process with the reader as agent in cases when neither the protagonist nor the speaker is willing or able to undergo a (necessary or desirable) change, an event the reader is meant to perform vicariously, as in dramatic monologues (Hühn → Event and Eventfulness). Simon (2004) has proposed a rhetorical approach to sequentiality in poems, on the basis of applying rhetoric as action theory. He construes the progression of a lyric poem as an intention-driven action, in which rhetorical tropes, figures and their concatenation function as sequence patterns. While narratological analyses link the poetic “story” to an agent or patient, Simon’s rhetorical approach locates the action within the text itself. One problematic aspect of this approach con-

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cerns the form in which tropes and figures are metaphorically translated into actional moves and extracted from the text in a largely intuitive manner. An analytic model for the practical analysis of sequentiality on the basis of Propp’s and Todorov’s action theories has been developed by Kafalenos (2006: 157–178), more elaborate and systematic than Stillinger (1985). Kafalenos analyzes the moment, event or situation represented in a lyric in terms of “functions,” i.e. with respect to its position within a progressive chain of implied causes and possible consequences. The model allows for a distinction between the textual signals and the reader’s interpretations by laying out the successive moves in the reconstruction of the narrative sequence of antecedents and future actions as ascribed to the persona. This approach presents a valuable new contribution to the practical analysis of narrative sequentiality in lyric poetry despite the (untenable) restriction of the temporal dimension of poems to one single moment (in analogy to pictures), a restriction, which ultimately does not affect the applicability of the model. A final dimension in which narratological approaches to poetry analysis promise new insights concerns the poetic specificity of narrative in lyric poems. Two aspects may be distinguished: First, as to the influence of poetic devices on the mediation of narrative. Such techniques generally lack inherent meaning and become meaningful only by interacting with the semantic dimension. McHale (2009, 2010) equates poetry with versification and identifies its constitutive feature as segmentivity, i.e. sub-division into smaller units, which offer “affordances” in interaction with the narrative, varying between concordance and discordance and thereby structuring the development of the story. Though broadly valid for verse texts in general, this approach also offers first suggestions for the analysis of the impact of prosodic features on narrative elements in lyric poems. More specific semantic effects have been pointed out by Hühn and Kiefer (2005: 255–256) and Schönert et al. (2007: 327) on the basis of detailed analyses of particular poems, e.g. emphasizing the emotional reaction to a cognitive insight in the course of a reflective process; supporting the eventful shift from the level of the happenings to the poetic text as a way of overcoming problems in the narrated story-world through aestheticization or wit in the form of a presentation event. Second, as to generically specific forms and functions of narrative in lyric poems. Hühn (2005: 167–168), Hühn and Kiefer (2005: 233–235) and Schönert et al. (2007: 311–313) have pointed to characteristic tendencies in which narration in lyric poems tends to differ from that in novels and stories. One such tendency concerns the preference for stories in which simultaneous (performative

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or mimetic) narration moves towards a decisive turn, either achieving this presentation event at the very end of the poem or, more typically, breaking off before it is achieved, because of external or internal resistance. To negotiate this problematic transition, the speaker often employs prospective narration (cf. e.g. Hühn 2005: 167). This typically lyric phenomenon is also described, from a less explicitly narratological angle, by Dubrow (2006) under the term of “anticipatory amalgam.” In conclusion, the claim formulated in some programmatic statements that the transfer of narratological concepts to poetry will contribute to a differentiated theory of poetry (Müller-Zettelmann 2000: 4; Hühn & Schönert 2002: 287–288) has yet to bear its full fruit. Even so, this transgeneric thrust is already enriching the analysis of poetry and facilitating investigation of the specific relations between poems and their cultural and historical contexts. 3.2 Dimensions of the Transgeneric Approach to Drama Most categories commonly used for the analysis of narrative fiction can equally be applied to drama, as Richardson (2007: 142–151) argues convincingly. This is valid for representations of character, plot, beginnings and endings, time and space as well as for fictional causality (defined by Richardson as the “canon of probability” [150] to which plays and novels adhere), narrative framing and narration. Whereas plot, beginnings and endings and character also belong to the traditional categories of drama criticism, the relevance of concepts of narrative mediation and their applicability in a transgeneric context is currently under debate. Narratological approaches to drama routinely focus on choric speeches, prologues and messengers, onstage audiences and commentators, instances of character narration and of epic narrators such as the stage manager in Wilder’s Our Town, on frame narratives and embedded narratives, monologues, soliloquies, asides, audience address, selfreflective or meta-dramatic comments, instances of metalepsis (Pier → Metalepsis) as well as on self-referential techniques such as the playwithin-the-play. Recent research also suggests a distinction between mimetic and diegetic narrativity (Abbott → Narrativity; Nünning & Sommer 2008: 337–339) and combines the analysis of narration in drama with performative approaches to the study of discourse in narrative fiction (Fludernik 2008: 367–369). Historically, there has been a tendency in drama criticism to regard epic elements and violation of the Aristotelian unities which frequently went along with them as “undramatic” and to consider them merely as a

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way to overcome the technical limitations of stage design (Delius 1877). This view was challenged radically by 20th-century playwrights such as Beckett and, of course, Brecht’s programmatic use of alienating techniques―frequently narrative or meta-dramatic in nature―which defined his internationally acclaimed notion of an epic theater. Throughout the 20th century, narrative experiments in drama have contributed to the emergence of a canon of plays (including Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle, Williams’s The Glass Menagerie and Shaffer’s Amadeus) routinely quoted in narratological accounts of drama. The development of drama and theater in the second half of the 20th century, however, should not be reduced to an increased awareness of its narrativity or to self-reflective games with narrative and dramatic conventions: there is a broad variety of new developments including improvised forms of performance, the fusion of theater with other genres, media and technologies, and the emergence of a “post-dramatic” theater which abandons conventional story-based and characteroriented dramaturgy (Lehmann 1999). The frequent occurrence of narrative or epic elements in performed or presented narratives (theater or film) led Chatman (1990) to question the strict separation of mimesis and diegesis favored by Genette. Instead of identifying the former with showing and preserving the latter for the verbal mediation of narrative content, Chatman points to the fact that both modes (showing and telling) can be used to transmit a story. Thus, a narrator might present a story “through a teller or a shower or some combination of both” (113). In order to avoid terminological confusion, Chatman suggests the new umbrella term “presenter” to designate his broader conception of narrator which subsumes both the narrator in Genette’s narrower sense of verbal narration by anthropomorphic narrating instances (a notion compatible with Stanzel’s definition of mediacy as the sine qua non of fictional narration), on the one hand, and “a kind of narration that is not performed by a recognizably human agency” (115), on the other. The latter type of narrator may be said to “tell” (or “show” or “present”) the majority of enacted stories on stage and screen. Chatman’s main argument in favor of his approach (besides terminological clarity) is theoretical consistency: “Once we define narrative as the composite of story and discourse (on the basis of its unique double chronology), then logically, at least, narratives can be said to be actualizable on the stage or in other iconic media” (114). This idea is further developed by Jahn (2001), who emphasizes the diegetic nature of stage directions and compares the multiple levels of communication within dramatic texts with narrative embedding in the novel. He also modifies Chatman’s taxonomy of text types (1990: 115)

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by introducing a “playscript mode” (to which he assigns all utterances belonging to the “secondary text”) and by replacing Chatman’s subdivision of “diegetic” and “mimetic” with the distinction between “written/printed” and “performed” narratives. More recently, Nünning and Sommer (2008) have argued that plays make acts of (intradiegetic) storytelling theatrical by representing acts of character narration, leading them to propose a distinction between different degrees of diegetic narrativity in narratives that extend across the traditional generic boundaries (thus a memory play may have a high degree of diegetic narrativity, while modernist novels preoccupied with the representation of consciousness and processes of perception may be said to have a low degree of either mimetic or diegetic narrativity). Another direction is taken by Fludernik (2008), whose notion of experientiality paves the way for a cognitive narratological approach to drama. She revises the standard narratological model of communication in fictional narrative (based on the distinction between story level and discourse level) by adding a third level, corresponding to performance or enactment in order to highlight the specific circumstances in which storytelling occurs: “In drama, there is a real performance involving actors; in a performance of narrative, the performer and audience ‘take over’ the roles of narrator and narratee. What the model allows one to argue is that in drama, the narratorial level is optional and the performative level is constitutive, whereas in epic narrative, it is the performance level that is optional” (365). Whereas narratologists from Chatman and Richardson to Jahn and Fludernik have repeatedly emphasized the narrativity of drama from a variety of perspectives, there are also critical voices rejecting the idea of a narratology of drama (or at least parts of it). Referring to Stanzel’s notion of mediacy, Rajewsky (2007: 58) insists on the distinction between narrative communication in the novel and non-mediated communication in drama, thus excluding the possibility of heterodiegetic narration on the stage (where, she argues, discourse is always produced by participants of the storyworld). This view is supported by SchenkHaupt (2007: 30), who maintains that “extradiegetic narration is impossible in dramatic writing.” Proponents of a narratology of drama, however, generally agree that both Genette’s notion of diegetic narration as a verbal transmission of narrative content and Stanzel’s insistence on mediacy as a prerequisite of narrative are too restrictive, proceeding, as they do, from the normative assumption (based on normative genre theory) that there is no narrative discourse in drama. There are several more recent (and more convincing) alternatives to Genette’s and Stanzel’s definitions of narra-

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tive available, including Chatman’s revision of Genette’s concept and Jahn’s subsequent modification of Chatman, Ryan’s transgeneric and transmedial definitions of narrative as a “cognitive template” (Ryan 2005; Nünning & Sommer 2008: 333), or Fludernik’s “natural” narratology, based on her definitions of narrativity and experientiality. Therefore, attempts to prove transgeneric narratology wrong by pointing out its incompatibility with Genette (Schenk-Haupt 2007: 31–32) or Stanzel (Rajewsky 2007: 58) can hardly be convincing. SchenkHaupt’s conclusion that there “is no direct extradiegetic communication in dramatic writing―authorial characters, embedded stories, epic devices, and the quirky expansion of stage directions merely create the aesthetic illusion of an extradiegetic agent speaking” (2007: 37) is valid for all narratological concepts: they all refer to effects produced by verbal, visual or auditive signs. Rajewsky (2007) further suggests that a transgeneric and transmedial narratology should not try to level the differences between the various media in which stories can be transmitted. For this reason, she rejects Jahn’s argument that unperformable, unrealizable stage directions can be regarded as evidence of a heterodiegetic narrating instance: since they cannot be performed, they highlight generic conventions and emphasize the distinctions between narrative fiction and narrative drama which transgeneric narratology seeks to overcome (61). Schenk-Haupt (2007) offers a similar argument: “If we accepted that [...] the secondary text took over a narrative, mediating function, this would eventually lead to a confusion of generic boundaries” (36). The disagreement seems to be partly due to the fact that the discussion of the relationship between primary and secondary text is merged with the text vs. performance debate and/or with generic issues. Ultimately, the existence (or absence) of a narrating instance in drama is a matter of perspective: it depends both on the critic’s chosen theoretical framework (Genette/Stanzel vs. Chatman /Jahn/ Ryan/ Fludernik) and on his or her main research interests (narrative vs. genres/media). Admittedly, narratology sometimes tends to produce counter-intuitive concepts, and a play’s “superordinate narrative agent” (Jahn 2001: 672) or “superordinate narrative system” (Weidle 2009) may easily fall into that category for critics more concerned with performance and performativity. Transgeneric narratology is still in its infancy, however, and if the current cognitive approaches are pursued further, a truly transmedial and interdisciplinary theory of storytelling and narrative comprehension might be developed which would not only help to solve some of the problems in classical genre theory, but also

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allow for a better understanding of the anthropological function of narrative in literary and in non-literary discourses.

4 Topics for Further Investigation 4.1 Topics for Further Investigation: Poetry The relation of the various event types with different historical epochs and with different cultures and cultural traditions; comparison between poetry and prose fiction in their various genres with respect to the schemata used, event types and the degree of realization of events. 4.2 Topics for Further Investigation: Drama The compatibility or mutual dependency of transgeneric and transmedial theories of narrative; a comparative discussion of diegetic narrativity in dramas, play texts and performances; a revision of structuralist narratological approaches to drama from a cognitive and pragmatic/semantic perspective.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited: Poetry Bernhart, Wolfgang (1993). “Überlegungen zur Lyriktheorie aus erzähltheoretischer Sicht.” H. Foltinek et al. (eds.). Tales and ‘their telling difference’: Festschrift für Franz K. Stanzel. Heidelberg: Winter, 359–375. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: Chicago UP. Dubrow, Heather (2006). “The Interplay of Narrative and Lyric: Competition, Cooperation, and the Case of the Anticipatory Amalgam.” Narrative 14, 254–271. Hühn, Peter (1998). “Watching the Speaker Speak: Self-Observation and SelfIntransparency in Lyric Poetry.” M. Jeffreys (ed.). New Definitions of Lyric. Theory, Technology, and Culture. New York: Garland, 215–244. – (2004). “Transgeneric Narratology: Applications to Lyric Poetry.” J. Pier (ed.). The Dynamics of Narrative Form. Berlin: de Gruyter, 139–158. – (2005). “Plotting the Lyric: Forms of Narration in Poetry.” E. Müller-Zettelmann & M. Rubik (eds.). Theory into Poetry. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 147–172. – & Jens Kiefer (2005). The Narratological Analysis of Lyric Poetry: Studies in English Poetry from the 16th to the 20th Century. Berlin: de Gruyter. – & Jörg Schönert (2002). “Zur narratologischen Analyse von Lyrik.” Poetica 34, 287–305.

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Kafalenos, Emma (2006). Narrative Causalities. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Kinney, Clare R. (1992). Strategies of Poetic Narrative: Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Eliot. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Kraan, Menno (1991). “Towards a Model of Lyric Communication: Some Historical and Theoretical Remarks.” Russian Literature 30, 199–230. McHale, Brian (2005). “Narrative in Poetry.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 356−58. – (2009). "Beginning to Think about Narrative in Poetry." Narrative 17, 11−27. – (2010). "Affordances of Form in Stanzaic Narrative Poetry." Literator (Potchefstroom, SA) 31: 3, 49−60. Müller-Zettelmann, Eva (2000). Lyrik und Metalyrik: Theorie einer Gattung und ihrer Selbstbespiegelung anhand von Beispielen aus der englisch- und deutschsprachigen Dichtkunst. Heidelberg: Winter. – (2002). “Lyrik und Narratologie.” A. Nünning & V. Nünning (eds.). Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär. Trier: WVT, 129–153. Rohwer-Happe, Gislind (2011). Unreliable Narration im dramatischen Monolog des Viktorianismus. Konzepte und Funktionen. Göttingen: V&R unipress, Bonn UP. Schönert, Jörg (2004). “Normative Vorgaben als ‘Theorie der Lyrik’? Vorschläge zu einer texttheoretischen Revision.” G. Frank & W. Lukas (eds.). Norm ―Grenze―Abweichung. Kultursemiotische Studien zu Literatur, Medien und Wirtschaft. Michael Titzmann zum 60. Geburtstag. Passau: Stutz, 303–318. – et al. (2007). Lyrik und Narratologie: Text-Analysen zu deutschsprachigen Gedichten vom 16. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: de Gruyter. Seemann, Klaus Dieter (1984). “Die Kommunikationsstruktur im lyrischen Gedicht.” W. Schmid & R. Döring-Smirnov (eds.). Text, Symbol, Weltmodell: Johannes Holthusen zum 60. Geburtstag. München: Sager, 533–554. Semino, Elena (1995). “Schema theory and the analysis of text worlds in poetry.” Language and Literature 4, 79–108. Simon, Ralf (2004). "Handlungstheorie des Lyrischen." Rhetorik: Ein internationales Jahrbuch. Berlin: de Gruyter, vol. 23, 50–80. Stillinger, Jack (1985). “The Plots of Romantic Poetry.” College Literature 12, 95–112. Weststeijn, Willem G. (1989). “Plot Structure in Lyric Poetry: An Analysis of Three Exile Poems by Aleksandr Puškin.” Russian Literature 26, 509–522. Wolf, Werner (1998). “Aesthetic Illusion in Lyric Poetry?” Poetica 30, 18−56.

5.2 Further Reading: Poetry Adam, Jean-Michel (2002). “Conditions et degrés de narrativation du poème.” Degrés: Revue de Synthèse à Orientation Sémiologique 111, a 1–a 26. Müller-Zettelmann, Eva (2011). "Poetry, Narratology, Meta-Cognition." G. Olson (ed.). Current Trends in Narratology. Berlin & New York: de Gruyter, 232–253. Schönert, Jörg (2008). “Auteur empirique, auteur implicite et moi lyrique.” J. Pier (ed.). Théorie du récit. L’apport de la recherche allemande. Villeneuve d’Asqc: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 84–96. Semino, Elena (1997). Language and World Creation in Poems and Other Texts. London: Longman.

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Simon, Ralf (2004). “Handlungstheorie des Lyrischen: mit Analysen zu Hölderlins Heidelberg, Mörikes Die schöne Buche und Georges Wir werden heute nicht zum garten gehen.” Rhetorik: Ein internationales Jahrbuch 23, 50−80. Steffen, Jorge (2010). Das perspektiverzeugende Medium in der 'Confessional Poetry' am Beispiel von Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell und John Berryman. Saarbrücken: Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften (zugl. Diss. TU Berlin 2008).

5.3 Works Cited: Drama Chatman, Seymour (1990). Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Delius, Nikolaus (1877). “Die epischen Elemente in Shakespeare’s Dramen.” Shakespeare-Jahrbuch 12, 1–28. Fludernik, Monika (2008). “Narrative and Drama.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 353–381. Jahn, Manfred (2001). “Narrative Voice and Agency in Drama: Aspects of a Narratology of Drama.” New Literary History 32, 659–679. Lehmann, Hans-Thies ([1999] 2001). Postdramatisches Theater. Frankfurt a.M.: Verlag der Autoren. Nünning, Ansgar & Roy Sommer (2008). “Diegetic and Mimetic Narrativity: Some Further Steps towards a Narratology of Drama.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 329–352. Rajewsky, Irina O. (2007). “Von Erzählern, die (nichts) vermitteln: Überlegungen zu grundlegenden Annahmen der Dramentheorie im Kontext einer transmedialen Narratologie.” Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 117, 25–68. Richardson, Brian (2007). “Drama and Narrative.” D. Herman (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 142–155. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2005). “On the Theoretical Foundations of Transmedial Narratology.” J. Ch. Meister (ed.). Narratology beyond Literary Criticism: Mediality, Disciplinarity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1–23. Schenk-Haupt, Stefan (2007). “Narrativity in Dramatic Writing: Towards a General Theory of Genres.” Anglistik 18.2, 25–42. Weidle, Roland (2009). “Organizing the Perspectives: Focalization and the Superordinate Narrative System in Drama.” P. Hühn et al. (eds.). Point of View, Perspective, and Focalization. Modeling Mediation in Narrative. Berlin: de Gruyter, 221–242.

5.4 Further Reading: Drama Elam, Keir (1980). The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. London: Methuen. Garner, Stanton B. (1989). The Absent Voice: Narrative Comprehension in the Theater. Urbana: U of Illinois P. Hauthal, Janine (2008). Metadrama und (Text-)Theatralität: (Selbst-)Reflexionen einer intermedialen literarischen Gattung am Beispiel englischer und nordamerikanischer Meta- und Postdramatik. Trier: WVT.

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Jong, Irene J. F. de (1991). Narrative in Drama: The Art of the Euripidean Messenger Speech. Leiden: Brill. Korthals, Holger (2003). Zwischen Drama und Erzählung: Ein Beitrag zur Theorie geschehensdarstellender Literatur. Berlin: Schmidt. Morrison, Kristin (1983). Canters and Chronicles: The Use of Narrative in the Plays of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Pavel, Thomas G. (1985). The Poetics of Plot: The Case of English Renaissance Drama. Manchester: Manchester UP. Pfister, Manfred ([1977] 1988). The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Ryan, Marie-Laure, ed. (2004). Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Sommer, Roy (2005). “Drama and Narrative.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 119–124.

Narration in Religious Discourse (The Example of Christianity) Sönke Finnern

1 Definition Narratives of various kinds can be found in religious discourse, constituted by a religious content or at least by a religious context. A religious content can appear in one or more of the following forms: 1) a character presented directly or indirectly as religious or non-religious in regard to his/her identity, character traits, opinions, experiences, emotions, behavior, personal appearance, social context, knowledge, duties, wishes or intentions (e.g. a monk, an atheist, a believer); 2) a “supernatural” being (related to a religious belief system) as part of the narrative world; 3) direct or indirect references to religious texts, beliefs, rituals, places or buildings within character or narrator discourse. A religious context in communication is conveyed through sender, message and receiver: 1) religious context of the sender: s/he is a believer or has a religious background; 2) message: the narrative is used to convey a religious message; 3) (intended, historical, empirical) receiver: s/he is a believer or a skeptic.

2 Explication Either a religious content or a religious context must be established to define religious discourse whereas the latter criterion is more general. “Narration in religious discourse” does not necessarily refer to a narrative with a religious content such as supernatural beings, as might be thought. Empirically speaking, those narratives are a small part of the corpus. Much narration in religious discourse has no religious content but is constituted only by its religious context (religious sender, application or receiver). Narratives like Jesus telling the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–35) or a pastor telling a joke in a sermon are secular even though they form part of religious discourse. Therefore, “narration in religious discourse” ranges from biblical narratives to a

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story that a church member tells his pastor at a birthday visit. Accordingly, there are no literary features that are typical for all kinds of religious narration. Nevertheless, common sorts of religious narration can be grouped together. One sort of religious narration concentrates on a specific event (e.g. conversion narrative, miracle story; see event II in Hühn → Event and Eventfulness) which is often interpreted as an act of God; another frequent kind of religious narration focuses on application, as when a character serves as a role model for good or bad behavior, belief in God, etc. (e.g. parables, many biblical narratives, saints’ lives). To consider the context is crucial to add some of these narratives to religious narration. An outstanding example for this is the biblical book of Esther, which does not mention God a single time but effectively celebrates God’s providence when being read by an informed audience. For an overview of important religious narrative genres, see Mauz (2009a) on conversion narrative, narration in sermons, prayers and Gospel narratives.

3 History of Narration in Christianity and its Study This article concentrates on the study of religious narration as studied by several sub-disciplines of academic Christian theology: Biblical Studies, Systematic Theology and Practical Theology. These three fields of study encompass a historical, thematic and empirical/contemporary approach to narration in Christianity. (For narratology in Islamic studies, see e.g. Conermann ed. 2009; for narratology in the science of religion, see e.g. Brahier & Johannsen eds. 2013; in the Jewish religion, e.g. Sternberg 1985.) 3.1 Narratives in Biblical and Related Writings and their Study 3.1.1 Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Roughly speaking, more than half of the Hebrew Bible consists of narration: Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood, Moses and the exodus from Egypt, etc. It is not possible to describe Old Testament (OT) narration in general. However, some narrative techniques are rather typical: in OT narratives, biblical characters often serve as role models in regard to belief, behavior and experiences. Character perspective and direct discourse are used widely. Through the use of these techniques, the narrator builds up empathy even for sinners like Cain, David or Jonah. By

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adopting the main character’s perspective, the reader becomes immersed in the story and witnesses God’s grace or punishment. The narrator is nearly invisible and normally does not comment directly on the behavior of the characters (except in Judges and 1–2 Chronicles, for example), which is therefore left to the reader (see Judges 19:30) who is told the consequences of this behavior. In some passages, God is presented as speaking to single characters like Abraham, Moses, Elijah and other prophets. Belief in God and a life according to God’s commandments leads to God’s blessing in the form of victory over enemies, security and wealth. Suspense and surprise are therefore mainly generated by the unpredictable behavior of the characters, not by God. Only in the book of Job is the connection between deeds and consequences severed. Fantastic narration instilling suspense and awe of God is also found in OT narrative, but remains marginal in relation to the full corpus. Most stories are assumed to be received by the reader as factual narration. In general, the main intent of OT religious narration is to encourage the reader to live according to God’s commandments. A fundamental challenge for OT narration is how to relate human deeds and God’s will. God’s providence does not determine the sequence of events fully, but leaves ample space for surprising behavior and sins committed by the characters. But in the end the reader learns that through human behavior God has acted out his will and fulfilled his promises (see Genesis 50:20 as an emblem for all patriarchal stories). Regarding the study of OT books, classical scholarly research concentrated on textual criticism, source criticism, tradition history, form criticism and redaction criticism (the so-called historical-critical method). Since the 1970s, hermeneutical approaches from other textual sciences have stirred up controversy. Some scholars dismiss the source questions and insist on asking what the “final,” canonical text means. Most OT scholars, however, are not familiar with narratological theory (see the critical analysis of narrative research on the books of Samuel by Andersson 2009). Even so, the interdisciplinary bridge is taking form. Thus Sternberg (1985) presents a broad study of point of view, gap-filling, temporal discontinuities, proleptic portraits of characters and repetition in the Hebrew Bible while some newer studies of OT texts apply the narratological categories of Bal or Genette. Schmitz (2008), for example, describes perspective and narrative voice in 1 Kings 13 and 22, showing that OT authors can create complex effects through the use of perspective that leave it to the reader to determine which of the opposing characters’ points of view are true. General narratological theory can also be found in several studies (see the research

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report in Vette 2010 and the online bibliography compiled by RRENAB 2013). 3.1.2 New Testament The canonical books of the New Testament (NT) include the narrative of the life of Jesus (the “Gospel”) in four versions (the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in which Jesus often acts as an intradiegetic narrator, as in the parables; the book of Acts, which narrates the history of early Christianity, especially Paul’s travels; and the Apocalypse of John, a proleptic narrative of the heavenly realm and forthcoming events. The unknown authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are usually seen as redactors of the Gospel of Mark using an additional source of Jesus’s sayings, named “Q.” The Gospel of John relates much special material. Religious narration in the Gospels serves as an example of the biography of a religious founder. The rendering of this biographical story employs various narrative categories and devices. Regarding plot, the Gospels can be described as tragedy in which the main conflict between Jesus and the Jewish authorities from the very beginning (see e.g. Mark 2) escalates into the crucifixion of the protagonist at the end. The speed of narration slows down noticeably as the crucifixion approaches (the Gospels have thus been described as “passion narratives with an extended introduction”; see Kähler 1892: 33). Only the resurrection does not fit into the tragedy pattern. The Gospels also add reports of the protagonist’s birth giving the life of Jesus an adequate beginning and echoing ancient biographical narration. – As to the temporal perspective, there is some proleptic narration in that Jesus predicts his own death and resurrection three times. With regard to the order of events, the Gospels differ (see Luke 1:3, which nonetheless insists on the factuality of the narrated) because scenes are often grouped thematically by the redactor. Many scenes can be understood without their literary context as a result of oral transmission over decades prior to being committed to writing. A typical Gospel scene consists of four steps: 1) Jesus travels and encounters a person; 2) action or question of the person; 3) miracle or saying of Jesus; 4) reaction of the people. Knowing this formula, the religious reader thus anticipates an outstanding event after step 2 (e.g. a miracle by Jesus), but s/he is curious as to how the miracle will be accomplished. In this sense, the Gospels’ eventfulness is not created by the fact that God is acting (which meets the reader’s expectation), but by uncertainty as to how and when God will act.

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Regarding perspective, there are only a few inside views of the protagonist Jesus (e.g. Matthew 9:36; Luke 9:44). More important is that the reader’s empathy is focused on the disciples who accompany Jesus and that the reader will identify with them. Adopting the point of view of the disciples, the reader witnesses the sayings, conflicts and miracles of their master. By choosing the “disciple perspective” (the Gospel of John also includes the perspective of minor characters, see Culpepper 1983), the Gospel authors intend for the reader to believe in Jesus as the Son of God (explicitly John 20:30–31) in the same way the disciples did. More specific studies of NT narration began in the 1970s. Some of these early studies adopted linguistic, structuralist and semiotic theories such as the theories of Propp and Greimas (e.g. Patte & Patte 1978). In contrast, the “New Literary Criticism” opposed historical criticism, being mostly a paraphrase of the NT in its final, canonical form in accord with the practice of “close reading.” The first adaptions of narratology to NT narration in a stricter sense were Rhoads and Michie (1982), Culpepper (1983) and Kingsbury ([1986] 1988). Culpepper (1983) discusses point of view, narrative time, plot development and character (Jesus, God the Father, the disciples, the Jews and minor characters) as well as irony and symbolism in the Gospel of John. These books established a relatively solid methodological approach within Gospel research and have had a wide influence in English-speaking scholarship. This narratological approach has been coined “narrative criticism” by analogy with the other exegetical methods of interpretation. Interestingly, narrative criticism did not find its way into Germanspeaking scholarship. In the 1990s, reception aesthetics (esp. the works of Iser) came into vogue among German biblical scholars. NT parable study adopted literary studies early in the 1970s. Since the turn of the millennium, there have been several studies on the Gospels and Acts from a more decidedly narratological approach (e.g. Rose 2007 on Mark 1, based on Genette) describing the “new” approach of narratology for use in NT interpretation (e.g. Eisen 2006 on the book of Acts; Finnern 2010 on Matthew 28). Aside from Ebner and Heininger (2005: 57–130), there are few textbooks in German NT exegesis that include narratological categories. Although not a textbook in the strict sense, Finnern (2010) aims at serving as “handbook for narratological biblical interpretation” (440). It concentrates on a broad range of narratological issues in both literary and biblical studies with regard to the analysis of setting, plot, characters, point of view and intended reception of a narrative.

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3.1.3 Other Early Jewish and Early Christian Writings In addition to narration in the canonical Hebrew Bible/Septuagint and NT texts, there are other narratives of a similar religious and cultural origin which normally refer to biblical narratives and amplify them freely. This sort of paraphrase often uses a narrative gap within the biblical story for dealing with actual theological and ethical questions of the addressees. Regarding Hebrew Bible/Septuagint texts, these are e.g. the Book of Jubilees, Ascension of Isaiah, Life of Adam and Eve, 1 Henoch, Joseph and Aseneth, or Liber antiquitatum biblicarum. Narration subsequent to the NT is vast, which can be seen from the manuscripts that have survived including apocryphal Gospels, apocryphal Acts and apocryphal apocalypses. They are intended to fill narrative gaps, legitimate (Gnostic) theological positions and satisfy a craving for sensation. For example, the Gospel of Peter (probably 2nd cent. AD) describes the passion and resurrection of Jesus in a more dramatic way, speaking through the first-person narrator Peter. In regard to pseudonymous religious narration, there is a question as to whether the ancient author sought to deceive his addressees about his identity or took on the guise of an unreliable narrator, a well-established practice in literary narration. The second possibility is that these apocryphal writings are a form of fantastic and even grotesque narration aimed at entertaining the reader (e.g. little Jesus creating birds from clay in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas). Although there is a broad range of this kind of religious narration, very few studies of these texts from a narratological point of view exist. (For an overview of early Christian narratives after the NT, see Markschies & Schröter eds. 2012.) 3.2 Narratives and their Study in Systematic Theology The interest Christian theology (“dogmatics”) has taken in narratology is less practical—biblical exegesis is concerned mainly with its usefulness for text analysis—than theoretical: what does it mean for human existence and theological language about God and revelation that religious interpretations of life are mainly narrated? Of special importance is the term “narrative theology,” coined by Weinrich (1973) in reference to “the crisis of religious language.” Its main thesis is that Christianity “lost its narrative innocence” when it encountered the Hellenistic world (1973: 331) and began to prefer argument (“Logos”) over myth, even though from its origins, Christianity has been a “narrative community.” For the purposes of theological discourse, narration is thus in need of being rediscovered. For a good overview of the debate on “nar-

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rative theology” in German protestant theology, see Mauz (2009b). Also in this context, the emerging discussion about “narrative ethics” in theology must be mentioned (e.g. Hofheinz et al., eds. 2009). More recently, Schneider-Flume (2005) has sought to renew the practice of “narrating dogmatics.” It raises once again the age-old question as to what form is appropriate for speaking about God: by narration or by arguments and abstract concepts such as sin, justification, providence? To further this discussion, it may be helpful to look at specific narrative texts to determine how they convey theology and ethics. In this sense, Rose (2007) presents his investigation of “theology as narration” in the Gospel according to Mark. Finnern (2010: 224–242, 429–438) shows how a reader’s theology (i.e. his/her mental model of God or, more generally, beliefs about theological topics) and ethics (i.e. attitudes toward persons and attitudes toward narrated qualities and behavior) are shaped by narratives, based on the narrator’s beliefs and attitudes (2010: 179–183, 378–389). On this basis, it is possible to draw correspondences between theological notions and narratological concepts: e.g. the concept of providence corresponds to “finally motivated” narration or to a coincidence plot. This may be due to the fact that it comforts the reader to know that there is direction in life. “Sin” as a concept is illustrated by a narrative where a specific behavior of a character is finally punished by God. Alternatively, the character is accused by God or by a prophet guided by the spirit of God (and therefore has the same evaluative point of view): e.g. the anger of Moses about the Golden Calf (Exodus 32). “Justification” is narrated paradigmatically, as in the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32), where the reader’s empathy for the second son during the progress of the story enables him to share his final relief when experiencing the unwavering love of the father. 3.3 Narratives and their Study in Practical Theology Practical Theology is concerned with current forms of Christian religious practice. As a field of study, it includes the following: 1) Christian education; 2) Christian preaching (“homiletics”); 3) Christian counseling (“pastoral care”); 4) church services (“liturgics”). To these classical fields of research can be added 5) everyday Christian living and 6) Christianity and (mass) media. In all of these fields, narration plays a crucial role, as it will become clear below. 1) Christian Education. Narration in religious education is very widespread. Especially younger children need stories to understand. Biblical stories are re-narrated by teachers but also in teaching materials

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such as illustrated Bibles for children. Here, the selection, presentation and ethics of biblical stories is interesting to analyze. Despite the enormous potential of narratology for the study and practice of religious education, references to narratological theory in Christian pedagogy are rare. Yet some studies do adopt narratological theory such as Scholz and Eisenlauer (2010), which integrates Labov and Waletzky’s model into Bible didactics. They show that classifying biblical texts into abstract, orientation, complicating action, resolution, evaluation and coda helps to understand the text and initiate discussion among students. 2) Christian Preaching. A sermon is a special type of discourse with a religious content, normally referring to a biblical text and usually delivered during church services. Sermons are a highly institutionalized form of discourse and have a long history of study. There are three aspects of preaching that relate to narration: a) preaching about (biblical) narratives; b) preaching as narrative, i.e. re-narrating a biblical text employing first-person narration, internal focalization, direct discours, free indirect discourse, etc.; c) narratives within preaching (“sermon examples”). However, the theory of preaching in Christian theology (“homiletics”) has no specific tradition of studying narration or narrative theory. There are some small passages on narration in the better-known volumes on preaching. Recently, a new approach to homiletics has emerged known as “dramaturgical homiletics” (Nicol [2002] 2005). This approach argues for the necessity of narration and draws parallels between sermons and movies. Meinhard (2003) is one of the rare voices in homiletics who adopts categories such as focalization for analyzing narrative sermons. 3) Christian Counseling. Narratives in Christian counseling can be found on both sides of communication: narratives of the client and narratives of the counselor. Narratives of the client include religious biography, accounts of traumatizing events, reporting of experiences between two sessions, etc. The counselor narrates his own experiences or other (possibly biblical) narratives which run parallel to the client’s situation and offer another view of the world, of oneself, of others, of God or of potential actions (see Peseschkian 1979). A special case of religious narration is a funeral sermon when the life of a deceased person is recounted by a pastor, priest or deacon together with “comforting words.” There is a good deal of empirical research within pastoral care studies on Christian counseling discourse, including narration (e.g. Hauschild 1996). Some researchers thematize narration on the side of the client (i.e. biographical aspects) while others focus on how helpful the counselor’s narration might be. But in general, research in pastoral care and Christian counseling is only seldom concerned with narration.

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4) Church Services as Theater. Liturgy employs narration in the form of theater characterized by dramatic events, a setting such as a medieval church, characters/actors (pastor, priest, altar servers) and the audience (the congregation). Consequently, character constellations, movements on the “stage” or triggering of the congregants’ expectations, emotions, suspense, etc. can be analyzed as theater. Moreover, liturgy refers to narration by evoking the Christmas story, the story of the passion, etc. in accordance with the liturgical year as well as various events commemorated during regional feast days. All in all, it can be said that liturgy is inseparable from narration. The study of church services (“liturgics”) has not embraced narratology yet in its stricter sense although there is near unanimity in current scholarship that church services resemble theater performances (see the overview of MeyerBlanck 2011: 374–387). 5) Narratives in Everyday Christian Religious Discourse. In addition to education, sermons, church services and counseling there is also religious narration in daily life. Many classifications of religious topics in everyday narration are possible according to the type of narrative (biographical events, news events, etc.), typical communication situations or intent (to evangelize, demonstrate, seek appreciation, etc.). Among the four main forms of oral narration (Fludernik → Conversational Narration – Oral Narration), spontaneous oral narration is most relevant in this context. With the empirical turn brought in by practical theology, everyday life has also come into the focus of research in recent years. Practical theology has been reconceptualized as the “theory of lived religion” understood as perception, examination and formation of religion in everyday life (Streib 1998). There has also been some influential research on religious milieus. However, these studies do not deal specifically with everyday narratives or with narratology. 6) Narratives in the Media Relating to Christian Belief. In addition to individual religious narration is mass media religious narration. Besides televangelism, numerous TV series, movies, novels, comics, etc. are characterized by religious contents, references or contexts. These works, with their religious aspects, are mainly studied by the respective scholarly disciplines. In addition, Christian religious communication in the mass media has been analyzed (Schultze & Woods eds. 2008). In conclusion, while there is a broad range of studies on contemporary mass media narration with religious aspects, a bridge between this research field of practical theology and narratological methods has still to be built.

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4 Topics for Further Research (a) Religious narration in biblical and related writings: Although awareness of narrative techniques and narratological analysis is growing quickly within OT scholarship, there remain numerous gaps in research. Perhaps due to the lack of an accepted method of narrative analysis, research on single OT books has been isolated. A comprehensive narratological analysis of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament narration, including the “writings” and deuterocanonical books, with regard to setting, plot, characters, perspective and reception is still missing. The same is true for NT research. Further work is required in the area of methodology to formulate commonly shared methods for textual analysis. (b) Religious narration in systematic theology: In systematic theology, narratological analysis of religious texts and narratological reformulation of theological terms could help to clarify discussion about “narrative theology.” (c) Religious narration in practical theology: To date, practical theology in general is unfamiliar with narratology although researchers do deal with the study of narration in various forms. One example is religious education: here, narratology could be helpful for the critical study and development of narrative teaching materials so as to analyze the morals of children’s bibles, for example. Second, the question as to how freely a biblical story can be re-narrated could be answered more specifically from a narratological point of view. Third, the many forms of involving children in stories such as “godly play,” “bible theater” or “bibliologue” can be evaluated. Fourth, biographical narration by children could come into focus on a methodical basis. Fifth, research about moral education through narratives could be enriched by narratology (Phelan → Narrative Ethics).

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Andersson, Greger (2009). Untamable Texts. Literary Studies and Narrative Theory in the Books of Samuel. New York: T. & T. Clark. Brahier, Gabriela & Dirk Johannsen, eds. (2013). Konstruktionsgeschichten. Narrationsbezogene Ansätze in der Religionsforschung. Würzburg: Ergon. Conermann, Stephan, ed. (2009). Modi des Erzählens in nicht-abendländischen Texten. Narratio Aliena? Berlin: EB-Verlag.

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Culpepper, R. Alan (1983). Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel. Philadelphia: Fortress P. Ebner, Martin & Bernhard Heininger (2005). Exegese des Neuen Testaments. Ein Arbeitsbuch für Lehre und Praxis. Paderborn: Schöningh. Eisen, Ute E. (2006). Die Poetik der Apostelgeschichte. Eine narratologische Studie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Finnern, Sönke (2010). Narratologie und biblische Exegese. Eine integrative Methode der Erzählanalyse und ihr Ertrag am Beispiel von Matthäus 28. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Hauschild, Eberhard (1996). Alltagsseelsorge. Eine sozio-linguistische Analyse des pastoralen Geburtstagsbesuches. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Hofheinz, Marco & Frank Mathwig et al., eds. (2009). Ethik und Erzählung. Theologische und philosophische Beiträge zur narrativen Ethik. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag. Kähler, Martin (1892). Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche, biblische Christus. Leipzig: Deichert. Kingsbury, Jack Dean ([1986] 1988). Matthew as Story. Philadelphia: Fortress P. Markschies, Christoph & Jens Schröter, eds. (2012). Antike christliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung. 1. Band: Evangelien und Verwandtes (2 Teilbände). 7. Aufl. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Mauz, Andreas (2009a). “In Gottesgeschichten verstrickt. Erzählen im christlichreligiösen Diskurs.” Ch. Klein & M. Martínez (eds.). Wirklichkeitserzählungen. Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens. Stuttgart: Metzler, 192–216. – (2009b). “Theology and Narration. Reflections on the ‘Narrative Theology’– Debate and Beyond.” S. Heinen & R. Sommer (eds.). Narratology in the Age of Cross-Disciplinary Narrative Research. Berlin: de Gruyter, 261–285. Meinhard, Isolde (2003). Ideologie und Imagination im Predigtprozess. Zur homiletischen Rezeption der kritischen Narratologie. Leipzig: Evang. Verlagsanstalt. Meyer-Blanck, Michael (2011). Gottesdienstlehre. Neue theologische Grundrisse. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Nicol, Martin ([2002] 2005). Einander ins Bild setzen. Dramaturgische Homiletik. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Patte, Daniel & Aline Patte (1978). Structural Exegesis. From Theory to Practice. Exegesis of Mark 15 and 16. Hermeneutical Implications. Philadelphia: Fortress P. Peseschkian, Nossrat (1979). Der Kaufmann und der Papagei. Orientalische Geschichten in der Positiven Psychotherapie. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer. Rhoads, David & Donald Michie (1982). Mark as Story. An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel. Philadelphia: Fortress P. Rose, Christian (2007). Theologie als Erzählung im Markusevangelium. Eine narratologisch-rezeptionsästhetische Untersuchung zu Mk 1,1–15. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. RRENAB [Réseau de Recherche en Narratologie et Bible]. Bibliographie du RRENAB. http://www2.unil.ch/rrenab/bibliographie.html [Accessed 31 Oct. 2013]. Schmitz, Barbara (2008). Prophetie und Königtum. Eine narratologisch-historische Methodologie entwickelt an den Königsbüchern. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

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Schneider-Flume, Gunda (2005). “Dogmatik erzählen? Ein Plädoyer für biblische Theologie.” G. Schneider-Flume & D. Hiller (eds.). Dogmatik erzählen? Die Bedeutung des Erzählens für eine biblisch orientierte Dogmatik. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 3–18. Scholz, Stefan & Volker Eisenlauer (2010). “Narrativität und Bibeldidaktik.” Praktische Theologie 45, 46–56. Schultze, Quentin J. & Robert H. Woods, eds. (2008). Understanding Evangelical Media. The Changing Face of Christian Communication. Downers Grove: InterVarsity P. Sternberg, Meir (1985). The Poetics of Biblical Narrative. Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Streib, Heinz (1998). “Alltagsreligion oder: Wie religiös ist der Alltag? Zur lebensweltlichen Verortung von Religion in praktisch-theologischem Interesse.” International Journal of Practical Theology 2, 23–51. Vette, Joachim (2010). “Narrative Poetics and Hebrew Narrative: A Survey.” H. Liss & M. Oeming (eds.). Literary Construction of Identity in the Ancient World. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 19–61. Weinrich, Harald (1973). “Narrative Theologie.” Concilium (D) 9, 329–334.

5.2 Further Reading Marguerat, Daniel & Yvan Bourquin (1999). How to Read Bible Stories. An Introduction to Narrative Criticism. London: SCM P. Zumstein, Jean (1996). “Narrative Analyse und neutestamentliche Exegese in der frankophonen Welt.” Verkündigung und Forschung 41, 5–27.

Narration in Various Disciplines Norbert Meuter

1 Definition Whenever we discuss the meaning and function of narrative in the academic disciplines, we need to distinguish between two main aspects. On the one hand, narratives are the subject area, or at least an important issue among others, in many disciplines, without this being explicitly thematized in every case. Here, one would have to distinguish whether these disciplines find their “narrative objects” more or less ready-made, or whether they themselves create these totally or at least partially. On the other hand, implicit references to narratives have sparked a growing tendency towards explicit reflection upon various aspects of narration. In conjunction with this reflection, the phenomenon of narrativity (Abbott → Narrativity) itself is thematized, and with it content- or methodology-oriented concepts of narrativity are developed within the varied frameworks of the disciplines in question.

2 Explication Narrative as a phenomenon has a pivotal role in literary studies and history, for narratives have always formed a key subject of these disciplines. In the field of literature, narrative objects are fully formed from the outset (at least if one excludes interpretation and historical contextualization from the concept of the literary text), whereas the historical disciplines need to construct these objects, if not completely, then at least to a large extent. Accordingly, it is in these two disciplines that we find the first fundamental theoretical discussions of the concept of narrativity, making them the leading disciplines in the study of narrativity. Further important impulses have come from psychology, philosophy and the philosophy of science. Even beyond these disciplines, we not only find narrative objects which are to a large extent unspecified, but also explicit content- and methodology-oriented discussions of narrative in sociology, theology, pedagogy, ethics, psychoanalysis, art, and

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art history as well as law studies (Mitchell ed. 1981; Polkinghorne 1988; Nash ed. 1990; Müller-Funk 2002). It is therefore justified to speak of a “narrative turn” (Kreiswirth 2005) with its underlying assumption that the narrative paradigm may serve to reformulate the scientific and rational nature specific to the humanities (Meuter 2004). Today, the varied approaches to the theory of narrative in the humanities constitute the interdisciplinary study of narratology (Prince 1997; Phelan & Rabinowitz eds. 2005; Herman et al., eds. 2005; Kindt & Müller eds. 2003). In the natural sciences, however, the study of narratology (Meister → Narratology) remains to a large extent a desideratum. So far, it is only in medicine that rudimentary attempts have been made; however, these concern aspects of the doctor-patient relationship rather than the core problems of narrative. Systems theory might prove an innovative approach in that it presupposes such a high level of abstraction as to enable a shared sphere of reflection for both the natural sciences and the humanities.

3 Concepts and their History 3.1 Literary Studies Literary studies deserve to be called the leading discipline in the study of narrative, with Aristotle’s Poetics constituting a seminal source. The triadic structure of classical tragedy, based on the terms “beginning,” “middle” and “end,” can be applied to any kind of narratable material (Straub 1998). Significant beginning- and end-markers make the totality (holos) of the story emerge from the sequence of experiences. A story only becomes meaningful through the selection and combination of happenings and actions (mythos). These do not follow one upon the other in a random sequence or simply “one after the other” (meta), but rather “one out of the other” (dia), so that an intrinsic connection is made between them. Seen as a whole, there emerges a suspenseful trajectory or development from beginning to end with one or more disruptions and moderate or radical changes in direction (peripeteia). For Aristotle, a narrative is constituted by establishing a meaningful, cohesive, probable, and possibly even necessary order out of dissonant, fragmented, merely episodic, accidental or contingent elements (Halliwell 1987; Ricœur [1983/85] 1984/88). Thus, any sequence of actions and happenings which is discernible as a unit and has a temporal organization as well as being perceived as meaningful can be called a narrative.

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In the 20th century, the German hermeneutic tradition, harking back to Aristotle, formulates “elements of narration” (Bauformen des Erzählens, Lämmert [1955] 1991) which are then reformulated as a general “theory of narration” (Theorie des Erzählens, Stanzel [1979] 1984). The focus is on the relationship between narration and temporality, on the significance and function of the narrator (Margolin → Narrator), and on inquiries into the elements and structures of the narrative (Martínez & Scheffel [1999] 2007). (Regarding other traditions, e.g. formalist or structuralist, cf. Herman 1999; Nünning 2003.) In the course of this development, narrative theorists in literary studies have increasingly had to grapple with the fact that the authors of Modernism and Postmodernism tend to break down the classic Aristotelian structures in order to construct “anti-narratives.” This tendency manifests itself for example in the refusal to meet such structural requirements as including a beginning and an end except on a purely formal level and, more importantly, in the destruction of a suspenseful fable (plot, story, intrigue) with a clear climax or anti-climax. In the wake of this development, the sovereignty of the narrator, even of the author (Schönert → Author) (Foucault [1969] 1987), is regarded as increasingly problematic. Still, much controversy surrounds the debate as to whether the postmodern practice of narration really constitutes the demise of the Aristotelian theoretical tradition or whether it is simply an extension and reformation of this tradition (Gibson 1996; Currie 1998). 3.2 The Arts In the context of the arts, the study of narrativity can turn to Lessing’s famous Laocoön ([1766] 1984). According to the definition proposed by this essay for demarcating the fine arts from the literary arts (Ryan → Narration in Various Media), painting and sculpture are marked by spatiality and synchronicity, whereas temporality and diachronicity are the features of poetry. The simultaneous arrangement of shapes and colors depicts objects or bodies, while the successive arrangement of articulated sounds results in the narration of actions. The visual arts can mediate actions only indirectly through the depiction of bodies, whereas in poetry a body can be portrayed only through the narration of actions. According to Lessing, the painter or sculptor must therefore find the “pregnant moment” that condenses the temporal movement in contrast to the poet, who must integrate the “defining trait” of a body into narration of the action. Moving beyond Lessing, other narrative means that allow the visual arts to depict temporal sequences might be taken into account (Pochat 1996).

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3.3 The Historical Sciences Traditionally, the literary and historical disciplines are distinguished from each other on the basis of the different relationships of their subject area with the reality of what is represented. Aristotle’s Poetics (Halliwell 1987) already formulates the assumption that the role of fiction―in contrast to historiography―is not to convey what really happened, but rather what, under the given circumstances, could happen. At the same time, fiction has a generalizable, representative quality: the “actual” (ta genomena) of history vs. the “possible” (ta dynata) of fiction. Still, the question remains whether it is actually possible to differentiate clearly between historical or factual and literary or fictional narratives (Schaeffer → Fictional vs. Factual Narration). Goethe’s categories, poetry and truth (Dichtung und Wahrheit), might well be more closely linked than they appear to be at first glance. As for philosophical contributions to this debate (Ricœur [1983/85] 1984/88), they presuppose an ontological and epistemological cross-over relationship between history and fiction (cf. also Danto 1965; Veyne [1971] 1984). Any methodology of the historical sciences must therefore also examine the question of how and to what extent its object can or must be represented by narrative means. Many authors contend that narratives are a suitable and even necessary medium for recording, describing, and explaining historical developments (Rüsen 1986, 1990). Others suggest a type of “historical argumentation” that in logical terms is independent of any form of narrative (Kocka [1980] 1989), an argument supported by the positions of the Ecole des Annales (cf. Ricœur [1983/85] 1984/88). White (1973) formulated the critical position that the great historians of the 19th century modeled their works on the pattern of certain narrative genres (romance, comedy, tragedy, satire). According to White, the real events of the past are molded into an artificial narrative form, giving them a certain meaning they did not inherently possess. Since every narrative form inevitably transports certain normative statements and value judgments, White (1987) regards this molding of reality to create narrative patterns of meaning as a potentially totalitarian act. It cannot be denied that grands récits (Lyotard [1979] 2003) are potential instruments of power. However, any critique of history as narrative from the position of ideological criticism as a principle is a questionable exercise (Straub 2001). Such is the case especially if this critique relies on a contestable dualism between “artificial forms” and “real events,” as argued by White and others (Mink 1978) who posit that human experience and actions do not have inherent narrative quali-

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ties but are reshaped through narrative after the event. Consequently, the concept of narrativity should be limited to explicit forms of (oral or written) narration, such that the existence of “untold stories” is negated: stories are never lived, but told. Life itself is seen as without beginning, middle and end, nor is it tragic, amusing, suspenseful, etc. Other authors (MacIntyre [1981] 2007; Carr 1986; Bruner 1990; Gergen 1998) take a diametrically opposed view. For them, narrative structures are not the product of literary writers or historians. On the contrary, stories are already formed in actions and life cycles: stories are lived before they are told. Therefore, narrativity is not primarily an aesthetic category, but is rooted in practice. This means that the historical sciences are not merely allowed to resort to narration, but are required to do so if they are to do their subject matter justice. A simple chronicle in which events are simply linked together by dates may be more objective, but this cannot generate understanding because such understanding can be achieved only if a specifically narrative connection is established between the recorded dates. The configuration of this connection―and the selective process behind it―will inevitably be influenced by the “master plots” (Schwemmer 1987) of the cultural environment in which it is created as well as by the individual personality of the historian and the scope of his knowledge, interests, etc. White seems justified in his contention that narrativization of historical events comes at the expense of objectivity, but one has to take into account that historical events fundamentally differ from the natural events that occur in physics, for example, since such events possess no ontological or epistemological objectivity outside of a frame of reference. A historical narrative and its portrayal of a sequence of events do not form a mimetic relationship but a “metaphorical relationship” (Ricœur [1983/85] 1984/88): narrative makes visible something that would otherwise remain unperceived (cf. also Jaeger 2002). 3.4 Psychology The concept of narrativity is increasingly being used as a key not only in the historical and literary disciplines, but also in (hermeneuticallyoriented) psychology. Narrative psychology has emerged as an independent discipline, emphasizing―in contrast to the dominant objectivist and positivist orientation in the field―the significance of forms which are meaningful for human experience and actions (Sarbin ed. 1986; Polkinghorne 1988). Narrative psychology regards narrative forms as a genuine focus for psychological research in so far as the

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cognitive and emotional processes of consciousness are generated on the basis of and through these forms. Bruner (1990) has influenced the debate with his distinction between paradigmatic and narrative modes of thought. In the paradigmatic mode, individual events or objects are linked with conceptual categories during the thought process, while in the narrative mode, events are perceived as elements of a story which contribute to its development. This concerns the cognitive ability to configure diverse events and actions into larger temporal and meaningful units—a capacity for narrative structuring (emplotment) which is obviously one of the fundamental capabilities of human consciousness. Bruner also examines the question of whether this ability is genetic and universal or acquired and learnt, i.e. shaped in different ways by the cultural environment. His position is one of compromise: according to him, we all have an innate predisposition for telling and understanding stories, but this must be developed through cultural models and social interaction into an active competence. A number of studies in developmental psychology on the formation of narrative competence have been published (e.g. Wolf 2001). These studies examine the ability to perceive a range of temporally disparate events as a meaningful and progressive series and also the ability to construct such a meaningful series (Hühn → Event and Eventfulness). The focal point here is not well-constructed literary tales, but simple everyday stories. In such studies, the Aristotelian “middle” represents the turning point of the story in which something surprising, unexpected or interesting constitutes the center around which other happenings are grouped. Empirical studies show that children generally acquire the competence that enables mastery of this basic narrative model between the ages of seven and ten. This is preceded by a development which begins with the ability to string together events in a merely linear fashion, followed by an increasing use of temporal and logical or content-based links and meaningful grouping into episodes until the stage is reached where genuine narrative plots are understood and actively mastered. One specific focus of psychological studies bearing on narrative is the significance of narrative forms for the understanding of emotions. In these studies, emotions are not regarded as isolated and disjointed phenomena but as situationally and socially contextualized. We are able to understand emotions only if we can relate them to our own behavior and experience and to that of the people we interact with within a narrative frame of reference (Sarbin 1989; Gergen 1998), a finding that appears to be a cultural universal (Hogan 2003). Emotions are made un-

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derstandable through stories and in turn, stories also generate emotions, making us feel angry, sad, happy, etc. This is due to the fact that stories are “presentative symbolizations” (Langer 1948). Even though they rely on the discursive medium of language, stories speak to us on a far deeper emotional level than discursive symbolizations such as abstract argumentation or scientific theories can ever do. 3.5 Psychoanalysis The realization of the importance of narrative in the field of psychology has generated therapeutic, and especially psychoanalytical, concepts which interpret the therapeutic process in its entirety with the help of narrative categories (Boothe 1994). Accordingly, neurotic conditions are rooted in untold, repressed stories, which in the course of analysis need to be transformed into an explicit story in order for the subject to come to terms with past events (Schafer 1992). This being the case, narratives have not only an informative function, but also a presentational one. The analyst must thus take note not just of what is told but also how it is told, taking into account both the content and the style of narrative self-presentation and its performative or theatrical manifestations (Lorenzer [1973] 1995, [1979] 1997), since this is precisely the area where the patient’s unconscious identity and personality traits are articulated. There appear to be increasing discussions of the active role of the analyst during this process. Initially, the analyst must record the free associations of the patient with “evenly-hovering attention” (Freud [1912] 1975), after which this material is condensed into narratives thanks to the focus provided by the analyst. These narratives in turn can become paradigmatic case studies and, as a possibly problematic result, may influence the analyst’s focusing acts (Thomä & Kächele 2006). 3.6 Philosophy Plato refers to stories and myths that serve as a point of departure and exemplification for his abstract teachings, a tradition that continues in philosophy even today. Underlying this practice is the idea that the function of narrative is to provide concrete examples in support of conceptual arguments. Hegel formulates the insight that philosophical concepts can themselves only be understood as the end result of their own story (Plotnitsky 2005a). Husserl’s disciple Schapp ([1953] 1985) was the first to develop a distinctive “philosophy of stories.” According to his main thesis, the human being is not the autonomous subject of his own constructions of

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meaning, but throughout his life is inextricably “entangled in stories” which are the prerequisite for the formation of his identity and subjectivity. Since, according to Schapp, stories are the fundamental medium without which we would not be able to perceive meaning, one is justified―with reference to Heidegger―in speaking of a “narrative beingin-the-world.” This philosophical point of departure raises questions concerning the constructive character of narrative. Explicitly told stories are symbolic constructions. The question is whether, and in what way, these constructions are connected with the experience and behavior of the individuals concerned. From a philosophical perspective, an assumed dualism of artificial form and real events (cf. 2.2 above) appears equally contestable. Human experience and behavior do not show wellorganized narrative patterns comparable to the careful compositions of fiction and history writing. Rather, the identifying and shaping of a narrative structure of a certain complexity, with a clear point of view, an individual line of suspense, a characteristic peripeties, etc., is always the result of an active endeavor. On the other hand, experience and behavior cannot exist without some kind of structure. If, for example, one presupposes that to act means (at least partly) to follow a project, this already constitutes a complex achievement, even on the level of action. There is constant interference in and interruption of the project in hand by other experiences, actions and projects. In addition, it is often not clear from the beginning whether one is actually engaged in a project at all. Without at least a rudimentary narrative structure, it would not be possible to find one’s way even on the level of action (Danto 1965; Carr 1986). The idea of a single act seen in isolation is therefore a false abstraction, and for this reason, the concept of story is as fundamental a philosophical term as the concept of action (MacIntyre [1981] 2007; Schwemmer 1987). With Ricœur, who has put forth what is perhaps the most comprehensive philosophical theory of narrativity ([1983/85] 1984/88), it is possible to argue a case for a kind of compromise. Ricœur draws on the classic philosophers that are relevant here (Aristotle, Augustine, Dilthey, Husserl, Heidegger, Schapp) as well as on literary and historical theory, integrating them into a comprehensive narratological hermeneutics. Its key theoretical concept is the three-part mimesis, the aspects of which are not seen in a hierarchical relationship, but in an integrative one. Accordingly, the composition of an explicit story (Mimesis II) is always a creative act that provides a new and unique view of reality, but at the same time, this always follows on from something that has gone before this process. Every story points to a “before.” The

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referent in this relation (Mimesis I) is the “lived world,” which is itself already organized as narrative, at least in part. Because of their symbolic and temporal aspects, real-life actions have an inherently prenarrative structure. Every explicit story, on the other hand, meets its intended target only when it is perceived by a recipient (Mimesis III). Reception is made possible because of the inherent openness of the explicit stories in general terms. These stories―regardless of how precisely and concretely they might be told―contain no truly individual events, but simply schematized conceptions that have to be concretized by the recipient. The three types of mimesis form a temporal unit as a circular cultural process that is constantly evolving: through reception, the explicit narrative configuration once again becomes part of the reallife experience of the experiencing and acting recipient who can expand, confirm or vary the pre-existing pre-narrative structures. Such a newly and differently (re-)configured real-life situation in turn forms the basis for the next explicit configuration. Narrative therefore involves mediation between common cultural standards and exceptional deviations from these standards, hence a complex interplay of tradition and innovation (Alber & Fludernik → Mediacy and Narrative Mediation). In this model, the narrative “seeing-things-together” (prendreensemble) can be understood as the construction and establishment of a meaningful and more or less coherent or probable order created out of dissonant, scattered or random elements. The important point is the ontological distinction between event and incident (Ricœur [1965] 2007). An incident is defined by its complete contingency, as something that occurs in a certain manner but could equally occur in a different manner, or not at all. A story transforms a series of heterogeneous incidents into meaningful events within a diachronic structure. The composition of a story is a process that organizes various components into a whole in order to produce a single meaningful effect. The narrative seeingthings-together transforms the irrational contingency of non-contextualized incidents into an intelligible contingency of events. In the tradition of Kant, this seeing-things-together can be described as a “synthesis of the heterogeneous.” Inquiry into the personal identity of the individual is a further philosophical area of research in the field of narrativity. Narrative approaches to this issue (Ricœur [1983/85] 1984/88, [1990] 1992; Kerby 1991; Meuter 1995; Brockmeier & Carbough eds. 2001; for further discussion, see Strawson 2004) assume that personal identity is formed and stabilized only through the telling of stories (Bamberg → Identity and Narration). The identity of the individual person differs fundamentally

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from the numerical identity of individual objects. Personal identity rests upon a self-image that is physical, emotional, mental as well as practical, and this self-image is internally reflected and externally communicated in the narrative process. Corresponding to these two forms of usage, it is possible to distinguish two types of identity (Ricœur [1983/85] 1984/88, [1990] 1992): on the one hand, identity as “sameness” (German: Selbigkeit; Latin: idem; French: mêmeté); on the other hand, identity as “selfhood” (German: Selbstheit; Latin: ipse; French: ipséité). Narrative identities are invariably ipse-identities which are constantly reconfigured through the telling of stories. 3.7 Ethics The concept of narrative identities has a genuine moral or ethical dimension (Korthals Altes 2005). In relation to neo-Aristotelian concepts, authors such as Taylor (1989) and MacIntyre ([1981] 2007) examine narrative identities in connection with the search for the “good life.” The writings of Nussbaum (1990) highlight this aspect in that they emphasize the significance of narrative fiction in the formation of values and, generally speaking, moral awareness. The stories of the literary canon provide a rich source of alternative forms of the “good life.” But there is an even deeper structural interrelation between narrative identity formation and the moral dimension of human existence. The formation of narrative identities is identical with the development of a set of values that are independent of any given situation and which lend a whole life―or at least certain stages of a life―moral meaning and stability. This is a genuinely social process in the sense of interaction with others to accomplish shared projects. Thus the narrative process also serves to generate forms and expressions of mutual respect. In this context, Ricœur ([1990] 1992) speaks of the “complementary dialectics” of identity formation and respect for others. The other individual represents the moral imperative to take responsibility for his potential suffering. However, in order to be able to reflect critically on the relationship with the other, the self must define its own position. Forms of “self love,” or at least of “self esteem,” are thus essential for moral behavior with regard to the other, and these constitute the reflexive moment in the orientation towards a good life. This dialectic of identity formation and respect takes place in and with the stories we live through and tell each other (Meuter 2007).

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3.8 Sociology Studies on narrative in the field of sociology (Morrison 2005) also focus on the problem of personal identity. In the sociology of knowledge (Luhmann 1989), this problem is regarded as a feature of the modern functionally differentiated society which, unlike pre-modern societies, no longer ascribes a fixed identity to its members on the basis of birth, class, etc. Identity thus becomes an accomplishment for which the individual himself is responsible. Society no longer provides an answer to the question “who am I?”, but leaves it to the individual to find his or her own answer. To do so, the modern individual must have a very clear idea of which of his behavioral traits are relevant to his participation in the various sectors of society (politics, academia, education, the economy, the arts, etc.). Nowadays, the necessity of having multilayered identities that enable participation in various social environments is a given. Consequently, the modern individual can only resolve the problem of his (all-embracing) identity by adopting a self-image as an “individual individual,” i.e. an individual with a unique, distinctively individual life story whose decisive meaning resides in its distinctiveness from other life stories (Meuter 2002). Accordingly, the modern concept of the identity of the individual is articulated mainly through narrative. Narrative forms, with their inherent structures of temporality and meaning, indeed appear to lend themselves particularly well to questions concerning one’s own (individual) identity: it is possible in a story for one to change, develop, and integrate sudden changes (peripeteia) while somehow remaining “the same.” The question is, though, whether and to what extent concepts of identity based on an idea of the narrative unity of human life can be upheld under the social conditions of late modern and postmodern times (Kraus 1996; cf. Salmon 2007). Critics regard such categories as continuity, consistency, and coherence, which are inherent in narrative and biographical identity, as a fundamentally totalitarian coercion into regarding one’s own life as an integral unity which must be realized. They claim that the way of life of the individual in postmodern societies can no longer be adequately described in the classical narrative sense as “I-identity,” but at best within the conceptual framework of a “patchwork-identity” (Keupp 1996). 3.8 Theology All religions rely on narrative myths of foundation which have subsequently acquired canonical status. Theological studies with a narrato-

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logical orientation (Goldberg 1982; Sternberg 1987; Hauerwas & Jones eds. 1989; Cornils 2005) have picked up on this connection and can be understood as reflections on the narrative practices of religion. It must be borne in mind that theology has always been rooted in narrative practices with which it is inextricably linked (in the sense of Schapp [1953] 1985). There is no isolated plane of pure theological abstraction, since theological discourse has always been a part of religious practice. On this basis, the matter in hand is the development of a theology through narration which defines the genuinely narrative dimension of religious belief (Wenzel 1997). However, the question remains as to whether there are inherent limits to a narrative theology, since theology centers on faith which, by its nature, cannot be narrated. Even so, narrative has an immense significance for theology with respect to ethics. Christian ethics in particular must be seen as rooted within a specific religious community, the church. This community derives its identity from the fact that all of its members see themselves as part of a shared narrated story: the story of God’s relationship with the beings he has created (Hauerwas 1983). 3.10 Pedagogy Narrative pedagogy implicitly criticizes the abstract structural analysis of institutions, systemic constraints and patterns of interaction, focusing instead on the concrete situations in which teaching and learning take place. Gaining insight into the real-life experience of learning from stories is the point of departure for an inquiry into the narrative sources of pedagogical knowledge (Baacke & Schulze eds. [1979] 1997). Where this is applied to concrete didactic problems, school lessons and the teaching of content-oriented knowledge can be analyzed with regard to narrative forms (Krummheuer 1997). Narrating in this context means describing a specific phenomenon in everyday classroom communication. Narrative pedagogy is focused in particular on the argumentative content of narrative-based learning and teaching processes: a storyoriented argumentation will invariably appear more realistic and convincing than the presentation of purely theoretical knowledge. In order to understand experience, and particularly the experience of the self and its identity, pedagogy requires narrative elements that supplement academic knowledge with narrative knowledge. The inclusion of narrative paths to the acquisition of knowledge is a prerequisite for the processes of identification that are necessary for an effective learning experience (Neubert 1998).

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3.11 Law Studies Law studies have a strong affinity with the concept of narrativity, especially in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of “case law” based on precedent (Lüderssen 1996; van Roermund 1997; Bruner 2002). All laws can be understood as abstractions of individual cases. Individual cases, in turn, enter the legal system by way of narrations. The prosecutor, defendant, defense counsel, counsel for the prosecution, witnesses, and experts tell the court their version of events relevant to the case. Judge and jury then select―or adequately transform―the one version that in their judgment corresponds to what really happened, a procedure that presupposes a high degree of narrative competence. In particular, this involves the ability to actively employ and analyze as well as to criticize the rhetorical devices and narrative strategies resorted to by the witness in order to lend plausibility to his version of events (Brooks & Gerwitz eds. 1996). Another characteristic central to narrative competence in legal contexts is the ability to compare and evaluate stories in view of their legal relevance. Here, the legal sciences can resort to literary renderings of legal problems (Gearey 2005; Brooks 2005; Sternberg 2008), a connection that represents one aspect of the “law and literature movement.” 3.12 Medicine In the field of medicine, questions relating to narrative have been explicitly thematized for some time now (Greenhalgh & Hurwitz eds. 2005). This results from an understanding of medicine that regards the discipline not primarily as a natural science, but as a behavioral science: scientific knowledge of the human being is necessary, but in the end it only serves to enable the medical practitioner to heal the patient or provide palliation for his ailment. Stories are generally a central factor in the doctor-patient relationship, particularly where anamnesis is concerned. Before a doctor can begin treating the patient, he must learn as much as possible about his supposed condition on the basis of what the patient tells him. In this situation, linguistic, empathetic and interpretative faculties are required. The doctor needs to “translate” the stories told by the patient into narratives with a medical focus without moving too far beyond the sphere of the patient’s real-life experience, but at the same time providing a structural basis for the next steps in the professional-medical treatment (Hydén 2005). The doctor’s medical training, however, will in no way have prepared him to meet these requirements. As a medical student, he will have been confronted with a number of

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significant case studies, but at present there is a lack of systematic socio-cultural training of narrative competence. This is relevant because such stories provide the meaning, context and perspective for the specific problematics of an individual patient’s case. Stories explain how and why someone has fallen ill. By evoking as many subjective aspects of the illness as possible, they make possible a holistic approach to diagnosis and therapy. Periods of sickness are important peripeties in life and often figure prominently in life stories. 3.13 Philosophy of Science Starting with Danto (1965), the concept of “narrative explanation” (Roth 1989) in the philosophy of science has emerged as a critical position that challenges the influence of positivism and logical empiricism on the philosophy of science in the humanities. According to the positivist-nomological position, the humanities, too, are governed by a process of logical deduction whereby individual events must be explained, i.e. the event to be explained (the explanandum) is deduced from certain a priori conditions and empirical laws which, together, constitute the explanans. A critique of this model hinges mainly on the concept of “cultural laws,” although these laws are not to be understood as analogous to the laws of nature. In the humanities we do not expect explanations to be founded on laws, but on motives, reasons and aims, in other words, on the intentions of persons who take part in given scenarios. Furthermore, there are many other factors that lead to cultural events taking place such as the behavior of other people, circumstances and coincidences, etc. Still, the question remains as to whether one is justified at all, and if so, to what extent, in speaking of intentions in relation to actions that are manifest before and independent of the process of their realization. It is therefore clearly insufficient to explain action―and even more so, complex cultural processes―solely, or even predominantly, on the basis of the intentions of acting subjects (Schwemmer 1987; Meuter 2000). Instead, it is necessary to reconstruct the individual story of which the action in question forms a part. Furthermore, the purely nomological philosophy of science ignores the fact that the explanandum does not constitute just an event, but a transformation. It is therefore wrong to regard the former state, in the sense of initial conditions, as part of the explanans. On the contrary, the beginning and the end of a process of transformation both form part of the explanandum. On this basis, it is possible to construct the basic formula for a narrative explanation (Danto 1965): a narrative explanation is arrived at by filling in the middle between the temporal starting

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and ending points of a transformation. A story is the explanation of how a transformation took place from beginning to end: (a) x is F in t-1; (b) H happens in conjunction with x in t-2; (c) x is G in t-3. (a) and (c) form the explanandum, and (b) the explanans of the narrative explanation. Together, the three steps delineate the relevant transformation in keeping with the triadic structure: the explanation has a beginning (a), a middle (b), and an end (c). One must bear in mind, though, that this basic schema is an oversimplification. Many transformations, especially those which the historical sciences seek to explain, are far more complex and incorporate numerous factors that have to be integrated into the narrative explanation. The complexity of factual processes cannot serve as an argument against narrative explanations per se. On the contrary, a narrative, by definition, is a symbolic form of representation that is flexible and malleable enough to make possible the integration of (relevant) complex factors into the explanation. In any case, the specific rationality and scientific nature of explanations in cultural studies are directly linked with the narrative formula. In cultural studies, narratives are not regarded as a deficiency―something that one has to fall back on in the absence of alternatives due to a lack of insight into “cultural laws,” for example―but rather a genuine means for formulating insights and research findings.

4 Topics for Further Research 4.1 Natural Sciences Despite the fact that on occasion narrative elements are used in explanations in the natural sciences (e.g. the narrative of “Schroedinger’s cat”; cf. Plotnitsky 2005b) and that certain narrative backgrounds exist (e.g. in the term “natural history” in the theory of evolution and in paleontology), a specifically narratological inquiry in the natural sciences remains a desideratum. In the philosophy of science, this involves the concept of meaning and the related classic dichotomy of “explaining” and “understanding”: the world of nature is devoid of meaning and must be explained through laws and the establishment of causal connections; by contrast, the world of culture and human understanding is rendered meaningful and can be understood through stories (among other

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means). An application of the concepts of narrative would therefore presuppose a revision of fundamental precepts in the natural sciences: it would be necessary to understand nature as something that is not (or at least not entirely) governed by laws and causal connections, but primarily constitutes a dynamic and creative process. This calls for philosophical paradigm shifts, the beginnings of which can be found in Whitehead’s ([1929] 1978) cosmology. In the tradition of Aristotelian physics, being is conceived as a complex interplay of processes of becoming, each having their own structure. Every occurrence in nature begins with an event which becomes part of a creative process oriented towards the final outcome. From this point of view, it seems possible to describe processes in nature with narrative categories (Lachmann & Meuter 2011). 4.2 Systems Theory A systems theoretical approach, which encompasses the difference between nature and culture, might prove productive with regard to potential studies on the role of narrative in the natural sciences. Independent of this, however, systems theory has the benefit―in contrast to the classic theories of behavior, for example―of reaching a level of abstraction that makes possible a discussion of all areas of culture in a single unified theory. As a first step, a narrative can be understood as the “systemic self-organization of meaning and time” (Meuter 2004). Traditional approaches posit that meaning comes into the world through subjects who act intentionally; systems theory, by contrast, argues that the identity of subjects and actions is formed first of all through processes that produce meaning by means of selective reductions. From a phenomenological perspective, these processes of meaning appear in the form of stories. A narration is not the realization of a plan, but rather a dynamic series of events that follows its own logic, and because of its peripeties cannot be mastered from without. Subjects are therefore not the sovereign masters of their own stories, but―similar to their actions―must be regarded as their effects. The systems theoretical term “self-organization” lends itself to describing precisely this situation. The decisive factor for a narrative-oriented systems theory is the high improbability of factual events. The reason why a certain event takes place instead of another, equally probable one can only be explained if one regards events as elements in a meaningful systemic process. From a systems theoretical perspective, any experiential meaning

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is based on the difference between actuality and potentiality: only one possibility can ever be realized out of an abundant potentiality. Under this condition, meaning is by nature experienced as a reduction of complexity, as an inescapable necessity for selection. Here, one has to take into consideration that it is a specific characteristic of a system operating with meaning that it not only reacts to the selections that have de facto just taken place, but also to the selectivity of these selections. Meaning is therefore inextricably linked with the experience of contingency: systems of meaning select differently due to the experience of being able to select. A systemic process, therefore, is not just a formal “row” or “chain” where identical parts are simply lined up according to a never-changing principle. Rather, every part of the process “leaves its legacy” of selectivity to the one following it, and in the course of this process, ever greater improbabilities accumulate through recursive loops. Phenomenologically speaking, this, too, manifests itself in narrative form: whenever one is entangled in a story, one quickly―after only very few peripeties―finds that one has arrived at a point that initially one would never have thought possible. Thus, narrations explain reality to us, or at the very least, they can help us understand why something is the way it is, even if it is improbable and not created by subjects: what is, is the result of a self-organizing systemic process. (Translated by Nina Stedman)

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Baacke, Dieter & Theodor Schulze, eds. ([1979] 1997). Aus Geschichten lernen. Zur Einübung pädagogischen Verstehens. Weinheim: Juventa. Boothe, Brigitte (1994). Der Patient als Erzähler in der Psychotherapie. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht. Brockmeier, Jens & Donald Carbough, eds. (2001). Narrative and Identity. Studies in Autobiography, Self, and Culture. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Brooks, Peter (2005). “Narrative in and of the Law.” J. Phelan & P. Rabinowitz (eds.). A Companion to Narrative Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 415–426. – & Paul D. Gerwitz eds. (1996). Law’s Stories. Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law. New Haven: Yale UP. Bruner, Jerome (1990). Acts of Meaning. Cambridge: Harvard UP. – (2002). Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Carr, David (1986). Time, Narrative, and History. Bloomington: Indiana UP.

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Cornils, Anja (2005). “Theology and Narrative.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 599–600. Currie, Mark (1998). Postmodern Narrative Theory. London: Macmillian. Danto, Arthur C. (1965). Analytical Philosophy of History. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Foucault, Michel ([1969] 1987). “What is an Author?” V. Lambropoulus & D. Miller (eds.). Twentieth Century Literary Theory. An Introductory Anthology. Albany: State U of New York P, 124–142. Freud, Sigmund ([1912] 1975). “Ratschläge für den Arzt bei der psychoanalytischen Behandlung.” S. Freud. Schriften zur Behandlungstechnik (Studienausgabe Ergänzungsband). Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 169–180. Gearey, A. (2005). “Law and Literature.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 271–275. Gergen, Kenneth J. (1998). “Erzählung, moralische Identität und historisches Bewußtsein. Eine sozialkonstruktivistische Darstellung.” J. Straub (ed.). Erzählung, Identität und historisches Bewußtsein. Die psychologische Konstruktion von Zeit und Geschichte. Erinnerung, Geschichte, Identität. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 170–202. Gibson, Andrew (1996). Towards a Postmodern Theory of Narrative. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Goldberg, Michael (1982). Theology and Narrative. A Critical Introduction. Nashville: Abingdon. Greenhalgh, Trisha & Brian Hurwitz, eds. (2005). Narrative-based Medicine―Sprechende Medizin. Bern: Huber. Halliwell, Stephen (1987). The Poetics of Aristotle. Translation and Commentary. London: Duckworth. Hauerwas, Stanley (1983). The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics. London: U of Notre Dame P. – & L. Gregory Jones eds. (1989). Why Narrative? Readings in Narrative Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Herman, David (1999). “Introduction: Narratologies.” D. Herman (ed.). Narratologies. New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1–30. – et al., eds. (2005). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge. Hogan, Patrick Colm (2003). The Mind and its Stories. Narrative Universals and Human Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Hydén, Lars-Christer (2005). “Medicine and Narrative.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 293–297. Jaeger, Stephan (2002). “Erzähltheorie und Geschichtswissenschaft.” V. Nünning & A. Nünning (eds.). Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär. Trier: WVT, 237–263. Kerby, Anthony Paul (1991). Narrative and the Self. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Keupp, Heiner (1996). “Bedrohte und befreite Identitäten in der Risikogesellschaft.” A. Barkhaus et al. (eds.). Identität, Leiblichkeit, Normativität. Neue Horizonte anthropologischen Denkens. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 380–403. Kindt, Tom & Hans-Harald Müller, eds. (2003). What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: de Gruyter.

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Kocka, Jürgen ([1980] 1989). “Zurück zur Erzählung? Plädoyer für historische Argumentation.” J. Kocka. Geschichte und Aufklärung. Aufsätze. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 8–20. Korthals Altes, Liesbeth (2005). “Ethical Turn.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 142–146. Kraus, Werner (1996). Das erzählte Selbst. Die narrative Konstruktion von Identität in der Spätmoderne. Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus. Kreiswirth, Martin (2005). “Narrative Turn.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 377–382. Krummheuer, Götz (1997). Narrativität und Lernen. Mikrosoziologische Studien zur sozialen Konstitution schulischen Lernens. Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag. Lachmann, Rolf & Norbert Meuter (2011). “Akt.” P. Komer & A.G. Wildfeuer (eds.). Neues Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe. Freiburg: Alber, vol. 1, 63–74. Lämmert, Eberhard ([1955] 1991). Bauformen des Erzählens. Stuttgart: Metzler. Langer, Susanne (1948). Philosophy in a New Key. A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art. New York: Penguin. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim ([1766] 1984). Laocoön. An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Lorenzer, Alfred ([1973] 1995). Sprachzerstörung und Rekonstruktion. Vorarbeiten zu einer Metatheorie der Psychoanalyse. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. – ([1979] 1997). “Die Analyse der subjektiven Struktur von Lebensläufen und das gesellschaftlich Objektive.” D. Baacke & Th. Schulze (eds.). Aus Geschichten lernen. Zur Einübung pädagogischen Verstehens. Weinheim: Juventa, 230–255. Lüderssen, Klaus (1996). “Das Narrative in der Jurisprudenz.” K. Lüderssen. Genesis und Geltung in der Jurisprudenz. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 66–67. Luhmann, Niklas (1989). “Individuum, Individualität, Individualismus.” N. Luhmann. Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik. Studien zur Wissenssoziologie der modernen Gesellschaft. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, vol. 3, 149–258. Lyotard, Jean-François ([1979] 2003). The Postmodern Condition. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. MacIntyre, Alasdair ([1981] 2007). After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P. Martínez, Matías & Michael Scheffel ([1999] 2007). Einführung in die Erzähltheorie. München: Beck. Meuter, Norbert (1995). Narrative Identität. Das Problem der personalen Identität im Anschluß an Ernst Tugendhat, Niklas Luhmann und Paul Ricœur. Stuttgart: Metzler/Poeschel. – (2000). “Die körperliche und soziale Infrastruktur des Handelns.” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 4, 579–493. – (2002). “Müssen Individuen individuell sein?” J. Renn & J. Straub (eds.). Transitorische Identität. Der Prozesscharakter des modernen Selbst. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 187–210. – (2004). “Geschichten erzählen, Geschichten analysieren. Das narrativistische Paradigma in den Kulturwissenschaften.” F. Jäger & J. Straub (eds.). Handbuch der Kulturwissenschaften: Paradigmen und Disziplinen. Stuttgart: Metzler, vol. 2, 140–155.

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Sarbin, Theodore R. (1989). “Emotions as Narrative Emplotments.” M. J. Packer & R. B. Addison (eds.). Entering the Circle. Hermeneutic Investigations in Psychology. Albany: State U of New York P, 185–201. – ed. (1986). Narrative Psychology. The Storied Nature of Human Conduct. New York: Praeger. Schafer, Roy (1992). Retelling a Life. Narration and Dialogue in Psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books. Schapp, Wilhelm ([1953] 1985). In Geschichten verstrickt. Zum Sein von Mensch und Ding. Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann. Schwemmer, Oswald (1987). Handlung und Struktur. Zur Wissenschaftstheorie der Kulturwissenschaften. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Stanzel, Franz K. ([1979] 1984). A Theory of Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Sternberg, Meir (1987). The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading. Bloomington: Indiana UP. – (2008). “If-Plots: Narrativity and the Law-Code.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 29–107. Straub, Jürgen (1998). “Geschichten erzählen, Geschichten bilden. Grundzüge einer narrativen Psychologie historischer Sinnbildung.” J. Straub (ed). Erzählung, Identität und historisches Bewußtsein. Die psychologische Konstruktion von Zeit und Geschichte. Erinnerung, Geschichte, Identität. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 81– 169. – (2001). “Über das Bilden der Vergangenheit.” J. Rüsen (ed.). Geschichtsbewußtsein. Psychologische Grundlagen, Entwicklungskonzepte, empirische Befunde. Köln: Böhlau, 45–113. Strawson, Galen (2004). “Against Narrativity.” Ratio n.s. 17, 428–452. Taylor, Charles (1989). Sources of the Self. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Thomä, Helmut & Horst Kächele (2006). Psychoanalytische Therapie. Band 3: Forschung. Berlin: Springer; also: . Veyne, Paul ([1971] 1984). Writing History: Essay on Epistemology. Middletown: Wesleyan UP. Wenzel, Knut (1997). Zur Narrativität des Theologischen. Prolegomena zu einer narrativen Texttheorie in soteriologischer Absicht. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang. White, Hayden (1973). Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – (1987). The Content of the Form. Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Whitehead, Alfred North ([1929] 1978). Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology. New York: Free Press. Wolf, Dagmar (2001). “Zur Ontogenese narrativer Kompetenz.” J. Rüsen (ed.). Geschichtsbewußtsein. Psychologische Grundlagen, Entwicklungskonzepte, empirische Befunde. Köln: Böhlau, 137–175.

Narration in Various Media Marie-Laure Ryan

1 Definition The term of medium (plural: media) covers a wide variety of phenomena: (a) TV, radio, and the internet (especially the WWW) as the media of mass communication; (b) music, painting, film, the theater and literature as the media of art; (c) language, the image and sound as the media of expression (and by implication as the media of artistic expression); (d) writing and orality as the media of language; (e) handwriting, printing, the book, and the computer as the media of writing. The definition provided by Webster’s dictionary puts relative order in this diversity by proposing two distinct definitions: (1) Medium as a channel or system of communication, information, or entertainment; (2) Medium as a material or technical means of expression (including artistic expression).

2 Explication The first definition regards media as conduits for the transmission of information, while the second describes them as “languages” that shape this information (Meyrowitz 1993). (The use of quotation marks in this entry will distinguish “language” as a collection of expressive devices from language as the semiotic code that forms the object of linguistics.) The relevance of the concept of medium for narratology is much more evident for type 2 than for type 1. Ong (1982) has objected to a conception of media that reduces them to “pipelines for the transfer of a material called information.” If indeed conduit-type media were nothing more than hollow pipes for the transmission of artifacts realized in a medium of type 2 (e.g. a film broadcast on TV, a painting digitized on the WWW, a musical performance recorded and played on a phonograph), they would bear little narratological interest. But the shape of the pipe affects the kind of information that can be transmitted, alters the conditions of reception, and often leads to the creation of works tailor-made for the medium (cf. films made for TV). For the narratolo-

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gist, channel-type media are only interesting to the extent that they involve “differences that make a narrative difference”—in other words, to the extent that they function as both conduits and “languages.” Among technologies, TV, radio, film, and the internet have clearly developed unique storytelling capabilities, but it would be hard to find reasons to regard Xerox copy machines or phonographs as possessing their own narrative “language.”

3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 Historical Background In Western thought, reflection on how narrative is conditioned by the medium in which it is realized—what we may call its mediality—can be traced as far back as Plato’s distinction between a diegetic and a mimetic mode of narration. According to Plato, in diegetic narration the poet speaks in his own voice (or rather, in the case of fiction, in the voice of a narrator), while in mimetic narration, he speaks through the characters. Both modes occur in epic poetry, but while diegetic narration, interpreted as reporting, remains dependent on language, mimetic narration, interpreted as showing, has become the dominant mode of presentation in multi-channel performing arts, such as drama, film, the opera, mime, and ballet. In these last two cases, as well as in silent film, mimetic narration becomes emancipated from language. It was left to Aristotle to acknowledge medium as a distinctive property of art. After defining poetry as imitation (in the sense of representation), Aristotle mentions three ways of distinguishing various types of imitation: through medium, object and mode. Under medium, he classifies expressive resources such as color, shape, rhythm, melody, and voice. The notion of object (or content) creates a generic distinction between imitations that share the same medium: for instance, tragedy deals with people of higher standing, while comedy represents people of lower social stature. “Mode,” finally, covers Plato’s distinction between diegetic and mimetic presentation, but it is recast as an opposition between narration and impersonation: “It is possible to imitate the same objects in the same medium sometimes by narrating (either using a different persona, as in Homer’s poetry, or as the same person without variations), or else with all the imitators as agents and engaged in activity” (1996: 2.2). Here Aristotle regards narration and impersonation as instances of the same medium because both are made of language; but if we make a pragmatic distinction between enacting and reporting and

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regard this distinction as constitutive of medium, then their difference in “mode” marks epic poetry and drama as distinct narrative media in the modern sense of the word despite their common semiotic support. Another landmark in the study of narrative mediality is Lessing’s distinction between spatial and temporal forms of art. Reacting to the 18th-century philosophy of art, which was captured by the saying of Simonides of Ceos, “painting is mute poetry, and poetry is speaking painting,” Lessing insisted on the sensory and spatio-temporal dimensions of the two media: painting speaks to the sense of sight, poetry to the imagination; painting extends in space, poetry extends in time. These differences predispose the two art forms to the representation of different subject matters: “signs existing in space can only represent objects whose wholes or parts coexist, while signs that follow one another can express only objects whose wholes or parts are consecutive” ([1766] 1984: 78). While the strength of painting lies in the representation of beauty, which resides in a relation between the parts of an object, poetry excels at the representation of action because action develops in time. Painting is in essence a descriptive medium, and poetry a narrative one. But Lessing does not exclude the possibility of stretching each medium in the direction of the other. Poetry can dramatize the evocation of static objects by transforming spatial vision into temporal action, as Homer does when he describes Juno’s chariot by recounting how Hebe put it together piece by piece. The spatial arts, conversely, can overcome their narrative deficiency by selecting a so-called “pregnant moment” that offers a window on the preceding and following actions. Lessing’s example is the famous Greek sculpture of Laocoön, which shows the Trojan priest and his sons in the last moments of a hopeless struggle against a sea serpent. While we can extract observations relevant to what we now call medium in earlier periods, it wasn’t until the 20th century, when technological inventions such as photography, film, the phonograph, radio, and television expanded the repertory of channels of communication and means of representation that the concept of medium emerged as an autonomous topic of inquiry. McLuhan, an inspiring but somewhat mercurial thinker, popularized the concept with his characterization of media as “extension of man,” his claim that media are “forms that shape and reshape our perceptions,” and his oft-quoted but variably interpreted slogan “the medium is the message” (1996), which puts selfreference at the center of media studies. He was also instrumental in breaking down the barrier between elite and popular culture, a move which lead to the emancipation of media studies from literature, philosophy, and poetics. For McLuhan, comic strips, advertisements or the

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composition of the newspaper front page were as worthy of attention as works of high literature. But it was his disciple, Ong (1982), who broke the ground for the study of narrative in media other than written literature with a systematic explorations of the forms of narrative in oral and chirographic cultures (=cultures based on handwriting). In France, the structuralist/semiotic movement gave legitimacy to the study of non-verbal forms of representation (advertisement and photography for Barthes [1980] 1981, cinema for Deleuze [1983] 1986, [1985] 1989 and Metz [1968] 1974, TV and mass communication for Baudrillard [1981] 1994). However, structuralism sometimes hampered the understanding of media due to its insistence on regarding Saussure’s linguistic theory as the model of all semiotic systems. Visual representations, in particular, cannot be divided into discrete units comparable to the morphemes and phonemes of language, and the doctrine of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign cannot account for the iconic signification of painting and film. In the long run, Peircian semiotics, with its tripartite division of signs into symbols, icons and indices, has proved more fruitful for media studies. The founding fathers of narratology recognized from the very beginning the medium-transcending nature of narrative: according to Bremond (1973), stories can be realized in media as diverse as literature, stage, ballet, and film. Mixing genres (Hühn & Sommer → Narration in Poetry and Drama) and media, Barthes ([1966] 1977) expands the list to include myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic history, drama, mime, painting, stained glass window, cinema, comics, news items, conversation, etc. Were he alive today, he would add blogs, hypertext, and video games. Barthes’ and Bremond’s wish to open up narratology to media other than literature went unfulfilled for years. Under the influence of Genette, narratology developed as a project almost exclusively devoted to literary fiction. Media representing the mimetic mode, such as drama and film, were largely ignored, and because of their absence of narrator, sometimes not even recognized as narratives, despite the similarity of their content with the plots of diegetic narration. But this situation changed dramatically in the late 20th century with the socalled “narrative turn” in the humanities. In the past twenty years, the study of non-literary or non-verbal forms of narrative has extended to conversational narrative (Labov 1972), film (Bordwell 1985; Chatman 1978), comic strips (McCloud 1994), painting (Bal 1991; Steiner [1988] 2004), photography (Hirsch 1997), opera (Hutcheon & Hutcheon 1999), television (Kozloff 1992; Thompson 2003), dance (Foster 1996), and music (Abbate 1989; Grabócz 1999, 2007: 231–298; Tarasti 2004; Seaton 2005).

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Media studies took a theoretical turn in the 1990s. In the U.S., Bolter and Grusin (1999) proposed the concept of “remediation” to explain the relations between different media. In their view, every new technologybased medium must be understood, in the context of other media, as an attempt to “remediate” their limitations and get closer to the elusive goal of “achieving the real.” Video games, for instance, remediate film by incorporating narrative techniques commonly used in cinema within an interactive environment; digital photography remediates analogue photography by making images easier to manipulate; analogue photography remediates painting by being more faithful to its object; and the Internet remediates all other media by encoding them digitally in order to facilitate their transmission. In its narratological applications, “remediation” directs attention to how narrative texts may create networks of connections between different media. But the claim that every new medium constitutes an improvement over an old one cannot be sustained from a narratological and aesthetic point of view, for every gain in expresseness comes at a cost, and new media do not necessarily produce better narratives than old ones. The concept of “intermediality,” now widely adopted in Europe, is more narrowly focused on art forms than remediation, and it avoids the meliorism inherent in this term. As Wolf (2008) observes, intermediality can be conceived in a narrow and in a broad sense. In a broad sense, it is the medial equivalent of intertextuality and covers any transgression of boundaries between different media. In a narrow sense, it refers to the participation of more than one medium—or sensory channel—in a given work. The opera, for instance, is intermedial through its use of gestures, language, music, and visual stage setting. If intermediality is interpreted in a wide sense, other terms must be forged to differentiate its diverse forms, including a new term for the narrow sense. Wolf (2005) suggests “plurimediality” for artistic objects that include many semiotic systems; “transmediality” for phenomena, such as narrative itself, whose manifestation is not bound to a particular medium; “intermedial transposition” for adaptations from one medium to another; and “intermedial reference” for texts that thematize other media (e.g. a novel devoted to the career of a painter or composer), quote them (insertion of text in a painting), describe them (representation of a painting through ekphrasis in a novel), or formally imitate them (a novel structured as a fugue). In recent years, under the influence of Günther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen (2001), the term of “multimodality” has become established for works that combine several types of signs, such as images and text. In this new terminology, language, image and sound are regarded as

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“modes” rather than as “media,” as they would be when one adheres to the second of Webster’s definitions, but Kress and van Leeuwen’s terminology raises the problem of how to draw the line between modes and media. 3.2 The Nature of Media The variety of the phenomena subsumed under the concept of medium stems not only from the two distinct functions mentioned by Webster’s definition—transmitting information or forming the support of information—but also from the nature of the criteria that differentiate individual media. These criteria belong to three conceptual domains: semiotic, material-technological, and cultural, each of which can be linked to different approaches to narrative. As a semiotic category, a medium is characterized by the codes and sensory channels upon which it relies. The semiotic approach tends to distinguish three broad media families: verbal, visual, and aural. The groupings yielded by this taxonomy broadly correspond to art types, namely literature, painting, and music. This rudimentary typology must be expanded in order to account for an art like dance, which is based on the movements of the body, or for an activity like video games, whose distinctive feature is the pragmatic notion of active user participation. Insofar as signs extend in time or space, the semiotic analysis of media should also take into consideration their spatio-temporal dimensions. Media can be temporal and dynamic (music, oral language transmitted through radio or telephone), temporal and static (i.e. relying on sequentially ordered signs but freezing them through inscription, as in written literature); they can be purely spatial (painting, photography, sculpture, architecture) or spatio-temporal; the spatio-temporal in turn can be a static combination of temporal language and spatial image or inscription (comics, written literature that exploits the two-dimensionality of the page), or include a kinetic dimension that controls the duration of the receptive act (film, drama, mime, dance, and oral narrative accompanied by gestures). A semiotic approach to media focused on narrative will ask about the storytelling abilities and limitations of the signs of the medium under consideration. For instance: How can images suggest time? How can gestures express causality? What is the meaning of the graphic layout? How do the various types of signs contribute to narrative meaning in plurimedial art forms? To bring further refinement to semiotic media families, we must ask about the material support of their individual members. Material support can be either a raw substance, such as clay for pottery, stone for

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sculpture, the human body for dance, and the human vocal apparatus for singing and oral storytelling, or a technological invention such as writing (subdivided into manuscript, print, and electronic form), individual musical instruments, photography, film, television, the telephone, and digital technology. (As a meta-medium that encodes all other media, digital technology would be a pure conduit, but by adding interactivity to these media, it reaches the status of “language.”) For the narratologist, the importance of technology lies in its ability to improve or modify the expressive power of purely semiotic media. A case in point is the well-documented and deep-reaching impact of the invention of writing, and later of print technology, on the form, use and content of narrative. According to Ong (1982), the influence of writing is felt in the rising and falling contour of the dramatic plot (for Western drama, even though performed orally, relies on a written text), in the development of psychologically complex characters, in the epistemological focus of the detective story, and in the self-referentiality of the postmodern novel. Not all phenomena regarded as media can be distinguished on the basis of technological and semiotic properties alone. Newspapers, for instance, rely on the same semiotic dimensions and printing technology as books, but “the press” is widely regarded by sociologists as a medium in its own right because it fulfills a unique cultural role in the “media ecology.” It is also to cultural practice that we can attribute the grouping of semiotic dimensions into multi-channel media such as drama, the opera, and comic books, or, with the help of a technological support, into film, television, and computer games. The properties of narratives produced in a certain medium are often due to a combination of cultural, technological, and semiotic factors. The prevalence of shooting in American computer games could for instance be explained culturally by the importance of guns in American society (Japanese games are much less violent), as well as by the fact that the computergame industry targets an audience of young males. But it is also motivated semiotically by the presence of a sound track (shooting is primarily manifested through noise) as well as technologically facilitated by the fact that the action of shooting is easily simulated by the manipulation of controls (hitting a key is reasonably similar to releasing a trigger). By far the majority of media studies have been devoted to the cultural use of medium-specific narratives. Possible topics for this approach include the rhetoric of TV news or the social impact of such phenomena as computer games, Internet pornography, and film violence.

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3.3 The Primacy of Language as Narrative Medium Though we lack documents about the earliest manifestations of narrative among higher primates, it is reasonable to assume that language capacities, storytelling abilities, and human cultures co-evolved in symbiotic relation with each other. Dautenhahn (2003) attributes the need to tell stories to the complex social organizations of humans, compared to that of apes, while Turner (1996) argues that humans did not start telling stories as the result of developing language, but rather that language was developed in response to the need to tell stories. In these accounts of the social and cognitive foundations of storytelling, natural language is presented as the original narrative medium. The innate affinity of narrative and language can be explained by the fact that narrative is not something that is perceived by the senses: it is constructed by the mind, either out of data provided by life or out of invented materials. Similarly, as a mode of representation, language speaks to the mind rather than to the senses, though it is of course through the senses that its signs are perceived. Thanks to its semantic nature and its power of articulation, language is the only semiotic system (besides formal notation systems) in which it is possible to formulate propositions. Stories are about characters placed in a changing world, and narration is crucially dependent on the ability of a medium to single out existents and attribute properties to them. Neither images nor pure sound possesses this intrinsic ability: sound has no meaning, and pictures can show, but they cannot refer (Worth 1981). This makes it difficult for them to foreground specific properties of objects out of the background of their global visual appearance. If we look at the constitutive features of narrative, we see other reasons why natural language is its medium of choice. Narrative is widely regarded by scholars as a discourse that conveys a story; story, in turn, has been defined as a mental image formed by four types of constituents (Ryan 2007): (1) a spatial constituent consisting of a world (the setting) populated by individuated existents (characters and objects); (2) a temporal constituent, by which this world undergoes significant changes caused by non-habitual events (Hühn → Event and Eventfulness); (3) a mental constituent, specifying that the events must involve intelligent agents who have a mental life and react emotionally to the states of the world (or to the mental states of other agents); (4) a formal and pragmatic constituent, advocating closure and a meaningful message. The first and fourth of these conditions are not particularly dependent on language. Closure and meaningfulness can be achieved in any

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semiotic system, and images are more efficient than words at representing a world populated by existents because of the spatial extension and visual appearance of concrete objects. But the second and third features of narrative are highly language-dependent. As Lessing observed, the temporality of language is naturally suited to represent events that succeed each other in time. With its combination of dynamic unfolding and visuality, film may be as efficient as words at representing a succession of events such as “the king died and then the queen died,” but only words can say “the king died and then the queen died of grief” because only language is able to make relations of causality explicit. In a film (and even more so in a static image), causal relations between events must be left to the spectator’s interpretation, and without a voice-over narration (Kuhn & Schmidt → Narration in Film), we can never be completely sure that it was grief and not illness that killed the queen. Language-based narratives may admittedly choose to be highly elliptic in their presentation of causal relations: nothing would be more tedious than a story that left nothing to infer, but if all causal relations had to be guessed, this would place serious limitations on the repertory of stories that can be told by a medium. However, it is with condition 3 that language displays its true narrative superiority over other semiotic media. In language, we can express emotions and intents unambiguously by saying “x was scared,” “x was upset,” “x was in love,” or “x decided to take revenge.” Language can dwell at length on the mental life of characters, on their considerations of multiple possible courses of actions, on their philosophy of life, on their hopes and fears, on their daydreams and fantasies, because mental life can be represented as a kind of inner discourse, structured in the same way as language. Cognitive science may tell us that not all thinking is verbal, but the translation of private thought into language is one of the most powerful and widespread narrative devices. Most importantly, only language can represent the most common type of social interaction between intelligent agents, namely verbal exchanges, for the very simple reason that only language can represent language. The narrative power and diversity of film, drama and the opera is mainly due to the presence of a language track. This track, traditionally, has been limited by the conventions of realism to what an observer looking through an imaginary fourth wall can hear, namely dialogue. But phenomena such as the chorus of Greek tragedy, the written signs of epic theater, the asides to the audience of modern drama, and the voice-over narration of film represent an attempt to use language not only to imitate the speech of characters, but also to comment on the action, as it does so often in diegetic narrative. The story-

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telling potential of a medium is directly proportional to the importance and versatility of its language component. 3.4 Narrating without Language The independence of narrative from language is a matter of degree. In its strictest interpretation, “narrating without language” means that a story unknown to the appreciator is evoked by the purely sensory, nonsemantic resources of image or sound. (Taste, touch, and smell are far less developed senses, and they do not seem to have any narrative potential.) In a slightly weaker form of non-verbal narrativity (Abbott → Narrativity), the work tells a story new to the user, but it uses a language-based title to suggest a narrative interpretation. In the loosest interpretation, a narrative without language is a work that illustrates a story already known to the user (Varga 1988), and its narrativity is parasitic on the narrativity of the original text, which, most likely, will be known through language. This illustrative function is by far the most common occurrence in non-verbal narration. 3.4.1 Pictorial Narrative To achieve narrativity, pictures must capture the temporal unfolding of a story through a static frame. Wolf (2005) distinguishes three kinds of pictorial narratives: monophase works that evoke one moment in a story through a single image; polyphase works that capture several distinct moments within the same image; and series of pictures that capture a sequence of events. The monophase work presents the greatest narrative challenge because it must compress the entire narrative arc into a single scene. For an image to suggest a narrative interpretation, it must not only represent a frozen moment in a dynamic action, but must also arouse curiosity about the motivation of the agent. From very early on, the visual arts have shown man in action, but the hunting scenes or everyday activities depicted in cave paintings or on Egyptian scrolls do not fully qualify as narratives because they represent repetitive events with an unproblematic life-maintenance function. Similarly, the scenes of 17th-century Dutch genre painting are low in narrativity, or more specifically in eventfulness, because they rely almost entirely on familiar scripts and schemata for their interpretation. A truly narrative image must depict one-of-a-kind events that cause a significant change of state for the participants: not baking bread but stealing a loaf; not hunting animals for food, but killing a dragon to save a princess; not making music as a

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group, but secretly fondling a fellow musician (cf. Hühn’s distinction between event I and event II in the present encyclopedia (Hühn → Event and Eventfulness)). To read a picture narratively is to ask: Who are the characters shown in the picture? What are their interpersonal relations? What have they done before? What are they doing? What are their reasons for acting? What change of state will the action bring? How will the characters react to the event? Pictures cannot answer these questions directly because they are limited to the representation of visual properties. Not only do images lack a temporal dimension, they are also unable to represent language and thought, causal relations, counterfactuality, and multiple possibilities. Other limitations include the inability to make comments, provide explanations, and create suspense and surprise, two effects which depend on a time-bound disclosure of information. Even so, the narrative incompleteness of images is a powerful generator of curiosity. As Wolf (2005) has shown, reading a picture narratively necessitates a far more elaborate gap-filling activity than reading a language-based story. Monophase pictorial narratives are either illustrative or indeterminate in their content. An indeterminate picture opens a small window on time through the technique of the pregnant moment, but many different narrative arcs can pass through this window, corresponding to the multiple ways of imagining the longterm past and future that expand the content of the window into a complete story. Perhaps the only type of monophase pictures that tells a determinate story is the humorous single-frame, caption-less cartoon, for humor lies in a narrowly defined feature that people either get or miss. Yet still pictures also have their narrative strengths, when compared to language: they can give a far better idea of the spatial configuration of the storyworld; they can suggest emotions through facial expressions and body language; and they can show beauty directly, rather than naming the property and leaving its specific representation to the reader’s imagination. Though they lack operators of mental activity, they can develop visual conventions, such as the thought balloon, to “derealize” events and represent objects as mental images formed by characters. They often make up for their inability to name characters by using traditional attributes (keys for Saint Peter, horns for the devil), and they can suggest abstract ideas through conventional visual symbols: lilies for purity, pomegranates for lust, a skull for death. When purely visual means fail, they can internalize language by showing intra-diegetic objects bearing inscriptions, such as signs or letters (cf. the very readable letter from Charlotte Corday held by the dead Marat in Jacques-Louis

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David’s “Marat Assassinated”). Because pictures stand still, the spectator has ample time to inspect them for narratively significant details. In polyphase pictures, the narrative arc is much more determinate because it is plotted through several distinct scenes within the same global frame. These scenes are often separated by architectural features: for instance, in Benozzo Gozzoli’s “The Dance of Salome and the Beheading of St John the Baptist” (cf. Steiner [1988] 2004), an arched wall separates the beheading scene from the dancing scene, and Salome presents the head of the saint to her mother Herodiad in an alcove of the room where the dancing scene takes place. The space of the pictures may or may not be used as an indicator of temporal sequence: in “The Dance of Salome,” the eye does not read the story told by the painting linearly (i.e. left to right or right to left), but follows a circular path, from the right to the left to the center. This path must be discovered by detecting relations of causality which parallel the direction of time. But the narrative gaps between the individual scenes are so great in this particular painting that a spectator unfamiliar with the biblical story would be unable to decode its narrative logic. Themes such as reward and revenge, crucial to the Salome story, involve mental constructs far too complex for visual representation. It takes a series of pictures to tell a story that is both reasonably determinate and new to the reader. Serial pictures can narrate in two ways. The first, illustrated by William Hogarth’s painting series A Rake’s Progress and Marriage à la Mode (Wolf 2005), consists of devoting each picture to one episode in the life of a character by resorting to the techniques of the monophase pictures. The individual paintings depict self-contained mini-narratives separated from each other by significant time gaps, but the various scenes are connected by weak causal relations: each painting represents a step in the downfall of the hero, a young man who rises from poverty through inheritance, engages in a life of debauch and dishonesty, gambles his fortune away, is imprisoned and ends up in a mental asylum. Narrative content is suggested on the level of the individual images by their reliance on familiar scripts, such as the gambling-house or the prison script, and on the global level by the recurrence of the same character (identified by constant visual features), as well as by the chronological sequence indicated by the spatial arrangement of the pictures. The other technique, common in wordless comic strips, associates every image with one moment in a continuous action as if it were a frozen frame in a silent film. While in the first technique narrativity exists on both the macro- and the micro-level, here it is limited to the macro-level. The individual images are separated by smaller time spans than in the first type, but they are linked to-

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gether by stronger causal relations. An example of this technique is a sketchbook titled “Pipe Dreams” by the French artist Jean-Jacques Sempé, published in The New Yorker on November 20, 2000. “Pipe Dreams” tells the story of a lion who fantasizes loving a unicorn. But since unicorns do not exist, he marries a mare and tries unsuccessfully to turn her into a unicorn by putting an ice cream cone on her forehead. The upset bride runs away from him, and he ends up on a psychiatrist’s couch. Through the use of speech and thought balloons, the narrative is able to perform a rare feat in wordless storytelling: a disruption of the chronological order. After an opening frame that shows the lion dreaming of a unicorn, the next five frames (out of fourteen) represent the lion on the couch, and his personal experience is shown as images within a speech balloon, suggesting that it is being told to the psychiatrist. When the lion’s story escapes from the balloon and fills the entire frame, the storytelling act disappears from sight, and the reader is transported back to the time of the narrated events. The embedded sequence of the past catches up in the last frame with the embedding sequence of the present when the lion is shown knocking on the psychiatrist’s door. Thanks to the visual conventions of the modern comic strip, “Pipe Dreams” remediates many of the limitations of the purely mimetic image without using a single word: even the title is not indicative of narrative content. 3.4.2 Narrating through Gestures As ballet, pantomime, and the movies of the silent area demonstrate, it is possible to tell a story through the kinetic means of gestures and facial expression. But ballet either fulfills an illustrative function (cf. for this aspect also 3.4.3 on music) with respect to the story referred to by its title (“Cinderella,” “The Nutcracker”) or relies on a summary in the program, while silent movies use music and subtitles to suggest a narrative interpretation. Can body movement tell a story that is new to the spectator without external help? The answer is yes, but the repertory is very limited. A pantomime could for instance tell the story of a scorned lover who becomes depressed and attempts suicide, but suddenly regains his lust for life when an attractive woman walks by. Narrative is about evolving networks of human relations; and gestures and movement, by varying the distance between bodies, are reasonably good at representing the evolution of interpersonal relations, as long as mental life can be translated into visible body language. But even though gestures add a kinetic element to serial still pictures, this does not result in a significant increase in narrative power. On the contrary: it is much

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more difficult to narrate through continuous gestures than it is through discrete pictures frames. The chronological rearrangements of the Sempé cartoon would be impossible in a pantomime because gestural narration unfolds entirely in the present. It also operates in a simulacrum of real time that largely limits the narrated time to the time of narration. This real time dimension predisposes gestural narration to the representation of short sketches. Serial pictures, by contrast, break the continuity of action into distinct frames, and the frames are separated by variable time spans: from a fraction of a second when cartoons reproduce continuous action to a lengthy period of time when frames introduce new episodes. Gestural narration could admittedly signal breaks between episodes by making the actors disappear from the stage and reappear. But in contrast to still pictures, language, and film, the live performance of gestural narration is incapable of skipping a moderate period of time. It is only when gestures are recorded through film and the footage put together through montage that it becomes possible to create ellipses of any length in the development of a narrative action (e.g. Bordwell & Thompson 2008: 229–231). 3.4.3 Musical Narratives Music has a long history of being paired with language for narrative effects (sung poetry, “texted” music, opera, sound track of film and computer games), but it may seem paradoxical to even mention the possibility of telling stories through pure sounds. As a semiotic substance, sound possesses neither the conventional meaning nor the iconic value that allow words and images to create a concrete world and bring to mind individuated characters. Music cannot imitate speech, represent thought, narrate actions, or express causal relations. Its mimetic abilities are limited to the imitation of aural phenomena: the gurgling of a brook, the song of birds, or the rumbling of thunder. Yet in the 19th century, composers frequently attempted to tell stories through music by patterning their works according to what musicologists call a “narrative program.” These programs, expressed in words, instruct the listener’s imagination to look for a precise theme in each part of the composition: for instance, “Awakening of joyful sensations on arrival in the country” and “Scenes at a brook” as the titles of movements in Beethoven’s Pastoral symphony. More recently, a school of musicology has postulated the existence of a “deep narrativity” inherent to all music (or at least, to all music of the classical Western tradition). To tease out this deep narrativity, scholars resort to well-known narratological models such as Greimas’ semiotic square and Propp’s functions (Tarasti 2004),

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Ricœur’s theory of narrative temporality (Grabócz 1999), or the classical plot schema of equilibrium, conflict and resolution (Seaton 2005). Comparisons have also been made with diegetic and mimetic modes of storytelling (Abbate 1989), leading to the conclusion that music is a mimetic mode when it stands by itself, but fulfills a diegetic function when it is used in plurimedial works such as film and musicals (Rabinowitz 2004). In mimetic modes, according to the narrative school, music itself counts as narrative action, while in diegetic modes, it comments upon the enacted events. The appeal of the concept of narrative to both composers and musicologists can be explained by the temporal dimension of music. Narrative lives from a succession of events that brings transformations to the state of the storyworld, while music lives from a succession of sounds that creates melody and harmony through transformations in pitch, rhythm, and loudness. The term “line” is used to describe the development of both plot and melody, and in each case, this line controls attention, builds expectations, and creates effects of suspense, curiosity, and surprise (Sternberg 1992). But unlike verbal narrative, music does not suggest the passing of time by showing its effects on concrete existents: it captures time in its pure form, as a forward movement, a desire-forsomething-to-come, a tension calling for a resolution. In music as in narrative, the appreciator may have a powerful sense that a dénouement is imminent (perhaps more so in music, for in literature the coming end is often signaled not by narrative devices, but by the number of pages left to be read). Through its modest descriptive abilities, music can sometimes sketch a setting (cf. Beethoven’s Pastoral symphony), and in what amounts to creating its own conventional “language,” it can individuate characters by linking them to a specific instrument or to a leitmotiv. It also possesses an ability unequalled among semiotic media to represent and induce emotions. But these features are not sufficient to tell specific stories. In contrast to the narrativity of language-based texts, the narrativity of music is neither determinate nor literal. It is indeterminate because narrative content is something that is read into a composition rather than read from it (Wolf 2005). Even when music instructs the listener to associate the composition with a certain story, every listener fills in the general pattern in a highly personal way (Nattiez 1990), and many listeners will appreciate the composition without giving any thought to a narrative interpretation. This would be unthinkable with a language-based story. Meanwhile, from the point of view of the musicologist who uses narratological models to analyze particular compositions, the alleged narrativity of music is the product of a metaphor based on a structural analogy. Music and language-based stories

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present similar formal patterns, but these patterns are filled with vastly different substance: intrinsically meaningless sound in the case of music (though of course musical arrangement creates its own type of meaning), concrete semantic content in the case of language-based stories. As the focus of interest of a scholarly approach, the narrativity of music is a purely analytical construct situated, cognitively, on a very different level than the narrativity of language, film, or even pictures because it can exercise its power without being consciously recognized. 3.5 Combining Sensory and Semantic Dimensions into Plurimedial Texts Given the overwhelming storytelling superiority of language, one may wonder why mankind ever bothered to develop other narrative media. The limited narrative power of non-verbal media does not mean, however, that they cannot make original contributions to the formation of narrative meaning. The affordances of language, pictures, movement, and music complement each other, and when they are used together in multi-modal media, each of them builds a different facet of the total imaginative experience: language narrates through its logic and its ability to model the human mind, pictures through their immersive spatiality and visuality, movement through its dynamic temporality, and music through its atmosphere-creating, tension building and emotional power. The ultimate goal of art is to involve the whole of the embodied mind, the intellect as well as the senses. To achieve this wholeness, sensorial art forms must be coaxed into conveying messages, while language-based art forms must be taught to appeal to the senses. Through narrativization, sensorial arts acquire a sharper mental dimension, and through collaboration with sensorial signs, language-based narrative allows a fuller experience of the storyworld. In multi-modal media, the appreciator can directly see, hear, and maybe even interact with objects, and the imagination, relieved from the cognitive burden of simulating sensory data, can more easily immerse itself in the story. But this does not mean that multi-modal media are automatically superior to literature in narrative power because every gain in the visual, aural or even interactive domain may bring a loss of attention to the language channel (e.g. for the relation between audiovisual and voice-over narration in film Kozloff 1988: 8–22).

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4 Recent Trends Research concerning the relations between media and narrative has recently taken two major directions. The first is an increased interest in multimodality. Narrative forms combining a variety of semiotic channels have existed since the dawn of civilization, if one thinks of the inherent multimodality of oral storytelling (voice + gestures), but every new technology of communication inspires novel combinations: printing allowed the wide distribution of illustrated books, and later of comics; photography gave birth to photonovels; cinema integrated animated images, music, spoken language and occasionally written text, and digital technology added interactivity to the many modes of film. The current interest in multimodality has led to a reappraisal of some easily overlooked modes, such as the gestures of oral storytelling, the sound track of film, or the choreography of actor movements on stage. It has also focused attention on the increasingly common insertion within novels of a variety of non-verbal documents, such as photos, handwritten notes, graphs, and maps (Hallett 2014)—a list that could extend to video clips and animation for Web-based texts. The other new research area focuses on the spreading of narrative content across multiple media platforms. Widely known as “transmedia” or “transmedial” narration, and first described by Henry Jenkins (2006; see also Dena 2009 and Mittell 2014), this important trend in contemporary culture comes in two types. The first could be called the “snowball effect”: a certain story enjoys so much popularity, or becomes culturally so prominent, that it spontaneously generates a variety of either same-medium or cross-media prequels, sequels, fan fiction and adaptations. In this case there is a central text that functions as common reference for all the other texts. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are good examples of the snowball effect: they started out in the medium of the novel, created by a single author, and they expanded to film and computer games by popular demand. In the other type of transmedial narration, illustrated by the commercial “franchise” of The Matrix, which comprises films, computer games and comics, a certain story is conceived from the very beginning as a project that develops over many different media platforms (Ryan 2013). The phenomenon of transmedial storytelling raises important theoretical questions, such as: are the component of the system autonomous, or do they presuppose knowledge of other members of the network; how do the storyworlds of the various texts relate to each other (i.e. can they be regarded as regions of the same global world or are they logically incompatible?); what elements must be present for audiences to assume that, despite

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additions or modifications, texts of different media refer to the same storyworld; and what kind of stories inspire transmedial developments.

5 Topics for Further Investigation (1) What is the range of applicability of narratological concepts with respect to media (i.e. which ones apply to all media capable of narrativity, which ones are medium-specific, and which ones can be used for several media but not for all of them?) (2) How are certain constitutive dimensions of story, such as subjectivity, temporal sequence, or causality, or certain discourse strategies, such as focalization, represented in non-verbal media (Thon 2014; Horstkotte & Pedri 2011); (3) How do newly developed media progressively free themselves from the influence of older media and discover their own narrative “language”? (4) What social practices are generated by the “cult narratives” of mass media (e.g. practices such as the creation of fan communities on the Internet, fan fiction, spoiling, online discussions of plots)? (5) In which media, besides language, does fictionality exist? (6) What forms does (or will) narrative take in interactive environments?

6 Bibliography 6.1 Works Cited Abbate, Carolyn (1989). “What the Sorcerer Said.” 19th-Century Music 12, 221–230. Aristotle (1996). Poetics. Tr. & intr. M. Heath. London: Penguin Books. Bal, Mieke (1991). Reading Rembrandt: Beyond the Word-Image Opposition. New York: Cambridge UP. Barthes, Roland ([1966] 1977). “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative.” Image Music Text. New York: Hill & Wang, 79–124. – ([1980] 1981). Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill & Wang. Baudrillard, Jean ([1981] 1994). Simulacra and Simulations. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. Bolter, Jay David & Richard Grusin (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT P. Bordwell, David (1985). Narrative in the Fiction Film. Madison: U of Wisconsin P. – & Kristin Thompson (2008). Film Art. An Introduction. New York: McGrawHill. Bremond, Claude (1973). Logique du récit. Paris: Seuil.

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Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Dautenhahn, Kirsten (2003). “Stories of Lemurs and Robots: The Social Origin of Story-Telling.” M. Mateas & Ph. Sengers (eds.). Narrative Intelligence. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 63–90; also on WWW at . Deleuze, Gilles ([1983] 1986). Cinema 1: The Movement Image. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. – ([1985] 1989). Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Dena, Christy (2009) Transmedia Fictions: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World across Distinct Media and Enviroments. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Sidney. Foster, Susan Leigh (1996). Choreography and Narrative. Bloomington: U of Indiana P. Grabócz, Márta (1999). “Paul Ricœur’s Theories of Narrative and Their Relevance for Musical Narrativity.” Indiana Theory Review 20, 19–40. – (2007). Sens et signification en musique. Paris: Hermann. Hallet, Wolfgang (2014). “The Rise of the Multimodal Novel: Generic Change and ist Narratological Implications.” M.-L. Ryan & J.-N. Thon (eds.). Storyworlds Across Media. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Hirsch, Marianne (1997). Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Horstkotte, Silke & Nancy Pedri (2011). "Focalization in Graphic Narrative." Narrative 19.3, 330–357. Hutcheon, Linda & Michael Hutcheon (1999). Opera: Desire, Disease, Death. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Jenkins, Henry (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP. Kozloff, Sarah (1988). Invisible Storytellers. Voice-Over Narration in American Fiction Film. Berkeley: U of California P. – (1992). “Narrative Theory and Television.” R. C. Allen (ed.). Channels of Discourse, Reassembled. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 43–71. Kress, Günther & Theo van Leeuwen (2001). Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold. Labov, William (1972). Language in the Inner City. Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim ([1766] 1984). Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. McCloud, Scott (1994). Understanding Comics. New York: Harper Perennials. McLuhan, Marshall (1996). E. McLuhan & F. Zingrone (eds.). Essential McLuhan. New York: Basic Books. Metz, Christian ([1968] 1974). Film Language. A Semiotics of the Cinema. New York: Oxford UP. Meyrowitz, Joshua (1993). “Images of Media: Hidden Ferment—and Harmony—in the Field.” Journal of Communications 43, 55–66.

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Mittell, Jason (2014). “Strategies of Storytelling on Transmedia Television.” M.-L. Ryan & J.-N. Thon (eds.). Storyworlds Across Media. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Ong, Walter J. (1982). Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen. Nattiez, Jean-Jacques (1990). “Can one Speak of Narrativity in Music?” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 115, 240–257. Rabinowitz, Peter (2004). “Music, Genre, and Narrative Theory.” M.-L. Ryan (ed.). Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 305–328. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2007). “Toward a Definition of Narrative.” D. Herman (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 22–35. – (2013). “Transmedial Storytelling and Transfictionality.” Poetics Today 34.3, 361–388. Seaton, Douglas (2005). “Narrative in Music: The Case of Beethoven’s ‘Tempest’ Sonata.” J. Ch. Meister (ed.). Narratology beyond Literary Criticism. Mediality, Disciplinarity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 65–82. Steiner, Wendy ([1988] 2004). “Pictorial Narrativity.” M.-L. Ryan (ed.). Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 145– 177. Sternberg, Meir (1992). “Telling in Time (II): Chronology, Teleology, Narrativity.” Poetics Today 13, 463–541. Tarasti, Eero (2004). “Music as Narrative Art.” M.-L. Ryan (ed.). Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 283–304. Thompson, Kristin (2003). Storytelling in Film and Television. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Thon, Jan-Noël (forthcoming). “Subjectivity across Media: On Transmedial Strategies of Subjective Representation in Contemporary Graphic Novels, Feature Films, and Computer Games.” M.-L. Ryan & J.-N. Thon (eds.). Storyworlds Across Media. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Turner, Mark (1996). The Literary Mind. New York: Oxford UP. Varga, A. Kibédi (1988). “Stories Told by Pictures.” Style 22, 194–208. Wolf, Werner (2005). “Intermediality”; “Music and Narrative”; and “Pictorial Narrativity.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 252–256, 324–329, and 431–435. – (2008). “The Relevance of ‘Mediality’ and ‘Intermediality’ to Academic Studies of English Literature.” M. Heusser et al. (eds.). Mediality / Intermediality. Göttingen: Narr, 15–43. Worth, Sol (1981). “Pictures Can’t Say Ain’t.” S. W. Studying Visual Communication. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 162–184.

6.2 Further Reading Kafalenos, Emma (2001). “Reading Visual Art, Making—and Forgetting—Fabulas.” Narrative 9.2, 138–145. – (2004). “Overview of the Music and Narrative Field.” M.-L. Ryan (ed.). Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 275–282.

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Nünning, Vera & Ansgar Nünning, eds. (2002). Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär. Trier: WVT. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2005). “On the Theoretical Foundation of Transmedial Narratology.” J. Ch. Meister (ed.). Narratology Beyond Literary Criticism. Mediality, Disciplinarity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1–23. – (2006). Avatars of Story. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. – & J.-N. Thon, eds. (2014). Storyworlds Across Media. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Wolf, Werner (2002). “Das Problem der Narrativität in Literatur, Bildender Kunst und Musik: Ein Beitrag zu einer Intermedialen Erzähltheorie.” V. Nünning & A. Nünning (eds.). Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär. Trier: WVT, 23–104.

Narrative Acquisition in Educational Research and Didactics Mechthild Dehn, Daniela Merklinger & Lis Schüler

1 Definition This article takes as its subject the approaches adopted and results gathered by research into narration by children under the age of ten, focusing on two aspects: (1) the acquisition and development of productive and receptive narrative ability; (2) possible means of cultivating productive and receptive narrative ability in school, along with criteria for evaluating these abilities. Special attention is paid to the difference between factual and fictional as well as between oral and written forms of narration. Research in this field is concerned chiefly with three facets of narrative proficiency selected as being of particular significance for its development in the outside world and its cultivation in school: (1) experientiality as the preferred frame of reference for the content of narratives (children assimilate and produce stories in connection with their own experience in real life and in stories); (2) tellability as a criterion for determining the pertinence of what is being told (up to the first years of school, children are not always able to judge the tellability of stories without the support of an adult); (3) story repertoires, contents, structures and traditional and modern media, the use of which can develop and cultivate narrative competence.

2 Explication Experientiality, “the quasi-mimetic evocation of ‘real-life experience’,” is deemed by Fludernik (1996: 12) to be an essential characteristic of narratives. Children, both in their understanding and production of stories, refer back to their own experience of reality. If an adult and a child look at a book together, or if the adult reads or tells a story, the child connects what he sees and hears to his own experiences (Wieler 1997). He imagines something, remembers, participates in the portrayed reali-

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ty, and in doing so affirms a sense of self. Taking experientiality as the basis on which narration emerges is, in the field of narratology, one approach among others to the definition of narrativity: “to characterize the purpose and function of the storytelling as a process that captures the narrator’s past experience, reproduces it in a vivid manner […]” (Fludernik 2003: 245). The category of experientiality is also central in developmental psychology and educational science. Bruner speaks about “the narrative construal of reality” (1996: chap. 7), stating elsewhere that “we organize our experience and memory of human happenings mainly in form of narrative” (Bruner 1991: 4). Stories told and read by others, whether fictional or factual, offer children alternative experiences that they can apply to confirm or alter their models of the world, representing and evoking experientiality at the same time. Therefore, almost from the time a child first begins to talk, narrative serves as a mediator between “the canonical world of culture and the more idiosyncratic world of beliefs, desires, hopes” (Bruner 1990: 52). Whatever is being narrated must be of interest to someone, whether the narrator or the listener/viewer. Tellability (Labov 1972) depends on evaluation. Labov and Waletzky (1967) differentiate two functions of narration, the referential and the evaluative. The evaluative function consists in “the means used by the narrator to indicate the point of the narrative, its raison d’être: why it was told, and what the narrator is getting at” (Labov 1972: 366). This evaluation forestalls a “so what?” reaction from the audience. Whether a narration is tellable depends on the context. Thus, picture books that show quotidian events from children’s lives are highly tellable because children, as they are growing up, see themselves as affirmed by scripts and want to see and hear them again and again. This early stage is concerned primarily not with eventfulness as the breach of expectation, but with affirmation of the familiar. Also potentially tellable—as in “braided” narration, i.e. dialogic narration with an open structure (Wagner 1986)—are shared experiences that narration can bring to mind for everyone present. This phenomenon corresponds to Lotman’s ([1970] 1977: 290–294) distinction between an “aesthetic of identity” and the expectation-breaching “aesthetic of opposition”. In this case, tellability is tied to the memory of a personally significant experience, and not to a break with expectation. Whether founded on surprise, memory or affirmation, personal significance can be seen as a central criterion for tellability (Fludernik 2003: 245). According to the definition by Labov and Waletzky, generating tellability is the task of the speaker. Whether he succeeds, however, depends also on the listener and how he, in his specific context, takes in what is narrated. This means that the story’s success relates above all to

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its relevance to its addressee. “Tellability […] is dependent on the nature of specific incidents judged by storytellers to be significant or surprising and worthy of being reported in specific contexts, thus conferring a ‘point’ on the story” (Baroni → Tellability). Children find it difficult until well after they have begun school to bring out what is tellable in their narrations. In processes of learning and teaching, this initially requires above all that the adult cull from a child’s statement (e.g. “I have yellow wellies”) what it is that is tellable and help the child understand it (e.g. “Are they new? / Oh, they’re lovely! / Were the old ones broken? / Did you choose the color yourself?”). By finding out what has prompted the statement, the adult addressee can locate the tellability attached to the statement’s personal significance to the child (and his audience). A “so what?”, on the other hand, whether verbally or merely as a gesture, would not encourage the child to further narration. Tellability is a central consideration for teaching methods in primary school, because it is often first generated and affirmed in interaction with adults, while it is only gradually that children learn to express it for themselves. Narration draws on story repertoires of heard, read or seen stories, of character groups, plot models, and patterns of text and genre. Propp ([1928] 1968) described a repertoire of characters and functions limited to a corpus of 100 Russian fairy tales. For children, the limit to the number of such functions, as Propp delineated them (e.g. hero, villain, magical agent or helper), and the way they can be applied to other types of fictional text helps them to learn. If a child aged three-and-half can have a Christmas story read to him from a picture book and say at the end, “There’s no baddie in it,” that shows just how early childhood attention can pertinently direct itself to such models—in this case, characters—and draw lessons from them, assuming, of course, that the child has the opportunity to learn this kind of “story repertoire.” Such a repertoire comprises oral and written narratives as well as films. In this repertoire of structural story-models, the prime position is given in school to the so-called ‘climactic narrative’ (Hühn → Event and Eventfulness). Its structure corresponds to the oral narratives produced by adults that Labov and Waletzky studied in response to the question, “Were you ever in a situation where you thought you were in serious danger of being killed?” (1967: 14). This structural model comprises five stages: abstract, orientation, complication, resolution, coda (Labov & Waletzky 1967; Labov 1972). Infants and children—even those already of school age—have difficulties in employing this structure. Particularly with regard to orientation and sequencing, they are reliant on interaction with adults—on their interest, their follow-up

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questions and thus (as with tellability) on “scaffolding” (Bruner 1986). One reason for favoring climactic narratives in school may be the ease of assessing children’s efforts against that yardstick.

3 Dimensions of the Concept and History of its Study 3.1 The Function of Narration in Child Development The narrative framing of experience starts early in childhood: it is the primary means by which children make sense of those experiences (Hymes 1982). Infants and young children do so by forming cognitive models or scripts of events they take part in or that they observe at mealtimes or bedtimes, for instance. These scripts are at first rather fragmented. Through interaction with adults, they gradually become coherent narrative models of everyday experience (Nelson 1996: 341). At the age of about four, children not only start to put the perspectives of other people into clearer focus, they also begin to reflect increasingly on their own internal states (Nelson 1999: 248). They begin to develop a theory of mind and to gain an understanding of other people’s intentions. This becomes “obvious in their use and comprehension of mental terms such as think, remember, wish, hope and want” (Wellmann 1988: 86). The stories a child hears and tells about himself, about others and about the world, help him understand who he is and who others are, enabling him to find his own identity (Bamberg → Identity and Narration). Cognitive narratologists emphasize the similarity between the process of becoming conscious of one’s own experiences and a form of narrative that establishes a connection between single situations and events. By either receptively or productively drawing on a repertoire of stories, one can become conscious of one’s own experiences. From an educational perspective, and in the context of new learning cultures, narrative is a medium for the generation and transfer of knowledge (Fahrenwald 2011). The underlying concept is that identity emerges out of an intersubjective and narrative process of self-construction, a process that, in the main, takes place dialogically (2011: 203; cf. Dehn & Dehn 1980).

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3.2 The Acquisition of Narrative 3.2.1 Overview of Research Studies on the acquisition of narrative pursue differing aims and proceed with highly diverse methods as regards the categories of experientiality, tellability and repertoires of stories. Some researchers refer to Labov and Waletzky’s (1967) structural model of the story, i.e. the climactic narrative. They use phased models to investigate how children appropriate climactic narratives and what role is played here by discourse between child and adults, also factoring in various genres of child narration (Boueke et al. 1995; Hausendorf & Quasthoff 1996; Becker [2001] 2011; Ohlhus & Quasthoff 2005; Augst et al. 2007). Experientiality, particularly in studies that posit an event that is the same for everyone, is defined more strongly as a characteristic of the event than it is by the person’s subjective experience of it (on changes to narrative behavior when a child is actively involved, see Hausendorf & Quasthoff 1996: 8, 55). Tellability, too, is regarded as a characteristic of a given situation. It is thus equated with the “abnormality of the narrated” and regarded as a parallel with Labov and Waletzky’s “setting” (Kern et al. 2012: 1–2). For adults, the question of how then to construct a story also has a prototypical solution, namely to precisely reproduce the sequence of happenings and highlight the climax. In several studies, children’s narratives are assessed on how closely they approximate this prototype. The focus on the climactic narrative as a type of structure limits consideration and analysis of child narration as regards children’s interest in the content of what they are narrating. Others have explored the effect that the appropriation of stories has on the content and language of the child’s narration, and thus investigate child narration in the context of the available story repertoires (Wardetzky 1992; Dehn 1999, 2002, 2005; Weinhold 2000, 2005; Wieler 2011). In studies that analyze children’s stories in the context of story repertoires (by using stories or paintings as prompts), the connection to the children’s own experiences and to what they consider worth telling is at least suggested: in that they have to remember; in that their imaginative development is tested; in that they can be selective; in that they have to decide themselves what to focus their narration on; and in that they have opportunity to transfer what moves them, as a means of narrative self-affirmation, to focus on the people and happenings of their stories. Because children place emphases differently and so tell widely differing stories, their interest in the rest of the group’s stories can be assumed, since stories told by others contain new accentuations

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and interpretations. There is quite distinctly not a prototypical “best” solution for the story. The group’s interest is directed equally to the content and the narrative forms. One shortcoming of these studies is that they have so far been rather narrow as regards comparisons between age groups, and insufficiently differentiated as regards the forms in which acquisition occurs. The following studies address the relationship between acquisition of factual and fictional narrative as well as that between acquisition of oral and written narrative. 3.2.2 Factual and Fictional Narration Factual narration refers to individual experiences, to shared community experiences or to knowledge (Fahrenwald 2011). Fictional narration encompasses the “fantasy story,” carrying on from a story beginning, narration in response to single or moving pictures from art and the media, re-narration of stories and narration in response to stories. Over and above the various approaches to research, there is agreement that the acquisition of factual narrative proceeds much more slowly than fictional narrative (cf. Becker [2001] 2011; Andresen 2011; Weinhold 2010; Wieler 2011). That the narration of real-life events develops more slowly than that of fantasy, and of re-narration, has to do with the way memory works in young children. For the first three years, they primarily remember experiences that recur frequently, taking on the form of scripts. It is only when autobiographical memory emerges, which Nelson (1996) places in the fifth year, that children become able to connect themselves verbally with the events they have experienced. The development of narrative is therefore directly bound up with cognitive processes and, by the same token, with the structuring of memory processes. Of interest to narratology are the following findings: whereas Becker ([2001] 2011: 189) observed that five-year-olds mix fantasy and reality in narrative and concluded that children of that age are not yet able to securely separate fictive and real elements, Andresen (2011) shows by means of her investigations into the spontaneous oral narratives of four- to six-year-olds that four-year-olds are quite able to distinguish between fictive and real; five-year-olds then mix the forms, especially in real-life narratives, and can reliably separate these forms again only as six-year-olds. One conclusion that suggests itself is that playing with the boundary between fiction and non-fiction by literary texts has, inter alia, an anthropological basis.

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Wordless picture strips are, in comparison with other narrative forms, the ones that children find hardest to cope with (Becker [2001] 2011). On the one hand, this is astonishing because the sequence, so difficult to acquire, is already provided. On the other hand, there are a number of explanations for this finding, first among them being that the picture strip appears to be fictional and factual at the same time. The happenings portrayed do not make a claim to “referential truthfulness” (Schaeffer → Fictional vs. Factual Narration) and so can be seen as fictional; but they also appear to observing children as an extra-linguistic referent, i.e. factual. Secondly, narrating to a series of pictures is a form relevant exclusively to school in which what children produce is measured against a prototypical solution. Experientiality is present at most implicitly; and even if the examiner has already looked at the picture strip with the child (Boueke et al. 1995), the child feels scant motivation for narrating. Tellability loses its communicative function and becomes a merely formal aspect. Appropriating narratives that are bodied forth as climactic narratives has been broken down into a sequence of stages. The various findings about these developmental stages resemble one another. For the narrative acquisition of picture stories, Boueke et al. (1995) distinguish isolated-enumerative, linear-sequential, contrastive-discontinuous, evaluativeinvolving/narrative. Augst et al. (2007) also identify four stages and, for writing to a single picture, set up as an end-point for this development the significance of a break in the scheme, bringing out a “point,” framing by means of a coda, dramaturgy of speech and reply and finally, achieving a “narrative tone” (51–52). Of course, climactic narratives do form part of the repertoires of stories, but limiting the definition of narrative competence to the ability to keep to a structural schema does not do justice to the complexity of the repertoires of stories available. Fictional narration develops far more rapidly than factual. To what degree and in what ways this is so can be seen by the following finding. At the end of their first year (aged 7), and within a few days, children wrote stories both about their experiences and in response to a picture book. The task was not to re-tell the story portrayed by the picture book but rather to write about what was important to them. While in their real-life narratives they mostly named only a single event or formulated several in a row, forcing the reader to ferret out the tellability of the story for himself (“At the circus. I went to the circus on Saturday and with my parents”), a clear majority of the same children came out with complete stories when writing to a picture book (cf. Dehn et al. 2011: 8–10; 176–178). These stories contained narrative models from the picture book but also from other texts appropriated by the child such as for

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temporal organization (“once upon a time”; “one day”), for intensification (“very…”; “above all”; “went and went”). These are often not climactic narratives in a strict sense even though the turning point of the story may be marked by use of the adversative conjunction “but.” The children figured out the need that motivated the character to set off and almost always brought the story of his quest to a happy ending. In their play between what is provided and what is brought forth, between reception and production, these kinds of narrative display rhetorical figures, metaphor construction and genre patterns, e.g. the crime story or the serial with patterns such as “material of transformation” (Dehn 2005: 52; on structural characteristics in narrative texts from learner writers to literary and media figures, see Weinhold 2005, 2010). Becker (2002: 32), too, shows that fantasy narratives contain formulaic expressions as early as in the first year of school (age 6), especially for the end of the story. One reason for the differences in appropriation of the two narrative forms is that thanks to their experiences with heard (and seen) stories, children have more phraseological and textual models of structure to draw on in fantasy narrative (as shown by Andresen 2011), starting as early as at the age of four in oral narrative (cf. Fox 1993; in reference particularly to the variability in evaluative functions in five-year-olds, cf. Griffin et al. 2004: 128). The appropriation of narrative models is thus not bound to literacy. The significance for narrative acquisition of the connection between personal experience and access to repertoires of stories is underlined by Lesemann et al. (2007): “talking with the child about personal experiences, memories, stories, and about topics of general interest, on the one hand, and reading narrative books, picture books, and information books to the child, on the other hand,” (340) has a positive effect not only on lexis and textual comprehension, but also on their own capacity for narration, and especially re-narration. For continuations of fairytalelike story beginnings in grades 2 to 4 (age 7 to 9), Wardetzky, with reference to Propp ([1928] 1968), investigated the stories’ motifs, figures and symbols. She shows that the stories are not reproductions but “Icentered mental games played with received material” (208). She sees the results of this study as having been confirmed by narrative experiments in schools and concludes that a child achieves “narrative competence” when he can orient himself in relation to examples. “Traditional motifs, character groups and pictures are transformed into imagined worlds of their own, open to all the sources by which the imaginations of today’s children are nourished” (2011: 41).

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“Collective narrative processes—individual stories” (Dehn 2002). How these go together and the fact that models from the media appear in children’s narratives is demonstrated by Erlinger (2001), drawing on more than a hundred stories written by children in response to the TV series “Siebenstein.” Analyses of fantasy narratives (here from grade 8, age 14) display forms of “visualizing narrative” (Fix & Jost 2004: 168– 169), which is not only shown in the use of single models but is inherent to the text on a conceptual level as regards cuts, shots and zooms. Hoffmann and Lüth (2007) investigate how narratives in response to a computer game in grades 3 and 4 (age 9 to 10) have their perspectives determined by an altered picture-perception. Game situations and played stories oscillate between factuality and fictionality. The avatar is both a protagonist of the narrated story (i.e. fictional) and the gamecharacter with whom the player moves the narrative forward (i.e. factual). In nearly half of the stories, the pupils take in several perspectives simultaneously: their own as players and the avatar’s, whom they write about sometimes as “I,” sometimes as “he,” sometimes as “we” (260). These findings about narrative acquisition demonstrate the close connection between experientiality, tellability and access to story repertoires. Children draw ever more deeply on these repertoires and so widen their access to the world, narrative being “a central hinge between culture and mind” (Brockmeier & Carbaugh 2001: 10). McCabe shows how the acquisition of narrative ability is anchored in a culture’s narrative traditions (cf. McCabe 1997 for an overview). This also applies to experientiality and tellability. Narrative traditions exert a great influence not only on how children comprehend and remember stories (Invernizzi & Abouzeid 1995) but also on how they tell stories of their own. With explicit reference to Herman’s (2009) concept of “storyworld” in the sense of available repertoires of stories, Spinner (2013: 171), analyzing the case of a spontaneous monological narrative by a seven-yearold girl without any addressee present, explains in detail how biographical narration of urgent experiences is permeated by transformations of narratives from a children’s book. The case study makes clear the existential significance of narration for self-affirmation. People feel an urge to put what they feel and imagine into some form. One of these forms is narration, even if, as Gertrude Stein had it, the interlocutor may not understand the narrative: “It is a well-known fact that no human being can really stand not being able to tell some one something, you can see an audience not understanding does not make any difference as long as any one can tell any one something” (1935: 56).

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This emphasis on the significance of narrating, rather than on being heard, does not mean that scaffolding is not also important in processes of appropriation and transfer. This has been investigated for both factual and fictional narration: Hausendorf and Quasthoff (1996) not only tease out what children have to do (demonstrate the relevance of content and/or form, bring out themes, elaborate and/or dramatize, conclude, segue), but they also show that references by adults to the story’s content foster the child’s narrative ability. McCabe (1997) also shows that the type of input provided by an adult exerts considerable influence on real-life narratives and that children narrate for longer and with greater structural complexity the more highly elaborated that input is. Of particular interest in educational contexts is the observation that children whose parents did more to extend the topic during parent-child reminiscing resorted more frequently to evaluating the narratives they structured themselves, indicating that parental interest in a child’s past experience supports the development of evaluative elements more than does specific parental attention to evaluation (Peterson & McCabe 2004: 41). That not only narrative development but also scaffolding displays genre-specific characteristics is shown by Kern and Quasthoff (2005), using the examples of fantasy-stories and real-life narratives. This is further attested by Pramling and Ødegaard’s (2011) study of scaffolding by pre-school teachers for one- to four-year-old nursery children in the shared development of a story in response to various picture cards, or in the gradual reconstruction of a child’s narrative of a sibling’s baptism. In fictional narration, the teachers need only remind the children of familiar formulae for openings and endings, since the children already know them. The upshot, which is directed above all at the equalizing of sociocultural difference in such settings, is that “Learning to narrate means appropriating a cultural mould for sense-making and communication, through which we learn and make sense of the fantastic […] as well as the ordinary […], ourselves and each other” (32). Other forms of this type of scaffolding are prompts for fictional narration in books or picture-books, a teacher’s narrative (cf. Wardetzky) or a computer game as a mixture of fictional and factual narration. 3.2.3 Oral and Written Narration Narrating a story means that the narrator places himself at a distance from the momentary situation, regardless of whether he is narrating factually or fictionally or of whether this is orally or in writing. This abstraction from the situation is an essential characteristic of conceptual

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writtenness in Koch and Oesterreicher’s (1985) sense, i.e. of decontextualized use of language. In this sense, narration is an excellent medium for the full education of a person. This applies to written narration even more than to schoolchildren’s oral narration. The transition to writing has been investigated by Merklinger (2011), who discovered that preschool children and those just starting school (at age 6) dictate their ideas for a written response to a picture book. In speaking and then in seeing how the words are written down before their eyes, the children gain the experience of a writing situation. This changes not only the way they articulate (speaking more slowly, pronouncing case endings) but also how they phrase their stories. In this way, dictation can be a bridge to written narration. In reference to fairytales, Wardetzky and Weigel (2008) showed how children’s narration can be stimulated by the narratives of professional story-tellers who, every week for two years, told classes from 16 schools (with children from 27 nations) fairytales from around the world without simplifying the language. This oral narration, in which voice, gesture and facial expression are central, is clearly distinguished from everyday narratives or from such institutionalized narrative forms as the “What I did at the weekend” type in schools. Children become familiar with pictures, motifs and conflict groupings which they can apply to their own experiences, imagine and transform, first through oral re-telling, re-making, invention of their own fairytales, and later through written narration. Wardetzky sees this narration as an “incubation period of the oral” (2010: 46). In this project of cultural language help, therefore, oral expression provides a basis for written expression. Wieler examines teaching methods (lesson reports and the children’s work) and shows that the written narratives of multi-lingual children in grades 1 and 2 (age 6 to 7) in response to a wordless picture book (The Snowman) are far more diverse than their contributions to discussion in class. This applies to the portrayal of temporal structure and relationships as “integrated dialogic sequences” and, above all, to attempts to convey the perspective of the characters in the story (2011: 140). Writing allows the children to “give expression to the experiences relevant to them” in their engagement with the book (144). Wieler sees the reasons for this higher diversity as “freedom from the communicative pressure of class discussion” and a longer time allowed for planning to write (140). Becker (2002) compared oral and written fantasy and reallife narratives from the end of first year. She shows that written narratives of both types contain considerably more emotional markers and that fantasy narratives already contain “genre schemes” (36; cf. Weinhold 2005). Writing frees up to a higher degree the narrative resources

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that children have gathered through contact with stories. In that sense, it is also plausible that the supportive interaction of an adult is more necessary in real-life narratives than in fantasy ones (Becker 2005; Kern & Quasthoff 2005; Ohlhus & Quasthoff 2005). 3.3 Teaching Since the beginning of the 20th century, written real-life narratives have stood on center stage in primary school writing lessons, long based on the introduction—climax—conclusion template. As early as 1968, Geißler pointed out that this could lead to “sensationalism” and that personal “experience” (in Dilthey’s sense), which is centered around a core, could not be evaluated. Geißler thus argued that “free, fictional narrative, so-called fantasy narrative, should be taken into greater account” (112). Up till the “communicative turn” in the teaching of German in the 1970s, this form remained dominant as part of a quartet with depicting, reporting and describing. Even with the extension of writing practice to such types as giving instructions and arguing and with the abandonment of description, narrative retained its dominant position in scholastic practice on the assumption that it was the basis of the other types of text. However, that these forms do in fact develop independently of one another has been emphatically shown by Augst et al. (2007) in their long-term study. The findings from research suggest that today’s teaching ought to place greater emphasis on fiction as a means to imagining one’s own concerns in an unfamiliar story (in reception) and to bringing them to expression (in production), rather than on real-life narratives and the everyday stories told in school. This also goes for written narratives based on narrative prompts, including oral ones, rather than on the children’s oral narratives. 3.3.1 Experientiality und Tellability Narration in an institutional framework, particularly in school, is a sensitive topic, because the object of the lesson bears on the whole person far more than other types of discourse do. If the narrating of a story becomes too standardized, experientiality and tellability are at risk of being lost, thus limiting narration to forms “relevant in school” such as wordless picture strips or climactic narratives. In schools, whose educational mandate is bound up with evaluation of performance and selection, it is particularly the criterion of experientiality that requires a sensitive approach. If, as in a morning story circle,

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personal experiences or shared class experiences such as braid narrative (Wagner 1986) become part of the lesson, this can even potentially foster the development of a shared class identity. However, this situation places a high demand on teachers not to pass judgment on children’s expression of experientiality. It seems more advantageous to allow pupils to transform their experiences within the “protection” of a fictional story. This has been confirmed by the results of research into fantasy narratives. Teaching narration can play a central role both in language development and in the wider sense of a rounded education, especially for pupils who have little opportunity in their domestic environment to experience, whether by listening, reading or narrating, how narration can function as a means of constructing identity. Of decisive importance is the teachers’ attitude. If they assume that what their pupils are narrating necessarily is worth telling, then they can accompany the story with reactions that bring tellability to the surface through a combination of questions and comments (cf. McCabe 1997: 466; see also the concept of a “resource-oriented narrative didactics” in Ohlhus & Stude 2009: 480). 3.3.2 Story Repertoires Studies that examine child narration in the context of the available story repertoires contain many examples of implicit learning. Appropriating and playing with rhetorical figures and models of text and genre takes place first operatively, not declaratively, without the learners being able to say what is going on. This implicit learning mode appears “above all in circumstances of high complexity” and is more successful in these circumstances than explicitly directed learning (Neuweg 2000: 203). It is specifically the high complexity of narration that invites implicit learning processes. “If the system in use is too simple, or if the code can be broken by conscious effort, then one will not see implicit processes” (Reber 1989: 220, in reference to artificial grammars). From this perspective, it is no longer entirely up to the teachers to determine precisely what is to be taught and, above all, what is to be learned. It is far more about conceiving stimuli and challenges for implicit learning processes, thus extending children’s resources. As regards narration in the institutional framework of school, it must be considered whether the explicit teaching of structural characteristics is not more advisable for other types of text such as reporting or instruction, which do not bear on the individual in the same way as real-life narratives. Taking experientiality, tellability and story repertoires into account when planning lessons means, above all, searching for answers to the

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following questions: Do pupils have the opportunity to receptively and productively construct story repertoires so as to become conscious of their own experiences, to process them and so also gain a distance from them? Do pupils have the opportunity to choose for themselves what they consider worth telling? Can pupils extend their repertoires of culturally pre-formed stories in the lesson? Many children develop these kinds of story repertoires from pictures and modern media. In narratology (Ryan → Narration in Various Media; Kuhn & Schmidt → Narration in Film), in art pedagogy (e.g. Sowa 2012) and in (native) language didactics (e.g. Maiwald 2012), interest has widened in the past decades to encompass narration with and in response to (moving) pictures (Dehn 2007; Dehn et al. 2011; Dehn et al. 2004; Abraham & Sowa 2012; Schüler 2013). In lessons, however, these forms do not yet play a central role. It is a question that comes down to the “connection between narrative imagination and pictorial representation” (Sowa 2012: 358), to “making pictures/images talk” (Maiwald 2012: 38). If pupils become familiar with numerous varieties of culturally based narratives, both verbal and visual, and if they are given the opportunity to transform what they have heard and seen into words, pictures and figures and to bring their experience to a narrative form of expression as well as to exchange their views about this experience with others, then identity can be constructed in social contexts and story repertoires are developed on which the pupils can draw when they tell a story themselves.

4 Topics for Further Investigation To the best of our knowledge, no research has been carried out as to how the reception of scripts develops in early childhood relative to the reception of stories where a breach of expectation occurs. The findings on child narration in the context of story repertoires require differentiation and specification in both institutional and familial contexts. The narration of fictional stories deserves particular attention. a) How does model formation develop in fictional narration (oral and written) in pre-school and school (as a controlled long-term study)? b) How can fictional stories (narration by professional storytellers, teachers’ narratives, reading of narrative literature and use of children’s media in pre-school, school and at home) foster narrative acquisition: in reference to model formation and decontexualization of language use, both oral and written? c) What function do pictorial forms of narration

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have in verbal narration and vice versa? And how can this be observed in children’s narratives? d) How can explicit teaching (e.g. the analysis of plot structure and forms of representation) encourage fictional narration? e) What forms of scaffolding and task assignment prove beneficial, especially for the beginnings of factual and fictional narration? (Translated by Alexander Starritt)

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Abraham, Ulf & Hubert Sowa (2012). “Bilder lesen und Texte sehen.” Praxis Deutsch 39, Nr. 232, 4–20. Andresen, Helga (2011). “Erlebtes und Fiktives – Zur Dynamik der Entwicklung von Erlebnis- und Phantasieerzählung im Vorschulalter.” P. Hüttis-Graff & P. Wieler (eds.). Übergänge zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Vor- und Grundschulalter. Freiburg: Fillibach, 151–180. Augst, Gerhard et al. (2007). Textsortenkompetenz. Eine echte Longitudinalstudie zur Entwicklung der Textkompetenz im Grundschulalter. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang. Becker, Tabea ([2001] 2011). Kinder lernen erzählen. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider. – (2002). “Mündliches und schriftliches Erzählen: Ein Vergleich unter entwicklungstheoretischen Gesichtspunkten.” Didaktik Deutsch 7.12, 23–38. – (2005). “The role of narrative interaction in narrative development.” U. Quasthoff & T. Becker (eds.). Narrative Interaction. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 93–111. Boueke, Dietrich et al. (1995). Wie Kinder erzählen. München: Fink. Brockmeier, Jens & Donal Carbaugh (2001). “Introduction.” J. Brockmeier & D. Carbaugh (eds.). Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1–24. Bruner, Jerome (1986). Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard UP. – (1990). Acts of Meaning. Cambridge: Harvard UP. – (1991). “The Narrative Construction of Reality.” Critical Inquiry 18, 1–21. – (1996). The Culture of Education. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard UP. Dehn, Mechthild (1999). Texte und Kontexte. Schreiben als kulturelle Tätigkeit in der Grundschule. Berlin: Volk und Wissen. – (2002). “Kollektive Erzählprozesse—individuelle Geschichten. Medien und Mythos in Kindertexten.” M. Hug & S. Richter (eds.). Ergebnisse soziologischer und psychologischer Forschung. Impulse für den Deutschunterricht. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider, 62–77. – (2005). “Schreiben als Transformationsprozess. Zur Funktion von Mustern beim Lernen.” J. Stückrath & R. Strobel (eds.). Deutschunterricht empirisch. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider, 49–67. – (2007). “Unsichtbare Bilder. Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Text und Bild.” Didaktik Deutsch 13.22, 25–50.

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& Wilhelm Dehn (1980). “Erzählstruktur und Lernprozess.” Der Deutschunterricht 32.2, 94–104. – et al. (2004). Zwischen Text und Bild. Schreiben und Gestalten mit neuen Medien. Freiburg: Fillibach. – (2011). Texte und Kontexte. Schreiben als kulturelle Tätigkeit in der Grundschule. (Neubearbeitung und Erweiterung von Dehn 1999). Velber: Klett-Kallmeyer. Erlinger, Hans Dieter (2001). “Kinder erzählen. Narrative Antworten auf mediale Angebote.” H. D. Erlinger (ed.). Kinder und ihr Symbolverständnis. München: Kopäd, 31–53. Fahrenwald, Claudia (2011). Erzählen im Kontext neuer Lernkulturen. Eine bildungstheoretische Analyse im Spannungsfeld von Wissen, Lernen und Subjekt. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Fix, Martin & Roland Jost (2004). “Spuren der Medienrezeption in Schülertexten.” M. Bönninghausen & H. Rösch (eds.). Intermedialität im Deutschunterricht. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider, 156–173. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. – (2003). “Natural Narratology and Cognitive Parameters.” D. Herman (ed.). Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences. Standford: CSLI 243–267. Fox, Carol (1993). At the Very Edge of the Forest. The Influence of Literature on Storytelling by Children. London: Cassell. Geißler, Rolf (1968). “Die Erlebniserzählung zum Beispiel. Versuch einer fachdidaktischen Erörterung.” Die deutsche Schule 60.2, 102–112. Griffin, Terri M. et al. (2004). “Oral Discourse in the Preschool Years and Later Literacy Skills.” First Language 24, 127–147. Hausendorf, Heiko & Uta Quasthoff (1996). Sprachentwicklung und Interaktion. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Herman, David (2009). Basic Elements of Narrative. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Hoffmann, Thomas & Oliver Lüth (2007). Adventure: Zwischen Erzählung und Spiel. Transformationsprozesse in Schülertexten. Tönning: Der andere Verlag. http://www.schwimmenlernenimnetz.de (accessed 2. Jan. 2014). Hymes, Dell (1982). “Narrative Form as a ‘Grammar’ of Experience: Native Americans and a Glimpse of English.” Journal of Education 2, 121–242. Invernizzi, Marcia A. & Mary Abouzeid (1995). “One story map does not fit all: A cross-cultural analysis of children’s written story retellings.” Journal of Narrative and Life History 5.1, 1–20. Kern, Friederike & Uta Quasthoff (2005). “Fantasy stories and conversational narratives of personal experience: Genre-specific, interactional and developmental perspectives.” U. Quasthoff & T. Becker (eds.). Narrative Interaction. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 15–56. – et al. (2012). “Erzählen als Form, Formen des Erzählens.” F. Kern et al. (eds.). Erzählen als Form. Formen des Erzählens. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1–9. Koch, Peter & Wulf Oesterreicher (1985). “Sprache der Nähe – Sprache der Distanz. Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Spannungsverhältnis von Sprachtheorie und Sprachgeschichte.” Romanisches Jahrbuch 36, 15–43.

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Labov, William (1972). “The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax.” W. Labov. Language in the Inner City. Studies in the Black English Vernacula. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 354–396. – & Joshua Waletzky (1967). “Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience.” J. Helm (ed.). Essays on Verbal and Visual Arts. Seattle: U of Washington P, 12–44. Lesemann, Paul M. et al. (2007). “Home literacy as a special language environment to prepare children for school.” Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft 10, 334–355. Lotman, Jurij ([1970] 1977). The Structure of the Artistic Text. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. Maiwald, Klaus (2012). “Bilder zur Sprache bringen. Sehen lernen als Aufgabe des Deutschunterrichts.” Informationen zur Deutschdidaktik: Kultur des Sehens 36.2, 38–48. McCabe, Allyssa (1997). “Cultural Background and Storytelling: A Review and Implications for Schooling.” Elementary School Journal 97, 453–473. Merklinger, Daniela (2011). Frühe Zugänge zu Schriftlichkeit. Eine explorative Studie zum Diktieren. Freiburg: Fillibach. Nelson, Katherine (1996). Language in Cognitive Development. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. – (1999). “Event representations, narrative development and internal working models.” Attachment and Human Development 1, 239–252. Neuweg, Georg Hans (2000). “Mehr lernen, als man sagen kann. Konzepte und didaktische Perspektiven impliziten Lernens.” Unterrichtswissenschaft 28, 197–217. Ohlhus, Sören & Uta Quasthoff (2005). “Genredifferenzen beim mündlichen und schriftlichen Erzählen im Grundschulalter.” P. Wieler (ed.). Narratives Lernen in medialen und anderen Kontexten. Freiburg: Fillibach, 49–68. – & Juliane Stude (2009). “Erzählen im Unterricht der Grundschule.” M. BeckerMrotzek (ed.). Mündliche Kommunikation und Gesprächsdidaktik. Deutschunterricht in Theorie und Praxis (DTP) 3. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider, 471–486. Peterson, Carole & Allyssa McCabe (2004). “Echoing Our Parents: Parental Influences on Children’s Narration.” M. W. Pratt & B. H. Friese (eds.). Family Stories and the Lifecourse: Across Time and Generations. New York: Allyn Bacon, 27–54. Pramling, Niklas & Elin Eriksen Ødegaard (2011). “Learning to Narrate: Appropriating a Cultural Mould for Sense-Making and Communication.” N. Pramling & I. Pramling Samuelsson (eds.). Educational Encounters: Nordic Studies in Early Childhood Didactics. Dordrecht: Springer, 15–37. Propp, Vladimir ([1928] 1968). Morphology of the Folktale. Minneapolis: U of Texas P. Reber, Arthur S. (1989). “Implicit Learning and Tacit Knowledge.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 118.3, 219–235. Schüler, Lis (2013). “Wort und Bild.” Die Grundschulzeitschrift 27 Nr. 262/263, 34–37. Sowa, Hubert (2012). “Erzählen.” H. Sowa (ed.). Bildung der Imagination. Kunstpädagogische Theorie, Praxis und Forschung im Bereich einbildender Wahrnehmung und Darstellung. Bd. I. Oberhausen: Athena, 357–361. Spinner, Kaspar (2013). “Narrative Selbstvergewisserung—Wie ein Kind literarische und eigene biographische Erfahrung verbindet.” T. Becker & P. Wieler (eds.). Erzählforschung und Erzähldidaktik heute. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 165–174.

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Stein, Gertrude (1935). Narration. Four Lectures. Chicago: Chicago UP. Wagner, Klaus R. (1986). “Erzähl-Erwerb und Erzählungs-Typen.” Wirkendes Wort 36, 142–156. Wardetzky, Kristin (1992). Märchen-Lesarten von Kindern: eine empirische Studie. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang. – (2010). “Schwimmen lernen. Vom Zuhören über das Erzählen zum Schreiben.“ Die Grundschulzeitschrift 24.231, 44–47. – (2011). “Eine weltweit aufblühende Kunst. Die Kraft des professionellen Erzählens in der Schule.” Informationen zur Deutschdidaktik 35.3, 35–44. – & Christiane Weigel (2008). Sprachlos? Erzählen im interkulturellen Kontext. Erfahrungen aus einer Grundschule. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider. Weinhold, Swantje (2000). Text als Herausforderung. Zur Textkompetenz am Schulanfang. Freiburg: Fillibach. Weinhold, Swantje (2005). “Narrative Strukturen als Sprungbrett in die Schriftlichkeit?” P. Wieler (ed.). Narratives Lernen in medialen und anderen Kontexten. Freiburg: Fillibach, 69–84. – (2010). “Vom Sinn des Erzählens für das Schreibenlernen.” C. Albes & A. Saupe (eds.). Vom Sinn des Erzählens. Geschichte, Theorie und Didaktik. Frankfurt: Lang, 179–191. Wellmann, Henry M. (1988). “First steps in the child’s theorizing of the mind.” J. Astington, P. Harris & D. Olson (eds.). Developing Theories of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 64–92. Wieler, Petra (1997). Vorlesen in der Familie. Fallstudien zur literarisch-kulturellen Sozialisation von Vierjährigen. München: Juventa. – (2011). “‘Denn sie erkannten nicht die Gefahr’—bildungssprachliche Aspekte in Gesprächen und Texten von Kindern im Deutschunterricht der Grundschule und darüber hinaus.” P. Hüttis-Graff & P. Wieler (eds.). Übergänge zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Vor- und Grundschulalter. Freiburg: Fillibach, 123–148.

5.2 Further Reading Becker, Tabea (2011). “Erzählkompetenz.” M. Martínez (ed.). Handbuch Erzählliteratur. Theorie, Analyse, Geschichte. Stuttgart: Metzler, 58–63. – & Petra Wieler, eds. (2013). Erzählforschung und Erzähldidaktik heute. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Birkle, Sonja (2011). Erwerb von Textmusterkenntnis durch Vorlesen. Eine empirische Studie in der Grundschule. Freiburg: Fillibach. Cook-Gumperz, Jenny & Amy Kyratzis (2005). “Children’s Storytelling.” D. Hermann et al. (eds.). Routlegde Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 60–62. Feilke, Helmuth (2013). “Erzählen gestalten – Erzählungen schreiben.” Praxis Deutsch 40, Nr. 239, 4–12.

Narrative Constitution Michael Scheffel

1 Definition In general terms, the term “narrative constitution” refers to the composition of narratives. In a narrower sense, it involves structural models with two or more tiers that, following the tradition of formalism and structuralism, divide the narrative work into various levels and treat it as the product of a series of transformations (understood in a more or less formal sense) of a set of happenings. In a wider sense, though, the concept touches on the basic questions attached to the construction of narratological models in any form. It concerns, in fact, the theoretical modeling—which can differ widely depending on the methodological approach taken—of both the relationship between happenings and narrative and the relationship between literary and non-literary narration.

2 Explication Building on corresponding formulations associated with Russian formalism, Schmid introduced the expression “narrative constitution” into narratological discussion and has retained the term in a prominent piece of recent work (1982, 1984, 2005: 223–272). Schmid uses narrative constitution to refer to the structural models of narrative that have emerged in the tradition of formalism and structuralism and been developed with reference to works of literary, i.e. fictional narrative. The work is understood here as an object sui generis and divided into individual levels (understood as tiers of its constitution); in the process, certain narrative operations are paired with the transformations that lead from the natural order of the narrated happenings (the ordo naturalis of rhetoric) to the artificial arrangement of the narrative (the ordo artificialis). Various binary oppositions have been put forward, such as fabula/sujet (e.g. Tomaševskij [1925] 1965), histoire/discours (e.g. Todorov [1966] 1980; story/discourse), and story/plot (e.g. Forster [1927] 1972), as have multileveled models such as Geschehen/Geschichte/Text der

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Geschichte (Stierle [1971] 1973; happenings/story/text of the story), histoire/récit/narration (Genette [1972] 1980, [1983] 1988; story/narrative/narrating), and Geschehen/Geschichte/Erzählung/Präsentation der Erzählung (Schmid 1982; happenings/story/narration/presentation of the narration). These distinctions provide a framework in which the approaches involved attempt to grasp the construction of narrative works in a theoretical manner and represent it as the transformation of a set of happenings in a generative manner in the sense of an abstract model of production. Where the modeling of the relationship between happenings and narrative is concerned, these approaches can be said to make the happenings logically antecedent to the narrative itself. In the sense of the distinction between the “two principles of narrative” elucidated by Culler, in other words, they assume a theoretical “priority of events” posited in the case of fictional narrative (1981: esp. 179, 186– 187). Even if we subscribe to the theoretical premises of approaches with a text-internal or formalist orientation, the practicality of such models is affected not least by the fact that their authors, though sharing the idea that narrative works can be decomposed into levels or components, often have very different starting points and sometimes even associate significantly different meanings and concepts with a particular term (Martínez & Scheffel [1999] 2007: 26, for a comparative table of the basic terms used by nineteen theorists from Propp to Schmid). In actual fact, the study of narrative composition should be confined neither to a text-internal perspective nor to works of literary narrative. Thus, against the background of a newly developed interest in narration as one of the fundamental forms of human cultural activity, more recent narratological approaches have adopted a broader understanding of the concept of narrative constitution, in the context of which they take into consideration the problem of the relationship between narrative and reality in general (Schaeffer → Fictional vs. Factual Narration). The historiographical theorist White took a crucial step in this direction when, in the 1970s, he developed several theses regarding the fiction of the factual. These theses have been taken up repeatedly in the context of post-structuralism. They are based on a multileveled, originally abstract model of production in the tradition of formalism and structuralism, and transfer this model of the narrative constitution of fictional narratives to the at first sight non-fictional narratives of historiography and their relationship to historical reality (Meuter → Narration in Various Disciplines). On this basis, White set out a theory of “emplotment”: this theory takes the form of a typology of how meaning is generated through narrative and treats the transformation of happenings into stories as, at base, a process that gives rise to literature (in this case, the set

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of happenings presents itself as a product of the narrative, creating an unbridgeable gap between historical reality and all narratives of any kind). White’s concept of emplotment has been cited many times in the context of the narrative turn in cultural studies. Ricœur takes an analogous approach when he writes about how a reality that is in and of itself contingent is subjected to a fundamental reshaping by a process of mise en intrigue (rendered as “emplotment” by his translators) that is bound up with narrative. In his far more complex concept of a narrative hermeneutics, however, Ricœur—unlike White—takes as his starting point the idea that there is a mutual relationship between narrative and human activity, and that the concept of narrative constitution applies to essential parts of the reality of human life in general.

3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 Russian Formalism and the Opposition between Fabula and Sujet The beginning of systematic interest in the composition of narrative works belongs to a time when the attention of literary scholars came to be directed toward the question of literariness and with it the problem of the characteristic form of literature. Against this historical background in the first quarter of the 20th century, one model emerged that was to have a greater influence than any other on subsequent literary research. This model was developed in the context of Russian formalism. The model, which has two tiers, is based on the opposition generally described using the terms fabula and sujet. Where details are concerned, though, Ėjxenbaum, Šklovskij, Tomaševskij, Tynjanov, Vygotskij, and other theorists proceed from markedly different starting points, using the corresponding terms with different, sometimes even opposing meanings in each case (for detailed reconstructions, see e.g. Volek 1977; García Landa 1998: 32–48; Schmid 2005: 224–236). From a historical perspective, the use of the terms fabula and sujet in the manner of a binary opposition can be seen to begin with Šklovskij. The locus classicus for their definition is to be found in an essay in which, at the end of a detailed consideration of the idiosyncratic narrative form of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Šklovskij points out the chronological differences between chains of events in “actual life” and in art. In this context, he stresses that the “aesthetic laws” of artistic narrative can be grasped only if we distinguish between sujet and fabula. In the process, Šklovskij explains that the fabula should be understood as the “material for sujet formation” and the sujet as the material of the fabula

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in artistic form ([1925] 1991: 170; Schmid 2009). It is clear here and in other contexts that Šklovskij, like most other Russian formalists after him, does not associate the fabula with a neutral, given phenomenon. Instead, in contrast to the sujet, which is understood as bearing the literariness of the narrative work, he sees the fabula as something subordinate that is overcome, so to speak, in the work of art (in the same historical context, the opposite is the case in the work of Propp [1928] 1968 which, with its model of actants and functions, was concerned solely with the plot structure of narrative works, and more precisely with the rules governing constitution of the fabula). Numerous Russian formalists took up the pair of terms during the 1920s and put what were at times very different slants on it. Tomaševskij used and popularized the fabula/sujet distinction in a way that retained at least something of Šklovskij’s understanding of it. In the first edition of his textbook-like Teorija literatury ([1925] 1965, revised 1928), which found a relatively wide readership in Western European literary studies, a footnote deleted from later editions contains the concise, much-quoted formulation that “in short, the fabula is that ‘which really was,’ the sujet that ‘how the reader has learnt about it’” ([1925] 1991: 137). In the main text of the work, on the other hand, Tomaševskij provides a more nuanced definition of the fabula as “the totality of motifs in their logical causal-temporal chain” and the sujet as “the totality of the same motifs in that sequence and connectivity in which they are presented in the work” (Černov 1977: 40). Thus, here and in other passages of his Teorija literatury, Tomaševskij—in contrast to Šklovskij—associates the fabula with the property of causally connected motifs (in the sense of events). To this extent, it contains more than the aesthetically indifferent, preliterary happenings, and is, even if Tomaševskij himself does not say so directly, already part of the artistic fashioning of the work. 3.2 Story and Plot in the Work of E. M. Forster and other English-speaking Scholars of the 1920s to the 1940s Roughly contemporaneously with the Russian formalists, Forster ([1927] 1972) outlined a two-tiered model based on the terms “story” and “plot.” Forster sees the story as “the lowest and simplest of literary organisms,” explaining that “it is a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence—dinner coming after breakfast, Tuesday after Monday, decay after death, and so on” ([1927] 1972: 35). As for plot, the following comment in the book was soon to become famous: “We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A

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plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. ‘The king died and then the queen died,’ is a story. ‘The king died, and then the queen died of grief,’ is a plot” (93). For Forster, then, the crucial difference between story and plot lies in the move from simple chronology to causality—in the establishment of a causal relationship between individual events. If we consider the fabula/sujet opposition of the formalists with this in mind, it becomes clear that Forster’s model should not be understood as straightforwardly analogous to the two terms of Russian origin (Volek 1977: 147–148; Sternberg 1978: 8–14, for a detailed description of the terms and concepts involved, and Pier 2003: 77–78, for a discussion of the issue of translating Russian fabula and sujet into English). The concept of sujet has no direct equivalent in Forster’s work; what Forster refers to with “plot” would seem to correspond to the meaning fabula has for Tomaševskij; and Forster’s concept of story corresponds to what the formalists either consider part of the fabula but do not name or, like Tomaševskij, say, distinguish from the fabula and call xronika (“chronicle”; Tomaševskij [1925] 1965: 215). If we exclude the case of Muir, who refers to plot and story but uses the terms imprecisely and at times synonymously (e.g. [1928] 1979: 16–17), it was above all the term “plot,” frequently associated with the Aristotelian concept of muthos, that was soon taken up by other scholars in the English-speaking countries. From the 1930s onward, they used it as a central category in work on the composition of narrative works (reconstructions of this process can be found in e.g. García Landa 1998: 48–60). Brooks & Warren provided a widely known definition: “Plot, we may say, is the structure of an action as it is presented in a piece of fiction. It is not, we shall note, the structure of an action as we happen to find it out in the world, but the structure within a story. It is, in other words, what the teller of the story has done to the action in order to present it to us” ([1943] 1959: 77). 3.3 Histoire and Discours in French Structuralism and Classical Narratology The reception of the texts of Russian formalism in Western Europe began around the middle of the 20th century. As part of this process, French structuralism picked up the terms fabula and sujet and replaced them in the 1960s with the binary oppositions of récit/narration (Barthes (1966) 1977) and histoire/discours (Todorov [1966] 1980). The two-layered model of histoire and discours has spread far beyond the boundaries of French structuralism and stands out as highly suc-

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cessful from a present-day point of view. It was developed, building on Tomaševskij ([1925] 1965), by Todorov, a Bulgarian whose academic background lay in Slavonic studies in Sofia (in fact, Todorov drew the terms histoire and discours from a model developed by the linguist Benveniste, who actually uses them to mean something different, namely the contrast to be found in the tense system of French between forms of narration with and without a clearly apparent speaking entity, discours and histoire respectively; Benveniste [1959] 1971). Todorov’s formulation is still potentially compatible with Tomaševskij when he writes: “At the most general level, the literary work has two aspects: it is at the same time a story [histoire] and a discourse [discours]. It is story, in the sense that it evokes a certain reality […]. But the work is at the same time discourse […]. At this level, it is not the events reported which count but the manner in which the narrator makes them known to us” ([1966] 1980: 5). These same words, though, also suggest that the terms histoire and discours are not simply translations of fabula and sujet. Apart from various studies of narrative grammar by Bremond and others (see for example Bremond 1964; Greimas [1967] 1970; Todorov 1969), which stand in the tradition of Propp and concentrate entirely on the constitution of the histoire, the subsequent use of the terms histoire and discours in French structuralism and its successors confirms that both the extension of the two terms and the theoretical framework involved have been altered in certain ways. Unlike Šklovskij, say, who associates the sujet with the dynamic nature and special quality of a principle of literary composition, the French structuralists take discours to mean primarily the result, as it presents itself in the individual narrative work, of a certain way of mediating the set of happenings. Indeed, in contrast to the Russian formalists, histoire and discours are explicitly treated as having equal status: “the two aspects, the story [histoire] and the discourse [discours], are both equally literary” (Todorov [1966] 1980: 5). Neither of the two components has priority over the other, which accords well with the fact that writers such as Barthes and Genette drew up their narratological models against the background of the theory of the linguistic sign developed by Saussure. They treat the relationship between histoire and discours as analogous to the dichotomy between signifier and signified. The two terms are openly understood as having a greater extension, though. Tomaševskij’s sujet, for example, relates primarily to the order of events in their literary representation; yet as early as Todorov, discours subsumes the literary mediation of a set of happenings in its entirety (not just the sequence of events, that is to say, but also such fea-

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tures as perspective, style, mode, and so on). And unlike Tomaševskij’s fabula, which consists only of those parts of the narrated world of relevance to the plot, Todorov’s histoire explicitly contains not just the set of happenings itself, but also the overarching continuum of the narrated world, the continuum within which the set of happenings unfolds. Finally, we may mention Chatman. Building on the development from Russian formalism to French structuralism just described, he has concisely described the canonical view of the two-tier model of histoire and discours in classical narratology as follows: “each narrative has two parts: a story (histoire), the content or chain of events (actions, happenings), plus what may be called the existents (characters, items of setting); and a discourse (discours), that is, the expression, the means by which the content is communicated. In simple terms, the story is the what in a narrative that is depicted, discourse the how” (1978: 19; italics in original). This form of the two-tiered model, upheld in similar fashion by Prince (1982), was adopted most recently by Martínez and Scheffel ([1999] 2007). Martínez and Scheffel distinguish between a level of wie, or “how,” and a level of was, or “what.” The wie, known as the Darstellung (representation), has two aspects: Erzählung (narrative) and Erzählen (narration). The was is made up of the Handlung (plot) and erzählte Welt (narrated world). In the field of Handlung, Martínez and Scheffel distinguish further between Ereignis (event), Geschehen (happenings), Geschichte (story), and Handlungsschema (plot schema). 3.4 Three- and Four-Tier Models Even in the context of French structuralism itself, extensions of or refinements to the binary opposition between fabula/histoire on the one hand and sujet/discours on the other were already being put forward. For example, Genette ([1972] 1980) outlined a three-part framework to which he returned in ([1983] 1988). On the one hand, he retains the term histoire, which he defines as “the signified or narrative content.” On the other side of the dichotomy, though, Genette replaces discours, which he criticizes for being heterogeneous, with the terms récit and narration. By récit, Genette means “the signifier, statement, discourse or narrative text itself”; by narration, in contrast, he means “the producing narrative action and, by extension, the whole of the real or fictional situation in which that action takes place” ([1972] 1980: 27). Genette’s triad of histoire/récit/narration reappears in the guise of different terms, but essentially unchanged with respect to content, as story/text/narration in Rimmon-Kenan ([1983] 2002; similar also is sto-

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ry/plot/narration in Abbott [2002] 2008). Bal (1977: 6), though, points out correctly that Genette’s concept of narration operates on a different logical level from that of the two other concepts: it refers to the activity of utterance, whereas récit and histoire refer to the result of this activity (from a theoretical point of view, indeed, Genette did not apply his triadic system consistently: he treats the narration under the heading of voice as part of the discours; for an alternative model that takes account of the special features of fictional narration, see Scheffel 1997: 49–54). Bal ([1985] 1997) seeks to resolve this problem by means of a tripartite division fabula/story/text in which text refers to the signifiers or surface structure of the story, which itself refers to the signifiers or surface structure of the fabula. Adopting a similar approach to Bal and Volek, who refers in German to the triad Fabula/Sujet/Text (Volek 1977: 165), García Landa distinguishes between three levels of the narrative work in a monograph that has been influential in the Spanish-speaking countries. These levels, essentially of equal importance, are arranged above one another in tiers or nested within one another. They are acción (plot), relato (narrative), and discurso narrativo (narrative discourse). By acción, García Landa means the sequence of narrated events; by relato the presentation (representación) of the narrated events (i.e. tense and mood in Genette’s sense; Niederhoff → Perspective – Point of View); and by discurso the presentation of the relato, the transformation of the relato, that is to say, into a sign system in conjunction with the act of utterance that is the narración (‘narration’). In this latter level García Landa includes what Genette covers under voice as well as pragmatic aspects such as the communication between author and reader (García Landa 1998: esp. 20–21; Alber & Fludernik → Mediacy and Narrative Mediation). Unlike Genette and Rimmon-Kenan, who take distinctions in the field of the discours as the basis for their tripartite models, García Landa’s relato is situated in a borderline region between discours and histoire, and he himself treats it as a kind of intersection (a “terreno commún”) between acción and discurso. Stierle, meanwhile, makes clear that his proposed triad of Geschehen/Geschichte/Text der Geschichte is grounded in the field of the fabula. Here, Geschehen is the aesthetically neutral narrative material implied by the Geschichte, which is understood as the result of artistic operations that generate meaning. Text der Geschichte, on the other hand, resembles the discours of, for example, Todorov in that it includes both the arrangement of the events as well as the Geschichte as manifested in a medium (Stierle [1971] 1973).

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The concepts of Genette and others on the one hand and those of Stierle on the other are based on distinctions in the field of the discours and the fabula, respectively. They are developed further, or indeed in a sense synthesized, in Schmid’s four-tiered model of Geschehen/Geschichte/Erzählung/Präsentation der Erzählung. Schmid developed his model at the beginning of the 1980s and has defended it again in the recent past (1982, 1984, 2005, 2007). According to this framework, Geschehen is the “implied raw material” for selections whose output constitutes the Geschichte, understood in the sense of Tomaševskij’s fabula and Todorov’s histoire (selected happenings in ordo naturalis). Erzählung, on the other hand, is “the result of the ‘composition’ that arranges the happenings in an ordo artificialis,” and Präsentation der Erzählung means the representation of the Geschichte in a particular medium (the result, that is, of the elocutio; cf. 2005: 241–272). Schmid treats the Präsentation der Erzählung as a pheno-level, the only level accessible to empirical observation, whereas the three other levels are geno-levels that can be arrived at only by means of abstraction. In addition, Schmid’s model assumes that the four levels can be identified from changing angles, specifically from the producer’s or recipient’s side of the narrative work. If we move in an upward direction, an abstract perspective on production takes shape, extending from the Geschehen to the Präsentation der Erzählung; if we move in the opposite direction, namely downward, a semiotic perspective, the beginnings of which can also be found in Bal and others, takes shape. Seen from this latter perspective, the Präsentation der Erzählung is a signifier denoting the signified Erzählung, which itself is a signifier pointing to the Geschichte as a third level, and so on. 3.5 Narrative Constitution in Historiographical and Philosophical Theory In the 1970s, White (1973) adopted the model of narrative constitution in the formalist and structuralist tradition and applied it to the description of historiographical texts. So, something originally concerned with literary texts and meant as an abstract model of production—one abstracting away from the actual process by which narratives are made— is openly applied to non-fictional narratives, their actual genesis, and their relationship to historical reality. White uses the terms “historical field,” “chronicle,” “story,” and “emplotment” to describe the genesis of a historiographical work as follows. Historians are presented with their material, the elements of the historical field, in the form of events. The first step involves arranging these events into a chronologically

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ordered chronicle. The second step involves transforming this chronological sequence of events into a structured unity in the guise of a story with beginning, middle, and end; in the process, individual events acquire the function of initial motifs, transitional motifs, and the like. There then remains the question of the story’s meaning. According to White, this question involves the problem of explaining the set of happenings in the sense of grasping “the structure of the entire set of events considered as a completed story” (1973: 7; italics in original). This is where emplotment comes in, a concept much quoted in the context of the narrative turn in cultural studies but used somewhat vaguely by White himself. There is a famous passage in which White defines it thus: “Providing the ‘meaning’ of a story by identifying the kind of story that has been told is called explanation by emplotment” (1973: 7; italics in original). For White, then, who does not make a precise theoretical distinction between the acts of production and reception, the meaning of a story takes shape as the historian shapes or discerns a plot in the story formed on the basis of the chronicle: the events arranged into a story, that is to say, are subsumed into a particular plot schema (Emmott & Alexander → Schemata) (“Thus, in telling a story, the historian necessarily reveals a plot;” 1978: 52). Drawing on Frye (1957), White assumes further that there is a limited number of archetypal “modes of emplotment” (mythoi in the sense of Frye’s Poetics-based terminology) that can provide a story with meaning, irrespective of whether it is a case of literary or non-literary narration. Specifically, White believes there are four such modes of emplotment: romance, tragedy, comedy, and satire. If we recall now the origins of the two-tiered model for works of literary narrative in Russian formalism, it becomes clear that White in his Metahistory employs an essentially comparable model of narrative constitution with precisely the opposite objective. Šklovskij develops the concept of a sujet that should be distinguished from the fabula, and does so in order to set a certain emphasis by treating the fact of being artificial as an essential quality of a particular form of narration, specifically literary narration (with Šklovskij seeing the function of this form of narration as being “to return sensation to our limbs” [(1925) 1991: 6]). White, on the other hand, uses the idea of emplotment, situated on a level between fabula and sujet, to show that the transformation of happenings into stories necessarily involves a process of making literature; the signs are that this process is understood as one of fictionalization (accordingly in this respect, White describes historiographical narration as “essentially a literary, that is to say fiction-making operation”; 1978: 85).

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Ricœur takes an analogous approach to White when, in discussing narratives, he writes about how a reality that is in and of itself contingent is subjected to a fundamental reshaping by a “synthesis of the heterogeneous” in the form of a process of mise en intrigue (rendered as “emplotment” by his translators). By this, Ricœur means “the operation that draws a configuration out of a simple succession” ([1983/85] 1984/88, vol. 1: 5); configuration here, similarly to White’s emplotment, is linked to the Aristotelian concept of muthos, a story, that is to say, in the sense of a whole with beginning, middle, and end. Thus, for Ricœur, too, it is a fundamental fact that narratives of every kind have the nature of creative constructions. In the context of the “narrative hermeneutics” (Meuter 1994) outlined by Ricœur, though, the relationship between happenings and narrative should be conceived of not simply in the sense of an unbridgeable gap but, in so far as the happenings are concerned with human action, in the sense of a special kind of mutual relationship. The following ideas from Ricœur’s complex theoretical approach are significant where the issue of narrative constitution is concerned. Ricœur links the principle of configuration to the Aristotelian concept of mimesis and distinguishes between three levels, which he identifies as mimesis I, mimesis II, and mimesis III. Mimesis II refers to the structure and medium of the narrative, ultimately, that is, to Todorov’s discours or Schmid’s Erzählung and Präsentation der Erzählung. Mimesis I and mimesis III, on the other hand, involve that on which the narrative depends and that to which it gives rise. Roughly speaking, in other words, mimesis I (prefiguration) concerns the world in which people act and the models for their actions; mimesis II (configuration) relates more or less directly to that world; and mimesis III (refiguration) concerns the recipient’s realization of the mise en intrigue manifested in mimesis II. The recipient here is himself influenced more or less directly in his activity (including the models that determine his image of himself and of the world in which people act) by the reception of mimesis II. Thus, in contrast to the structural models of narrative constitution belonging to the formalist and structuralist tradition, Ricœur’s idea of a narrative hermeneutics does far more than identify the formal construction of narratives. Furthermore, his perspective on the question of narrative constitution, widened as it is by the idea of interplay between experience and narrative, reveals new angles of research for a contextbased narratology with an interest in the pragmatics of narrative: “For a semiotic theory, the only operative concept is that of the literary text. Hermeneutics, however, is concerned with reconstructing the entire arc of operations by which practical experience provides itself with works,

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authors, and readers. […] What is at stake, therefore, is the process by which the textual configuration mediates between the prefiguration of the practical field and its refiguration through the reception of the work” ([1983/85] 1984/88, vol. 1: 53).

4 Topics for Further Investigation (a) The place of voice as a text- and fiction-internal pragmatic dimension of the narrative in models of narrative constitution has not to date been properly described where fictional narration is concerned. (b) If we follow Ricœur in considering the problem of narrative constitution in the broader sense of a narrative hermeneutics, we are presented with a wide range of questions to be tackled both by empirical studies of the interplay between human experience and narrative and by work on its theoretical foundations. (Translated by Alastair Matthews)

5 Bibliography Abbott, H. Porter ([2002] 2008). The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Bal, Mieke (1977). Narratologie. Les instances du récit. Essais sur la signification narrative dans quatre romans modernes. Paris: Klincksieck. – ([1985] 1997). Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Barthes, Roland ([1966] 1977). “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives.” R. Barthes. Image Music Text. London: Fontana, 79–124. Benveniste, Émile ([1959] 1971). “The Correlations of Tense in the French Verb.” É. Benveniste. Problems in General Linguistics. Coral Gables: U of Miami P, 205– 215. Bremond, Claude (1964). “Le message narrative.” Communications No. 4, 4–32. Brooks, Cleanth & Robert Penn Warren ([1943] 1959). Understanding Fiction. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Černov, Igor (Chernov, Igor) (1977). “A Contextual Glossary of Formalist Terminology.” A. Shukman & L. M. O’Toole (eds.). Formalist Theory (Russian Poetics in Translation 4). Oxford: Holdan, 13–48. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Culler, Jonathan (1981). “Story and Discourse in the Analysis of Narrative.” J. Culler. The Pursuit of Signs. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 169−187. Forster, Edward M. ([1927] 1972). Aspects of the Novel. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

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Frye, Northrop (1957). Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton UP. García Landa, José Ángel (1998). Acción, relato, discurso. Estructura de la ficción narrativa. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – ([1983] 1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Greimas, Algirdas Julien ([1967] 1970). “La structure des actants du récit. Essai d’approche génerative.” A. J. Greimas. Du sens. Essais sémiotiques. Paris: Seuil, 249–270. Martínez, Matías & Michael Scheffel ([1999] 2007). Einführung in die Erzähltheorie. München: Beck. Meuter, Norbert (1994). “Prä-Narrativität. Ein Organisationsprinzip unseres Handelns.” Studia Culturologica 3, 119–140. Muir, Edwin ([1928] 1979). The Structure of the Novel. London: Chatto & Windus. Pier, John (2003). “On the Semiotic Parameters of Narrative: A Critique of Story and Discourse.” T. Kindt & H.-H. Müller (eds.). What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: de Gruyter, 73–97. Prince, Gerald (1982). Narratology. The Form and Functioning of Narrative. Berlin: Mouton. Propp, Vladimir ([1928] 1968). Morphology of the Folktale. Austin: U of Texas P. Ricœur, Paul ([1983/1985] 1984/1988). Time and Narrative. 3 vols. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith ([1983] 2002). Narrative Fiction. Contemporary Poetics. London: Methuen. Scheffel, Michael (1997). Formen selbstreflexiven Erzählens. Eine Typologie und sechs exemplarische Analysen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Schmid, Wolf (1982). “Die narrativen Ebenen ‘Geschehen,’ ‘Geschichte,’ ‘Erzählung’ und ‘Präsentation der Erzählung’.” Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 9, 83–110. – (1984). “Der Ort der Erzählperspektive in der narrativen Konstitution.” J. J. van Baak (ed.). Signs of Friendship. To Honour A. G. F. van Holk, Slavist, Linguist, Semiotician. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 523–552. – (2005). Elemente der Narratologie. Berlin: de Gruyter. – (2007). “La constitution narrative: les événéments―l’histoire―le récit―la présentation du récit.“ J. Pier (ed.). Théorie du récit. L’apport de la recherche allemande. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 153–188. – (2009). “‘Fabel’ und ‘Sujet’.” W. Schmid (ed.). Slavische Erzähltheorie. Russische und tschechische Ansätze. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1–45. Šklovskij, Viktor (Shklovsky, Victor) ([1925] 1991). Theory of Prose. Elmwood Park: Dalkey Archive P. Sternberg, Meir (1978). Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Stierle, Karlheinz ([1971] 1973). “Geschehen, Geschichte, Text der Geschichte.” R. Koselleck & W. D. Stempel (eds.). Geschichte―Ereignis und Erzählung. München: Fink, 530–534. Todorov, Tzvetan ([1966] 1980). “The Categories of Literary Narrative.” Papers on Language and Literature 16, 3–36.

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– (1969). Grammaire du Décaméron. The Hague: Mouton. Tomaševskij, Boris ([1925] 1965). Teorija literatury. Poėtika. Moskva: Gos. Izd. English trans. of the chapter “Thematics” from the 1928 ed.: L. T. Lemon & M. J. Reis (eds.). Russian Formalist Criticism. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 61–95. Volek, Emil (1977). “Die Begriffe ‘Fabel’ und ‘Sujet’ in der modernen Literaturwissenschaft.” Poetica 9, 141–166. White, Hayden (1973). Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – (1978). Tropics of Discourse. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.

Narrative Empathy Suzanne Keen

1 Definition Narrative empathy is the sharing of feeling and perspective-taking induced by reading, viewing, hearing, or imagining narratives of another’s situation and condition. Narrative empathy plays a role in the aesthetics of production when authors experience it (Taylor et al. 2002–03: 361, 376–377), in mental simulation during reading, in the aesthetics of reception when readers experience it, and in the narrative poetics of texts when formal strategies invite it. Narrative empathy overarches narratological categories, involving actants, narrative situation, matters of pace and duration, and storyworld features such as settings. The diversity of the narratological concepts involved (addressed in more detail below) suggests that narrative empathy should not simply be equated with character identification nor exclusively verified by readers’ reports of identification. (Character identification may invite narrative empathy; alternatively, spontaneous empathy with a fictional character may precede identification; Keen 2007: 169.) Empathetic effects of narrative have been theorized by literary critics, philosophers, and psychologists, and they have been evaluated by means of experiments in discourse processing, empirical approaches to narrative impact, and through introspection.

2 Explication Nonfictional narrative genres may involve narrative empathy, but most of the published commentary and theorizing on narrative empathy centers on fictional narratives, especially novels and film fiction, and to a lesser degree, drama. Brecht’s disdain for the evocation of audience empathy in favor of estrangement effects has had a lasting legacy, depressing the theorizing of reception in performance studies. Individual dramatists, directors, and actors may nonetheless draw on empathy in the form of motor mimicry; some spectators experience the transactions

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of feeling states involved in empathy, including real-world motor mimicry and emotional contagion (Zillman 1995). Individual readers testify to greater or lesser intensities of emotional fusion with nonfictional subjects of autobiography, memoir, and history, contrasted with fictional characters. Whether non-fiction arouses greater or lesser empathy in individuals and in larger populations of readers and viewers is a question for future empirical work. The remainder of this entry focuses on narrative fiction, since empathy is most often discussed in relation to the impact of fictional worlds on readers. Narrative empathy differs from two related but distinct phenomena: sympathy and the empathetic aversion that psychologists label personal distress. Sympathy refers to an emotion felt for a target that relates to but does not match the target’s feeling. (“I feel for you” rather than “I feel with you.”) Sometimes called empathetic concern, sympathy may or may not follow on an experience of narrative empathy. While in readers’ narrative empathy shared feeling enables a living reader to catch the emotions and sensations of a representation (in other-directed attention), personal distress caused by unpleasant discordant empathetic sharing results in an aversive reaction (self-directed focus) (Eisenberg 2005). Extreme personal distress in response to narrative usually interrupts and sometimes terminates the narrative transaction: the distressed responder puts the book down, leaves the theater, or turns off the transmission. The psychologists who study narrative empathy in laboratory settings have identified key features of narrative fictional texts, including high levels of imagery inviting mental simulation and immersion, that dispose readers to making subjective reports of being transported or of “having left the real world behind while visiting narrative worlds” (Gerrig 1993: 157). The phenomenology of transportation is taken to be a fact of readers’ immersion; Miall explicitly links empathy with immersion (Miall 2009: 240–244). Mar and Oatley argue that “imagined settings and characters evoked by fiction literature likely engage the same areas of the brain as those used during the performance of parallel actions and perceptions” (Mar & Oatley 2008: 180), an argument that has received experimental support from research in cognitive neuroscience on mirror neurons. Since narrative empathy involves sharing feelings as well as sensations of immersion, it is reasonable to inquire into the status of emotions involved in fiction. The evocation of real emotions by fictional narratives, a topic of controversy in philosophy (Yanal 1999), raises the question of the status of “fictional emotions” as opposed to the drivers of narrativity: curiosity, suspense, and surprise (Sternberg 1992: 529).

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Dewey lays the groundwork for discussion of fictional emotions in his broader statement (about all the arts) that “esthetic emotion is native emotion transformed through the objective material to which is has committed its development and consummation” (Dewey 1985: 85). This definition of esthetic emotion allows for a range of feelings, not limited to aesthetic pleasure in form and catharsis. As Yanal later writes, “Whether we are purged, pleasured, or made flexible from emotions matters little. […] Some emoters may aim at catharsis in seeking out fiction, some at affective flexibility, others at pleasurable stimulation. Any of these counts as an end that renders emotion coherent” (1999: 30). The “paradox of fiction” questions whether genuine emotion can be felt in response to a fictitious character or event (Dadlez 1997; Hjort & Laver 1997). Readers do often become emotionally involved or immersed in fictional worlds, even when they are aware of the illusion of fictionality (Yanal 1999: 11). Some modes of fiction, such as postmodern novels, employ devices such as metalepsis deliberately to disrupt readers’ immersion, but belief in an aesthetic illusion, or realistic representation, is not required for empathy to occur. Gerrig (1993) argues that readers naturally experience narrative information as continuous with information gleaned from real experience and thus must exert themselves consciously to regard fictive narratives as fictional. In a follow-up study, Gerrig and Rapp (2004) suggest that real readers must make an active effort to disbelieve the reality of fictive narratives, in contradistinction from Coleridge’s willing suspension of disbelief. Narrative empathy evidences Gerrig’s contention despite the paradox of fictional emotions, for narrative empathy transacts feelings through narrative representations. Readers and viewers can block feeling responses to fiction by reminding themselves of its unreality, but it takes an effort, according to Gerrig and Rapp. Narrative empathy can be situated in both authors and readers. Authors’ empathy bears on fictional worldmaking and character creation. It may influence writers’ choices about narrative techniques, evincing a desire to evoke an empathetic response in the narrative audience, even though exercise of these choices does not necessarily imply didactic intentions or a bid for an altruistic response in the real world. That fiction- writers as a group exhibit fantasy empathy (as measured by Davis’s Interpersonal Reactivity Index [Davis 1980]) and test higher for empathy than the general population has been demonstrated by Taylor (Taylor et al. 2002–03). At the creative end of the narrative transaction, authors’ empathy is likely a core element of the narrative imagination, though much remains to be discovered about narrative artists’ personalities and practices. Authors’ empathy does not directly correspond to

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readers’ empathy, arising from, receiving, or co-creating narratives. That is, while authors show signs of engaging in fantasy empathy (Davis 1980: 10, 85) when in the process of creating fictional worlds, readers of the resultant narrative may respond with fantasy empathy for their own reasons, not necessarily matching authors’ strategic narrative empathizing (Keen 2008: 478–479). As empirical research in discourse processing reveals, individual readers respond variously to narrative texts, depending on their identities, situations, experiences, and temperaments (Keen 2011b). Because empathy is a feeling experienced by real people, narrative empathy arises in the process of narrative dynamics, or the movement from beginning to end of the discourse (Richardson 2002: 1). Character identification of readers with fictional characters, within and across boundaries of group identification, may influence their experiences of narrative empathy, though it may also precede subsequent character identification (Keen 2007: 169). Some of the techniques thought to evoke empathetic responses have been described in narratological terms (e.g., free indirect speech, narrative situations, etc.; Keen 2007: 92–99), though caution should be taken not to oversimplify predictions about the effects of particular narrative techniques, which are protean (cf. Sternberg 1982). The empathetic dispositions that readers bring to the text have an impact on the efficacy of particular techniques. For instance, empathetic individuals tend to better grasp the causal relations between narrated events in fiction (Bourg 1996) than those testing low in empathy. Specific narrative techniques of fiction and film narrative have been associated with empathetic effects (Keen 2006: 216). These techniques include manipulations of narrative situation to channel perspective or person of the narration and representation of fictional characters’ consciousness (Schneider 2001), point of view (Andringa et al. 2001), and paratexts of fictionality (Keen 2007: 88–89). Other elements thought to be involved in readers’ empathy include vivid use of settings and traversing of boundaries (Friedman 1998), metalepsis, serial repetition of narratives set in a stable storyworld (Warhol 2003), lengthiness (Nussbaum 1990), encouraging immersion or transportation of readers (Nell 1988), generic conventions (Jameson 1981), metanarrative interjections (Fludernik 2003; Nünning 2001, 2004), and devices such as foregrounding (Miall 1989), disorder, or defamiliarization that slow reading pace (Zillman 1991). Most of the existing empirical research on empathetic effects in narration concerns film (Tan 1996; Zillman 1991) although a number of researchers are investigating potentially empathyinducing techniques using short fiction. Novels and stage drama are

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least studied empirically (though often theorized about), their length and performance conditions being, respectively, at odds with the current modes of empirical verification.

3 History of the Concept and its Study “Empathy” has often been conflated with its subset, “narrative empathy.” After a brief discussion on empathy, this account focuses on narrative empathy. For a history of the idea under the term empathy (the English translation of Einfühlung, or “feeling into”), emerging out of late 19th-century German psychological aesthetics, see Wispé (1987). The projected feeling of empathy involves responses not only to sentient beings, but also to inanimate objects and landscape features. It separates aspects of motor mimicry, emotional contagion, and fusion of feelings from the older term sympathy, “feeling for” or compassion. The literary implications of sympathy have been contested throughout the centuries (Keen 2007: 37–64). In contemporary philosophy and psychology (Batson 2011), as well as in popular usage, the definitions of empathy and sympathy remain entangled. Narrative empathy is often thematized in texts through direct representation of mind-reading “empaths” (Star Trek’s Deanna Troi [Roddenberry 1987–94], Octavia Butler’s Lauren Olamina [1993]) or discussion of successes or failures of empathy on the part of fictional characters (e.g., the contrast between Ender and Valentine in Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game [1985]). Most usage of the term “empathy” in relation to narrative occurs in 20th-century works of literary criticism (e.g., Hogan 2001), especially in reference to Victorian, postcolonial, ethnic, and woman-authored fiction. Commentators on narrative ethics have often linked fictional representation of empathy (or failures of empathy) with empathy experienced by real readers. The situation of an individual reader with respect to authors’ strategic empathizing depends in part on aspects of identity and narration. When readers’ attitudes alter, or when they receive tacit or explicit encouragement to undertake altruistic action on behalf of represented others for whom they feel narrative empathy, the impact can be considered an aspect of ethics in narrative discourse. Nussbaum (1990) argues that narrative empathy resulting from novel reading forms good world citizens. Further, it has been suggested by philosophers and developmental psychologists that experiences of narrative empathy contribute to readers’ moral development (Hoffman 2000). Some commentators assume that the empathy-altruism hypothe-

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sis regarding real-life human empathy and pro-social behavior (Batson et al. 2009) applies to narrative empathy, especially as it helps readers overcome bias (Harrison 2008, 2011). Keen criticizes accounts of narrative empathy that insist on moral efficacy as an outcome of reading, arguing that narrative empathy does not often lead to documented altruistic action (Keen 2007: 145). Patrick Colm Hogan argues that empathy for characters is inseparable from literary reading experiences and suggests that Keen holds narrative empathy to an unreasonably high standard of “moral heroism” (Hogan 2010: 267). However, Keen does not introduce the standard, deriving it rather from the discussions of Nussbaum, Hoffman, and others. Even so, empathy may be strategically employed in narrative for purposes of ideological manipulation. The Machiavellian use of empathy is well documented in real life as well as in fictions such as Ender’s Game. A contribution to rhetorical narratology, Keen’s theory of narrative empathy elaborates the uses to which real authors/narrative artists put their human empathy to work in imaginative character-creation and in other aspects of worldmaking, as well as theorizing readers’ responses (Keen 2006). Rhetorical narratology takes an interest in effects on readers, especially with regards to persuasion. While no narrative text consistently inspires empathy in all its readers, who vary in dispositional empathy (Keen 2007: 89) and in their official and unofficial positions with respect to the text (Goffman 1956), study of the responses of readers belonging to different audiences reveals narrative empathy in action. A subset of narrative empathy, readers’ empathy leads to differentiation in terms of belonging (Keen 2011a). Bounded strategic empathy addresses members of in-groups. Ambassadorial strategic empathy addresses members of more temporally, spatially, or culturally remote audiences. Broadcast strategic empathy calls upon all readers to experience emotional fusion through empathetic representations of universal human experiences and generalizable responses to particular situations (Keen 2008). Narrative empathy designates an affective element of the operations investigated by cognitive narratology. A subset of narrative empathy, readers’ empathy leads to differentiation of readers in terms of their belonging to in-groups addressed directly by authors hoping to evoke empathy. Empirical verification of claims made by narratologists about narrative empathy have been investigated in collaboration with specialists in discourse processing (Miall 2006) and psychologists who study persuasion and impact (Mazzocco et al. 2010). Research into narrative empathy in cognitive science has investigated the role of emotions, including empathy, in narrative processing (Mar & Oatley et al. 2011). Narrative

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empathy has also been studied in relation to experientiality (Fludernik 1996), immersion (Ryan 2001), mental imaging, and altruism (Johnson 2011).

4 Topics for Further Investigation Keen (2007: 169–171) lists twenty-seven hypotheses about narrative empathy that could be further theorized and, in some cases, tested empirically in collaboration with psychologists, social neuroscientists, and experts in discourse processing. Comparison of narrative empathy elicited by drama, film, and non-fiction could supplement existing research on narrative empathy and prose fiction. If a long-term study could be undertaken, longitudinal and comparative studies of groups of real readers would supplement the existing research on the impact of narrative empathy on beliefs and prosocial behavior. In any case, further research into narrative empathy will be best served by cross-disciplinary conversation and interdisciplinary collaboration.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Andringa, Els et al. (2001). “Point of View and Viewer Empathy in Film.” W. van Peer & S. Chatman (eds.). New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. Albany: SUNY P, 83–99. Batson, C. Daniel (2011). “These Things Called Empathy: Eight Related but Distinct Phenomena.” J. Decety & William Ickes (eds.). The Social Neuroscience of Empathy. Cambridge: MIT P, 3–15. – et al. (2009). “Empathy and Altruism.” C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (eds.). Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 417–426. Bourg, Tammy (1996). “The Role of Emotion, Empathy, and Text Structure in Children’s and Adults’ Narrative Text Comprehension.” R. Kreuz & M. S. MacNealy (eds.). Empirical Approaches to Literature and Aesthetics. Norwood: Ablex, 241–260. Butler, Octavia (1993). Parable of the Sower. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows. Card, Orson Scott (1985). Ender ’s Game. New York: Tor Books. Dadlez, E. M. (1997). What’s Hecuba to Him? Fictional Events and Actual Emotions. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP. Davis, Mark H. (1980). “A Multidimensional Approach to Individual Differences in Empathy.” JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology 10, 85.

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Dewey, John (1985). Art as Experience. The Later Works. Vol. 10. J. A. Boydston (ed.). Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP. Eisenberg, Nancy (2005). “The Development of Empathy-Related Responding.” G. Carlo & C. P. Edwards (eds.). Moral Motivation through the Life Span. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 73–117. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. – (2003). “Metanarrative and Metafictional Commentary: From Metadiscusivity to Metanarration and Metafiction.” Poetica 35, 1–39. Friedman, Susan Stanford (1998). Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter. Princeton: Princeton UP. Gerrig, Richard J. (1993). Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven: Yale UP. – & David N. Rapp (2004).“Psychological Processes Underlying Literary Impact.” Poetics Today 25, 265–281. Goffman, Erving (1956). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Edinburgh: U of Edinburgh P. Harrison, Mary-Catherine (2008). “The Paradox of Fiction and the Ethics of Empathy: Reconceiving Dickens’s Realism.” Narrative 16, 256–278. Harrison, Mary-Catherine (2011). “How Narrative Relationships Overcome Empathic Bias: Elizabeth Gaskell’s Empathy Across Social Difference.” Poetics Today 32, 255–288. Hjort, Mette & Sue Laver (eds.) (1997). Emotion and the Arts. Oxford: Oxford UP. Hoffman, Martin (2000). Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Hogan, Patrick Colm (2001). “The Epilogue of Suffering: Heroism, Empathy, Ethics.” SubStance 30, 119–143. – (2010). What Literature Teaches us About Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Jameson, Frederic (1981). The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Johnson, Dan (2011). “Transportation into a Story Increases Empathy, Prosocial Behavior, and Perceptual Bias Toward Fearful Expressions.” Personality and Individual Differences 52: 150–155. Keen, Suzanne (2006). “A Theory of Narrative Empathy.” Narrative 14, 209–236. – (2007). Empathy and the Novel. Oxford: Oxford UP. – (2008). “Strategic Empathizing: Techniques of Bounded, Ambassadorial, and Broadcast Strategic Empathy.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 82, 477–493. – (2011a). “Empathetic Hardy: Bounded, Ambassadorial, and Broadcast Strategies of Narrative Empathy.“ Poetics Today 32, 349–389. Keen, Suzanne (2011b). “Readers’ Temperament and Fictional Character.” New Literary History 42, 295–314. Mar, Raymond A. & Keith Oatley (2008). “The Function of Fiction is the Abstraction and Simulation of Social Experience.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 3, 173–192. – et al. (2011). “Emotion and narrative fiction: Interactive influences before, during, and after reading.” Cognition & Emotion 25, 818–833.

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Mazzocco, Philip et al. (2010). “‘This story is not for everyone’: Transportability and narrative persuasion.” Social Psychology and Personality Science 1, 36–68. Miall, David S. (1989). “Beyond the Schema Given: Affective Comprehension of Literary Narratives.” Cognition and Emotion 3, 55–78. – (2006). Literary Reading: Empirical and Theoretical Studies. New York: Lang. – (2009). “Neuroaesthetics of Literary Reading.” M. Skov & O. Vartanian (eds.). Neuroaesthetics. Amityville: Baywood Publishing, 233–247. Nell, Victor (1988). Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure. New Haven: Yale UP. Nünning, Ansgar (2001). “Mimesis des Erzählens: Prolegomena zu einer Wirkungsästhetik, Typologie und Funktionsgeschichte des Akts des Erzählens und der Metanarration.” J. Helbig (ed.). Erzählen und Erzähltheorie im 20. Jahrhundert: Narratologische Studien aus Anlass des 65. Geburtstags von Wilhelm Füger. Heidelberg: Winter, 13–47. – (2004). “On Metanarrative: Towards a Definition, a Typology and an Outline of the Functions of Metanarrative Commentary.” J. Pier (ed.). The Dynamics of Narrative Form. Studies in Anglo-American Narratology. Berlin: de Gruyter, 11–57. Nussbaum, Martha C. (1990). Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP. Richardson, Brian (2002). “General Introduction.” B. Richardson (ed.). Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1–7. Roddenberry, Gene (1987–94). “Troi, Deanna.” Star Trek: The Next Generation. http://www.startrek.com/database_article/troi. Accessed 20 December 2011. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2001). Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Schneider, Ralf (2001). “Toward a Cognitive Theory of Literary Character: The Dynamics of Mental-Model Construction.” Style 35, 607–642. Sternberg, Meir (1982). “Proteus in Quotation-Land: Mimesis and the Forms of Reported Discourse,” Poetics Today 3, 107–156. – (1992). “Telling in Time (II): Chronology, Teleology, Narrativity.” Poetics Today 13, 463–541. Tan, Ed S. (1996). Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine. Hilldale: Erlbaum. Taylor, Marjorie et al. (2002–03). “The illusion of independent agency: Do adult fiction writers experience their characters as having minds of their own?” Imagination, Cognition & Personality 22, 361–380. Warhol, Robyn (2003). Having a Good Cry: Effeminate Feelings and Pop-Culture Forms. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Wispé, Lauren (1987). “History of the Concept of Empathy.” N. Eisenberg & J. Strayer (eds.). Empathy and its Development. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 17–37. Yanal, Robert J. (1999). The Paradoxes of Emotion and Fiction. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 9–11.

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Zillman, Dolf (1991). “Empathy: Affect from Bearing Witness to the Emotions of Others.” D. Zillman & J. B. Bryant (eds.). Responding to the Screen: Reception and Reaction Processes. Mahwah: Erlbaum, 135–167. – (1995). “Mechanisms of Emotional Involvement with Drama.” Poetics 23, 33–51.

5.2 Further Reading Breger, Claudia & Fritz Breithaupt, eds. (2010). Empathie und Erzählung. Freiburg: Rombach. Breithaupt, Fritz (2009). Kulturen der Empathie. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Coplan, Amy & Peter Goldie, eds. (2011). Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford UP. Decety, Jean & William Ickes, eds. (2011). The Social Neuroscience of Empathy. Cambridge: MIT P. Keen, Suzanne (2011). “Introduction: Narrative and the Emotions.” Special Issue, Narrative and the Emotions. Poetics Today 32, 1–53. Oatley, Keith (1994). “A Taxonomy of the Emotions of Literary Response and a Theory of Identification in Fictional Narrative.” Poetics 23, 53–74.

Narrative Ethics James Phelan

1 Definition Narrative ethics explores the intersections between the domain of stories and storytelling and that of moral values. Narrative ethics regards moral values as an integral part of stories and storytelling because narratives themselves implicitly or explicitly ask the question, “How should one think, judge, and act—as author, narrator, character, or audience—for the greater good?”

2 Explication 2.1 Characteristic Questions and Positions Investigations into narrative ethics have been diverse and wide-ranging, but they can be usefully understood as focused on one or more of four issues: (1) the ethics of the told; (2) the ethics of the telling; (3) the ethics of writing/producing; and (4) the ethics of reading/reception. Questions about the ethics of the told focus on characters and events. Sample questions: What are the ethical dimensions of characters’ actions, especially the conflicts they face and the choices they make about those conflicts? What are the ethical dimensions of any one character’s interactions with other characters? How does a narrative’s plot signal its stance on the ethical issues faced by its characters? Questions about the ethics of the telling focus on text-internal matters involving implied authors, narrators, and audiences. Sample questions: What are the ethical responsibilities, if any, of storytellers to their audiences? What are the ethical dimensions of the narrative’s techniques? How does the use of these techniques imply and convey the values underlying the relations of the storytellers (implied authors and narrators) to their materials (events and characters) and their audiences (narratees, implied readers, actual audiences)? (Schmid → Implied Au-

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thor; Margolin → Narrator; Schmid → Narratee; Schmid → Implied Reader) Questions about the ethics of writing/producing focus on textexternal matters involving actual authors, film directors, or other constructing agents. Sample questions: What, if any, are the ethical obligations of the constructive agents of the narrative to its materials? For example, what obligations, if any, does a memoir writer have to other people whose experiences s/he narrates? What responsibilities, if any, does a filmmaker adapting a novel have to that novel and its author? What are the ethical implications of choosing to tell one kind of story rather than another in a given historical context? For example, what are the ethics of a fiction writer living under a repressive regime refusing to write about those socio-political conditions? Does developing a narrative about one’s own life help one become a better, more ethically sound person? Questions about the ethics of reading/reception focus on issues about audiences and the consequences of their engagements with narratives. Sample questions: What, if any, are the ethical obligations of the audience to the narrative itself, to its materials, and to its author? What, if any, are the consequences of an audience’s success or failure in meeting those obligations? Does reading narrative help one become a better, more ethically sound, person? (Prince → Reader) These four kinds of questions roughly correspond to four ethical positions occupied by the main agents involved in stories and storytelling (and again individual investigations vary in how many of these positions they focus on and which ones they make most important): (1) those of characters in relation to each other and to the situations they face; (2) those of the narrator(s) in relation to the characters and to the narratee(s); (3) those of the implied author in relation to the characters, the narrator(s), and the implied and actual audiences; (4) those of actual audience members (and the ethical beliefs they bring to the reading experience) in response to the first three ethical positions. These questions and positions shed light on the common claim by ethical critics that their investigations are different from “reading for the moral message,” since such reading has as its goal extracting a neatly packaged lesson from the ethics of the told (e.g. Macbeth teaches us about the evils of ambition). Attending to these four kinds of question and these four positions opens up the multi-layered intersections of narrative and moral values, even in narratives such as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and George Orwell’s Animal Farm that offer clear answers to questions about the ethics of the told.

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2.2 Literary Ethics and Narrative Ethics Where literary ethics is broadly concerned with the relation between literature and moral values, narrative ethics is specifically concerned with the intersection between various formal aspects of narrative and moral values. Thus, narrative ethics is both broader (including in its domain nonliterary narrative) and narrower (excluding from its domain nonnarrative texts) than literary ethics. At the same time, narrative ethics can be usefully seen as a recent development in the larger trajectory of literary ethics, one beginning in the late 1980s (cf. chap. 3 below). 2.3 Narrative Ethics in Relation to Politics and Aesthetics The four questions and positions of narrative ethics shed light on how inquiries into narrative ethics can overlap with or be distinct from inquiries in two related domains, the politics of narrative and the aesthetics of narrative. Where ethics is concerned with moral values, politics is concerned with power, especially as it is acquired, exercised, and responded to by governments, institutions, social groups, and individuals. Since, in any given acquisition or deployment of power, moral values will inevitably come into play, ethics can be a lens through which some aspects of politics get examined. In addition, since an individual’s or a group’s application of moral values in any given situation may well be influenced by issues of power, politics can be a lens through which (some aspects of) ethical behavior are examined. In narrative ethics, then, all four categories of questions can include (but are not limited to) questions about the politics of narrative. For example, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the ethics of the told include Darcy’s struggle between his love for Elizabeth and his knowledge that her family is socially inferior to his; the ethics of the telling include Austen’s decision to convey the action largely through the consciousness of her young female protagonist rather than, say, through the older, wealthier, and more socially powerful Darcy. The ethics of writing include Austen’s focusing on the adventures of the Bennet sisters in the marriage market rather than on the actions of, say, male characters involved in the deliberations of Parliament; and the ethics of reading/reception include whether and how readers can legitimately claim Austen as a feminist. In terms of positions, the fourth one is where the overlap between ethics and politics will be most immediately evident, as, for example, when an individual reader’s political stance against marriage as an instrument of patriarchy would lead her to find fault with the ethics of the told in Austen’s novel.

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Aesthetics is concerned with beauty, or, more generally, the excellence of an art work (or, indeed, of any human construction). The frequent overlap between narrative ethics and narrative aesthetics becomes evident when ethical deficiencies in the told or the telling mar the excellence of a narrative. For example, when in the final chapters of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain has Huck go along with Tom Sawyer’s “Evasion” and the various ways it dehumanizes Jim, Twain introduces a deficiency that is simultaneously ethical and aesthetic. The Huck who has come to recognize and respect Jim’s humanity ought not to condone Jim’s dehumanization. Because Twain does not signal anything but approval for Huck’s behavior, this section of the novel introduces deficiencies in both the ethics of the told and of the telling. These deficiencies simultaneously weaken the aesthetics of the novel because they erode the power of the narrative’s climactic moment (Huck’s decision to go to hell) and verge on making Huck an incoherent character. Nevertheless, the overlap between narrative ethics and narrative aesthetics is not complete, as becomes evident in cases where ethics seem deficient but aesthetics do not. For example, many readers find the ethics of the told in Nabokov’s Lolita to be abhorrent even as they admire the beauty of the novel’s style.

3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 Literary Ethics in Antiquity Although narrative ethics emerged as a clearly identified realm of study only in the 1980s, the interest in literature’s capacity to influence its audience for good or for ill goes back to Plato and Aristotle. Neither philosopher explicitly uses the term ethics in his discussion of literature, but each implicitly recognizes ethics as a substantial part of its appeal to audiences. In addition, the commentaries of the two philosophers provide striking examples of how ethics and aesthetics may overlap and of how a theorist’s understanding of ethics is often part and parcel of a broader philosophical vision. In The Republic, Plato (1998a: Book X) explains the defects of poetry (by poetry is meant lyric, epic, and drama) from the perspective of his ontological theory of forms, but that perspective has implications for the ethics of the told. Plato claims that poetry is twice removed from the truth: poetry imitates objects in the actual world, but these objects are themselves imitations of the ideal forms. A republic that welcomed such imitations would be doing its

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citizens an ethical disservice. In Ion (1998b), Plato contends that poetry has inherent deficiencies in the ethics of the telling that can lead to deficiencies in the ethics of the told: because poetry appeals to its audience’s emotions more than their reason, it can lead its audience to erroneous conclusions about what is good. Although Aristotle devoted a separate treatise to Ethics (actually, two treatises, the Eudemian Ethics (1952) and the Nicomachean Ethics (2002), the second a revision of the first), he also implicitly assigned ethics an important role in the Poetics (1920). He defined tragedy with reference to its emotional effect on the audience: a representation of an action that arouses pity and fear and culminates in catharsis, i.e. the purging of those emotions. Aristotle’s thinking about each part of tragedy follows from this conception of its overall nature, and that thinking often includes an understanding of the intertwining of aesthetics and ethics, especially the ethics of the told. His discussion of character offers a clear example. The optimal tragic protagonist is a man who is neither extraordinarily virtuous nor extraordinarily immoral and who comes to misfortune not through some major moral failing but as a result of misjudgment. Such a protagonist will evoke fear (because he is like us) and pity (because his misfortune is greater than his ethical character warrants). In this way, Aristotle indicates that the aesthetic quality of tragedy is dependent on the ethical character of the protagonist. 3.2 Literary Ethics before “The Theory Revolution” of the 1970s After Plato and Aristotle and before the rise of formal criticism in the 20th century, treatises on literature most often focused on the relation of text to world, as commentators continually returned to the concept of imitation. But many treatises, beginning with Horace’s Ars Poetica (1998), and its dictum that the purpose of literature is to instruct and to delight, also found a place for ethics. By linking the two purposes, Horace emphasized the interaction of the ethics of the told (and its role in instruction) and the ethics of the telling (and its role in delight). To take just two more examples in this tradition, Sidney ([1595] 1998) put ethics front and center, as he argued that literature is superior to both history and philosophy because it has the greater capacity to lead its audiences to virtuous action. And Arnold ([1880] 1998) contended that poetry would one day take the place of religion and philosophy because the best poetry skillfully intertwines aesthetics and ethics. During the first sixty-plus years of the 20th century, three of the four prominent formalisms—Russian formalism, the New Criticism, and

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French narratology—moved ethics into the background of literary theory/narrative theory, as they highlighted questions about either the distinctiveness of literature (Russian formalism and New Criticism) or about narrative as a system of signification. The fourth formalism, Chicago neo-Aristotelianism, is a notable exception, as will be discussed below. For the Russian formalists, the distinctiveness of literature resides in its ability to sharpen perceptions by defamiliarizing literature’s represented objects. As Šklovskij ([1925] 1990: 5) put it, “Automatization eats away at things, at clothes, at furniture, at our wives, and at fear of war. [I]n order to return sensation to our limbs, to make us feel objects, to make a stone stony, man has been given the tool of art.” Literature is the art that defamiliarizes through its distinctive uses of language and through other formal innovations. The New Critics, whose program became the dominant paradigm in the Anglo-American context between the end of World War II and the late 1960s, identified literariness as inherent in literary language with its capacity for generating complex meanings. More generally, the New Critics conceived of the literary text as an autonomous structure of language, independent of authorial intention and reader response, and they regarded the successful work as a verbal icon whose beauty arises from the balance achieved by artful juxtapositions of linguistic ambiguities and ironies (cf. Wimsatt & Beardsley [1946a] 1954a, [1946b] 1954b); Brooks 1947; Wellek & Warren [1949] 1956). Such balance, the New Critics argued, captures truths overlooked by the denotative language of the sciences. Although neither school explicitly addressed questions of ethics, their programs imply some concern with the ethics of the told and the ethics of the telling—and another illustration of overlap between aesthetics and ethics. The effects of defamiliarization—moving readers from automatization to fresh perceptions of the world—clearly have an ethical dimension, and since those effects depend on techniques of various kinds, this aesthetic program also implies an interest in the ethics of the telling. The New Critics’ emphasis on the complex truths conveyed by literary language implies a similar double interest in the ethics of the told and the ethics of the telling. The French narratologists of the 1960s and 1970s were concerned with neither aesthetics nor ethics, but, as heirs to the Russian formalists, with narrative “as an autonomous object of inquiry” (Ryan 2005: 344). Working within the scope of Saussurean semiology and adopting structural linguistics as a “pilot-science,” they sought to explore the modes of signification of narrative in all its forms as an international, transhis-

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torical and transcultural phenomenon (cf. Barthes [1966] 1977: 20; Meister → Narratology). Not surprisingly, the Chicago neo-Aristotelians followed Aristotle in making ethics an important implicit part of their approach. Dissatisfied with what they saw as the limitations of the New Critical conception of literature as a special kind of language, they looked back to the Poetics and asked how it would have to be revised in order to account for the very different kinds of literary works that had been written since Aristotle’s day. Retaining Aristotle’s interest in the affective components of form, they implicitly gave ethical judgments, arising from the ethics of the told and of the telling and how they positioned the audience in relation to characters, a significant role in the trajectory of emotional responses generated by plots. Thus, Crane (1952) shows how readers’ expectations and desires in Tom Jones are a function of multiple factors (including Fielding’s careful control of the disclosure of the truth about Tom’s parentage), the general pattern of the action (Tom repeatedly gets in and out of increasingly serious scrapes), and the ethical judgments Fielding builds into his representation of his characters. Through these means, Fielding generates the “comic analogue” of fear before fulfilling the audience’s desires and bringing the ethically admirable Tom to his happy union with the similarly admirable Sophia Western. Building on Crane’s work and putting even more emphasis on the positions of authors and readers in relation to each other, Booth ([1961] 1983) began to make the ethical consequences of the neo-Aristotelian approach more explicit. In The Company We Keep (1988), Booth revisited and greatly expanded this early effort (cf. chap. 3.4). 3.3 The Theory Revolution as Preparation for the Ethical Turn In the 1960s the hegemony of the New Criticism began to wane for both intradisciplinary and extradisciplinary reasons with the result that literary criticism became more interdisciplinary. Critics began to chafe under the limitations of the New Critical commitment to the autonomy of the text, a response reinforced by the political upheavals of the decade. As scholars began to connect literature with multiple aspects of the extratextual world, they brought relevant insights of theoretical work in other disciplines to the work of interpretation. Two aspects of these developments helped prepare the way for the ethical turn of the late 1980s. (1) The rise of poststructuralism and its critique of what Derrida ([1967] 1978: 261) called the “metaphysics of presence,” or the effort to ground understanding of the world in solid foundational principles

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(e.g. God, Descartes’ cogito, various binary oppositions such as nature/civilization). Poststructuralism argued that such foundations were either illusory or dependent on erroneously privileging one side of the binary over the other (speech over writing; God over the human; men over women; white over black; mind over body, etc.). This critique gave support to many contextualist, politically-oriented approaches such as feminist criticism, critical race studies, postcolonial criticism, and New Historicism. Practitioners of these approaches argued that what appears to be natural about the status quo—and about literary works that support the status quo—is actually a function of skewed power dynamics that needs to be revised. This emphasis on politics opened the door for attention to ethics, especially the ethics of the told. (2) The rise and fall of Anglo-American deconstruction, the movement spawned by the engagement of such figures as Hartman, Miller, and de Man with Derrida’s analysis of language as a system of signs devoid of any center (Derrida [1967] 1976). In this view, language is a system in which signifieds were determined not by any direct relation to objects or ideas in the world but by the play of signifiers. On the one hand, Anglo-American deconstruction contributed to the breakdown of the New Critical hegemony because its poststructuralist antifoundationalism undid such valued New Critical concepts as coherence and unity. On the other hand, this development was the logical extension of New Criticism, because it perpetuated the view that literature could be equated with its language and its distinctive ways of signifying. Like the New Criticism, Anglo-American deconstruction was initially more concerned with aesthetics (the glory of literary language is its polysemous undecidability) than it was with ethics. Nevertheless, Miller in The Ethics of Reading (1987) identified the important ethical consequences of deconstruction by offering its take on the position of the reader. In a characteristic deconstructive paradox, Miller argued that the reader’s ethical obligation is to respect the undecidability of the text’s language. In other words, the ethical reader will recognize that the nature of language inevitably undermines the search for a determinate ethics of the told. But Miller’s case for deconstructive ethics was eclipsed by the revelation that his deconstructionist colleague at Yale, de Man, had, during World War II, written several anti-Semitic articles for Le Soir, a Belgian newspaper that collaborated with the Nazis. In light of the horrific consequences of Nazi anti-Semitism, the position that de Man’s wartime writings do not have a determinate ethics of the told appeared to many to be the outcome not of a disinterestedly rigorous reading but of

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an effort to absolve de Man of responsibility for his repugnant views. After the de Man affair, literary studies became much less interested in undecidability and much more open to other ways of analyzing the intersections of ethics and literature. 3.4 The Ethical Turn: Poststructuralist and Humanist Ethics Since the late 1980’s, the ethical turn has taken two primary forms: poststructuralist ethics and humanist ethics. Because humanist ethics engages more directly with other work in narratology, it gets more attention here. In the wake of the de Man affair, Derrida developed a greater ethicopolitical emphasis in his own work (Derrida [1993] 1994) and called attention to the philosophical ethics of Levinas ([1961] 1969, [1974] 1981, [1979] 1987; see Critchley [1999] for a discussion of deconstructive ethics, focusing on Derrida and Levinas). Levinas argues that the essence of ethical behavior is to respect the otherness of the Other. He uses the metaphor of “the face” and “facing” to convey this position. One shows respect for the Other by facing his/her otherness. This emphasis on the Other dovetails with the political concerns of feminist, postcolonial, and critical race theory as well with disability studies. As a result, the poststructuralist stream emphasizes the ethics of alterity with special attention to the ethics of the told (representations of the other) and the ethics of reading (obligations to face otherness). Different theorists offered variations on the central themes. Harpham (1999: x) defined ethics as an “intimate and dynamic engagement with otherness,” while Attridge (1999: 28) maintained that “ethics is […] the fundamental relation not just between subjects but also between the subject and its multiple others,” adding that this fundamental relation “is not a relation and [it] cannot be named, for it is logically prior to relations and names, prior to logic.” Hale (2007, 2009), in her meta-analyses of the poststructuralist ethics of the novel, highlighted the recurrent attention to the ethics of reading and its injunctions to respect and to be responsible to the otherness of the text itself. Hale (2007) further noted that on this point poststructuralist and humanist ethics, including the rhetorical ethics of Booth, have much in common. Humanist ethics acknowledges otherness as important for ethical engagements with narrative, but it emphasizes the benefits of connecting across difference. Booth’s The Company We Keep (1988) and Nussbaum’s Love’s Knowledge (1990) were foundational texts for humanist ethics. While neither earned universal acclaim, together they moved ethics to a prominent place in narrative theory and prepared the

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way for Newton’s claim in Narrative Ethics (1995) that the two domains are inseparable. To appreciate Booth’s reflections on ethics and literature, it is helpful to start with his work on the rhetoric of fiction ([1961] 1983). Booth initially focused on the efficacy of overt authorial rhetoric in the novel, arguing that such rhetoric cannot be judged by a priori aesthetic dicta such as “true art ignores the audience.” Instead, it needs to be assessed according to its effectiveness in advancing the larger purposes of its author’s construction. In developing this case, Booth reached two broader conclusions. (1) Since an author’s use of any technique has effects on the novel’s audience, the author cannot choose whether or not to employ rhetoric but only which kind of rhetoric to employ. (2) The effects of rhetoric on the audience include cognitive, aesthetic, affective, and ethical ones, often in close interaction with one another. In a chapter on the ethics of the telling entitled “The Morality of Impersonal Narration” (Booth [1961] 1983: 377–398), Booth noted that Jamesian center-of-consciousness narration and unreliable character narration tend to generate sympathy, even when used in the representation of ethically deficient characters. As a result, Booth pointed out, these rhetorical choices may lead readers overlook those deficiencies. The upshot of the chapter is not to condemn these techniques, but rather to strike a cautionary note about their ethical effects. In the Afterword to the second edition of The Rhetoric of Fiction ([1961] 1983), Booth expressed some dissatisfaction with this argument, in part because he had let his personal moral commitments influence his rhetorical analyses. Later, Booth (1988) returned to his earlier conclusions and incorporated them into a more explicit discussion of ethics as an integral component of rhetoric. He employed the metaphor of books as friends to convey his view of the ethics of reading. Exploring this metaphor, Booth emphasized three key points: (1) friends are of different kinds—some are good for us and some aren’t—and their effects on the individual may vary depending on when, where, and why they are encountered; (2) many of these effects follow from the ways in which these friends guide one’s trajectory of desires; (3) one of the key functions of narrative fiction is to expand readers’ experiences as they follow these trajectories of desire. Booth offers numerous exemplifications of these principles, most notably in extended analyses of ethical virtues and deficiencies in the telling and told of Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel and Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Where Booth’s work arose out of a tradition of literary criticism, Nussbaum’s arose out of an effort to revise a tradition of philosophical inquiry into ethics. And where Booth was influenced by Aristotle’s way

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of thinking about parts in relation to wholes, Nussbaum, a classicist and a philosopher, was influenced by his discussions of ethics. She noted that ethics is that branch of philosophy concerned with Aristotle’s question of what the good life consists of, but she was dissatisfied with the ways analytic philosophy approached that question. Its style of reasoning, she argued, created a disconnect between its form and its content: how can one adequately discuss, say, an ethical struggle arising out of being in love through the abstractions of analytic philosophy? Novels, by contrast, seek to fit content to form (and vice versa), i.e. to set up mutually reinforcing relations between the ethics of the told and the ethics of the telling. As a result, novels conduct ethical inquiry in ways that are superior to those of analytic philosophy. More specifically, novels explore the concrete particularity of ethical dilemmas faced by fully realized characters, and those explorations harness the cognitive power of the emotions. Nussbaum (1997) later went on to explore the ethics of and to widen her scope to basic issues of human rights. Newton represents something of a hybrid between Booth and Nussbaum, even as he has some affinities with poststructuralist ethics. Like Booth, he has a sophisticated, fine-grained narratological understanding of narrative fiction, but rather than consider narrative as rhetoric with ethics forming an integral part of that conception, he views narrative as ethics. Like Nussbaum, he grounds his view of ethics in work by other thinkers, particularly Baxtin, Cavell, and Levinas. From Baxtin ([1986] 1993), he borrows the concept of ‘vživanie,’ or ‘live-entering’ (empathy with the Other without loss of self); from Cavell (1979), the concept of acknowledging (being in a position of having to respond); and from Levinas ([1974] 1981, [1979] 1987) the concepts of the Said (the told), Saying (performing a telling) and Facing (looking at or looking away). Newton (1995: 11) describes his project as the investigation of the “ethical consequences of narrating story and fictionalizing person, and the reciprocal claims binding teller, listener, witness, and reader in that process.” He uses his triumvirate of thinkers to good effect as he offers thoughtful, nuanced analyses of the interrelations of the ethics of the telling and the ethics of the told in fiction by Dickens, Conrad, James, Ishiguro, and others. Like Nussbaum, Newton (1998, 2001, 2005) has gone on to expand and develop his approach in later books, and in an essay on teaching narrative theory (2010), he revisits his conception of narrative as ethics by developing the metaphor that narrative and ethics haunt each other. Altieri (2003) has objected to what he sees as the excessively rational basis of Booth’s and especially of Nussbaum’s ethics. He has thus argued for a mode that can do better justice to what he calls the “partic-

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ulars of rapture,” a mode of reading analogous to the sublime, in which affect overpowers rational judgment. Also to be mentioned is the important contribution to the relations between affect and ethics made by Keen (2007, ed. 2011; Keen → Narrative Empathy). Phelan (2005, 2007, 2013) has sought to extend, clarify, and refine Booth’s work on the integral connection between rhetoric and ethics by highlighting the significance and centrality of ethical judgments in the experience of reading narrative. Phelan argued that, given the variety of ethical thought on display in the world’s narratives, it is valuable to do rhetorical ethics not only from the outside in, as Nussbaum and Newton do, but also from the inside out. That is, rather than privilege the ethical systems of one or more thinkers, the analyst can seek to uncover the ethical values underlying the specific rhetorical exchanges of a particular narrative. As part of his work on unreliable character narration, Phelan has put forth the idea that its ethical consequences can have effects ranging along a spectrum from bonding (Huck Finn’s naiveté leads him to be ethically unreliable in a way that increases the reader’s sympathy for him) to estranging (Jason Compson’s selfishness and pride lead to negative readerly judgments). Phelan (2011) has extended this work on the ethics of unreliability by examining the ethics of “deficient narration,” i.e. narration that authors signal as reliable but readers find “offkilter,” such as Huck Finn’s narration in much of the Evasion section of Twain’s novel. 3.5 Ethics and the Narrative Identity Thesis Questions about the ethics of writing/composing have extended beyond the domain of literary narrative to the domain of identity (Bamberg → Identity and Narration). Many philosophers and psychologists (e.g., MacIntyre [1981], Bruner [1987], and Schechtman [1997]) have advanced the view that conceiving of one’s life as a narrative is essential to having a self. As Strawson (2004) pointed out in an essay contesting this thesis about narrative identity, the view has both a descriptive psychological component (this is how human beings experience their lives) and a normative ethical component (having a narrative identity enables one to live a better life). Strawson rejected both components of the narrative identity thesis. Although he did not deny that some people experience their lives as narratives, he disputed that all (or even most) people do. Citing his own experience, he distinguished between Diachronics (those who do experience their lives as narratives) and Episodics (those who do not). He objected even more strongly to the ethical component of the narrative identity thesis, arguing that (1) having a

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narrative of one’s life often entails distorting the past and thus taking one further away from accurate self-understanding and (2) that one can live ethically independent of having a narrative of one’s life. Strawson’s argument did not lead to a wholesale rejection of the narrative identity thesis, and indeed some commentators found fault with his reasoning (Battersby 2006). But both the thesis and Strawson’s effort to debunk it point to the high stakes of questions about narrative ethics.

4 Topics for Further Investigation Altieri’s objections to Booth and Nussbaum indicate that the interrelations between the affective and ethical dimensions of reading deserve further examination. Hale’s (2007, 2009) work indicates that those doing poststructuralist ethics and those doing humanist ethics could learn from each other without giving up their distinctive projects. The similarities and differences among the ethical dimensions of narrative in different media are also worthy of further study. (For some valuable initial work in this area on film narrative, see Richter 2005, 2007.) Ethics in lifewriting (Eakin 2004), in medical narrative (Charon 2006), in legal narrative (Brooks 2001), and in other domains involved in the narrative turn also deserve further investigation. More generally, as the recent collection Narrative Ethics (Lothe & Hawthorn 2013) indicates, because the domains of narrative and ethics are themselves so vast and their interactions so varied, we can expect that exploration of their intersections will continue to excite much debate and to yield rich results.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Altieri, Charles (2003). The Particulars of Rapture: An Aesthetics of the Affects. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Aristotle (1920). Poetics. Oxford: Clarendon P. – (1952). Eudemian Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. – Aristotle (2002). Nicomachean Ethics. Oxford: Oxford UP. Arnold, Matthew ([1880] 1998). “The Study of Poetry.” D. H. Richter (ed.). The Critical Tradition. Boston: Bedford, 411–418. Attridge, Derek (1999). “Innovation, Literature, Ethics: Relating to the Other.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 114, 20–31.

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Barthes, Roland ([1966] 1977). “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives.” R. Barthes. Image – Music – Text. London: Fontana, 20–30. Battersby, James L. (2006). “Narrativity, Self, and Self-Representation.” Narrative 14, 27–44. Baxtin, Mixail (Bakhtin, Mikhail) ([1986] 1993). Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Austin: U of Texas P. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P. – (1988). The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction. Berkeley: U of California P. Brooks, Cleanth (1947). The Well-Wrought Urn. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Brooks, Peter (2001). Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Bruner, Jerome (1987). “Life as Narrative.” Social Research 54, 11–32. Cavell, Stanley (1979). The Claim of Reason. New York: Oxford UP. Charon, Rita (2006). Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness. New York: Oxford UP. Crane, R. S. (1952). “The Concept of Plot and the Plot of Tom Jones.” R. S. Crane (ed.). Critics and Criticism, Ancient and Modern. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Critchley, Simon (1999). The Ethics of Deconstruction. West Lafayette: Purdue UP. Derrida, Jacques ([1967] 1976). Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins P. – ([1967] 1978). Writing and Difference. Chicago: U of Chicago P. – ([1993] 1994). Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. New York: Routledge. Eakin, John Paul (2004). The Ethics of Lifewriting. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Hale, Dorothy J. (2007). “Fiction as Restriction: Self-Binding in New Ethical Theories of the Novel.” Narrative 15, 187–206. – (2009). “Aesthetics and the New Ethics: Theorizing the Novel in the TwentyFirst Century.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 124, 896–905. Harpham, Geoffrey Galt (1999). Shadows of Ethics: Criticism and the Just Society. Durham: Duke UP. Horace (1998). “The Art of Poetry.” D. H. Richter (ed.). The Critical Tradition. Boston: Bedford, 68–78. Keen, Suzanne (2007). Empathy and the Novel. New York: Oxford UP. – ed. (2011). Narrative and the Emotions. Special issue of Poetics Today 32. Levinas, Emmanuel ([1961] 1969). Totality and Infinity. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP. – ([1974] 1981). Otherwise than Being. Kluwer Academic P. – ([1979] 1987). Time and the Other. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP. Lothe, Jakob & Jeremy Hawthorn (2013). Narrative Ethics. Amsterdam: Rodopi. MacIntyre, Alasdair (1981). After Virtue. South Bend: U of Notre Dame P. Miller, J. Hillis (1987). The Ethics of Reading: Kant, de Man, Trollope, James, and Benjamin. New York: Columbia UP. Newton, Adam Zachary (1995). Narrative Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. – (1998). Facing Black and Jew: Literature as Public Space in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Cambridge UP.

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(2001). The Fence and the Neighbor: Emmanuel Levinas, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and Israel among the Nations. Albany: SUNY P. – (2005). The Elsewhere: Belonging at a Near Distance. Madison: U of Wisconsin P. – (2010). “Ethics.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Teaching Narrative Theory. New York: MLA, 266–280. Nussbaum, Martha (1990). Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. New York: Oxford UP. – (1997). Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life. Boston: Beacon P. Phelan, James (2005). Living to Tell about It: A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – (2007). Experiencing Fiction: Progressions, Judgments, and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP. – (2011). “The Implied Author, Deficient Narration, and Nonfiction Narrative: Or What’s Off-Kilter in The Year of Magical Thinking and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly?” Style 45, 127–145. – (2013). Reading the American Novel, 1920-2010. Oxford: Blackwell. Plato (1998a). The Republic, Book 1X. D. H. Richter (ed.). The Critical Tradition. Boston: Bedford, 21–29. – (1998b). Ion. D. H. Richter (ed.). The Critical Tradition. Boston: Bedford, 29–37. Richter, David H. (2005). “Your Cheatin’ Art: Double-Dealing in Cinematic Narrative.” Narrative 13, 11–28. – (2007). “Keeping Company in Hollywood: Ethical Issues in Nonfiction Film.” Narrative 15, 140–166. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2005). “Narrative.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 344–348. Schechtman, Marya (1997). The Constitution of Selves. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Sidney, Sir Philip ([1595] 1998). “An Apology for Poetry.” D. H. Richter (ed.). The Critical Tradition. Boston: Bedford, 134–159. Šklovskij, Viktor (Shklovsky, Victor) ([1925] 1990). Theory of Prose. Elmwood Park, IL: Dalkey Archive P. Strawson, Galen (2004). “Against Narrativity.” Ratio 17, 428–452. Wellek, Rene & Austin Warren ([1949] 1956). Theory of Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace and World. Wimsatt, William K. & Monroe C. Beardsley ([1946a] 1954a). “The Affective Fallacy.” W. K. Wimsatt & M. C. Beardsley (eds.). The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. Louisville: U of Kentucky P, 21–40. – & Monroe C. Beardsley ([1946b] 1954b). “The Intentional Fallacy.” W. K. Wimsatt & M. C. Beardsley (eds.). The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. Louisville: U of Kentucky P, 3–18.

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5.2 Further Reading Buell, Lawrence (1999). “Introduction: In Pursuit of Ethics.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 114, 7–19. Davis, Todd F. & Kenneth Womack (2001). Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P. Eskin, Michael (2004). “Introduction: The Double ‘Turn’ to Ethics and Literature?” Poetics Today 4, 557–572. Korthals Altes, Liesbeth (2005). “Ethical Turn.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 142–46. Phelan, James (2007). “Estranging Unreliability, Bonding Unreliability, and the Ethics of Lolita.” Narrative 15, 222–238.

Narrative Levels John Pier

1 Definition Narrative levels (also referred to as diegetic levels) are an analytic notion whose purpose is to describe the relations between an act of narration and the diegesis, or spatiotemporal universe within which a story takes place. At the outermost level, external to the intradiegetic (or diegetic, i.e. first-level) narrative, the extradiegetic narrator recounts what occurred at that first level; a character in that story can, in turn, become an intradiegetic narrator whose narrative, at the second level, will then be a metadiegetic narrative. This process can extend to further metalevels, forming a series of narratives patterned recursively in the fashion of Chinese boxes or Russian dolls. Characterized by a relation of inclusion, narrative levels are distributed vertically when a change of both (diegetic) level and speaker and/or addressee occurs, and horizontally when no change of speaker takes place (as in a digression) or when several parallel stories are recounted by different speakers but at the same narrative level (as in Boccaccio’s Decameron). Narrative levels are most accurately thought of as diegetic levels, the levels at which the narrating act and the narratee are situated in relation to the narrated story.

2 Explication According to Genette, who first proposed the term, narrative levels are one of the three categories forming the narrating situation, the other two being the time of the narrating (subsequent, prior, simultaneous or interpolated) and person (heterodiegetic or homodiegetic) ([1972] 1980: chap. 5). Introduced for the purpose of systematizing the traditional notion of embedding, narrative levels mark “the threshold between one diegesis and another,” and more particularly “the fact that the second diegesis is taken charge of by a narrative fashioned within the first diegesis” (Genette [1983] 1988: 84, original emphasis). This threshold re-

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sults from the fact that as every narrative, beginning with the first-level narrative, is produced by an act of narration which is of necessity external to that level: “any event a narrative recounts is at a diegetic level immediately higher than the level at which the narrating act producing this narrative is placed […]. The narrating instance of a first [i.e. firstlevel] narrative is therefore extradiegetic by definition, as the narrating instance of a second (metadiegetic) [i.e. second-level] narrative is [intra]diegetic by definition, etc.” (Genette ([1972] 1980: 228–229, original emphasis). It is important to bear in mind that first-level narrative (récit premier or récit primaire) is intradiegetic and not, as stated by some commentators, extradiegetic. Narrative levels are frequently understood to correspond to narrative framing or embedding. The two notions coincide to some extent, but it is essential to remember that narrative levels extend into areas not generally taken into account in non-narratological discussions of framing and embedding. From the perspective of narrative levels, framing or embedding occurs between the intradiegetic and the metadiegetic levels—not between the extradiegetic and the intradiegetic levels: narrative levels come into play at all three levels, even in the absence of any frame story (or metadiegetic narrative), it being important to remember that extradiegesis, where the narrative act occurs, lies “outside” the intradiegetic level. Lanser (1981: 134) puts it quite simply in postulating levels A, B and C, where a tale within a tale corresponds to level C (cf. Fludernik 1996: 342; Wolf 2006a: 181). In an attempt to resolve certain difficulties found in accounts of narrative framing or embedding, Genette (not without analogy to the differentiation between “who speaks?” and “who sees?” in his analysis of point of view and focalization) distinguishes level from voice. A second aspect of narrative levels is that they operate in close conjunction with voice, constituting a four-part typology of narrator status. Another point is that much discussion about narrative levels has resulted from two apparently incompatible ways of organizing them: by definition, levels are distributed vertically whereas framing and embedding are operations that involve inclusion. Genette embraces both, stating that a narrative event “is at a diegetic level immediately higher than” the narrative act ([1972] 1980: 228) but ultimately pleading in favor of an inclusionary relation, as illustrated with a series of stick figures and balloons ([1983] 1988: 85–86) where the second-level narrative is “inside” the first-level narrative. The contradiction between these two configurations has led some critics to revise the original concept and others to reformulate the concept in different terms.

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Finally, a third set of issues, closely intertwined with the previous two, concerns the types of relations between intradiegetic narrative and metadiegetic narrative, extending from the explanatory to the thematic to the narratorial. Succeeding discussions have sought to specify the functional nature of these relations.

3 History of the Concept and its Study One of the principal interests of narrative levels, a concept formulated by structuralist narratology, is that it has been effective in setting out terms for re-examining the traditional approaches to framing and embedding and in opening up new lines of debate and inquiry. Accordingly, this section comments on embedding and framing from the perspective of narrative levels (3.1), outlines a number of the responses to the various configurations of these levels (3.2) and comments on the functional relations between intradiegetic and metadiegetic narrative (3.3). 3.1 Embedding and Framing The terms embedding and framing themselves merit some clarification. Often used synonymously, the domains covered by the two notions are somewhat different. Embedding, along with linking and alternation, represents one of the ways that narrative sequences can be combined within a narrative instance or in different ones, and in this sense it is a device that pertains to story (histoire), independently of any change of level (Prince [1987] 2003: 5, 25, 48–49). The corresponding terms employed by Bremond (1973: 132) are, respectively, enclave (one sequence developing within another), bout-à-bout (the end of one sequence succeeded by the beginning of another) and accolement (bracketing simultaneous sequences together). Similarly, Todorov (1972: 379) proposes enchâssement (order: 1-2-1), enchaînement (order: 1-2), and entrelacement or alternance (order: 1-2-1-2). Earlier, however, Todorov ([1968] 1973: 83–85), employing the same terms, had linked embedding to narrative levels, thus associating it with discours. In “Narrative-Men” (originally published in 1967), it is stated that embedding coincides, not gratuitously, with the syntactic category of subordination in modern linguistics (e.g. “Scheherazade tells that Jaafar tells that the tailor tells that…”), and it is concluded that “embedding narrative is the narrative of a narrative” (Todorov [1971] 1977: 71). Strictly speaking, however, likening narrative embedding to the concept of embedding in transformational grammar, a concept devel-

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oped in place of subordination in traditional grammar, is not defensible: a sentence such as “Hamlet knew that his father had been murdered” cannot be described as an example of narrative embedding (cf. Pier 2011: 120–121). In order to avoid any misleading superimposition of linguistic categories on narrative categories, Greimas and Courtés (1979: 123) prefer to speak of “intercalation” in narrative texts rather than embedding. It is thus useful to bear in mind that even though embedding is the consecrated term in narrative theory, the process concerned is actually one of intercalation, the insertion of one story in another, i.e. metadiegetic narration, a relation which is not, in all cases, one of subordination. Emphasizing intercalation as the specific narratological sense of embedding serves both to stake out the parameters of the concept and to avoid the risk of assimilating it into phenomena that are actually of another nature. With reference to the criteria of punctuation and continuum, boundary and logical levels that characterize embedding in fields as diverse as linguistics, logic, psychology, communication, computer science, Füredy (1989) identified the more extreme forms of embedding found in artistic representation: (a) intact and multiplying boundary (e.g. mise en abyme, which in principle is open to infinite recursion); (b) intact but reified boundary (escape from the undecidable and oscillating boundary built into Escher’s Drawing Hands is possible only through access to an otherwise inviolate metalevel); (c) transgressed boundary (metalepsis; Pier → Metalepsis). Ryan (1986, 1991: 156–74) employs the term “embedded narrative” in a way she characterizes as “idiosyncratic” (1991: 274, n. 2) but which, requiring no speech act or verbalization, is nonetheless a logical extension of the principle as outlined above. For her, embedded narratives are not only narratives that “reflect the events of the factual domain” but also those that “delineate unactualized possibilities” such as “dreams, fictions, and fantasies” as well as “plans, passive projections, desires, beliefs concerning the history of TAW [textual actual world], and beliefs concerning the private representations of other characters” (156). In the field of conversation analysis, by contrast, embedding, referred to as “embeddedness,” concerns not a change of level but the context of surrounding discourse and social activity. Thus a narrative of personal experience may be embedded in an explanation or a prayer and will be more or less embedded into the surrounding social activity according to the frequency and length of turn-taking and the degree of thematic and rhetorical integration into the general conversation (Ochs & Capps 2001: 36–40; on the related notion of “situated communication,” see Young 1987: chap. 4). Indeed, if the story within the story is

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more characteristic of written narrative than it is of oral storytelling (Fludernik → Conversational Narration – Oral Narration), this is largely due to the attempt to restore a sense of orality to the written text and to simulate oral storytelling. Yet another angle on embedding is taken by deconstructive approaches to narrative. Considering that story is embedded in the objects, subjects, and bodies of the world, that they are in effect “texts,” these theories tend to assimilate text into its contexts (cf. Punday 2003), thus stepping beyond the question of how one story is embedded into another. If embedding can be thought of as inserting or placing something within a larger unit, framing is normally understood in the sense of enclosing. This nuance stands out in the earliest definition of the frame tale: “The concept is taken from framed pictures and this means that one tale encloses [umschliesst] another like a frame,” its two forms being “cyclical frame tales” and “framed individual novellas” (Merker 1928–29: 1; for a historical account, see Jäggi 1994 and Kanzog [1966] 1977; for framing in different genres, see Duyfhuizen 1992; for frame tales in Indian, Arabic and other cultures, see Picard 1987; Williams 1998: 104 comments on the frame metaphor from the visual arts). In addition to Merker’s two forms, involving “one-story framing” and “plural-stories framing” (or “interpolated framing”), note that a narrative frame can be “complete” or “closed,” but also that an introductory frame may be paired with a “missing terminal frame” just as a terminal frame may be paired with a “missing initial frame” (Wolf 2006a: 185– 188; cf. Fludernik [2006] 2009: 28–29). Framing is generally regarded as a presentational technique: the frame tale is of limited length and varying significance, serving to render the more ample inset or inner tale (Binnenerzählung) accessible and/or to authenticate it, imbuing it with a “narratorial illusionism” (Nünning 2004: 17), particularly in simulations of oral storytelling. Many but not all authors rely on quantitative criteria to characterize frames. Thus Williams (1998) argues that “a frame articulates a discernable narrative scenario, focusing on the rhetorical dynamic of narrative exchange” (107–108), and he goes on to outline a typology of preliminary, introductory and prologue frames (120–125). However, Williams does not appear to distinguish consistently between the frame and the framed and at one point even inverts them: “Framed narratives specify place and time—a setting—for the act of narrative” (110). Embedding, which, technically, also occurs in frame tales, is not concerned with the presentational relations between the two levels, but rather with identifying the “threshold” or differential relation between the narrating act and diegetic level. The principle of narrative levels does not seek to

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sort out these distinctions, and indeed Genette’s discussion wavers between narrative subordination and thematic precedence precisely when he takes up the question of framing ([1983] 1988: 86–90). Fludernik, speaking from the holistic perspective of natural narratology, seems to be one of the few commentators to have distinguished between framing and embedding. She observes that “[w]ith regard to length, frame and inset are […] in inverse proportion to the relation obtaining between a story and the embedded story within it,” and she concludes: “If the tale is conceptualized as subsidiary to the primary story frame, a relationship of embedding obtains; if the primary story level serves as a mere introduction to the narrative proper, it will be perceived as a framing device.” (Fludernik 1996: 343) This distinction is vital since, notably, it is only in the first case, where the embedding discourse is dominant, that a mise en abyme can occur, as in portions of the romance The Mad Trist that parallel certain incidents in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” (cf. Dällenbach [1977] 1989). A sort of “reverse” mise en abyme is the mise en cadre, where an element of the subsidiary frame may proleptically illustrate some feature of the dominant embedded story, as in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (cf. Wolf 2010). 3.1.1 Narrator’s Status Narrative levels differ from traditional concepts of embedding and framing because they articulate these questions in significantly new terms. Indeed, the concept cannot be isolated from other aspects of Genettian narratology, notably the time of the narrating and person which, together with narrative levels, constitute the narrating situation. A full treatment of narrative levels would thus bear not only on embedding and framing but would also take into account the so-called narrator’s status. The narrator’s status, broken down into the well-known four-part typology of narrators combining level (extradiegetic/intradiegetic) and the relationship of presence or absence of the narrator in the diegesis (heterodiegetic/homodiegetic) (see Genette ([1972] 1980: 248), is a topic that has attracted a considerable amount of commentary and revision. Here, mention can only be made of some of the issues raised by the two components of the narrator’s status. (For an explanatory note on Genette’s use of the term diegesis, see Pier [1986] 2010; for a discussion of person, level and voice, see Walsh 2010.) In his discussion of narrators and levels, Schmid ([2005] 2010: 67– 70) proposes to make Genette’s system more user-friendly by modifying the terminology. In place of extra-, intra- and metadiegetic, the

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terms primary, secondary and tertiary are employed to designate narrators and levels of embedding while diegetic vs. non-diegetic is adopted instead of homo- vs. heterodiegetic to replace the traditional firstperson/third-person dichotomy. The translation of one system into the other is thus as follows: extra- heterodiegetic narrator → primary nondiegetic narrator; extra- homodiegetic narrator → primary diegetic narrator; intra- heterodiegetic narrator → secondary non-diegetic narrator; intra- homodiegetic narrator → secondary diegetic narrator; meta- heterodiegetic narrator → tertiary non-diegetic narrator; meta- homodiegetic narrator → tertiary diegetic narrator. These emendations do clarify some of the terminological issues, but it should be pointed out that Schmid’s schema, extending from the primary to the tertiary level, presents itself as a system of “levels of embedding, the degree of framing” (67), not as a typology of narrators (for which a separate set of criteria are enumerated; cf. 66–67). In Genette’s system, as already pointed out, embedding occurs between the intradiegetic and the metadiegetic levels (Schmid’s secondary and tertiary levels), not between the extradiegetic and intradiegetic levels (primary and secondary levels). For Schmid, by contrast, the secondary level of narration functions as a “quoted world” of the primary level and thus already as framed or embedded narrative. Genette works out a typology of narrators that includes no metadiegetic (or tertiary) level; the question of embedding and framing is an extension of that typology that raises a specific set of issues. 3.2 Distribution of Narrative Levels As can be seen from the above example, the commentaries that the notion of narrative levels has given rise to and the revisions put forth by various authors center in large part around the prefixes added to the word diegesis and the vertical and horizontal dimensions of embedding. The prefix “meta-” in particular has drawn considerable attention, for Genette does not employ the term metadiegetic in the sense of metalanguage, i.e. a language used to speak about an object language. Rather, “the metanarrative [metadiegetic narrative] is a narrative within the narrative, as the diegesis […] designates the universe of the first narrative.” (228 n.1, original emphasis) (Note that metanarrative [métarécit] must not be confused with Lyotard’s grand récit, sometimes translated as “metanarrative,” or with “metanarrative comments”; cf. Nünning 2004: 15; Neumann & Nünning → Metanarration and Metafiction.)

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3.2.1 MetaIn one of the best-known critiques, Bal, adhering to a metalinguistic perspective, redefines embedding in terms of subordination, dominance and hierarchy: “[a]n embedded unit is by definition subordinate to the unit which embeds it” (1981b: 48). In place of “meta-” she thus adopts “hypo-” (meaning “under”) and proposes to replace “metadiegetic”/ “metadiegesis” with “hypodiegetic”/“hypodiegesis,” reserving “meta-” to the “superior level” (45; cf. Bal 1977: 35; Rimmon-Kenan [1983] 2002: 92–96 adopts this system of “subordination relations” between levels). As a result, Genette’s system of narrative levels is inverted so that it is the narrative act that is above or higher than the narrative event. In his reply Genette reaffirms the “inclusionary” approach as opposed to the metalinguistic conception, maintaining that a metanarrative occurs “within” the narrative, that it is not a narrative “on” narrative ([1983] 1988: 91–92). Actually, Bal partly rallies to this position when she states that quoted discourse is metalinguistic in relation to embedding discourse but that metadiscourse, when it is without quotation marks, must be qualified as “hypo-discourse” (1981b: 54–55). Genette further stresses the essential connection between metadiegetic and metalepsis, a connection which is blurred when hypo- replaces meta-. Despite this realignment, the term hypodiegetic continues to be widely used in place of metadiegetic. Adopting metalanguage as a model for narrative embedding, however, is not unproblematic: an embedding discourse (by which Bal means quotation) is not a metalanguage, nor is an embedded discourse an object language; and while an embedded discourse might be said to “depend” on the embedding discourse by which it is taken in charge, this is hardly the case of an object language examined with the use of a metalanguage (indeed, quite the opposite is true). Another point is that diegesis, in the sense of the spatiotemporal universe in which the story takes place, is largely abandoned by Bal, for in her system hypodiegetic narrative results from the embedding of the subject and object of narration, focalization and acting—a synthesis of Greimas’s actantial roles and of Genette’s focalization (1981b: 45; on the embedding of focalization, see Bal 1981a). She distinguishes between embedding and framing on the basis that in the former there occurs subordination of both actor and action whereas in the latter only one or the other is subordinated. Interestingly, narrative embedding is taken up again later under the heading “Levels of Narration,” but with no reference to hypodiegetic/hypodiegesis, concentrat-

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ing instead on speech representation and the relations of embedding between fabula and text (Bal [1985] 1997: 43–66). 3.2.2 Vertical / Horizontal Bal’s approach to narrative levels, carried out within the framework of structural linguistics, was succeeded by models that postulate two types of embedding: vertical, occurring in shifts between levels; and horizontal, without change of level but narrated by different narrators. A good example of this tendency is Nelles (1997), who, critical of Bal’s account of voice, subscribes to this distinction. He goes on to present a number of cases in which a vertical change of levels takes place accompanied not with a change of narrator but a change of narratee (e.g. the general narrator of The Canterbury Tales, who relates a secondlevel tale). He also notes examples of horizontal embedding (such as dreams) where no change of narrator takes place and where, rather than a change of level, there is a change in the nature of the diegesis or universe within which the story takes place (132–133). The events of the dream, he explains, “take place in an alternate universe created by a character’s mind rather than being physically carried out in the spatialtemporal universe of the rest of the narrative” (134). This adds a significantly new dimension to the question of narrative levels, leading Nelles to distinguish, with reference to McHale’s (1987) characterization of the “epistemological” dominant of modernist fiction as opposed to the “ontological” dominant of postmodernist fiction, and also analogously to Ryan (cf. § 3.1 above), between “epistemic” or “verbal” embedding (communicating knowledge) and “ontological” or “modal” framing (modes of being). García Landa (1998: 303–304) points out that the latter form of framing, which he calls “semiotic insertion,” is associated with Bal’s embedded focalization. With regard to verbal embedding, one possibility is to consider this from an enunciative perspective. Coste (1989: 165–174), for instance, gives precedence to the notion of “overall narrator” over the distinction homodiegetic vs. heterodiegetic narrator. He then sharply separates the subject of the enunciation from the subject of the enunciated, breaking down the subject as narrating instance into present storyteller and past (or future) character. Based on these and other premises, Coste sets forth two types of embedding: hypotactic, resulting from grammatical subordination and materialized in the form of delegated narration; paratactic (juxtaposition, coordination), forming a system of “parallel” narrators at the same diegetic level. In its complex forms, hypotaxis, a grammatical form that also applies to framing, tends to

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blur the origin of enunciation, resulting in effect in pseudo-diegetic narration: a narrative second in origin but which, lacking a diegetic relay, is narrated as though it were diegetic (Genette [1972] 1980: 237–243). As for narrational parataxis, this occurs when, without change of level, narratives are combined in one of three ways: by sequential relay (several narrators tell the same story chronologically); through concurrent/conflictive versions of the same story; in narrational crossfire (as in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, where the central character, Addie Bundren, is absent). By highlighting discrete narrational acts rather than the threshold between levels, parataxis is conducive to multiple points of view and polyphonic narration, and is thus related to dialogism (Coste 1989: 188–205; Shepherd → Dialogism), tending to call into question the very notion of narrative levels. Coste’s model departs from the traditional focus of embedding and framing on the story within the story; however, as the distinction hypotactic vs. paratactic narration is configured vertically and horizontally, the model does nevertheless echo multi-level embedding and plural stories framing. (On the convergence of narrational parataxis and the horizontal plane, see García Landa (1998: 302; for a discussion of multiperspectivity, frame tales and paratextual framing, see Wolf 2000). Looking at narrative levels from the perspective of vertical and horizontal distribution also opens the way to examining the concept in its various historical contexts. Thus Tomassini (1990: 43–67) stresses the fact that narrative levels, which involve the delegation of a speaker by the narrator, are rooted in Plato’s two modes of narration, pure narration (haplē diēgēsis) and imitation of the heroes’ discourse (mimēsis), and their mixed forms (a connection implicit in Genette and Bal but explicit in e.g. García Landa 1998: 301, and Walsh 2010). Later, Renaissance Italian poetics identified four modes of narration—linear, quasi-linear, oblique, quasi-oblique—two of which correspond to internal narratives. Quasi-linear narrative, in which a character becomes a narrator, is equivalent to metadiegetic narrative, but it also suggests more clearly than the modern concept the effect of reticence on the part of the intradiegetic narrator and that of curiosity on the part of his/her narratee. Quasi-oblique narrative, occurring without change of level (thus horizontally), is close to the rhetorical figure of digressio which, in narrative contexts, qualifies not as an analepsis but is sufficiently autonomous to suspend development of the principal narrative. One form of digression is excursus, where the extradiegetic narrator directly addresses the reader (as in Tristram Shandy), the other being narrative ekphrasis, as in the description of Achilles’ shield in the Iliad, a description which, however, verges on narration. Conceived in this way,

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digression cuts across modern distinctions such as explanatory metanarrative analepsis (Genette [1983] 1988: 93), models that exclude digression from framing and embedding (Williams 1998: 107–108) and extradiegetic narrative comment (Nünning 2004). Clearly, further historical research on these matters is required. 3.2.3 Illocutionary / Ontological Defining narrative levels in accordance with change of speaker and diegetic level proceeds from structuralist narratology. As the discussion above shows, however, a number of issues remain unresolved. Working from the perspective of artificial intelligence, Ryan (1986, 1991: chap. 9), proposes to rearticulate the question of narrative levels in terms of boundaries, frames and stacks. To start with, story and discourse are defined not in the sense of the “what” and “how” of narrative but as ontological (semantic) boundaries and illocutionary (speech act) boundaries, respectively. In the simplest case, a single speaker and the utterances are situated at the same level of reality, and there is no crossing of boundaries (1). Boundaries can be crossed in one of three ways, either actually (a) or virtually (b): change of speaker where the speakers are in the same world (2a); speech act of a character presented through that of a narrator (2b); crossing of ontological but not of illocutionary boundaries (change in levels of reality in Alice in Wonderland reported by the primary narrator) (3a); virtual crossing of the ontological boundary but not of the illocutionary boundary (a dream described from an external perspective) (3b); crossing of both boundaries, a fiction within a fiction (4a); actual crossing of the illocutionary boundary but virtual crossing of the illocutionary boundary (primary narrator speaking as though he were a secondary narrator but never entering the world of the projected story) (4b). Types (4a) and (4b), both of them forms of framing/embedding, can be represented visually as in a picture frame (cf. Ryan 1991: 178). However, modeling these processes in this way fails to distinguish illocutionary from ontological boundaries and also to take into account the chronological sequence of levels in a given narrative. To complement frame structures, Ryan thus introduces the notion of “stacks,” a metaphor drawn by computer science from the “pushing” and “popping” of a stack of cafeteria trays: as trays (or embedded stories) are added or removed, the stack (series of embedding stories) is pushed down or it pops up so that the topmost level remains in view. Where frames provide a static model of the text’s semantic domain and a map of boundaries, stacks are dynamic, capturing moments of that domain and model-

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ing the mechanisms of boundary crossings. Developed independently of Genette’s narrative levels, Ryan’s narrative frames and stacks nevertheless provide a basis for the analysis of metalepsis, as her comments on McHale’s (1987: chap. 8) discussion of strange loops, contamination of levels and other such cases shows (Ryan: 1991: 191–210; 2006). 3.3 Relations between Levels The original account of narrative levels identified three types of relations between metadiegetic narrative and first-level narration, extending from explanatory (causal relation) through thematic (contrast, analogy) to narrational, independent of metadiegetic content (distraction, obstruction) (Genette [1972] 1980: 232–234). This list was later expanded so as to incorporate Barth’s (1981) typology of the frame tale into a sixpart “functional” typology whose poles are diegetic content and the narrating act: (a) explanatory (by metadiegetic analepsis); (b) predictive (by metadiegetic prolepsis); (c) purely thematic; (d) persuasive; (e) distractive; (f) obstructive (Genette [1983] 1988: 92–94). For Genette, Barth’s interest is in the thematic relations between the two levels. However, it is also true that for Barth stories within stories are a form of digression or postponement of the main story (“Digression and return is a variation on the theme of theme and variation”; 1981: 62), a feature reserved by Genette to the distractive and obstructive functions (cf. Pier 2011: 122–124). A survey of the literature shows that a broad variety of other functions have been attributed to the two narrative levels as well, and also that a number of revisions of the system have been proposed. Numerous authors writing about frame tales have stressed the authenticating role (a “falsification” function has also been advocated; cf. Tomassini 1990: 175–182), and attention is frequently drawn to the fact that frame tales serve to restore an aura of oral storytelling to written narratives, some non-narratological discussions even restricting the frame tale to the reproduction of oral stories (Jäggi 1994: 62). The expository function of framing has been noted (e.g. Kanzog [1966] 1977: 322), and narrative framing as constitutive of “narrative circumstance” has also been defended (Williams 1998: 110–112). Closer to narrative levels proper is Shryock’s contention that Genette’s second typology, by adopting a functional perspective, implicitly shifts to a speech act approach. Shryock (1993: 6–8) points out that the explanatory and the predictive functions operate by virtue of their illocutionary force while the persuasive, distractive and obstructive functions can be qualified as such only by their perlocutionary effects

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(cf. Williams 1998: 101, 106). This suggests that intradiegetic narration, by serving as a “strategy of presentation” of metadiegetic narration, is not, as Genette would have it, “insignificant” ([1983] 1988: 95); at issue, it seems, is the degree of saliency of narrative levels that prevails in specific narratives. Nelles (1997: 138–149), referring to Genette’s and Barth’s typologies, maintains that embedded narrative is characterized by a dual function: dramatic, as it defers or interrupts the embedding narrative; thematic, by highlighting contrast or analogy. In light of these two functions he outlines an “interpretive strategy” for the study of narrative levels which incorporates Barthes’ hermeneutic, proairetic and formal codes. The disparities between these and other accounts of the relations between the two levels, intradiegetic and metadiegetic, are due at least in part to the lack of a shared conception of function. Further progress in this area will thus require theoretical reflection on the notion of function in order to clarify its applicability to narrative levels. One already existent line of inquiry into the functional nature of narrative levels can be traced back to Šklovskij. In an essay devoted to sjužet and the devices of repetition, postponement and digression, Šklovskij ([1925] 1990: chap. 2) shows how these and other techniques, by retarding the development of the principal story, contribute to the deautomatization of perception, or defamiliarization, one of the principal aims of art. It has been noted by Seager (1991: chap. 1) how Todorov ([1971] 1977), who stresses the importance of narrating within narration and thus the fundamental role of metadiegesis (a term not employed by Todorov) in narrative generally, effectively draws attention to the connection between the three functions of metadiegetic narration (explanatory, thematic, narrational) and the perception of retardation, an effect which, according to Šklovskij, is produced particularly by framing devices. Seager also credits Todorov (1979) with pointing out that Genette’s system of extra-, intra- and metadiegetic levels represents a rationalization of Šklovskij’s devices of sjužet composition. But at the same time he comments on the fact that neither of these narratologists follows up on the deautomatization of perception which, in Šklovskij’s poetics, is functionally indissociable from the devices of retardation. This is a point on which Šklovskij and structuralist narratology seem to diverge, but it is also a point that opens up perspectives for present-day narratology to develop a more functional approach to narrative levels.

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4 Topics for Further Investigation By formulating embedding and framing in terms of change of speaker and diegetic level, narrative levels have proved fruitful not only in clarifying questions that have remained problematic in the traditional notions, but also for determining premises and raising questions for continued debate. As already mentioned, further consideration is required into narrative levels from a historical perspective, both in practice and in theory (chap. 3.2.2), as well as into a functional approach to the concept (chap. 3.3). Because of the connection of narrative levels with framing in narrative, it is a natural step to inquire into the relevance of frames in other disciplines to this narratological category (e.g. Wolf 2006b). This begins with frame analysis (Goffman 1974) and extends, inter alia, to cognitive frames and scripts. To date, cognitive narratology has devoted little research to narrative levels (cf. Herman 2013: chap. 7; Herman → Cognitive Narratology); deictic shift theory (Duchan et al., eds. 1995) and contextual frame theory (Emmott [1997] 1999) are topics that open up prospects for further research in this direction.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Bal, Mieke (1977). Narratologie (Essais sur la signification narrative dans quatre romans modernes). Paris: Klincksieck. – (1981a). “The Laughing Mice.” Poetics Today 2.2, 202–210. – (1981b). “Notes on Narrative Embedding.” Poetics Today 2.2, 41–59. – ([1985] 1997). Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Barth, John (1981). “Tales within Tales within Tales.” Antaeus 43, 45–63. Bremond, Claude (1973). Logique du récit. Paris: Seuil. Coste, Didier (1989). Narrative as Communication. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Dällenbach, Lucien ([1977] 1989). The Mirror in the Text. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Duchan, Judith F. et al., eds. (1995). Deixis in Narrative: A Cognitive Science Perspective. Hillsdale: Erlbaum. Duyfhuizen, Bernard (1992). Narratives of Transmission. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP. Emmott, Catherine ([1997] 1999). Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Oxford: Oxford UP. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London & New York: Routledge. – ([2006] 2009). An Introduction to Narratology. London & New York: Routledge.

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Füredy, Viveca (1989). “A Structural Model of Phenomena with Embedding in Literature and Other Arts.” Poetics Today 10, 745–769. García Landa, José Ángel (1998). Acción, relato, discorso. Estructura de la ficción narrativa. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad Salamanca. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – ([1983] 1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Goffman, Erving (1974). Frame Analysis: An Essay in the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper & Row. Greimas, Algirdas-Julien & Joseph Courtés (1979). Sémiotique. Dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du langage. Paris: Hachette. Herman, David (2013). Storytelling and the Sciences of the Mind. Cambridge: MIT P. Jäggi, Andreas (1994). Die Rahmenerzählung im 19. Jahrhundert. Untersuchungen zur Technik und Funktion einer Sonderform der fingierten Wirklichkeitsaussage. Berne: Lang. Kanzog, Klaus ([1966] 1977). “Rahmenerzählung.” W. Kohlschmidt & W. Moln (eds.). Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte. Berlin: de Gruyter, vol. 3, 321– 343. Lanser, Susan (1981). The Narrative Act: Point of View in Prose Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP. McHale, Brian (1987). Postmodernist Fiction. London: Routledge. Merker, Erna (1928–29). “Rahmenerzählung.” P. Merker & W. Stammler (eds.). Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte. Vol. 3. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1–4. Nelles, William (1997). Frameworks: Narrative Levels and Embedded Narrative. New York: Lang. Nünning, Ansgar (2004). “On Metanarrative: Towards a Definition, a Typology and an Outline of the Functions of Metanarrative Commentary.” J. Pier (ed.). The Dynamics of Narrative Form: Studies in Anglo-American Narratology. Berlin: de Gruyter, 11–57. Ochs, Elinor & Lisa Capps (2001). Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Stories. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Picard, Hans Rudolf (1987). Der Geist der Erzählung: Dargestelltes Erzählen in literarischer Tradition. Bern: Lang. Pier, John ([1986] 2010). “Diegesis.” Th. A. Sebeok & M. Danesi (eds.). Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, 217–219. – (2011). “Narrative Embedding and the Multilinear Text: The Case of John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse.” S. Patron (ed.). Théorie, analyse, interprétation des récits / Theory, analysis, interpretation of narratives. Bern, etc.: Lang, 119– 146. Prince, Gerald ([1987] 2003). Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln & London: U of Nebraska P. Punday, Daniel (2003). Narrative after Deconstruction. Albany: SUNY P. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith ([1983] 2002). Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Routledge. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1986). “Embedded Narratives and Tellability.” Style 20, 319–340.

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(1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP. – (2006). “Metaleptic Machines.” M.-R. R. Avatars of Story. Minneapolis/London: U of Minnesota P., 204–230, 246–248. Schmid, Wolf ([2005] 2010). Narratology: An Introduction. Berlin: de Gruyter. Seager, Dennis L. (1991). Stories within Stories: An Ecosystemic Theory of Metadiegetic Narration. New York: Lang. Shryock, Richard (1993). Tales of Storytelling: Embedded Narration in Modern French Fiction. New York: Lang. Šklovskij, Viktor (Shklovsky, Victor) ([1925] 1990). Theory of Prose. Elmwood Park: Dalkey Archive P. Todorov, Tzvetan ([1968] 1973). Poétique. Paris: Seuil. – ([1971] 1977). “Narrative-Men.” The Poetics of Prose. Oxford: Blackwell, 53– 65. – (1972). “Texte.” O. Ducrot & T. Todorov (eds.). Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences du langage. Paris: Seuil, 375–388. – (1979). “Some Approaches to Russian Formalism.” St. Bann & J. E. Bowlt, eds. Edinburgh: Academic P, 6–19. Tomassini, Giovanni Battista (1990). Il racconto nel racconto: analisi teorica dei procedimenti d’inserzione narrative. Roma: Bulzone. Walsh, Richard (2010). “Person, Level, Voice: A Rhetorical Reconsideration.” J. Alber & M. Fludernik (eds.). Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 35–57. Williams, Jeffrey (1998). Theory and the Novel: Narrative reflexivity in the British tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Wolf, Werner (2000). “Multiperspektivität: Das Konzept und seine Applikationsmöglichkeit auf Rahmungen in Erzählwerken.” V. Nünning & A. Nünning (eds.). Multiperspektivisches Erzählen: Zur Theorie und Geschichte der Perspektivenstruktur in englischen Roman des 18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts. Trier: WVT, 79–109. – (2006a). “Framing Borders in Frame Stories.” W. Wolf & W. Bernhart (eds.). Framing Borders in Literature and Media. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 179–206. – (2006b). “Introduction: Frames, Framing and Framing Borders in Literature and other Media.” W. Wolf & W. Bernhart (eds.). Framing Borders in Literature and Media. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1–40. – (2010). “Mise en cadre—A Neglected Counterpart to Mise en abyme: A Frametheoretical and Intermedial Complement to Classical Narratology.” J. Alber & M. Fludernik (eds.). Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 58–82. Young, Katharine Galloway (1987). Taleworlds and Storyrealms: The Phenomenology of Narrative. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

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5.2 Further Reading Clarke, Bruce (2008). “Metamorphosis and Embedding.” B. Clarke. Posthuman Metamorphosis, Narrative and Systems. New York: Fordham UP, 94–146 Derrida, Jacques (1978] 2002). “The Parergon.” B. Richardson (ed.). Narrative Dynamics. Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 354– 365. Genette, Gérard ([1987] 1997). Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Meyer-Minnemann, Klaus & Sabine Schlickers (2010). “La mise en abyme en narratologie.” J. Pier & F. Berthelot (eds.). Narratologies contemporaines. Approches nouvelles pour la théorie et l’analyse du récit. Paris: Editions des Archives Contemporaines, 91–108. Morson, Gary Saul (1978). “The Heresiarch of Meta.” PTL 43: 407–427.

Narrative Strategies Valerij Tjupa

1 Definition Narrative strategy is a use of certain narrative techniques and practices to achieve a certain goal. The approach adopted and the intended goal, which presuppose certain competences (creative, referential, and receptive), characterise the author of the artistic text. However, the category of narrative strategies may also be used for the analysis of non-artistic narrative discourses where a distinction between the biographic author and the implied author is usually not important.

2 Explication Each narrative is an utterance and thus a communicative act. In accordance with Aristotle’s “rhetorical triangle,” somebody tells somebody about something. Thus the theory of narration belongs to the field of the general theory of communication; consequently, narrative strategies comprise a certain class of communicative strategies of culture. Narrative strategies are often reduced to the writer’s techniques. However, the notion of strategy, taken from military science, correctly describes the speaker’s preferences that direct his creative behaviour after he makes a strategic choice and determines the final result, as opposed to various tactical actions. Applied to narrative practices, this fundamental distinction avoids identifying the author with the narrator. The author’s strategic position provides unity of the communicative aim which the narrator’s (sometimes several narrators’) discourse leads to. This position may be either homogeneous with regard to the narrating subject’s position or distanced and even ironical in relation to him. The aim of speaking or writing is the interaction of consciousnesses in a communication event (see van Dijk 1988): choral harmony or provocative dissonance, monologic dominance or dialogic concordance (see Тjupa 2010). Difference in communicative aims generates a variety of strategies. A strategic choice is made by the biographic author

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(scriptor). Working consciously with the tactical means of narrative writing, however, he does not always adequately reflect on the narrative strategy of his own text. Any communicative strategy, narrative in particular, being “a speaker’s active position in an objective and semantic sphere” (Baxtin 1996: 187), cannot be reduced to “a speaker’s speech will” because “a subjective moment when an utterance is produced is inseparably combined with its objective and semantic side, limiting and connecting it with […] the situation of speech communication” (180). “Strategic choices do not emerge directly from a worldview or from a predominance of interests peculiar to this or that speaking subject” (Foucault [1969] 2002: 81). Rather, they are made “on the basis of the position occupied by the subject in relation to the domain of objects” (ibid.) and in relation to an addressee or a circle of addressees. This “situation” may be and usually is connected with the implied author. The latter may be thought of as a complex of discourse competences which are virtual by nature, analogously to Saussure’s langue (cf. Greimas & Courtès 1979: 249), but they are more or less consistently and successfully realised by the biographic author. It is crucial that the narrative strategy correlates not with the narrator, who is free to adopt one narrative tactic or another, but with the implied semantic entity of the abstract author (Schmid [2003] 2010: 36–51). The narrative subject (narrator) is positioned in relation to objects and recipients of narration by the cognitive subject of communication (author), which consists in adopting a strategic choice. Thus understood, narrative strategy is a configuration of three aspects of a single utterance that influence each another: 1) narrative modality (the speech subject’s rhetorical competence); 2) narrative world picture (the sphere of objects that are of narrative interest); 3) narrative intrigue (the aspect of plot that correlates the story with the recipient’s expectations). These three aspects correlate with the three aspects of any utterance as a communicative event.

3 Aspects of the Phenomenon and History of its Study 3.1 Narrative Modalities The rhetorical modality of the narrator’s speech behaviour determines what kind of “witness and judge” (Baxtin 2002b: 396) of “eventful being” (Baxtin) the narrator is. The category of modality is linked with the categories of focalization (Niederhoff → Focalization) and perspective (Niederhoff → Perspective – Point of View), but it is not identical

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to them. Explaining the term “focalization,” Genette ([1972] 1980) refers to the degree of the narrator’s awareness and the extent to which his knowledge is restricted. However, the narrator does not always represent knowledge: medieval Christian narrators, for instance, were guided by sacred conviction and tended to ignore or transform empirical facts. A chain of events (a story) can be recounted in the modality of a) neutral knowledge, b) an unreliable narrator’s personal opinion (Booth [1961] 1983: 158–159), c) authoritative conviction that does not need approval, or d) in the modality of understanding that is not subjective (e.g. an opinion) but is also not neutral or objective and that can be characterised as inter-subjective (sharing of a common understanding among subjects). The modality of knowledge presupposes the narrator’s principal “outsideness” (vnenaxodimost’ [Baxtin 2003: 72]) in relation to a recounted story. Homer could not witness the events of the Trojan war; nevertheless, the narrator of Homer’s epic, relying on legend, tells about these events in the narrative modality of knowledge. This knowledge is a content of consciousness that does not depend on consciousness itself (pure knowledge is not personified and is reproductive). Such a narrator is analogous to the leader of a ritual choir who recounts commonly known things more expressively than others. The strategy of impersonal narrative omniscience adopted by a teller can be characterised as choral. Writers of the early modern period may adopt a similar narrative strategy (cf. the narrator’s position in Gogol’s Taras Bul’ba [1842]). The modality of opinion is characterised by an apparently personified position and thus an emotional and moral, rather than factual, involvement in the flow of events. Such tellers present their own version of a recounted story and “make stronger demands on the reader’s powers of inference than do reliable narrators” (Booth [1961] 1983: 159). Thus the narrative strategy of unreliable narration adopted by Nabokov in Lolita (1959) “consists in inviting the reader with the help of the textual structure to guess the potencies concealed in the text; the reader is a co-creator and takes over certain authorial functions (carefully and jealously measured by the implied author)” (Ždanova 2008: 61). The other two modalities correspond to an intermediate position of “evaluative outsideness” (Baxtin 2003: 72) that does not presuppose omniscience but provides a wider conceptual horizon of the narrator than a participant in events may have. A profound difference between modalities consists in the convinced and convincing narrator’s monologic axiological domination, on the one hand, and in the understanding narrator’s dialogically open position, on the other. The word “convic-

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tion” is intended to focus on “a definite set of values […]. It is unipolar. Only one voice sounds in it […]. It exists in the ready-made, stably differentiated and evaluated world” (Baxtin 1986: 513). The narrative of conviction is subjective in terms of values (the narrator is not only a witness but also explicitly judges what goes on), but it is not personified. This is the narrative strategy frequently adopted by Tolstoj. The convergence of two (or even several) viewpoints in a narrated story that belong to a narrator and a character or to a narrator and an addressee establishes the modality of understanding. Such narration deepens the sense of the related story, but it does not bear the marks of absolute truthfulness of knowledge or of the absolute value of conviction. The truth of understanding is not relative but “principally exceeds the limits of one consciousness […] and is born at the junction point where different consciousnesses meet each other” (Baxtin 2002a: 92), as it occurs in Dostoevskij’s polyphonic novel. The narrative of understanding is personified but aims at overcoming the limits of the subject’s horizon. Such is the narrative strategy in the late works by Čexov. These texts are characterised by the same narrative strategy, even given the difference in narrative tactics employed in Dostoevskij’s novels and in Čexov’s short stories. 3.2 Narrative World Pictures The referential competence of narration consists in the actual “world picture which provides the scale for determining what an event is” (Lotman [1970] 1977: 234). From the perspective of narratology, the general notion of world picture represents the basic structures of narrative experience, the experience of eventfulness (Hühn  Event and Eventfulness). Constituting original assumptions about the general premises of our being, the world picture determines the “relevance” of transitions between situations that constitute a subject matter of the story (Schmid [2003] 2010: 9). The degree of eventfulness motivating the possibility and justifiability of a story is not an abstract value but depends on the idea of event formed in the given epoch, the literary genre in question, the model of eventfulness put forward by the work itself and the reader’s position (Šmid [2003] 2008: 24). Like a conventional mathematical space, the narrative world picture “guarantees a possible meaningful unity of possible judgements” (Baxtin 2003: 55) about what Baxtin calls the “event of being (sobytie bytija).” The inter-subjective “topos of agreement” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1958), necessary for understanding the text, limits the breadth of the world outlook with a certain conceptual horizon and creates a virtual space in which con-

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sciousnesses communicate in an addressee’s mind. Developing Perelman and Olbrecht-Tyteca’s conception of “rhetorical world pictures,” we can single out four experience structures basic for narrative practices, corresponding to the four narrative modalities: 1) precedental world picture (typical for myths and fairy tales) that does not allow characters to avoid their status destiny: an event is “always a fact which takes place, though it need not have taken place” (Lotman [1970] 1977: 236); it may set a precedent for succeeding facts of the same sort; 2) imperative world picture (of the parable type) that presupposes an unquestionable axiological system of the world order in which a character always has freedom of choice, even though this choice is objectively assessed in terms of good and evil; an event consists of fulfilling or failing to fulfil a duty, of observing the moral law of the world or of breaching it; 3) occasional world picture (of the anecdote type) in which a character existing in a flow of eventualities is granted the freedom of self-presentation, each of them claiming the status of eventfulness due to its uniqueness. Here, an event is any change in the static plot situation which is vitally important for a character (Tamarčenko 2008), but not for the world order; 4) probabilistic world picture (based on synergetics), concentrating on bifurcation points at which the story “forks.” Such points result from an unstable condition of the fictional world demanding a change that can, however, be different from the one reported in the story, meaning that the story could have unfolded in another way. Here, “an event is what could have been done differently” (Ricœur [1983] 1984: 97). At the same time, narrative “temporal schemes” may be only multiple virtual perspectives that unfold in the heart of the story in the direction of a possible but undefined horizon (Baroni 2010: 212). Eventfulness of this kind is based on a character’s responsibility for choosing one of the possible directions of the further course of life; however, in comparison to the imperative strategy, the unfolding of the chain of events cannot be assessed unambiguously because it correlates not with the norm of being but with its mystery. 3.3 Narrative Intrigue A place that an addressee is strategically given by the author is determined by a narrative intrigue, i.e. narrative interest of the plot, a “hu-

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man, sublunary” way of understanding what goes on (Veyne [1971] 1984). It connects the beginning of the story with its end and is based on our ability to trace a chain of narrated events. “In this sense, the Bible is a great intrigue of world history, and every literary intrigue is a sort of a miniature of a big intrigue that connects the Apocalypse with the Book of Genesis” (Ricœur 1984: 40; trans. V. T.). Understood as tension in a chain of events that arouses and realises certain readerly expectations, an intrigue is a configuration of episodes addressing the reader and implying familiarity with the narrative tradition. Intrigue in Ricœur’s understanding of the term is analogous to White’s (1973) “emplotment” and is linked to the category “plot.” Intrigue is not plot (sjuzhet) distinguished from story (fabula), as proposed by the Russian formalists, but an aspect of plot that addresses the reader’s receptive intentions. When correlated with narrative modalities and world pictures, the basic modifications of narrative intrigue can be grouped as follows: 1) the retrospective intrigue of realisation takes place in a fairy tale or in a mythical narrative with the precedental world picture related in the modality of knowledge whose end is already known; the narrative interest at reception results from nuances of detail and the fabric of speech; 2) narrative with the imperative world picture presupposing the modality of conviction is paired with the didactic intrigue of necessity; narrative interest is concentrated on a positive or negative outcome of the sequence of events; 3) the occasional world picture of narrations in the modality of opinion motivates the intrigue of adventure; the receptive intention consists in the reader’s paradoxical expectation of the unexpected events that are supposed to occur in this kind of plots; 4) the heuristic intrigue of revelation of the unobvious is generated by the probabilistic world picture of narrations in the modality of understanding (cf. Doležel 1998). 3.4 The Unity of a Narrative Strategy Discovering and analysing the generating mechanism of the communicative unity of the text requires a wide variety of narratological concepts. Basic complexes of discourse characteristics underlying a particular communicative aim include the above-mentioned strategies of choral harmony, monologic dominance, dialogic discordance and dia-

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logic concordance. At the same time, the creative, referential and receptive characteristics of each of the strategies stipulate one another and reject alien characteristics of other strategies. Thus earlier narrative practices, up to the time of the literary classics of the 19th century, are monostrategic and the unity of a narrative strategy is provided by its uniqueness for the given text. In contrast, the non-traditional narrative practices of the 20th and 21st centuries are characterised by a trend towards polystrategic symbioses and eclectic unities of the narrative act. Unity is preserved thanks to the dominance of one of the complexes of narrative characteristics (i.e. complexes of a narrative modality, a narrative world picture and a narrative intrigue). 3.5 History of Study of the Phenomenon It was Souvage (1965), in his study of the English novel, who first wrote about narrative strategies. A short but not quite clear definition of this category was proposed by Prince ([1987] 2003: 64): “In recounting a narrative, the set of narrative procedures followed or narrative devices used to achieve some specific goal.” This definition concerns not only narrative strategies, but also tactics. More recently, the term has become widespread, especially in Russian narratology. Narrative strategies are usually considered in the context of a given literary material (Kovalev 2009), sometimes less clearly named “authorial” (Andrianova 2011) or “literary” (Kibal’nik et al. 2008) strategies. However, this fundamental theoretical category is used in many studies on this topic merely to indicate particular features of the investigated text. On the other hand, Western narratology examines differences that can be characterised as strategic, using other terms such as “narrative modalities” (Doležel 1973; Ryan 1992), “suppositions” (Roussin 2010), etc. These various terms can be used to cover such fundamental characteristics of narrative discourse that are denoted with the widely used term “strategies.” Each of the three interconnected aspects of a narrative strategy may be studied separately, and indeed, each of them (narrative modality, narrative world picture, narrative intrigue) has its own research history. Scholarship devoted to “the illusion of skaz” (Ėjxenbaum 1924) and to the imitation of oral narration in literary form opened the way to interest in the unreliable narrator (Booth [1961] 1983), a narrator whose opinions cannot be taken at face value. Development of the categories of point of view (Doležel 1967; Uspenskij 1973) and focalization (Genette [1972] 1980; Bal 1977, [1985] 1997) has significantly broadened insights into narrativity (Abbott  Narrativity), while the emergence of

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the “new rhetoric” has contributed to a greater understanding of the broad spectrum of narrative modalities. A significant role in developing the category of world picture was played by Lotman’s turn to the theory of eventfulness (Lotman [1970] 1977) and by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyca’s (1958) typology of “rhetorical world pictures.” By adopting the notion “implied reader” (Schmid → Implied Reader), narratology was able to turn to the analysis of modelling the addressee of narration by the text of the story. Significant input into this turn has been provided by historiography. By the term “emplotment,” White (1973: 7–8) meant imparting meaning to a story by combining the events comprising it into a single, universal or archetypical form. Following the same line of thought, Ricœur ([1984] 1985: 165) developed a system for examining the structure of a narrative against the reader’s life world. With reference to Baxtin, Genette, Lotman and Uspenskij, Ricœur ([1984] 1985: 159) adopted the notion of plot as proposed by the historian Veyne ([1971] 1984). Broadening and deepening this notion, Ricœur integrated into Aristotle’s “muthos” Augustine’s reflections on time, White’s “emplotment” and Frye’s (1957) “modalities.” At the same time, he stressed the addressive (Aristotle’s “catharsis”) and explaining functions of the plot, describing it as a “configuration” of episodes that calls for a responsive “refiguration” of the narrated story by a receptive consciousness. Close attention to the receptive side of narration has resulted in putting the problem of its strategic purpose in the foreground. However, the study of narrative strategies as three foundational aspects of the communicative effectiveness of narrative has only recently begun to develop (Тjupa 2001, 2011, 2012; Žyličeva 2013). The term “narrative strategies” has not yet become widespread, but a need for this concept is becoming more evident.

4 Topics for Further Investigation Systematic study of narrative strategies will show that their emergence and establishment in the communicative practice of telling stories is consistent and follows a historical pattern. A better understanding is required of the phases of narrative in the evolution of human thinking (e.g. Herman ed. 2011). This will serve as a basis for sound comparative research on the parallel historical lines of the development of oral and written works in different national languages. Addressing the category of narrative strategies may thus significantly broaden narratologi-

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cal knowledge by complementing its theoretical and analytical aspects with historical and comparative factors. Adopting the comparative methodology of Veselovskij’s historical poetics (Kemper 2013) would be an effective way to develop a research branch of historical (comparative) narratology. (Translated by Inna Drach)

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Andrianova, Marija D. (2011). Avtorskie strategii v romannoj proze Andreja Bitova. SPetersburg: S-Peterb. gos. un-t. Baxtin, Mixail М. (Bakhtin, Mikhail) (1986). “Zametki.” M. M. Baxtin. Literaturnokritičeskie stat’i. Moskva: Xudožestvennaja literatura, 509–531. – (1996). “Problema rečevyx žanrov.” М. М. Baxtin. Sobranie sočinenij v 7 tomax. T. 5. Moskva: Russkie slovari, 159–206. – (2002a). “Problemy poėtiki Dostoevskogo.” М. М. Baxtin. Sobranie sočinenij v 7 tomax. T. 6. Moskva: Russkie slovari, 5–300. – (2002b). “Rabočie zapisi.” М. М. Baxtin. Sobranie sočinenij v 7 tomax. T. 6. Moskva: Russkie slovari, 371–439. – (2003). “K filosofii postupka.” М. М. Baxtin. Sobranie sočinenij v 7 tomax. T. 1. Moskva: Russkie slovari, 7–68. Bal, Mieke (1977). Narratologie (Essais sur la signification narrative dans quatre romans modernes). Paris: Klincksieck. – ([1985] 1997). Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Baroni, Raphaël (2010). “Réticence de l’intrigue.” J. Pier & F. Berthelot (eds.). Narratologies contemporaines: Approches nouvelles pour la théorie et l’analyse du récit. Paris: Éd. des archives contemporaines, 199–213. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Doležel, Lubomír (1967). “The Typology of the Narrator: Point of View in Fiction.” To Honor Roman Jakobson. Vol. 1. The Hague: Mouton, 541–552. – (1973). Narrative Modes in Czech Literature. Toronto: U of Toronto P. – (1998). Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Dijk, Teun A. van (1988). “The Analysis of News as Discourse.” T. A. van Dijk (ed.). News Analysis / Case Studies of International and National News in the Press. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. Ėjxenbaum, Boris M. (Eikhenbaum) (1924). Skvoz’ literaturu. Leningrad: Academia. Foucault, Michel ([1969] 2002). Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge. Frye, Northrop (1957). The Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton UP.

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Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Greimas Algirdas J. & Joseph Courtés (1979). Sémiotique: Dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du langage. Paris: Hachette. Herman, David, ed. (2011). The Emergence of Mind: Representations of Consciousness in Narrative Discourse in English. Lincoln/London: U of Nebraska P. Kemper, Dirk et al. (2013). Die russische Schule der Historischen Poetik. München: Fink. Kibal’nik, Sergej A. et al. (2008). Literaturnye strategii Viktora Pelevina. SPetersburg: Petropolis. Kovalev, Oleg A. (2009). Narrativnye strategii v literature (na materiale tvorčestva F. M. Dostoevskogo). Barnaul: Izd. Altajskogo gos. un-ta. Lotman, Jurij M. ([1970] 1977). The Structure of the Artistic Text. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. Perelman, Chaïm & Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958). Traité de l'argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique. Paris: PUF. Prince, Gerald ([1987] 2003). A Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln: U of Nebraska UP. Ricœur, Paul ([1983] 1984). Time and Narrative. Vol. 1. Chicago: U of Chicago P. – (1984). Temps et récit. T. 2. Paris: Seuil. – ([1984] 1985). Time and Narrative. Vol. 2. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Roussin, Philippe (2010). “Généalogies de la narratologie, dualisme des théories du récit.” J. Pier & F. Berthelot (eds.). Narratologies contemporaines: Approches nouvelles pour la théorie et l’analyse du récit. Paris: Éd. des archives contemporaines, 45–73. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1992). “The Modes of Narrative and their Visual Metaphors.” Style 26.3, 368–387. Šmid, Vol’f (Schmid, Wolf) ([2003] 2008). Narratologija. Мoskva: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. Schmid, Wolf ([2003] 2010). Narratology: An Introduction. Berlin: de Gruyter. Souvage, Jacques (1965). An Introduction to the Study of the Novel, with Special Reference to the English Novel. Ghent: E. Story-Scientia. Tamarčenko, Natan D. (2008). “Sobytie sjužetnoe.” Poėtika: slovar’ aktual’nyx terminov i ponjatij. Мoskva: Intrada, 239–240. Тjupa, Valerij I. (2001). Narratologija kak analitika povestvovatel’nogo diskursa. Tver’: Tverskoj gos. un-t. – (2010). Diskursnye formacii: Očerki po komparativnoj ritorike [Očerk 5]. Moskva: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. – (2011). “Narrativnaja strategija romana (‘Doktor Živago’).” Novyj filologičeskij vestnik. Moskva: RGGU, 3.18, 8–24. – (2012) “Narrativnaja strategija romana ‘Master i Margarita’.” Michail Bulhakow, jego czasy i my. Kraków: Scriptum, 337–347. Uspenskij, Boris A. ([1970] 1973). A Poetics of Composition. Berkeley: U of California P. Veyne, Paul ([1971] 1984). Writing History: Essay on Epistemology. Manchester: Manchester UP.

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White, Hayden (1973). Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP. Ždanova, Anna V. (2008). Narrativnyj labirint “Lolity” (Struktura povestvovanija v uslovijax nenadežnogo narratora). Toljatti: Izd. Volžskogo universiteta im. V. N. Tatiščeva. Žyličeva, Galina A. (2013). Narrativnyje strategii v žanrovoj structure romana (na materiale russkoj prozy 1920-1950-x gg). Novosibirsk: NGPU.

5.2 Further Reading Christoffersen, Rikke (2006). Narrative Strategies in the Novels of Erich Maria Remarque: A Focus on Perspective. Stirling: U of Stirling P. Dunne, Michael (1995). Hawthorne’s Narrative Strategies. Oxford: U of Mississippi P. Gillespie, Michael P. (1989). Reading the Book of Himself: Narrative Strategies in the Works of James Joyce. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Morton, Peter (2006). “Narrative Strategies in the Fictive Diary.” Life Writing Symposium, 13–15 June 2006. Flinders: Flinders UP. Niati, Justin S. (2012). Narrative Strategies in African Folktales: Revisiting the Russian Formalism Theory. Frederick: Publish America. Pollheide, Jens (2003). Postmodernist Narrative Strategies in the Novels of John Fowles. Bielefeld: Bielefeld UP. Roston, Murray (2006). Graham Greene’s Narrative Strategies: A Study of the Major Novels. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Тjupa, Valerij I. (2006). “The Communicative Strategy of Chekhov’s Poetics.” J. Douglas Clayton (ed.). Chekhov: Poetics – Hermeneutics – Thematics. Ottawa: U of Ottawa P, 1–20. – (2009). “Communicative Strategy of the Anecdote and the Genesis of Literary Genres.” Russian Journal of Communication 2.3/4, 161–170. Trieloff, Barbara A. (1984). “Absence supreme”: Narrative Strategies in Beckett’s Post-trilogy Prose. Hamilton: McMaster UP. Weese, Katherine L. (2006). “The ‘Invisible’ Woman: Narrative Strategies in the Stone Diaries.” Journal of Narrative Theory 36.1, 90–120.

Narratives in Rhetorical Discourse Stefan Iversen

1 Definition Rhetoric can be defined as “the use of symbols to induce social action” (Hauser 2002: 3), thus making rhetorical discourse texts aimed at specific audiences for specific reasons in specific situations. While they are rarely complete narratives or completely narrative, such discourses often use narrative elements as means to their argumentative, convincing or otherwise motivational ends. The study of narratives in rhetorical discourse takes as its object discourses that primarily serve argumentative functions in contrast to aesthetic or didactic functions. It overlaps with subfields of narrative study, most importantly rhetorical narratology, research on storytelling (Norlyk, Wolff Lundholt & Hansen → Corporate Storytelling) and Narrative Inquiry (Bamberg → Identity and Narration). In contrast to more formal approaches to narrative such as classical narratology (Meister → Narratology), these approaches share an interest in the ways in which narratives move or influence readers and audiences. They all understand narrative as situated in a communicative framework.

2 Explication Being a form of rhetorical criticism, the study of narratives in rhetorical discourse offers analytical and evaluative readings of narratives and narrative elements in situated discourse or acts aimed at persuading, convincing, uniting or otherwise moving people towards specific ends. It differs from narrative inquiry (as practiced in psychology, ethnography, socio-linguistics and the social sciences) in that the primary object of narrative inquiry is personal/group identity or linguistic competence. It also differs from rhetorical narratology as practiced in literary criticism in that the latter conceives “of narrative as an art of communication” (Phelan 2005a), while the study of narratives in rhetorical discourse works primarily with narratives in rhetorical communication.

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Thirdly, in methodology as well as in expected output, it differs from theories of storytelling (e.g., corporate communication, branding), when storytelling is understood as the strategic use of narratives: where the study of storytelling draws heavily on quantitative methods in attempts to maximize specific communicative effects, rhetorical criticism combines close reading with contextual analysis in order to arrive at normative judgments. Despite different takes on what delimits rhetorical discourse, most researchers engaged with the study of narratives in rhetorical discourse would agree on a core corpus including, at the very least, all types of political communication, public debate, critical journalism and most types of public address bearing on contested issues. Among the relevant genres, found across media and communication platforms, are speeches, presentation material, public dialogue, rallies, blogs, manifestos, constitutions and legislation, declarations, letters of opinion, editorials and demonstrations. An example would be Barack Obama’s 2009 address to a joint Session of Congress on health care. Here, Obama combined the retelling of Ted Kennedy’s experience of children suffering from cancer with a larger narrative of what constitutes the American character in order to persuade his audience to act in favor of the proposed reform. Another example of a rhetorical discourse employing narratives would be Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign (www.kony2012.com). This campaign used videos distributed online to raise awareness and inspire the public to take action toward catching an African war criminal. The controversy surrounding the campaign was partly due to the intense use these videos made of narrative elements, infusing stories of the victims and the story of the perpetrator not only with the story of the rhetor of the multimodal production but also with a story about the inscribed audience. The foundational debates in this subfield of narrative study are concerned with delimiting a) the question of what constitutes rhetorical discourse and b) the question of what constitutes a narrative or a narrative element in rhetorical discourse. a) The question of what makes a discourse rhetorical has a long history and is still being debated, with positions spanning a continuum from very narrow definitions (reserving the term for, say, explicitly persuasive public verbal genres) to very inclusive ones (having it cover all kinds and aspects of human symbol use). In modern rhetorical criticism—often referred to as “the new rhetoric,” a term borrowed from Olbrechts-Tyteca and Perelman’s and seminal Traité de l’argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique (1958), and from Kenneth Burke’s writings from the 1950s—two approaches stand out in the attempt to anchor

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the term “rhetorical discourse.” The first ties the notion of rhetoric to the concept of rhetorical situation. Bitzer (1968) defined rhetorical discourse as a specific response to a specific situation: “it is the situation which calls the [rhetorical] discourse into existence” (5) For him, a rhetorical situation comprises three necessary and sufficient components: an exigence (“an imperfection marked by urgency,” a problem modifiable by discourse), a rhetorical audience (those “capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change”) and constraints (persons or events with the “power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence”) (6–7). While often both highly artistic and formally elaborate, rhetorical discourse is thus a means to an end, and that end exists as a more or less explicit and changeable occurrence or state of affairs in the real world. Bitzer’s insistence on this one-way causality between occurrence and rhetorical discourse (his example is the assassination of Kennedy) has since been challenged (Vatz 1973, 2009) and modified (Hauser 2002; Kjeldsen 2008). However, the idea of distinguishing rhetorical discourse from, say, poetic or scientific discourse with recourse to the degree of manifest intentionality and function remains a crucial and distinctive move for this approach to rhetorical criticism. The second way of delimiting the term “rhetorical discourse” takes its cue from Burke’s notion of rhetoric as identification. A major thrust in Burke’s work is the intention to expand the idea of what counts as rhetoric from the neo-Aristotelian notions of rhetorical discourse as finding the most persuasive elements in a given situation to a much broader concept of rhetoric as any more or less conscious process of identification through the use of symbols: “The difference between the ‘old’ rhetoric and the ‘new’ rhetoric may be summed up in this manner: whereas the key term for the ‘old’ rhetoric was persuasion and its stress was upon deliberate design, the key term for the ‘new’ rhetoric is identification and this may include partially ‘unconscious’ factors in its appeal” (Burke 1951: 203). According to Burke, most actions are motivated by processes beyond rational persuasion, processes of identifying with, say, an idea, a world view, an image or a tonality. These forms of identification are constructed through what Burke calls consubstantiality (positive identification: “I am like this”) and diversification (negative identification: “I am different from that”). b) Being focused on rhetorical discourse with narrative elements rather than on full-fledged narratives, the different positions in the study of narratives in rhetoric result in rather different definitions of what a narrative is and on what epistemological and ontological level it might function. In a recent introduction to the field, Rowland (2009) suggests

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differentiating between two main functions of narratives in rhetorical texts: epistemic and persuasive. The epistemic function has to do with the ability of narrative to function as a tool for “understand[ing] the world” (121). Through the sequential, teleological structure of narrative, we ascribe meaning and value to past and future occurrences and establish relationships between them. According to Rowland, the persuasive function is an umbrella term that brings together different but often connected ways in which narratives produce persuasive effects in a given rhetorical situation: narratives “keep the attention” of the audience, they “create a sense of identification” between the sender/subject matter and the audience, they help “break down barriers” (122) through their ability to show a different world view from the inside, tapping into emotions and values by zooming in on particular people undergoing particular changes. While Rowland’s distinction between epistemic and persuasive is helpful for a quick overview of the positions in the field, it runs the risk of highlighting similarities where differences might matter more. Visualized along a spectrum, these differences range from, at the one end, conceiving of narrative as an optional stylistic device, to, at the other end, conceiving of narrative or narrative understanding as a fundamental, epistemological prerequisite for communication to take place at all.

3 History of the Term Although the systematic study of narratives on rhetorical discourse is a fairly recent enterprise in the sense it is being discussed here, the question of the role of narratives in rhetorical discourse, as well as the question of the power of fictional narratives to move audiences, was raised already in classical thinking, most notably by Aristotle and Quintilian. A major surge of interest took place during the 1980s, inspired by a more general turn toward narratives in history (White), psychology (Bruner) and philosophy (Ricœur; MacIntyre). Fisher and his idea of the narrative paradigm stands as perhaps the most radical contribution to this upsurge, partly due to its own ideas and partly due to the debate and discussion it provoked. Lucaites and Condit disagreed with some of the basic assumptions of Fisher’s reasoning and suggested instead a rethinking of insights from classical rhetoric. Apart from some additions to and revisions of Fisher’s basic categories, the study of narratives in rhetorical discourse has lain rather dormant in recent years. This is surprising, given the degree to which narratives and elements of narratives thrive in present-day political discourse.

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3.1 Statements of Facts: Classical Rhetoric With Rhetoric and Poetics, Aristotle established an early and influential division between two kinds of aesthetic consideration. In this division, fully invented narratives belong to poetics. To Aristotle, narratives play minor roles in the non-fictive rhetorical genres of the forensic, the deliberative and the epideictic in that they are confined to the following two functions: examples and statements of facts (narratio). Narratives as examples are a type of proof, pertinent in deliberative speeches and divisible into two types: “one consisting in the mention of actual facts, the other in the invention of facts by the speaker” (Aristotle 1984: 1393). Narratives as statements of facts come under forensic speeches, where in a sequential manner they represent the events of the (juridical) case to the audience (jury). For Aristotle, then, narratives in rhetorical discourse are tools for representation, either in order to make the nature of previous events temporarily present or to use former or invented events as images for things that could or should happen. Quintilian elaborates on the notion of narratives in rhetorical discourse as narratio, which he defines as “the persuasive exposition of that which either has been done, or is supposed to have been done” (1920: 67). Crucial to this exposition is that it avoids the temptation to dwell on artificiality, ornamentation and other forms of poetry: the narratio should remain as factual as possible. Seen from the perspective of classical rhetoric, then, narratives in rhetorical discourse are or ought to be markedly different from invented narratives on a formal as well as on a functional level. Invented or fictional narratives strive towards formal complexity, ambiguity and turning points while narratives used in rhetorical discourse should strive for simplicity, clarity and reliability. Narratives used for rhetorical purpose should fit the situation in which they are employed; they should be persuasive in the Aristotelian sense of that term. 3.2 The Narrative Paradigm: Fisher The premise informing Fisher’s concept of the narrative paradigm is that a large part of actual argumentation, including most cases of individual and social decision-making, relies on narratives rather than on what is traditionally taken to be argumentative discourse. Taking his cue from MacIntyre (MacIntyre 1981), Fisher conceives of humans as essentially storytelling animals, as homo narrans, choosing what seems like the right path through life with recourse to stories: “the world is a set of stories which must be chosen among to live the good life in a

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process of continual recreation. In short, good reasons are the stuff of stories” (1984: 8). According to Fisher, this insight calls for a major reorientation of rhetoric and communication studies. Rather than treating narrative as a specific genre or text-type, it should be seen as a meta-discourse, as a fundamental way of rationalizing behavior thanks to “narrative rationality.” Fisher’s position stands “in marked contrast to the view that narration is merely an element in rhetorical discourse or is a specific literary genre” (1984: 59). The concept of narrative paradigm thus moves beyond the distinction initially set up in this article between reading narrative as rhetoric and reading narrative elements in rhetorical discourse. In the narrative paradigm, the sequential orderings of narrative serve different functions: they bind together the disparate experiences of individuals into a coherent identity by connecting the choices and values of the individual to the commonly shared narratives that carry the values of social identities. How, then, do we choose which stories and thus which good reasons to identify with and follow? In order to analyze the relations between different narratives as well as between narratives and those who identify with them, Fisher introduces a distinction between what he calls narrative probability and narrative fidelity. A story worth identifying with must “ring true to the human condition” (Fisher 1987: 176). It accomplishes this by realizing a double coherence: internally, it must cohere as a structure (it must “hang together” and be “free of contradiction” (Fisher 1985: 349). Externally, it must cohere with what is taken to be the case in the culture where the story appears: it must accord “with the logic of good reasons” (349), i.e. display a certain degree of fidelity with regard to existing narratives. The decision to identify with or discard a line of narrative rationality is thus made with recourse to the structure of the proposed story as well as to the ways in which the story connects to other stories already accepted as valid in the life of the group or individual. Comparing Fisher’s idea of the role of narratives to the one in classical rhetoric, the differences are striking. Rather than a statement of the facts or an optional example used in an act of persuasion, narrative becomes epistemologically unavoidable, part of the very ground upon which arguing as well as most other types of communication take place. Fisher’s theory stirred up an intense debate in American rhetoric during the 1980s, the first wave of which came in a special issue of The Journal of Communication in 1986 (vol. 35.4). In the discussions of the narrative paradigm, two weaknesses were pointed out by several rhetoricians. The first regards what appears to be a major limitation inherent

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in Fisher’s concept of fidelity. If narrative reasoning comes about only when a new narrative shares values with what is already taken to be reasonable, how does the paradigm explain actual change in value and belief systems? (Kirkwood 1992: 75; see Stroud 2002 for an expanded version of this critique). A second, perhaps more fundamental problem, regards the epistemological omnipresence of narratives as stated by Fisher’s idea of a paradigm. Rowland (1989) uses three case studies to argue convincingly against the description of narrative as a universal meta-discourse. Traditional rhetorical texts without storylines or plot as well as plot-rich fiction with strange entities clearly resist the application of narrative fidelity and probability. Rowland concludes that “the domain in which narrative approaches to rhetoric should be utilized is much narrower than Fisher and others have suggested” (1989: 51). In a more indirect but also more consequential way, Lucaites and Condit (1985) voiced a similar critique, not only questioning the possibility and validity of a pan-narrative approach but also suggesting another way of studying narratives in rhetorical discourse. 3.3 Narratives as Lenses: Lucaites and Condit Lucaites and Condit argue that narratives carry different functions in different types of discourse. Their suggestion is thus diametrically opposed to the meta-discursive ambitions of the narrative paradigm. They distinguish between poetic, dialectic and rhetorical discourse, motivated by, respectively, the search for aesthetic pleasure, enlightenment and power. Drawing on Quintilian, they suggest analyzing narratives in rhetorical discourse on the basis of this type of discourse’s need to be adapted to specific contexts, audiences and purposes. These three subfunctions all share the quality of specificity in that rhetorical discourse, as well as the narrative elements appearing in it, is bound to a specific situation. The contextual sub-function stems from the fact that a rhetorical discourse is involved in an ongoing negotiation between at least two parties. This has two formal consequences. The first is that it requires a narrative within a rhetorical discourse to be unequivocal (it must “invite only one interpretation”) in order to clearly state the rhetor’s case. Second, because it is part of a discourse that attempts to move actual audiences to action, it must “stop short of the formal stage of plot ‘resolution’ by virtue of its purpose to encourage audience enactment” (Lucaites & Condit 1985: 100).

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The audience function is linked to the fact that rhetorical discourse is always directed at a specific audience. It also has two formal consequences, requiring that narrative rhetoric be consistent and concise. Consistency becomes important because the use of a narrative should be coherent internally and fit the context in which it occurs, meaning that it should strive to make sense in connection with the reality of the intended audience. The requirement of concision follows from the fact that rhetorical discourse should avoid putting unnecessary strain on the patience of the audience. The third sub-function—purpose—is the one that most emphatically makes narratives in rhetoric stand apart from, say, fictional narratives. To Lucaites and Condit, narratives in rhetorical discourse are always a true subset of a rhetorical artifact with an often very specific purpose, tied inextricably to the rhetor or sender of the artifact. The first formal consequence of this explicit link between a rhetorical artifact and its sender is that the narrative should aim for a “formal unity of narrator, author, and speaker” (101). The second consequence is that the ethos of the rhetor by necessity is connected to the impact of the narrative elements as well as vice versa. As should be evident, Lucaites and Condit express doubts about the validity of Fisher’s promotion of narrative to the position of master metaphor for human communication. Instead, their suggestion can be summed up as a poetics of the adequate use of narrative elements in rhetorical situations, an approach compatible with the ideas of narratives as statements of facts or examples: a “rhetorical narrative is a story that serves as an interpretative lens through which the audience is asked to view and understand the verisimilitude of the propositions and proof before it” (94). It is tempting to posit Fishers’ and Lucaites and Condit’s positions as extremes in a polarized discussion. Fisher deals with the epistemological qualities of narratives of social and individual identity but lacks adequate tools to analyze the specificity of the rhetorical narrative. Lucaites and Condit analyze these specifics but offer no tools for dealing with matters of more general narrative identification. Or, seen from another perspective: Lucaites and Condit offer few reasons for choosing narratives as part of an attempt to convince while Fisher claims that it is impossible to avoid narratives even if one tried to do so. 3.4 Recent Developments The difference is rather striking if one compares the massive proliferation of narrative studies with the amount of work done on narratives in

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rhetorical discourse during the last twenty years. As McClure put it in 2009: “in rhetorical theory and criticism narrative and the narrative paradigm have become virtually dead subjects” (2009: 189). Nevertheless, several pieces of interesting research have come out in the 2000s and early 2010s, most of which elaborate on Burke’s notion of identification while some also engage with aspects of Fisher’s concept of the narrative paradigm. Any scholar engaging with the narrative paradigm will have to position herself with regards to the double critique of the paradigm: on the one hand, its problem of being too general and wide, effectively turning narrative, as Rowland puts it, into a general “model for understanding the world” (Rowland 1989: 43); on the other hand, the problem of its analytical tools (probability and fidelity) being too narrow and inept at dealing with phenomena like the “inventional possibilities of new narratives, the rhetorical revision of old narratives, and the appeal and acceptance of improbable narrative accounts” (McClure 2009: 191). Stroud has taken issue with aspects of the second problem in a series of articles (Stroud 2002, 2003, 2004). Challenging Fisher’s ideas of probability and fidelity with a case that “involves contradictions at the level of values within a text and the reader’s necessitated activity of trying to synthesize or reconcile such contradictions,” Stroud revises the definitions of fidelity and probability to better account for situations where audiences encounter and make sense of discourse with “contradictory value structures” (2004: 42), which Stroud calls “multivalent narratives.” A more radical repositioning of the narrative paradigm is presented by the Burke expert McClure (2009). In stark contrast to the critique of the expansive ambitions of the narrative paradigm, McClure moves towards an “extension of the [narrative] paradigm that is consistent with poststructuralism” (191) through a further widening of the range of the Burkean notion of identification. 4 Topics for Further Investigation The lack of contemporary research on narratives in rhetorical discourse has left a range of pressing questions unanswered, some stemming from unresolved issues in the existing research, others raised by the transformations of communication brought on by, among other things, processes of digitalization and globalization. A major challenge in relation to the first set of questions is the problem of the epistemological reach and impact of narrative effects in rhetorical discourse. Are we to understand narratives (as Fisher argued) as

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a general master trope for human existence? Or are we rather, as Lucaites and Condit argued, to understand them as examples and statements of facts? Connected to this question of the place of narration are questions of the deliberative functions of narratives. To what extent should they be treated as subduing and thus a threat to processes of deliberation (Salmon [2007] 2010) or as subversive and thus a vehicle for such processes? Following this line of thought, what might the study of narratives in rhetorical discourse learn from work done on the ways in which narratives are used as tools for reversing or transforming existing opinions through the use of so-called counter-narratives (Bamberg & Andrews 2004; Godall 2010)? A promising but so far untapped field of investigation exists between work in rhetorical criticism of narratives and recent work in social sciences and sociology on narratives and storytelling in society and politics. Expanding the focus on personal life stories in narrative inquiry to a wider perspective of what Holstein and Gubrium call “the social life of stories” (2012: 3), several researchers offer new insights on, as the subtitle of Polletta (2006) dubs it: “storytelling in protest and politics.” Seen from the more rigorous viewpoints of classical and postclassical narratology, the study of narratives in rhetorical discourse seems lacking when it comes to definitions and delineations of the objects of study. Does it make sense to establish a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for narratives in rhetorical discourse, or are we better off with granular or prototypical descriptions? How much and what parts of narrative elements (or degrees of narrativity; Abbott → Narrativity) should be present in order for a rhetorical discourse to warrant a narrative analysis? And what and how does it matter whether a narrative in a rhetorical discourse employs strategies of fictionalization (Walsh 2007; Schaeffer → Fictional vs. Factual Narration)? The second set of questions has to do with the fact that the rhetorical narratives of today thrive in a new media ecology, making different demands on as well as offering new options for senders, audiences and the modalities of expression. With the shift from mass media to mass self-communication, and with the displacements of former distinctions between public and private brought on by social media, the forms and functions of narratives in rhetorical discourse are undergoing substantial changes. Socio-linguistic work on narratives (Georgakopoulou 2007) has argued that earlier theories of life narratives subscribed to an implicit understanding of narratives as stable, autonomous and monoperspectival entities, thus ignoring that in real, unfolding lives, narratives are often dialogical, multi-perspectival and fragmented. These

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insights have funneled into research on narrative in new media (Page & Bronwen 2011), but they have yet to be put to work on narratives in political rhetoric. Connected to these matters is the question of the audience. The study of narratives in rhetorical discourse could benefit from researchers engaging with powerful tools of rhetorical narratology such as the notion of positioning (Phelan 2005b) for analyzing the ethical and value-generating interactions between textual form and readerly response.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Aristotle (1984). Rhetoric. J. Barnes (ed.). The Complete Works of Aristotle, Vol. Two. Princeton: Princeton UP. Bamberg, Michael & Molly Andrews (2004). Considering Counter-Narratives: Narrating, Resisting, Making Sense. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Bitzer, Lloyd F. (1968). “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1.1, 1– 14. Burke, Kenneth (1951). “Rhetoric Old and New.” Journal of General Education 5, 202–209. Fisher, Walther (1984). “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm.” Communication Monographs 51, 1–22. – (1985). “The Narrative Paradigm: An Elaboration.” Communication Monographs 52, 347–367. – (1987). Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value and Action. Columbia: U of South Carolina P. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra (2007). Small Stories, Interaction and Identities. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Godall, H. L. (2010). Counter-Narrative: How Progressive Academics Can Challenge Extremists and Promote Social Justice. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast P. Hauser, Gerald A. (2002). Introduction to Rhetorical Theory. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press Inc. Holstein, James A. & Jaber F. Gubrium, eds. (2012). Varieties of Narrative Analysis. London: Sage Publications. Kirkwood, William G. (1992). “Narrative and the Rhetoric of Possibility.” Communication Monographs 59, 30–47. Kjeldsen, Jens E. (2008). “Mediated publics and rhetorical fragmentation.” Democracy, Journalism and Technology: New Developments in an Enlarged Europe. Tartu: Tartu UP, 115–128. Lucaites, John Louis & Celeste Michelle Condit (1985). “Re-constructing Narrative Theory: A Functional Perspective.” Journal of Communication 35.4, 90–108.

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MacIntyre, Alasdair (1981). After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. McClure, Kevin (2009). “Resurrecting the Narrative Paradigm: Identification and the Case of Young Earth Creationism.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 39.2, 189–211. Olbrechts-Tyteca, Lucie & Chaïm Perelman (1958). Traité de l’argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique. Paris: PUF. Page, Ruth & Thomas Bronwen, eds. (2011). New Narratives. Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Phelan, James (2005a). “Rhetorical Narratology.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 500–504. – (2005b). Living to Tell about It: A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. Polletta, Francesca (2006). It Was Like a Fever. Storytelling in Protest and Politics. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Quintilian (1920). Institutio Oratoria. Quoted from: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Quintilian/Institutio_Oratoria/4B*.html Rowland, Robert (1989). “On Limiting the Narrative Paradigm: Three Case Studies.” Communication Monographs 56, 39–54. Rowland, Robert (2009). “The Narrative Perspective.” J. Kuypers (ed.). Rhetorical Criticism. Perspectives in Action. Plymouth, MA: Lexington Books, 117–142. Salmon, Christian ([2007] 2010). Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind. London: Verso. Stroud, Scott R. (2002). “Multivalent Narratives: Extending the Narrative Paradigm with Insights from Ancient Indian Philosophical Texts.” Western Journal of Communication 66, 369–393. – (2003). “Narrative Translation Across Cultures: From the Bhagavad Gita to The Legend of Bagger Vance.” Journal of Communication and Religion 26.1, 51–82. – (2004). “Narrative as Argument in the Indian Philosophy: The Astāvakra Gitā as Multivalent Narrative.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 37, 42–71. Vatz, Richard E. (1973). “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 6.3, 154–161. Vatz, Richard E. (2009). “The Mythical Status of Situational Rhetoric: Implications for Rhetorical Critics’ Relevance in the Public Arena.” Review of Communication 9.1, 1–5. Walsh, Richard (2007). The Rhetoric of Fictionality. Columbus: Ohio State UP.

5.1 Further Reading Charland, Maurice (1987). “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québécois.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 73, 133–150. Foss, Sonja K. (2004). “Narrative Rhetoric.” Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice. Long Grove, Illinois: Waweland P., 333, 382. Hauser, Gerard (1999). Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres. Columbia: U of South Carolina P. Lewis, William F. (1987). “Telling America’s Story: Narrative Form and the Reagan Presidency.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 73, 280–302.

Narrativity H. Porter Abbott

1 Definition Though it has become a contested term, “narrativity” is still commonly used in two senses: in a fixed sense as the “narrativeness” of narrative and in a scalar sense as the “narrativeness” of a narrative, the one applied generally to the concept of narrative, the other applied comparatively to particular narratives. As such, it can be aligned with any number of modal pairings: e.g. the lyricism of the lyric/a lyric; the descriptiveness of description/a description. Depending on the context, these two uses of the term “narrativity” can serve their purposes effectively. But increasingly over the last three decades, the term has filled a growing and sometimes conflicting diversity of conceptual roles. In the process, other terms have, in varying ways, been drawn into the task of understanding narrativity, including “narrativeness” (used colloquially above), “narrativehood,” “narratibility,” “tellability,” “eventfulness,” “emplotment,” and “narrative” itself. To define narrativity fully, then, requires a survey not only of its different conceptual uses, but also of the supporting roles these other terms have been sometimes called on to play.

2 Explication This lively contestation has accompanied narrativity’s rise as a central term, and in some cases the central term (Sternberg, Sturgess, Fludernik, Audet, Simon-Shoshan), in narrative analytics. This is in large part because of the way the term has leant itself to a general shift away from the formalist constraints of structuralist narratology (where the term is rarely found) as attention has turned increasingly to the transaction between narratives and the audiences that bring them to life. As such, it has helped open up the study of narrative to an array of approaches— phenomenological, discursive, cognitive, historical, cultural, evolutionary—that have transformed the field.

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The term’s advantage in this expansion of disciplinary applications is built into its grammatical status as a reference to a property or properties rather than to a thing or class. As what one might call an “adjectival” noun, narrativity suggests connotatively a felt quality, something that may not be entirely definable or may be subject to gradations. Ryan’s distinction between “being a narrative” and “possessing narrativity” (2005c: 347, 2006a: 10–11) brings out the difference: where a narrative is a “semiotic object,” narrativity consists in “being able to inspire a narrative response” (2005c: 347). This flexibility and comparative freedom from restrictive categorizing (must a narrative have more than one event? [(Hühn → Event and Eventfulness)] must narrative events be causally connected? [Toolan → Coherence)] must they involve human or humanlike entities? [(Jannidis → Character)]) also gives the term a certain user-friendliness. To adapt Ryan’s language, if we ask: “Does Finnegans Wake have more or less narrativity than Little Red Riding Hood?” we will get much broader agreement than if we ask “Is Finnegans Wake a narrative?” (Ryan 2006a: 9, 2007: 30). In short, if narrative itself is a “fuzzy concept” (Ryan 2006b, 2007; Jannidis 2003), narrativity is a term more closely attuned to its fuzziness (Herman 2002). This practical advantage of the term has also abetted the development of a transgeneric and transmedial narratology (Wolf 2002; Ryan 2005c, 2006a; Hühn & Sommer → Narration in Poetry and Drama; Ryan → Narration in Various Media) that includes narrative in genres and media where words are no longer central to narration and where readers become viewers and even active participants. It has even facilitated consideration of narrativity in media that lack expectations of eventfulness (lyric poetry), sequentiality (painting), or even heteroreferentiality (referring to events outside the medial domain) that are the staple of narrative. Most controversial among the latter has been instrumental music, considered by many a purely self-referential artistic medium. Among those sketching a possible “narratology of music” (Kramer 1991; Newcomb 1987; McClary 1997; Micznik (2001); Wolf 2002, 2004; Meelberg (2006); Almén (2008); Grabócz 2009), it has been Micznik, Wolf, and Almén who have explicitly capitalized on the finer calipers of the term “narrativity” to capture narrative effects achievable in a medium that cannot tell a story. Not surprisingly, then, narrativity has been more often used as a variable quality than as a necessary component or set of components by which narrative can be defined. Thus Herman adopts the term “narrativehood” in the sense given it by Prince (1999) as a “binary predicate” by which “something either is or is not” deemed a story, and in this way reserves “narrativity” as a “scalar predicate” by which something is

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deemed “more or less prototypically storylike” (Herman 2002: 90–91). As Herman suggests, this distinction correlates with the distinction between “extensional” and “intensional” aspects of narrative which were introduced to narratology through the application of “possible worlds” theory by Doležel (1979, 1983, 1998), Pavel (1986), Ryan (1991), and others. Nevertheless, narrativity has not been used exclusively in an intensional sense. In his most recent reconsideration of this knotty terminological problem, Prince (2008) has sought to expand the concept of narrativity to include both extensional and intensional aspects. For the first—the entities that constitute narrative—he has retained the term narrativehood; for the second—the qualities or traits of narrative—he has applied the term narrativeness. In Prince’s view, both are scalar concepts in that they are subject to degrees, the first quantitative, the second qualitative. Without using the term narrativity at all, Morson (2003) also distinguishes between the defined object, for which he uses the term narrative, and the quality of narrativeness, which a narrative may or may not have (see also Hühn 2008: 143). Further complicating any effort to organize the range of discourse on narrativity are the ways in which the term has been deployed in modal or generic distinctions to delineate both a field of specifically narrative modes and a broader field in which narrative is one of a number of communicative and artistic modes. In both, its flexibility as a scalar phenomenon plays a role. At the broadest level of abstraction, then, the discussion of narrativity can be organized under four headings: (a) as inherent or extensional; (b) as scalar or intensional; (c) as variable according to narrative type; (d) as a mode among modes.

3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 Prehistory of Narrativity If, as noted above, the specific term “narrativity” did not develop its lively range of conceptual roles until the last decades of the 20th century, closely related concepts have been deployed from the start. The most influential precursor concept is the property of mediation, which Plato identified when distinguishing between the indirect representational character of diegesis and the direct presentational character of mimesis: the one narrated by the poet, the other performed (The Republic, Bk 3). As Schmid (2003: 17–18) notes, mediation was a central focus of classical narratology well before narratology got its name, notably in Stanzel’s major work of the 1950s and 1960s, later reinvigorated

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in A Theory of Narrative ([1979] 1984), but lacking the word “narrativity.” Another classical precursor concept is Aristotle’s idea of muthos, “the configuration of incidence in the story” (Greimas & Ricœur 1989: 551), which anticipates the concept of “emplotment,” a central term for Ricœur and others in the discourse on narrativity. In the development of structuralist narratology, the Russian formalist idea of “the dominant” has also been critical. Usually attributed to Tynjanov ([1927] 1971) and influentially developed by Jakobson, the dominant is the “focusing component of a work of art: it rules, determines, and transforms the remaining components” and as such guarantees “the integrity of the structure” (Jakobson [1935] 1971: 105). The dominant has been taken up by Sternberg and others as a categorical determinant, a perceived modal predominance, distinguishing any particular narrative from other modal kinds (see 3.5 below). 3.2 Narrativity as Inherent or Extensional Though narrativity has leant itself predominantly to usage that is intensional, subjective, and variable according to context, audience, and other factors, there have been several powerful conceptions of the term as inherent, determinative, and co-extensive with any particular narrative. 3.2.1 Immanence Greimas is the major exception to the general structuralist neglect of narrativity. His conception of the term is also notable for its breadth of application, referring to a structuring force that generates not simply all narratives but all discourse: “le principe organisateur de tout discours” (Greimas & Courtés 1979: 249). With regard to narrative in particular, Greimas distinguishes between an apparent and an immanent level of narration, with narrativity located in the latter. As such, “narrativity is situated and organized prior to its manifestation. A common semiotic level is thus distinct from the linguistic level and is logically prior to it, whatever the language chosen for the manifestation” (Greimas [1969] 1977: 23). It is also important to note that, for Greimas, narrativity is a disorganizing as well as an organizing force in that it disrupts old orders even as it generates new ones. It is “the irruption of the discontinuous” into the settled discourse “of a life, a story, an individual, a culture,” disarticulating the existing discourse “into discrete states between which it sets transformations” ([1983] 1987: 104). To bear this in mind is to see the deep commonality of modes (descriptive, argumentative,

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narrative) often left segmented in analytical terminology. In an analysis of Maupassant’s “A Piece of String,” Greimas carefully demonstrates how customary distinctions such as that between descriptive and narrative segments give way at a deeper level that organizes “according to canonical rules of narrativity” ([1973] 1989: 625). However static they may appear to be, descriptive segments are imbued with the same undergirding narrativity that organizes the segments of action. 3.2.2 Emplotment For Ricœur, a key manifestation of narrativity is “emplotment,” the articulation of which involves “broadening, radicalizing, [and] enriching” the Aristotelean idea of plot with the Augustinian understanding of time ([1985] 1988: 4). This allows him on the one hand to develop a complex reassessment of the temporal difference between fictional and historical narrative, while on the other to bring out their deep commonality. To accomplish this, Ricœur, like Greimas, posits a deep level of narrativity; but unlike Greimas, he sees it as a “pre-understanding” of our historical mindedness—“an intelligibility of the historicality that characterizes us” (Greimas & Ricœur 1989: 552)—and it lies at the heart of his critique of Greimas’s a-temporal model of fictional narrative (Ricœur [1980] 1981). In addition, and further differentiating his usage from that of Greimas, Ricœur saw the operation of emplotment as a dialectical process, a dynamic interaction between this “first-order intelligence” and the surface level where narrative is structurally manifest in the text (Greimas & Ricœur 1989: 551–552). Emplotment, then, is an evolving, processual feed-back loop between the informing level of narrativity and the particularity of its manifestation. Like Ricœur, White (1973, 1978, 1981) does not limit narrativity to the designated modes of fiction. But where Ricœur’s theory of emplotment not only bonds but distinguishes fictional and nonfictional narrativity (Schaeffer → Fictional vs. Factual Narration), White has tended over the course of his writings to stress the commonality of their narrativity. More than this, narrativity is for White a “panglobal fact of culture,” without which there is no conveying knowledge as meaning. Narrativity is at one with the perception of meaning because meaning only emerges when events have been “emplotted” with “the formal coherency that only stories can possess” (White 1981: 19). For this reason, history, by definition, cannot exist without narrativity. In its absence, there is a mere succession of events (annals) or, at best, events organized by some other means than plot (chronicles). It is emplotment that brings events to life, endowing them with cultural meaning, since

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“[t]he significance of narrative is not latent in the data of experience, or of imagination, but fabricated in the process of subjecting that data to the elemental rhetoric of the narrative form itself” (Walsh 2007: 39). The final irony, then, is that narrativity is the unacknowledged necessity of what we take for truth, for to attain the status of truth, a representation of “the real” requires, at a minimum, “the character of narrativity” (White 1981: 6). 3.2.3 A Logic of Narrativity For Sturgess, too, narrativity is inherent in narrative. It is an “enabling force” that “is present at every point in the narrative” (Sturgess 1992: 28). He also echoes Greimas when he writes of narrativity’s power over “nonnarrative” segments like descriptive passages. It governs “not only the chronology of a novel’s story, but equally every interruption of that chronology, and every variation in the mode of representation of that story” (22). At the same time, he situates himself in opposition to Greimas’s idea of “a deep structural level of narrative which is presumed in some way to account for the existence of the narrative in question” (14). Drawing on Bremond’s (1973) critique of Greimas, Sturgess sees narrativity instead as an all-determining “logic” or “power of narrativity which decides” how elements are deployed at any moment in a narrative (Sturgess 1992: 140–141). Cohen also proposes a logic of narrativity, but one that simply requires that the languages of literary and filmic fiction render their signs consecutively. The result, however, is also a co-extensively inherent narrativity that the reader or viewer is led to apprehend: “an unfolding structure, the diegetic whole, that is never fully present in any one group yet always implied in each group” (1979: 92). Like Sturgess, and unlike Ricœur and White, Cohen restricts narrativity to works of conscious art. But Sturgess’s concept differs from all three in two fundamental ways. First, for Sturgess, the “logic of narrativity” requires no sequential structuring principle, but simply the ability to arouse “a sense of its own wholeness” as narrative (1992: 28). Second, narrativity only crystallizes when the reader is persuaded that what is being read is a narrative. It is in this sense a reflexive concept. An advantage of both Sturgess’s and Cohen’s logics is the way they can accommodate postmodern and other extreme forms of weakened or obscured storyline that are often considered “anti-narrative,” since “every narrative will possess its own form of narrativity” (Sturgess: ibid.). In Cohen’s words, even “the randomness common to […] surrealist experiments points to the fundamental and seemingly inevitable

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narrativity of cinematic and literary language” (1979: 92). A disadvantage of this approach to narrativity is the threat of circularity, which weakens both its analytical leverage and its ability to distinguish narrative competence from narrative incompetence. 3.3 As Scalar or Intensional Some scholars start out with an extensional definition of narrativity, equating it with a “set” of defining conditions, as in “the set of qualities marking narrative and helping a reader or viewer perceive the difference between narrative and non-narrative texts” (Keen 2003: 121) or “the set of properties characterizing narrative and distinguishing it from nonnarrative” (Prince [1987] 2003: 65). But these same scholars will often go on to treat the concept of narrativity as an intensional quality by which a text is felt to be “more or less narrative” (ibid.). Indeed, as Schmid (2003: 30) notes, it is hard to remain objective or to do away with an interpretive stance when discussing the scalar narrativity of texts. This double usage of narrativity is the problem Prince (2008) set out to resolve when he divided narrativity into narrativehood and narrativeness. As he demonstrates, the scalar nature of narrativity is not only complicated by the variable combinability of these two subcategories but by other factors as well. With similar ambition, Ryan has spelled out a “tentative formulation of [nine] nested conditions” that might be used in describing narrative as a “fuzzy set,” recognizable in any particular work according to the number and importance of the conditions present (Ryan 2006a: 7–10, 2006b: 194). Many scholars have, nonetheless, centered their theorizing on a single manifestation of narrativity, while explicitly or implicitly acknowledging the complexity of narrative response that makes narrativity both a scalar and a fuzzy concept. This in turn means that there can be no pure segregation of their work under one caption or another. 3.3.1 Sequentiality In the 1970s, when Sternberg developed his theory of three overarching “master forces” of narrative—curiosity, suspense, and surprise (1978)—he did not use the word “narrativity.” In more recent years, however, the term “narrativity” has become increasingly useful for him as “the play of suspense/curiosity/surprise between represented and communicative time.” The important sequentiality in this regard is an intersequentiality entailing “an interplay between the one sequence's flow of developments and the other's flow of disclosures” (2010: 637).

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A narrative, then, is a text in which “such play dominates.” Narrativity would appear to be a scalar property which can be “stronger” or “weaker,” but when it is dominant in any text, its “functional” character is to act as a “regulating principle” (1992: 529). At this point, the theory transits to a concept of inherency. Thus “strong narrativity […] not merely represents an action but interanimates the three generic forces that play between narrated and narrational time” (2001: 119). If this process "constantly changes en route from beginning to end" (2010: 637), these changes involve fluid qualitative adjustments of thought and feeling as the text is processed by the mind. But they, along with all the other elements of the narrative, are orchestrated according to “the unbreakable lawlikeness of the narrative process itself” (2003: 328). Almost all arguments identifying narrativity with sequentiality start from the idea that there is more to it than simply one thing after the other. In this they follow antecedent theorizing ranging from Aristotle’s view of the well-made tragedy to Tomaševskij’s ([1925] 1965) definition of fabula and Forster’s ([1927] 1962) definition of plot, all of which stress the importance of causal connection. Since then, much theorizing about narrative has featured a sense of causal agency as “a necessary condition of narrativity” (Richardson 1997: 106; White 1981; Bal [1985] 1997; Bordwell 1985; Rabinowitz 1987). Pier (2008) more rigorously distinguishes between treatments of causality suitable in defining narrative and “narrative worlds” and a more adequate understanding of narrativity in relation to the complex, evolving, process of causal inference “set in motion by heuristic reading and semiotic reading” (134). More recently, understanding of sequentiality has been enlarged by the importation of schema theory from cognitive psychology (Bordwell 1985; Fludernik 1996; Herman 2002; Hühn 2008; Emmott & Alexander → Schemata). Especially important has been the concept of cognitive scripts in analyzing what happens at the script/story interface (Herman 2002). Scripts are stereotypical sequences warehoused in the brain that together contribute to Bruner’s (1991) “canonicity” or the expectations on which Sternberg’s sequence of curiosity/suspense/sur-prise depends. They participate in varying degrees of narrativity, depending on the extent to which they are breached with the unexpected. (For further commentary on narrativity and schema theory, see 3.2.4 below.) Ryan complicated the sequential unfolding of scalar narrativity when she located it in the varying ratio of two levels: “one pertaining to story (or the ‘what’ of a narrative) and the other to the discourse (or the ‘way’ such narrative content is presented).” For example, “[t]he same text can present full narrativity in sense 1, but low narrativity in sense

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2, when it tells a well-formed story but the progress of the action is slowed down by descriptions, general comments, and digressions” (2007: 34 n.25). Kermode (1983) takes this bi-level approach a step further. In narratives of any complexity, he argues, the sequentiality of the story’s narrativity is always at war with the nonnarrativity of the discourse. Narrativity on this view is a kind of psycho-cultural “propriety” that lies in the comforting “connexity” of the fabula, accepted simply as such. In this way, Kermode’s account of the reassurance of story chimes with White’s idea of narrativity as a conduit of ideological doxa. But for Kermode, what disturbs the orthodoxy freighted in the narrativity of the fabula is the sujet or the rendering of the story. It is the sujet that prevents us, if we are intent on not “underreading,” from resting in the story’s reassuring sequential narrativity, for it abounds in “mutinous” nonnarrative elements that contend with the text’s narrativity, crying out to be accommodated by interpretation even as they frustrate it (137). 3.3.2 Eventfulness Recent attention to eventfulness by the Hamburg Narratology Research Group responds to the need for a clearer understanding of what constitutes a narrative event than is found in most sequentiality-based theories (Hühn 2008: 146). Schmid (2003) develops his theory of eventfulness within a definition of the narrative event as a non-trivial change of state that takes place and reaches completion (is “resultative”) in the actual (“real”) world of any particular fictional narrative. Its narrativity, then, depends on its non-triviality, which in turn is a factor of its eventfulness. For Schmid this depends on five key variable features: relevance, unpredictability, persistence, irreversibility, and non-iterativity. Hühn (2008) supplements Schmid’s concept by drawing on schema theory and Lotman’s concept of the “semantic field.” Combining these two areas of research gives Hühn’s version of eventfulness an analytical scope that includes both the cognitive drama of schematic disruption and an awareness of historical and cultural contexts afforded by the recognition of differing semantic socio-cultural fields. Audet has sought to disconnect the concept of narrativity from any dependent connection with crafted narrative, identifying it instead with the more widely occurring sense of what he calls “eventness [événementialité], […] where the tension between a before and an after seems to generate a virtuality, that of a story to come” ([2006] 2007: 34). Audet builds on Lotman’s idea of a hierarchy of events, proposing three levels or types of event: the “inworld event” (concrete action), the “dis-

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cursive event,” and the “operal event” (“connected to the performing of the work itself”) (33), each of which in its emergence raises narrativity through its aura of events to come. However far one wishes to go down this road with Audet, he, like Cohen, Sturgess, and as we will see Fludernik, has found a way to accommodate those postmodern experimental texts that often frustrate narratologists wedded to a narrativecentered theory. Morson (2003) also uses a concept of eventness (with other qualities) in developing his scalar concept of narrativeness. Adapting the term from Bakhtin, Morson’s version of eventness is the sense of multiple (but not infinite) possibilities for what will ensue, given where we are in the narrative. It is a feeling of “process” not unlike that of life as it is lived (72). It is the source of narrative suspense, and, to the degree that a narrative sustains from one moment to the next this quality of being open to future developments, to the same degree does the reader experience the quality of narrativeness. 3.3.3 Tellability Originally introduced by Labov (1972), tellability (Baroni → Tellability) (or narratibility; cf. Prince 2008) is what makes a story worth telling. It allows a positive answer to the question “What’s the point?” and has often been “hard to disentangle” from narrativity (Ryan 2005b: 589). Specifically, tellability is the variable potential of a story as yet unnarrativized, while narrativity is the variable success of its narrativizing. In Herman’s precise wording: “Situations and events can be more or less tellable; the ways in which they are told can […] display different degrees of narrativity. Thus, whereas both predicates are scalar, tellability attaches to configurations of facts and narrativity to sequences representing those configurations of facts” (2002: 100). Nonetheless, the border between the two concepts has often been blurred. In scalar conceptions of narrativity, tellability often ranks high on the list of qualities that participate in a text’s narrativity. Bruner (1991) asserts that without tellability there can be no narrativity. Tellability is also essential to Fludernik’s experience-based concept of narrativity. Conceived as the narrator’s emerging sense of the importance (“point”) of the events narrated, tellability, for Fludernik, is the third of three narrational operations—reviewing past events, reproducing them, and evaluating them—that, when conjoined, “constitute narrativity” (2003: 245). For Hühn (2008), eventfulness is the prior concept on which tellability depends. In passing, he makes the useful distinction between narratives with sufficient eventfulness to be tellable and what he terms “process

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narratives,” found in the sciences, historiography, lawsuits, and even in recipes and instruction manuals, which are “a more descriptive and neutrally informative way of tracing and communicating developments, processes, and changes” (145 n.30). Elaborating further, Hühn argues that tellability is absent from the narrativity of the uneventful, plotless narration of type I events, but is the key distinction of the eventful, emplotted narration of type II events (see Hühn → Event and Eventfulness). 3.3.4 Narrative Competence and Experientiality The increasing concern for reader/audience response in postclassical narratology has led to a focus on narrative competence, which has involved varying degrees of a “constructivist” orientation to narrativity like the one Scholes (1982) developed in reaction to the widespread use of the term in film theory as “a property of films themselves.” In English, Scholes argued, the word narrativity “implies a more sentient character than we generally allow an artifact. For this reason and some others,” Scholes employs the word “to refer to the process by which a perceiver actively constructs a story from the fictional data provided by any narrative medium. A fiction is presented to us in the form of a narration (a narrative text) that guides us as our own narrativity seeks to complete the process that will achieve a story” (60). Echoing Iser ([1972] 1974) and Sternberg (1978), Scholes’s concept of narrativity engages in fictional world-making by filling in gaps, both “passive or automatic” and “active or interpretive,” guided always by the semiotics of fictional and filmic language (Scholes 1982: 61). Once aroused, the “primary effort” of our narrativity is “to construct a satisfying order of events.” This it does by exercising the power of our narrativity in concert with the “narrational blueprints” (69) of the art to construct “two features: temporality and causality” (ibid.). Anticipating McHale’s (2001) view of weak narrativity, Scholes argued that this exercise of our gift of narrativity is essential even in those postmodern and experimental novels and films that seek to disrupt it, since without this cognitive and semiotic equipment the effects of their disruption would go unexperienced (64). Leitch also adopted a constructivist narrativity, but with an account of the capabilities required that is interestingly different from Scholes’s: “At its simplest level, narrativity entails three skills: the ability to defer one’s desire for gratification; […] the ability to supply connections among the material a story presents; and the ability to perceive discursive events as significantly related to the point of a given story or se-

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quence” (Leitch 1986: 34). For Leitch (similarly to Scholes), it is up to any particular narrative “to cultivate an appropriate degree of narrativity, which may vary widely from one story to the next” (35). However, both stop short of a more extreme constructivism by contending that narrativity leaves off when we are no longer “under the illusionary guidance of a maker of narratives” (Scholes 1982: 64). This would leave out of account the power of narrativity to read a narrative where none is intended—to project, for example, from natural events the signs of a maker intent on communicating a prophetic story. “Life resumes,” Scholes writes, “when narrativity ceases” (ibid.). Nelles goes further in the direction of readerly control when he defines narrativity as “the product of a tropological operation by which the metaphor of narration is applied to a series of words on a page. To read a text by means of the trope of narration is to read out of it a narrator and its voice, and a narratee and its ear” (Nelles 1997: 116). Narrativity is at work, in other words, when a reader frames, or reframes, a text as narrative, an operation that can be applied even to texts commonly designated as something else (a lyric poem, an argument, a piece of music). Once such a text is imbued with narrativity, “the tools of narrative analysis can be applied” (120). From here it is a short step to narrativity as a universal feature of creative perception, that power that White theorizes as at once seeing and making history where there is none—the power to narrativize the real. The infusion of cognitive research has invigorated research on narrative competence. Notable in this regard is the work of Fludernik, for whom narrativity is quite explicitly “not a quality inhering in a text, but rather an attribute imposed on the text by the reader who interprets the text as narrative, thus narrativizing the text” (2003: 244). Fludernik derives the essential quality of narrativity from what she calls “human experientiality,” building on pre-cognitive work by Hamburger ([1957] 1993) and Cohn (1978) that had keyed narrative to its unique capability of portraying consciousness. Fludernik enlarges this focus with insight gained from Labovian discourse analysis and schema theory, expanding it to encompass a great range of expressive acts, starting with the conversation of everyday life (Fludernik → Conversational Narration – Oral Narration). Thus when readers encounter texts formally described as narratives, they draw on an immense accumulation of frames and scripts that arise from the experience of life itself. In this way, Fludernik displaces the centrality traditionally conferred on the formal properties of “story,” “plot,” and “narrator” in definitions of narrative, while (like Cohen, Sturgess, and Audet in their different ways) expanding the range of full narrative legitimacy to experimental

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fiction in which these properties are barely perceptible. At the same time, by locating narrativity as a “natural” process not dependent on the experience of literature, Fludernik broadens what Culler (1975: 134– 160) called “naturalization”—the process by which a reader gains or seeks to gain cognitive control over texts. She also narrows this process to a specifically narrative operation, replacing Culler’s term “naturalization” with “narrativization,” by which the reader draws on a compendium of experiential, not strictly literary, schemata marshaled under the “macro-frame” of narrativity. It is this that allows a “re-cognization of a text as narrative” (Fludernik 1996: 313). Only to the degree that a text resists narrativization does it discourage perceptions of narrativity. Yet even extreme postmodern textual derangements and other such “unnatural” cases, if repeated often enough, may become part of a reader’s natural experience and thus susceptible to narrativization. Herman, in his turn, builds on the “natural narratology” of Fludernik, Labov, and others, drawing, as they did, on cognitive theory and discourse analysis. For Herman, too, narrativity can be found in the larger terrain of human experience, and indeed much of his work intermixes a focus on narrativity as it occurs in conversation, ranging across a spectrum from the banal to the unfathomable. To put this in his words: “Narrativity is a function of the more or less richly patterned distribution of script-activating cues in a sequence. Both too many and too few script-activating cues diminish narrativity” (Herman 2002: 91). But Herman also critiques Fludernik’s reliance on “experientiality” as the determinate factor in gauging a text’s degree of narrativity. To do so, he argues, places “too much weight on a participant role whose degree of salience derives from a larger, preference-based system of roles” (2002: 169, 2009: passim). Phelan (2005, 2007), from his quite differently oriented “rhetorical understanding of narrativity,” also advocates maintaining a focus on both sides of the reader/text transaction. For him, narrativity is a complex, “double-layered phenomenon” involving both a progression of events and a progression of reader response. Each is characterized by a “dynamics of instability,” the one driving the tale, the other driving the response to it (Phelan 2007: 7). The tension of characters acting and reacting in an unstable situation is accompanied by a “tension in the telling—unstable relations among authors, narrators, and audiences,” and it is the complex interaction of the two kinds of instability that constitutes narrativity and that “encourages two main activities: observing and judging” (ibid.). Put differently, narrativity involves “the interaction of two kinds of change: that experienced by the characters and that experienced by the audience in its developing responses to the charac-

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ters’ changes” (Phelan 2005: 323). As a scalar concept, “[v]ery strong narrativity depends on the work’s commitment to both sets of variables (textual and readerly). Weak narrativity arises from the work’s lack of interest in one or both sets of variables” (Phelan 2007: 215; see also Ryan 2007; Prince 2008). 3.3.5 Fictionality Keen draws attention to a “slippage” whereby fictionality has been included as an index of narrativity (2003: 121). This controversial association of narrativity and fictionality can be traced back to Hamburger ([1957] 1993). However, as noted above, White (1973, 1978, 1981), has encouraged not just a slippage but a conflation of narrativity, fictionality, and history. Historical narratives are “verbal fictions the contents of which are as much invented as found and the forms of which have more in common with their counterparts in literature than they have with those in science” (1978: 82). Consciously or not, White ironizes a distinction that Woolf expressed when she wrote, “Let it be fact, one feels, or let it be fiction. The imagination will not serve under two masters simultaneously” (Woolf [1927] 1994: 473; see also Ryan 1991; Doležel 1998: 1–28; Cohn 1999: chap. 7). From his functionalist standpoint, Walsh rises above both White’s extreme view that “[a]ll narrativity […] shares in the properties of fictionality” and the counterargument for an absolute categorical distinction between fiction and nonfiction. “Fictionality,” he contends, “is the product of a narrative’s frame of presentation, of the various possible elements of what Gérard Genette has described as the paratext” (2007: 45). Correlatively, “a rhetoric of fictionality depends for its cultural currency upon its functional distinctiveness from nonfictional narrativity” (46). 3.4 As Variable according to Narrative Type, Genre, or Mode Herman writes that “narrative genres are distinguished by different preference-rule systems prescribing different ratios of stereotypic to nonstereotypic actions and events” (2002: 91). Variant narrativities, in other words, accompany generic variations among the totality of narrative genres. In her influential essay, “The Modes of Narrativity,” Ryan (1992) developed a narrativity-based taxonomy of narrative text types that included “simple narrativity” (dealing with a single conflict as in fairy tales and anecdotes), “complex narrativity” (having interconnected narrative threads as in the triple-decker 19th-century novel), “figural narrativity” (abstract universals, concepts, or collectivities freighted on

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characters and events as in certain lyrical and philosophical works), “instrumental narrativity” (illustrative support in sermons and treatises), and “proliferating narrativity” (having no overarching narrative but a series of little narratives involving the same cast of characters as in picaresque and magical realist novels). Ryan (1992, 2004, 2005c) also invokes the necessity of a modal view of narrativity if we are fully to grasp the narrative potential of non-verbal media: “It is only by recognizing other modes of narrativity […]—modes such as illustrating, retelling, evoking, and interpreting—that we can acknowledge the narrative power of media without a language track” (2005a: 292). Hühn (→ Event and Eventfulness) distinguishes between “broad” and “narrow” definitions of narrativity according to whether one is operating with a minimal definition of narrative with its minimal concept of event (type I) or a more restricted definition of narrative, requiring an event or events that fulfill certain conditions (type II). Hühn’s distinction yields a fixed concept of narrativity for “plotless” or “process” narration built from type I events, but yields a scalar concept of narrativity for “plotted” narration in which type II events play an integral role. In her three-part anatomy of narrativity, Revaz (2009) includes a plotless type (chronicle) organized solely by chronology (diary-like genres), followed in ascending degrees of complexity by relation and récit (fully emplotted narrative). Fludernik, resisting the efforts of some to extend full narrativity to historical writing, categorizes it instead as “restricted narrativity, narrative that has not quite come into its own” (1996: 26). Finally, where Ryan (1992) uses the term “anti-narrativity,” McHale settles on the term “weak narrativity” to describe the way in which Hejinian, Ashbery, and other avant-garde narrative poets interpolate, break up, or suspend narrative lines in their work. In such works, narrativity is not abolished; rather, “we intuit that we are in the presence of narrativity. But at the same time that our sense of narrative is being solicited, it is also being frustrated” (McHale 2001: 164). 3.5 As a Mode among Modes Chatman’s widely referenced distinction between narrative “text-types” and “non-narrative text-types” (argument, exposition, description) draws on the idea of a type-determinative “overriding” presence of one property or another (1990: 21). Though he does not use the term “narrativity,” in essence he is echoing the Russian formalist concept of the “dominant” that Sternberg deploys when he writes of the way a predominating narrativity draws technically non-narrative elements into a narrative whole.

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Phelan sets narrativity in contrast to two other modes: lyricality, in which the dominant is “an emotion, a perception, an attitude, a belief” or some form of meditation; and portraiture, in which the dominant is the revelation of character. All three can to some extent be present in a text of any length, but a text is hybridized when two or more are present in strength, with one or the other dominating (Phelan 2007: 22– 24). What is meant by “hybrid” and by the terms, “dominate” and “dominant” is itself a question on which there is room for debate. Sternberg, for example, argues for the importance of “properly [naming] the text after its dominant” since, once narrativity dominates, it draws the nonnarrative elements under its control in a way that is absolute. This includes “language, existents, thematics, point of view, etc.” as well as descriptive phrases and “equivalence patterns.” Under sufficient narrative pressure, “the descriptive turns kinetic” (Sternberg 2001: 119–120). This would appear, however, to exclude the possibility of hybrids for, given the dominant, “everything assimilates and conduces to its narrativity, as inversely with narrative elements in descriptive writing” (121). For Schmid (2003: 21–22), the situation can be more fluid, such that there are hybrid texts in which the functionality of descriptive and narrative elements can vie for dominance. A key element in reading such texts, then, is how the reader chooses to interpret them. In sum, the growing attention to the term “narrativity” continues to keep pace with the increasing range and richness of narratological debate. Whether or not this term will eventually displace the centrality of the term “narrative,” what Prince wrote over a decade ago still holds true: “further study of narrativity constitutes perhaps the most significant task of narratology today” (1999: 43).

4 Topics for Further Investigation (a) The widely endorsed idea promoted by Bruner, Sacks, and others that “each of us constructs and lives a narrative” (Sacks 1985: 105) has been attacked by Strawson (2004) as a fallacy that does not match the “gappy” discontinuity of consciousness and selfhood. But the issue is more complex than either position (Battersby 2006), and narrativity may play a key role in resolving it. (b) Related to this is the need for more work on narrativity as a part of what Brooks calls “our cognitive toolkit” (2005: 415; Herman 2002, 2009). (c) The narrativity of dreams is a limit case on which much depends in the definition of narrativity. On the one hand, there is flat rejection (Prince 2000: 16); on the other, support (Metz 1974; Walsh 2010). (d) Work is needed on narrativity in

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digital media, especially in narrativized games (Ryan 2006a) and what Aarseth (1997) calls ergodic literature in which the “story” is created in real time insofar as the events are determined by “non-trivial” actions of the players. (e) A highly consequential and disputed area for research is the role narrativity plays in law, its ethics and its practice (Brooks & Gewirtz 1996; Brooks 2005; Abbott [2002] 2008: 175–192; Sternberg 2008; Simon-Shoshan 2012; Ayelet 2013). (f) Narrativity may well turn out to be a key concept in building a critical and theoretical understanding of “narrative-impaired” art that has recently been gathered under the heading of “unnatural narratology.”

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Aarseth, Espen (1997). Cybertext: Perspectives of Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Abbott, H. Porter ([2002] 2008). The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Almén, Byron (2008). A Theory of Musical Narrative. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Audet, René ([2006] 2007). “Narrativity: Away from Story, Close to Eventness.” R. Audet et al. (eds.). Narrativity: How Visual Arts, Cinema and Literature are Telling the World Today. Paris: Dis Voir, 7–35. Ayelet, Ben-Yishai (2013). Common Precedents: The Presentness of the Past in Victorian Law and Fiction. Oxford: Oxford UP. Bal, Mieke ([1985] 1997). Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Battersby, James I. (2006). “Narrativity, Self, and Self Representation.” Narrative 14, 27–44. Bordwell, David (1985). Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: U of Wisconsin P. Bremond, Claude (1973). Logique du récit. Paris: Seuil. Brooks, Peter (2005). “Narrative in and of the Law.” J. Phelan & P. Rabinowitz (eds.). A Companion to Narrative Theory. Malden: Blackwell, 415–426. – & Paul Gewirtz (1996). Law’s Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law. New Haven: Yale UP. Bruner, Jerome (1991). “The Narrative Construction of ‘Reality’.” Critical Inquiry 18, 1–21. Chatman, Seymour (1990). Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Cohen, Keith (1979). Film and Fiction. New Haven: Yale UP. Cohn, Dorrit (1978). Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP. – (1999). The Distinction of Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.

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Culler, Jonathan (1975). Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Doležel, Lubomír (1979). “Extensional and Intensional Narrative Worlds.” Poetics 8, 193–211. – (1983). “Proper Names, Definite Descriptions, and the Intensional Structure of Kafka’s ‘The Trial’.” Poetics 12, 511–526. – (1998). Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. – (2003). “Natural Narratology and Cognitive Parameters.” D. Herman (ed.). Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences. Stanford: CSLI Publications, 243–267. Forster, Edward M. ([1927] 1962). Aspects of the Novel. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Grabócz, Márta (2009). Musique, Narrativité, Signification. Paris: L'Harmattan. Greimas, Algirdas Julien ([1969] 1977). “Elements of a Narrative Grammar.” Diacritics 7, 23–40. – ([1973] 1989). “Description and Narrativity: ‘The Piece of String’.” New Literary History 20, 615–626. – ([1983] 1987). “A Problem of Narrative Semiotics: Objects of Value.” A. J. Greimas. On Meaning: Selected Writings in Semiotic Theory. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. – & Joseph Courtés (1979). Sémiotique: dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du langage. Paris: Hachette. – & Paul Ricœur (1989). “On Narrativity.” New Literary History 20, 551–562. Hamburger, Käte ([1957] 1993). The Logic of Literature. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Herman, David (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. – (2009). Basic Elements of Narrative. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Hühn, Peter (2008). “Functions and Forms of Eventfulness in Narrative Fiction.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 141–163. Iser, Wolfgang ([1972] 1974). The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Jakobson, Roman ([1935] 1971). “The Dominant.” L. Matejka & K. Pomorska (eds.). Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views. Cambridge: MIT P, 105–110. Jannidis, Fotis (2003). “Narratology and Narrative.” T. Kindt & H.-H. Müller (eds.). What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: de Gruyter, 35–54. Kafalenos, Emma (2006). Narrative Causalities. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Keen, Suzanne (2003). Narrative Form. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Kermode, Frank (1983). The Art of Telling: Essays on Fiction. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Kramer, Lawrence (1991). “Musical Narratology: A Theoretical Outline.” Indiana Theory Review 12, 141–162. Labov, William (1972). Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. Leitch, Thomas M. (1986). What Stories Are: Narrative Theory and Interpretation. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP.

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McClary, Susan (1997). “The Impromptu that Trod on a Loaf: or How Music Tells Stories.” Narrative 5, 20–35. McHale, Brian (2001). “Weak Narrativity: The Case of Avant-Garde Narrative Poetry.” Narrative 9, 161–167. Meelberg, Vincent (2006). New Sounds, New Stories: Narrativity in Contemporary Music. Leiden: Leiden UP. Metz, Christian ([1974] 1982). The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Micznik, Vera (2001). “Music and Narrative Revisited: Degrees of Narrativity in Beethoven and Mahler.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 126, 193–249. Morson, Gary Saul (2003). “Narrativeness.” New Literary History 34, 59–73. Nelles, William (1997). Frameworks: Narrative Levels and Embedded Narrative. New York: Lang. Newcomb, Anthony (1987). “Schuman and Late-Eighteenth-Century Narrative Strategies.” Nineteenth-Century Music 11, 164–175. Pavel, Thomas G. (1986). Fictional Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Phelan, James (2005). “Narrative Judgements and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative: Ian McEwan’s Atonement.” J. Phelan & P. Rabinowitz (eds.). A Companion to Narrative Theory. Malden: Blackwell, 322–336. – (2007). Experiencing Fiction: Judgments, Progressions, and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Pier, John (2008). “After this, therefore because of this.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 109–140. Prince, Gerald ([1987] 2003). A Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. – (1999). “Revisiting Narrativity.” W. Grünzweig & A. Solbach (eds.). Grenzüberschreitungen: Narratologie im Kontext / Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Context. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 43–51. – (2000). “Forty-One Questions on the Nature of Narrative.” Style 34, 317–317. – (2008). “Narrativehood, Narrativity, Narratability.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 19–27. Rabinowitz, Peter J. (1987). Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation. Ithaca: U of Cornell P. Revaz, Françoise (2009). Introduction à la narratologie: Action et narration. Brussels: De Boeck Duculot. Richardson, Brian (1997). Unlikely Stories: Causality and the Nature of Modern Narrative. Newark: U of Delaware P. Ricœur, Paul ([1980] 1981). “Narrative Time.” W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.). On Narrative. Chicago: U of Chicago P. – ([1985] 1988). Time and Narration. Vol. 3. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP. – (1992). “The Modes of Narrativity and Their Visual Metaphors.” Style 26, 368– 387. – (2004). “Introduction.” M.-L. Ryan (ed). Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1–40.

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(2005a). “Media and Narrative.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 288–292. – (2005b). “Tellability.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 589–591. – (2005c). “On the Theoretical Foundations of Transmedial Narratology.” J. Ch. Meister (ed.). Narratology beyond Literary Criticism: Mediality, Disciplinarity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1–23. – (2006a). Avatars of Story: Narrative Modes in Old and New Media. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. – (2006b). “Semantics, Pragmatics, and Narrativity: A Response to David Rudrum.” Narrative 14, 188–196. – (2007). “Toward a Definition of Narrative.” D. Herman (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 22–35. Sacks, Oliver (1985). The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. New York: Summit Books. Schmid, Wolf (2003). “Narrativity and Eventfulness.” T. Kindt & H.-H. Müller (eds.). What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: de Gruyter, 17–34. Scholes, Robert (1982). Semiotics and Interpretation. New Haven: Yale UP. Simon-Shoshan, Moshe (2012). Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah. New York: Oxford UP. Stanzel, Franz K. ([1979] 1984). A Theory of Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Sternberg, Meir (1978). Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – (1992). “Telling in Time (II): Chronology, Teleology, Narrativity.” Poetics Today 13, 463–541. – (2001). “How Narrativity Makes a Difference.” Narrative 9, 115–122. – (2003). “Universals of Narrative and their Cognitivist Fortunes (I).” Poetics Today 24, 297–395. – (2008). “If-Plots: Narrativity and the Law-Code.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 29–107. – (2010). “Narrativity: from Objectivist to Functional Paradigm. Poetics Today 31: 507–659. Strawson, Galen (2004). “Against Narrativity.” Ratio n.s 17, 428–452. Sturgess, Philip J. M. (1992). Narrativity: Theory and Practice. Oxford UP. Tomaševskij, Boris (Tomashevsky) ([1925] 1965). “Thematics.” L. T. Lemon & M. J. Reis (eds.). Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 61–95. Tynjanov, Jurij ([1927] 1971). “On Literary Evolution.” L. Matejka & K. Pomorska (eds.). Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views. Cambridge: MIT P, 66–78. Walsh, Richard (2007). The Rhetoric of Fictionality: Narrative Theory and the Idea of Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State UP. – (2010). “Dreaming and Narrative Theory.” F. L. Aldama (ed.). Toward a Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts. Austin: U of Texas P, 141–157.

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White, Hayden (1973). Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – (1978). Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – (1981). “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality.” W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.). On Narrative. U of Chicago P, 1–24. Wolf, Werner (2002). “Das Problem der Narrativität in Literatur, bildender Kunst und Musik: Ein Beitrag zu einer intermedialen Erzähltheorie.” V. Nünning & A. Nünning (eds.). Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär. Trier: WVT, 23–104. – (2004). “‘Cross that Border—Close that Gap’: Towards an Intermedial Narratology.” EJES: European Journal for English Studies 8, 81–103. Woolf, Virginia ([1927] 1994). “The new Biography.” A. McNeillie (ed.). The Essays of Virginia Woolf. London: Hogarth, vol. 4, 473–480.

5.2 Further Reading Baroni, Raphaël (2007). La Tension narrative. Suspense, curiosité et surprise. Paris: Seuil. Brés, Jacques (1994). La narrativité. Louvain: Suculot. Davis, Nick (2012). "Rethinking Narrativity: A Return to Aristotle and Some Consequences." Storyworlds 4, 1–24. Fleischman, Suzanne (1990). Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction. Austin: U of Texas P. Gaudreault, André (1988). Du littéraire au filmique: système du récit. Paris: Méridien Klincksieck. Kearns, Michael (1999). Rhetorical Narratology. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Kellner, Hans (1987). “Narrativity in History: Poststructuralism and Since.” History and Theory 26, 1–29. – (1990). “‘As Real as It Gets…’ Ricœur and Narrativity.” Philosophy Today 34, 229–242. Meister, Jan Christoph (2007). “‘Narrativité’, ‘événement’ et objectivation de la temporalité.” J. Pier (ed.). Théorie du récit: l’apport de la recherche allemande. Villeneuve d’Asq: Septentrion, 189–207. Odin, Roger (2000). De la fiction. Bruxelles: De Boeck. Prince, Gerald (1996). “Remarks on Narrativity.” C. Wahlin (ed.). Perspectives on Narratology: Papers from the Stockholm Symposium on Narratology. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 95–106. Singer, Alan (1983). “The Methods of Form: Narrativity and Social Consciousness.” SubStance 41, 64–77. Tiffeneau, Dorian, ed. (1980). La narrativité. Paris: CNRS. Wolf, Werner (2003). “Narrative and Narrativity: A Narratological Reconceptualization and its Applicability to the Visual Arts.” Word and Image 19, 180–197.

Narrativity of Computer Games Britta Neitzel

1 Definition Narrativity can be understood as a virtual capacity of computer games. Like every game, computer games consist of rule-governed actions carried out by a player. But they may also contain elements typical for narratives: actions, events, characters, and a setting. If these elements are arranged in a story-like order, a computer game possesses narrativity (Abbott → Narrativity). Additionally, computer games, in contrast to other games (such as ball games or chess), integrate a representational level depicting the player’s actions in the game world and the player herself in the form of an avatar who acts within this world. This representational level can be compared with the level of narrative discourse.

2 Explication As to the narrativity of computer games, one of the important questions concerns the relation between the ludic and the narrative and their relative proportions. This interrelation has been defined in a spectrum of positions, ranging from the conception that computer games are narratives (Murray 1999) through the assumption that computer games contain narrative structures or elements (e.g. Neitzel 2000; Aarseth 2004a; Juul 2005; Ryan 2006) to the denial of any narrativity in computer games (Eskelinen 2001). Narrating and playing are both very old and fundamental forms of human expression and culture (cf. Huizinga [1938] 1998; Barthes [1966] 1977). They have sometimes been combined, as in the theater where a story, previously written down as a drama text, is not told but performed by actors, or in the cinema, where the projection of the film shows what was previously recorded (including the performance of the actors). Both media—theater and cinema—have been discussed with respect to their narrativity (Hühn & Sommer → Narration in Poetry and Drama; Kuhn & Schmidt → Narration in Film). These discussions have mainly focused

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on discourse or the level of (re)presentation, i.e. diegesis rather than mimesis in respect of drama (Plato 1979), or on telling rather than showing in respect of film (Branigan 1984). Discussions on filmic narration in particular have raised the question of whether film possesses a narrating instance (cf. Bordwell 1985; Chatman 1978, 1990; Gunning 1994; Gaudreault 1984). This question reappears in the discussion of the narrativity of computer games (cf. Laurel 1991; Neitzel 2000, King & Krzywinska eds. 2002), but it also raises another one: What is the role of the player? While in the theater and in the cinema the spectators are excluded from the production of the play or film, respectively, in computer games they (as players) are an indispensable part of the production of the chain of actions displayed on the computer screen. Hence the study of the narrative potential of computer games is led to specify how the ludic and the narrative interact, thus producing the concrete medial form of a computer game. The relevance of this question results from the premise that the ludic and the narrative are different or even incompatible forms. Narrative is traditionally defined by its linearity and chronology: it presents a story (histoire in Genette’s 1972 [1980] terms) with a beginning, a middle and an end (Aristotle 1995), and its events proceed successively. Bordwell (1985: 49) defines the story as “an action as a chronological, cause-and-effect chain of events occurring within a given duration and a spatial field.” This story is transmitted through a discourse (récit), which is the result of an act of narration. Games are defined differently from narratives: by repetitions (Buytendijk 1933, 1958) and recursions (Scheuerl [1954] 1990), or as a self-reflexive movement that falls back on itself with no reference to anything beyond its borders, be it factual or temporal (Scheuerl ([1954] 1990). While in a narrative someone (a narrator) recounts actions, a game consists of actions carried out by the players.

3 History and Aspects of the Study of Narrativity in Computer Games Depending on the starting point one chooses, computer games date back between forty and sixty years. The year 2001 was pronounced by Aarseth (2001) year one of game studies, thereby inaugurating a new discipline. The following sections will start with a brief historical overview of computer games and then take up recurrent questions on the subject. Owing to the differences within the field of computer games, the research questions are in some cases accompanied by descriptions of computer game genres or individual games.

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Research on a new medium on which there have been studies either draws on established methodologies or refers to (assumed) similarities in other media. Since narrative is a large and influential part of our culture present in various media (Ryan → Narration in Various Media), it seems reasonable to assume that computer games tell stories as well. A story-like order of the game events displayed on the computer screen may resemble visual narration in film. For this reason, the study of narrativity in computer games has played a prominent role in the emergent field of game studies. 3.1 Pre-history: Hypertext Studies Experiments with hypertext in the 1980s and 90s inspired the exploration of possibilities of ”interactive storytelling” as a new form of narrative in digital media (cf. Bolter 1991; Landow 1992; Landow ed. 1994). The study of hypertexts was extended to include verbally based computer games, the so-called text adventures. In this tradition, computer games are seen in connection with other texts based on computer technology. The main emphasis still remains on the text and the changes it undergoes (e.g. Ryan ed. 1999). Murray (1999) includes computer games in her study of narrative in cyberspace by observing them with respect to their narrativity, along with chatterbots (computer programs that simulate communication), Multi-User-Dungeons (text-based fantasy games played on the early internet), 3-D movies and finally the holodeck (holographic simulation, which became famous in the Star Trek series). Laurel (1991) examines computer applications and interfaces using the metaphor of the theater and drawing on Aristotelian drama theory. In her study, computer games represent only one application among others. One of the most insightful studies in this tradition is Aarseth (1997). This work analyses the differences between various types of text underlying the changed role of the reader in cybertexts, where the reader not only participates in the construction of meaning but also in the construction of the final text itself. His focus, however, remains on verbal media, and apart from an excellent analysis of the text-adventure, computer games are not discuss. 3.2 The Ludology vs. Narratology Debate The question of narrativity in computer games led to the first major debate in game studies, the starting point for a general survey of the field. The spectrum of approaches in this debate, the so-called Ludology vs. Narratology Debate, ranged from euphoric affirmations of the new pos-

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sibilities of storytelling (Murray 1999) to outright denial of the narrative quality of computer games (Eskelinen 2001). Even though studies on narrativity in computer games fell (and still fall) far short of forming a school, a vehement and often polemical body of criticism was directed at studies that saw the computer game as one possible form of future storytelling or that simply treated the computer game as a new narrative medium. On the one hand, this criticism had a “political” dimension motivated by the fear that established disciplines such as literary or film studies would incorporate computer games into their own territories, treating them as derivatives of literature or film. On the other hand, this critical position argued that computer games are first and foremost games, and that methods developed for the study of literature and film are insufficient to deal with their specifics (Aarseth 2004b: 362). Both positions—simply treating the computer game as narrative or negating any relation between narratives and games whatsoever—are too narrow in scope. In the first case, there is a danger of overlooking differences between games and narratives. The second position, by contrast, risks disregarding similarities between computer games and narratives. Not every game has the same structure, computer games being structured differently from ball games, for instance. Common to both positions is that they one-sidedly isolate one single dimension to the exclusion of all others, an approach which fails to acknowledge the specifics of the computer—namely, the fact that the computer is a hybrid medium that integrates various forms and media—and in so doing dissolves distinctions between them (cf. Thomsen ed. 1994). Digital memory and processing mechanisms allow the computer to adapt an almost unlimited number of surfaces to equally innumerable functions as well as to integrate and modify the structures of other media (cf. Bolter & Grusin 2000; Manovich 2001). The computer as toy (SuttonSmith 1986), and the computer game, must be described with reference to this dissolution of boundaries and integration of various elements. The fact that computer games are games by no means excludes them from having narrative qualities. There are common, trans-boundary elements both in computer games and in narratives, and there is a transition zone between narrative and non-narrative computer games. In the meantime, the topic of narrativity has become just one question among others in the field of game studies. To name only a few further research aspects: player studies, involvement, interface studies, space in computer games, online games and sociality, gamification, serious games.

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3.3 Degrees of Narrativity Computer games show a wide variety of forms and genres. They can be subdivided into abstract and mimetic games: games of skill (Geschicklichkeitsspiele), which demand dexterity from the players; and puzzle games (Denkspiele), which demand cognitive skills and decisionmaking. These groups overlap. Some games use abstract graphic elements that have to be arranged in a certain order or assembled like a puzzle. In other games, with abstract graphics, the dexterity of the players is important, as when the game elements have to be thrown or shot. Related to the latter are so-called shooters, which demand dexterity in a representational game world. As to the narrativity of computer games, it is also important to consider whether the player’s role is to direct a single game element (anthropomorphic or otherwise) or a group of elements. While computer role playing games, (action) adventures and action games fall in the first category, various sorts of sports games, (economic) simulations or strategy games (in which teams or armies are directed) belong to the second. Additionally, computer games are played on mobile phones, handheld or TV-connected consoles, the computer or on arcade machines. They are played alone, together with friends (in one room) or with strangers (and/or friends) on the Internet. And finally, in the history of computers the mode of representation has evolved from games that are only text-based (e.g. Zork, infocom 1977) or games with simple graphics (e.g. Pong, Atari 1972) to games with a representation that is almost cinematic. Text-based games and games with simple graphics continue to exist in niches. When the interest lies in the narrativity of computer games, it is common not to include all types of computer games. Different genres of computer games have different degrees of narrativity. Thus most abstract computer games lack narrative qualities (Ryan 2006; Aarseth 2004b), since narrativity presupposes the presence of “characters, event, setting” (Ryan (2006: 182). 3.4 Storystructures in the (Action)Adventure Game The genre of the adventure (or action adventure) game has been studied with respect to its narrativity (see e.g. Neitzel 2000; Wolf 2001; Walter 2001; Hartmann 2004). Two features in particular qualify adventures for a narrative analysis. First, in adventures the player directs a single avatar in a representational setting and not, as for example in strategy or

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team sports games, a team or an army. Second, adventures provide a relatively linear chain of actions and offer explicit points for the player to make a decision. They are, in Pias’ (2002: 184) words, “decisioncritical.” In the classical adventure, neither the execution of these decisions nor how fast they are made on the cognitive level is important, so that neither dexterity nor the speed of reaction are the point of the game but the decision and the consequences it provokes. Juul (2005: 67) calls games in which a player has to follow a consecutive chain of actions “games of progression” because they set up challenges for the players one after another up to the end. “Games of emergence,” on the other hand, set up challenges for the players indirectly through an interacting set of rules and do not have a fixed end state but one that evolves through the actions and decisions made in a game session. Many games incorporate a mixture of the two forms. The lines of action that evolve in a game are twofold. There is the possible chain of actions determined by the program which Thon (2011: 16), drawing on Rouse (2001), calls the “virtual designer-story,” and there is the actual chain of actions that is set up by the player while she is playing, the “player story.” Adopting a term proposed by the Russian formalists, Neitzel (2000) has defined the latter as the “sujet” of a narrative game, because it is only here that the actual order of events is determined. The progression of the virtual story in (action) adventure games is programmed according to a narrative structure that Todorov ([1971] 1971) has called the mythological story structure (cf. Neitzel 2000). Games with a mythological structure provide players or their avatars with a clearly defined aim that marks the end state of the game (e.g. “Rescue the Princess!”). The path to this aim can be arranged differently from one game to another. A classical narrative can use a linear path to this end: starting at the initial situation, a linear chain of events and actions leads to the end of the story. A game organized like this offers a very limited degree of freedom for the player: she does not have any choice, which makes the game rather boring, or, more precisely, there is no game at all because a game must offer at least two options. According to Ryan (2006: 196), the conflict between narrative design and gameplay is rooted in the “difficulty of integrating the bottom-up input of the player within the top-down structure of a narrative script.” Computer game programs almost always contain infrastructures that enable the player to actualize multi-linear chains of actions and events. This means that between the starting point and the endpoint of the game there are alternative paths or chains of events from which the player may choose. In a multi-linear story (Murray 1999: 188), there can be

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crossroads or dead ends that force the player to return to another path. Other paths may lead back to the main path in loop lines (Wages et al. 2004; Ryan 2006 102–103). In many games, these paths are realized spatially, forcing the player to orient herself in the fictional game world, cross this world and meet the challenges that lead to the goal. Linear and multi-linear story structures have in common that, in most cases, they lead to a single endpoint or, in the case of a multilinear structure, to one of several possible endpoints. A structure with multiple branching paths that leads to an indefinite number of endpoints would not be programmable. To avoid this problem, dead ends and loops leading back to the main path are integrated (Wages et al. 2004). To enhance the unpredictability and uncertainty necessary for playing, these structures of action lines can be supplemented by requirements for skill and speedy reaction on the part of the player. In addition to an overall line of action, computer role playing games usually contain numerous short linear action lines. In the game world, a player encounters Non-Player Characters (NPCs) who provide her avatar with quests and tasks. Depending on the particular game, the player has to accomplish the quests either successively in a linear order to progress towards an end state or randomly in a network-like structure. To perform the tasks, the player must kill a certain number of the enemy, find objects, visit a particular place, or perform similar clearly defined actions that require a certain skill. After completing the task, the game character returns to the quest-giver, is given her award and possibly a new quest. Retrospectively, the quests can be interpreted as little stories: e.g. “The avatar has retrieved the food stolen by the Orcs and rescued the inhabitants of the village.” But as Aarseth (2004b: 369), in reference to Tronstad, emphasizes, while the story has a constative quality, the quest itself is performative, acted out. Quests in role playing games are often integrated into fantasy stories involving a fight between good and evil. These framing stories are conveyed to the player in scattered parts and in different modes of representation: verbally at the beginning of the game or through quests; by monologues of NPCs, visual cut-scenes, books found in the game; or, on a paratextual level, by printed supplements, possibly novels or movies about the game but also by fellow players. Other parts of the mythology may be known through former games. As in myths, no clear origin can be identified. It has often been observed that these multiple stories and story fragments add to the narrativity of computer games (e.g. Ryan 2006; Jenkins 2004; Pearce 2004). The second underlying narrative structure that can be found in (action) adventure games is the gnoseological structure, a form that does

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not provide the players with a clearly defined aim (cf. Neitzel 2000). Todorov ([1971] 1971) defines the Parsifal-saga as the prototype of a gnoseological narrative. These narratives are about the search for meaning and, in contrast to mythological narratives, have an ending that is unforeseeable from the beginning of the narration and tends to point back into the past. This becomes obvious in Todorov’s second example, the detective novel, in which the protagonist tries to find out what had happened. With regard to computer games, this structure can be found mainly in adventure games. An early example is Zork. In this game, the player is thrown into a situation in which she does not know what to do, where she is located and what the environment looks like. The player never knows which events are relevant for the solution of the game (see Aarseth 1997: 112). No concrete clues are given on her way as to how to find the solution. Uncertain about which storyline to follow, the player’s first task in an adventure game is to get a sense of the world and the situation. Thus the more or less successful attempts of a player to navigate in the game world differ enormously from the wellconsidered constructions of narrative discourse generally found in literary narratives or films. The player’s path through the game can be considered a search for meaning. In contrast to action games, usually backed up with a mythological structure, the player of an adventure game is not given a clear aim as to how orient herself within the game (Neitzel 2000). 3.5 Separation of Narration and Play The player’s participation in the act of actualizing these virtual story lines has led to another tendency in studies of narrativity in computer games: the separation of phases of play and narration (e.g. Furtwängler 2001; Walter 2001) or of ludic and narrative elements in a computer game (Newman 2004: 93–94; Thon 2007, 2011). So-called cutscenes, which are fully pre-produced and in which players cannot intervene, are the narrative phases of the game, while scenes in which the players can intervene (and must intervene to get the game going) are the ludic or interactive phases. The ludic and the narrative are often considered incompatible (Walter 2001: 302). Significantly, scenes in which the player can intervene do not have a name of their own. While “cutscene” is an established term, “playscene” is not. The playscene represents the normal case whereas the cutscene is something special that has emerged recently in the history of computer games and in need a discriminating term. Cutscenes are usually found at the beginning of a game where they constitute the exposition, introducing the place and time of the ac-

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tions, the protagonists and possibly their aims. Additional cutscenes, interspersed in the playscenes, often mark turning points in the game’s underlying story, while in the playscenes the players carry out a relatively fixed chain of actions. At the end of the game, there is often a last cutscene, an epilogue which marks the end of the story and the game. The model on which this separation of narrative and ludic elements is based can be traced back to Barthes’ differentiation between cardinal functions and catalyzers ([1966] 1977). It acts upon the assumption that cardinal functions, which propel the game forward, are found in cutscenes, while playscenes contain only catalyzers. This means that the decisions which are important for the course of the pre-programmed story are not made by the player but provided to her in the cutscenes (cf. Pias 2002). Even if the act of narration, in the simplified sense of setting up a fixed chain of actions, might take place only in the cutscenes, the narrativity of computer games is not restricted to them. The playscenes are meaningful for the cutscenes and the story of the game: they tie in with the events and elements in the cutscenes. They provide information on the progress of the action, contain the same figures and are set in the same environment. In some games (e.g. Blade Runner [Westwood 1997], Silent Hill II [Konami 2001] or Fahrenheit [Quantic Dream 2005]), the choice of a particular cutscene, which is executed by an algorithm within the game program, depends on the decisions a player has made in the preceding playscenes. The construction of meaning necessary for a story thus takes place in the playscenes. However, although it is true that a player does not play in the cutscenes, some games (e.g. Half Life [Valve 1998] or Metal Gear Solid – Snake Eater [Konami 2004]) offer the opportunity for the player to intervene in the cutscenes and to change the perspective of the virtual “camera,” for example, which indicates that the avatar is looking around in the game world. Backe’s (2008) model is also concerned with the construction of meaning. He separates game and narrative as well. However, in contrast to the approach mentioned above, this separation does not apply to the level of the game’s syntax; instead, he transfers the narrative of a computer game to the level of its reception or interpretation. Backe develops a model with a trichotomy of sub-, micro-, and macrostructures in which he distributes narrative and ludic elements. These structures are distinguished into world-rules (substructure), aims of the game (microstructure) and meta-rules (macrostructure). While on the level of substructures the ludic paidia (a free form of play (Caillois [1958] 2001) is enacted, which means that players can explore the game world more or

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less freely, the second level (microstructures) is the reign of ludus, which defines the aim of the game as well as the conditions for winning. Finally, the third level (macrostructures) is determined by narrative principles. This level, according to Backe, belongs to a secondorder game, a game of interpretation or reception. Backe’s model of the ludic and of the second-order narrative game (the game of reception or interpretation) separates levels that interact in the computer game. The construction of a story may take place in the player’s interpretation of the game, but the possibilities for this interpretation are given—“pre-formed” by the game’s program. 3.6 Spatial Narration The pre-design of a possible story is the basis for “interactive storytelling” (cf. Crawford [2004] 2013). A digital environment is established in which players can intervene and decide, within given possibilities, which events or actions to actualize. The aim of interactive storytelling is to make the players choose precisely those possibilities which will form a story-like line of actions and events (without letting them know that they are guided in a certain direction). Focusing on the environmental qualities of interactive storytelling, Jenkins (2004) suggests that one should think of game designers not as storytellers but as “narrative architects” (129). “Game designers don’t simply tell stories; they design worlds and sculpt spaces.” (121) In this regard, interactive storytelling and computer games are conceptually related to possible worlds theory and practice (cf. Pias 2002: 183–185; Ryan 2001: 99–105). Like possible worlds, computer games work in the subjunctive mode: they pre-form possibilities of what can actually happen in a digital environment. For Ryan (2006), who employs a relatively broad definition of narrative (“capturing a fictional world that evolves in time under the action of intelligent agents is all it takes for a semiotic artifact to fulfill the semantic conditions of narrativity”; 200), this qualifies a computer game as narrative. On the basis of such a broad definition of narrative, even other computer games apart from action and adventure games would qualify as narrative. This applies to the so-called “Sandbox Games” (Squire 2008), for example, which allow players to do just anything in a virtual environment. Some games mix sandbox elements with a more rigid progression of events. In the very popular Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series, the players (apart from fulfilling missions) get the opportunity to drive in a stolen car through the GTA-cities and listen to music (in each game, different radio stations are offered). Thus, since the publication

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of GTA-Vice City (Rockstar Games, 2002), “cruising” has become the activity these games are known for. Furthermore, games of emergence (see 3.4 above), in their form as world-building games (in computer game genre terms: simulations), would also count as narrative if Ryan’s (2006) definition of narrativity is employed. These games, which have been associated with Todorov’s ([1971] 1971) third category, the ideological structure (cf. Neitzel 2000), are defined by rule structures that lead to repetitive and recursive activities. Thus in each game session of the simulation Sim City (Maxis since 1989), a different city will emerge, but the player-actions that lead to the city will be very similar to the activities in former game sessions. In this respect, Sim City can be compared to football or tennis. Such games do not have an intrinsic ending but are stopped by extrinsic factors (the memory capacity of a computer or arbitrary time restrictions). However, it is not really possible to retell the “story” of these games. The “(his)story” of a game like Sim City or Civilization (Micropose since 1991) has the structure of a chronicle (Neitzel 2000), which is not a narrative form in the strict sense of the term. 3.7 Aspects of the Fictional Game World In games and play, the separation of levels (story and discourse) is incomplete. Bateson (1972) states that a play-action always includes meta-communication. For a player, killing a monster in a game means “I know that I am killing a monster in a game.” The player is aware of that she is playing. However, in the computer game context this knowledge need not be based on an abstract reflection of the game’s semiotic status. Rather, the actions of a player of a computer game themselves already encompass two levels: the fictional level (e.g. “Mario rescues Princess Toadstool”) and the physical level (e.g. “I press the button combination of cross and triangle”) (cf. Neitzel 2004). Like performative speech acts, which cause changes outside the linguistic realm, the actions of a player on the interfaces of the computer (in combination with the technical apparatus) cause changes in the fictional game world (Neitzel 2007a). This double-level characteristic is incorporated into the technical apparatus of the computer game. While the material body of the player remains outside the game, she operates inside the game with the help of a semiotic body, her avatar, which serves as a tool for operations, as a fictional figure in the game’s diegesis, and (in multiplayer games) as a representative for the player. Through the avatar, the player functions as an actor in the game and at the same time remains a spectator: she

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sees herself acting through the avatar. This leads to three notable differences between computer games and narratives: 1) Metalepsis, “a grabbing gesture that reaches across levels and ignores boundaries” (Ryan 2004: 441), is the normal case in computer games. It is not an artistic deviance but the basis of the game (Pier → Metalepsis). 2) As a consequence of these two positions (being inside and outside the fictional game world at the same time), computer games not only provide the player with a point of view but additionally with a point of action (cf. Neitzel 2007b; Thon 2009). 3) The fictional game actions and the physical actions (of the player and the technical apparatus that displays the game actions) take place at the same time. Thus if one identifies the act of playing with the act of narrating, the result is simultaneous narration (Neitzel 2000; Ryan 2006), a form of narration seldom found in literature (Genette [1972] 1980: 218–219).

4 Topics for Further Investigation Though much has been done in recent years, the narrative analysis of computer games, as are game studies, is still at its beginning. So far, there are divergent approaches but no schools, nor is there a consensus on central issues. This is due not only to the novelty of computer games, but also to the diversity of scholars’ disciplinary backgrounds. Few game scholars have a sound knowledge of narratology, and probably an even smaller number of narratologists are knowledgeable about computer games. Thus all the issues named above are in need of further investigation. What is required are more case studies as well as a closer look at the modes of mediation and at the relation between narrative and ludic elements in specific games. Beyond the necessity of precise analyses of games and their narratives, two broader issues are worth investigating. On the level of cultural practices, the narratology vs. ludology debate can be pursued further. The aim here should not be to decide whether computer games are narratives or a form of play but to investigate the relation between the cultural practices of narrating and playing. Taking up Ong’s ([1982] 1995: 136) statement that a “secondary orality” emerges through the multiple use of electronic technologies, it should be investigated whether (and how) the computer contributes to the displacement of narration by play or of narratives by games.

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5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Aarseth, Espen J. (1997). Cybertext. Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – (2001). “Game Studies, Year One.” Games Studies 1.1 http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/editorial.html – (2004a). “Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation.” N. WardripFruin & P. Harrison (eds.). First Person. New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge: MIT P, 45–55. – (2004b). “Quest Games as Post-Narrative Discourse.” M.-L. Ryan (ed.). Narrative across Media. The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln/London: Nebraska UP, 361–376. Aristotle (1995). Poetics. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Backe, H.-J. (2008). Strukturen und Funktionen des Erzählens im Computerspiel. Eine typologische Einführung: Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Barthes, Roland ([1966] 1977). “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives.” R. Barthes. Image Music Text. London: Fontana, 79–124. Bateson, Gregory (1972). “A theory of play and fantasy.” G. Bateson. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books, 177–193. Bolter, Jay David (1991). Writing Space. The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale: Hove; London: Lawrence Earlbaum. – & Richard Grusin (2000). Remediation. Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT P. Bordwell, David (1985). Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Routledge. Branigan, Edward (1984). Point of View in the Cinema. A Theory of Narration and Subjectivity in Classical Film. Berlin, etc.: Mouton. Buytendijk, Frederik J. J. (1933). Wesen und Sinn des Spiels. Das Spielen des Menschen und der Tiere als Erscheinungsform der Lebenstriebe. Berlin: Wolff. Buytendijk, Frederik J. J. (1958). “Das Menschliche in der menschlichen Bewegung.” F. J. J. Buytendijk. Das Menschliche. Wege zu seinem Verständnis. Stuttgart: Koehler, 170–188. Caillois, Roger ([1958] 2001). Man, Play, and Games. Chicago: U of Illinois P. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – (1990). Coming to Terms. The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca/London: Cornell UP. Crawford, Chris ([2004] 2013). Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling. Berkeley: New Riders. Eskelinen, Marku (2001). “The Gaming Situation.” Game Studies 1.1. http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/eskelinen/ Furtwängler, Frank (2001). “‘A crossword at war with a narrative’ Narrativität versus Interaktivität in Computerspielen.” P. Gendolla et al. (eds.). Formen interaktiver Medienkunst. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 369–400.

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Gaudreault, André (1984). “Narration et monstration au cinema.” Hors Cadre 2, 87–98. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Gunning, Tom (1994). D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film. The Early Years at Biograph. Urbana: U of Illinois P. Hartmann, Bernd (2004). Literatur, Film und das Computerspiel. Münster: LIT. Huizinga, Johan ([1938] 1998). Homo Ludens. A Study of the Play-element in Culture. London: Routledge. Jenkins, Henry (2004). “Game Design as Narrative Architecture.” N. Wardrip-Fruin & P. Harrigan (eds.). First Person. New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge: MIT P, 118–130. Juul, Jesper (2005). Half-real. Video games between real rules and fictional worlds. Cambridge: MIT P. King, Geoff & Tanya Krzywinska (eds.). (2002). SreenPlay. Cinema / Videogames / Interfaces. London: Wallflower. Landow, George P. (1992). Hypertext. The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – ed. (1994). Hyper / Text / Theory. Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins UP. Laurel, Brenda (1991). Computers as Theatre. Reading: Addison-Wesley. Manovich, Lev (2001). The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT P. Murray, Janet H. (1999). Hamlet on the Holodeck. The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge: MIT P. Neitzel, Britta (2000). Gespielte Geschichten. Struktur- und prozessanalytische Untersuchungen der Narrativität von Videospielen. Weimar. www.db-thueringen.de/servlets/DerivateServlet/Derivate2063/Dissertation.html – (2004). “Wer bin ich? Zur Avatar-Spieler Bindung.” B. Neitzel et al. (eds.). “See? I’m real ...” Multidisziplinäre Zugänge zum Computerspiel am Beispiel von Silent Hill. Münster: Lit, 193–212. – (2007a). “Metacommunication in (computer)games and play.” W. Nöth & N. Bishara (eds.). Self-Reference in the Media. Berlin: de Gruyter, 237–252. – (2007b). “Point of View and Point of Action. Eine Perspektive auf die Perspektive in Computerspielen.” K. Bartels & J. N. Thon (eds.). Computer/Spiel/Räume. Materialien zur Einführung in die Computer Game Studies. Hamburg: Zentrum für Medienkommunikation, 8–28. Newman, James (2004). Videogames. London: Routledge. Ong, Walter J. ([1982] 1995). Orality and Literatcy. The Technologizing of the Word. London: Routledge. Pearce, Celia (2004). “Towards a Game Theory of Game.” N. Wardrip-Fruin & P. Harrigan (eds.). First Person. New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge: MIT P, 143–153. Pias, Claus (2002). Computer Spiel Welten. München: Sequenzia. Plato (1979). The Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Rouse, Richard (2001). Game Design. Theory & Practice. Plano: Wordware. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2001). Narrative as Virtual Reality. Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – (2004). “Metaleptic Machines.” Semiotica 150.1/4, 439–469.

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(2006). Avatars of Story. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P. ed. (1999). Cyberspace Textuality. Computer Technology and Literary Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Scheuerl, Hans ([1954] 1990). Das Spiel. Weinheim: Beltz. Squire, K. (2008). “Open-Ended Video Games: A Model for Developing Learning for the Interactive Age.” K. Salen (ed.). The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning. Cambridge: MIT P, 167–198. Sutton-Smith, Brian (1986). Toys as Culture. New York: Gardner P. Thomsen, Christian W., ed. (1994). Hybridkultur. Bildschirmmedien und Evolutionsformen der Künste. Siegen: DGF Sonderforschungsbereich. Thon, Jan-Noël (2007). “Unendliche Weiten? Schauplätze, fiktionale Welten und soziale Räume neuerer Computerspiele.” K. Bartels & J.-N. Thon (eds.). Computer/Spiel/Räume. Materialien zur Einführung in die Computer Game Studies. Hamburg: Zentrum für Medienkommunikation, 29–60. – (2009). “Perspective in Contemporary Computer Games.” P. Hühn et al. (eds.). Point of View, Perspective, and Focalization. Modeling Mediation in Narration. Berlin: de Gruyter, 279–299. – (2011). “Zu Formen und Funktionen narrativer Elemente in neueren Computerspielen.” J. Sorg & J. Venus (eds.). Erzählformen im Computerspiel. Zur Medienmorphologie digitaler Spiele. Bielefeld: Transcript, 1–22. Todorov, Tzvetan ([1971] 1971). “The Two Principles of Narrative.” Diacritics 1, 37– 44. Wages, Richard et al. (2004). “Benutzerführung und Strukturen nichtlinearer Geschichte.” B. Neitzel et al. (eds.). “See? I’m Real ...” Multidisziplinäre Zugänge zum Computerspiel am Beispiel von Silent Hill. Münster: LIT, 41–57. Walter, Klaus (2001). Grenzen spielerischen Erzählens. Spiel- und Erzählstrukturen in graphischen Adventure Games. Phil. Diss. Universität Siegen http://www.ub.uni-siegen.de/epub/diss/walter.htm Wolf, Mark J. P. (2001). The Medium of the Video Game. Austin: U of Texas P.

5.2 Further Reading Arsenault, Dominic (2008). Narration in the Video Game An Apologia of Interactive Storytelling, and an Apology to Cut-Scene Lovers. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller. Bogost, Ian (2006). Unit Operations. An Approach to Videogame Criticism. Cambridge: MIT P. Ryan, Marie-Laure & Jan-Noël Thon, eds. (2014). Storyworld across Media. Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P.

Narratology Jan Christoph Meister

1 Definition Narratology is a humanities discipline dedicated to the study of the logic, principles, and practices of narrative representation. Dominated by structuralist approaches at its beginning, narratology has developed into a variety of theories, concepts, and analytic procedures. Its concepts and models are widely used as heuristic tools, and narratological theorems play a central role in the exploration and modeling of our ability to produce and process narratives in a multitude of forms, media, contexts, and communicative practices.

2 Explication As a human science, narratology is historically defined and reflects ongoing changes in research agendas and methodologies in the humanities. At the same time, the persistence of narratological inquiry for more than four decades, despite its increasing “centrifugal tendencies” (Barry 1990), testifies to its cohesion as a system of scientific practices. During its initial or “classical” phase, from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, narratologists were particularly interested in identifying and defining narrative universals. This tendency is still echoed in a concise 1993 definition of narratology as “the set of general statements on narrative genres, on the systematics of narrating (telling a story) and on the structure of plot” (Ryan & von Alphen 1993: 110). However, a decade later, narratology was alternatively described as (a) a theory (Prince 2003: 1), (b) a method (Kindt & Müller 2003: 211), or (c) a discipline (Fludernik & Margolin 2004: 149). The third option seems most adequate: the concept of discipline subsumes theory and method, acknowledging narratology’s dual nature as both a theoretical and an application-oriented academic approach to narrative. Narratology is no longer a single theory, but rather comprises a group of related theories (cf. Herman ed. 1999). This has motivated

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some to conclude that narratology is in fact a textual theory whose scope extends beyond narratives and to claim that “none of the distinctions introduced by narratology to text theory is specific to any genre” (Titzmann 2003: 201). However, contemporary “postclassical” narratology cannot be reduced to a text theory, either. Over the past twenty years, narratologists have paid increasing attention to the historicity and contextuality of modes of narrative representation as well as to its pragmatic function across various media, while research into narrative universals has been extended to cover narrative’s cognitive and epistemological functions. Against this background, two questions deserve particular attention: (a) How does narratology relate to other disciplines that include the study of narrative? (b) How can its status as a methodology be characterized? Five observations can be made in response to these questions which at the same time substantiate the above definition of narratology: (i) Narratology is not the theory of narrative (Bal 1985), but rather a theory of narrative (Prince 1995: 110; Nünning 2003: 227–228). Other theories of narrative coexist with narratological ones. The relation between narrative theory and narratology is thus not symmetrical, but hierarchical and inclusive (Nünning & Nünning 2002: 19). (ii) At the same time, narratology is more than a theory. While it may not have lived up to the scientistic pretension expressed in its invocation as a new “science of narrative” (Todorov 1969: 10), it does qualify as a discipline. It has a defined object domain, explicit models and theories, a distinct descriptive terminology, transparent analytical procedures and the institutional infrastructure typical of disciplines: official organizations; specialized knowledge resources (journals, series, handbooks, dictionaries, bibliographies, web portals, etc.); a diverse scientific community engaging in national, international, and interdisciplinary research projects. And last but not least, narratology is taught in undergraduate and graduate courses. (iii) Narratology’s overriding concern remains with narrative representation as type, although it does not preclude the study of narrative tokens. Defining narratology in positive terms may prove difficult, but defining it ex negativo is not: a statement on narrative representation―a theory, an argument, but also a concrete empirical finding―is not narratological if it does not ultimately concern “narrative qua narrative” (Prince 1990: 10). (iv) In the wake of the “narrative turn,” the application of narratological tools to extra-narratological research problems has become

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more and more widespread, resulting in a multitude of compound or “hyphenated” narratologies. However, in a theoretical perspective not every approach labeled “narratological” automatically constitutes a new narratology sensu strictu. While one subset of the new approaches comprises methodological variants (natural narratology, critical narratology, cognitive narratology, etc.; Herman 2002; Fehn et al., eds. 1992; Fludernik 1996), others focus on thematic and ideology-critical concerns (post-colonial narratology, feminist narratology, etc.; cf. Nünning 2003; Nünning & Nünning 2002). (v) Despite the high level of academic attention enjoyed by the practices and products of human narrative competence, the commonsense notion of narrative is still predominantly associated with text-based narratives. “Narrative representation” is therefore a preferable definition of narratology’s object of study in that it counteracts this reductionism in two ways: (a) narrative representation is not media specific, since its specificity is of a functional order and lies in narrativity. (b) “representation” denotes the product as well as the process of representing or, as Prince stated: “Narrative is an act and it is an object” (1990: 4).

3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 Coining of the Term “Narratology” The French term narratologie was coined by Todorov (1969: 10), who argued for a shift in focus from the surface level of text-based narrative (i.e. concrete discourse as realized in the form of letters, words and sentences) to the general logical and structural properties of narrative as a univers de représentations (9). Todorov thus called for a new type of generalizing theory that could be applied to all domains of narrative, and in fact for a hypothetical “science that does not exist yet; let’s call it NARRATOLOGY, or science of narrative.” The neologism alluded to social and natural sciences such as sociology and biology (Herman 2005: 19), and its invention by Todorov is sometimes interpreted as a foundational act. However, the assumption of a direct link between the history of the concept and the history of the discipline is misleading: hardly any of the important contributions to early narratology explicitly associated itself with “narratology” by title (e.g. Communications 8, 1966; Genette [1972] 1980; Prince 1973; Bremond 1973; Culler 1975; Chatman 1978). Bibliometrical analysis of

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some 4,500 entries listed in the online bibliography of the “Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology” (ICN) shows that usage of the concept as a methodological and disciplinary identifier in French, Dutch, German, and English monographs and journal articles only became popular after the publication of Bal’s Narratologie in 1977. The first use of the term in an English title is found in Ryan (1979) and in a German title in Schmidt (1989). One of the reasons for the scientific community’s hesitant acceptance of the name “narratology” was the proliferation of related and more general concepts as well as of alternative research agendas concerned with narrative. In Germany, the terms Erzähltheorie and Erzählforschung were already well established and had been in use since the mid-1950s (Lämmert 1955), which might also explain why Ihwe’s 1972 attempt to introduce the term “narrativics” (Narrativik) met with limited success. Among the Russian avant-garde, for whom poetry dominated literature, the call for a “theory of prose” amounted to a plea for a revaluation of the other hemisphere, while important American contributions such as Booth ([1961] 1983) or Chatman (1978, 1990a) evolved from the tradition of New Criticism and rhetoric. Finally, French narratologists were rooted in structural linguistics and semiology (Greimas [1966] 1983), in logic (Bremond 1973), or in rhetorical and traditional grammatical categories Genette ([1972] 1980). 3.2 Precursors Core elements and ideas at play in the narratological modeling of narrative were introduced as early as Greek antiquity, while others originated from the late 19th century onward, particularly in the context of phenomenological, morphological and hermeneutic taxonomies and theories of literary and folk narratives. 3.2.1 Plato and Aristotle: Representational Modes and the Functional Relation between Character and Action In The Republic, Plato differentiated literary genres on the basis of the genre-specific constellation of two fundamental modes of speech termed mimesis, the direct imitation of speech in the form of the characters’ verbatim dialogues and monologues, and diegesis, which comprises all utterances attributable to the author. According to Plato, the lyric genre is restricted to the use of diegesis and the dramatic genre to the use of mimesis, with only the epic genre combining both. This fundamental distinction of the two principal modes of narrating not only an-

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ticipated the 20th-century opposition showing vs. telling, but it also prefigured one of the three analytical dimensions adopted by Genette ([1972] 1980), namely voice. Aristotle’s Poetics presented a second criterion that has remained fundamental for the understanding of narrative: the distinction between the totality of events taking place in a depicted world and the de facto narrated plot or muthos. He pointed out that the latter is always a construct presenting a subset of events, chosen and arranged according to aesthetic considerations. This resulted in the Poetics’ functional approach to fictional protagonists and their actions, the latter explained as governed by the aesthetic and logical requirements of the overall muthos. 3.2.2 The Normative Paradigm: 17th to Early 20th-century Theories of the Novel Prose narrative as we know it today became an accepted part of the literary canon only from the 18th century onward. Focusing on aspects of thematics and didactics, the main question motivating its early theorists (e.g. Huet [1670] 1715; Blanckenburg [1774] 1965) was therefore normative: would the new literary form stand up to the qualitative standards of the ancient epos? This concern continued to dominate many theories of the paradigmatic narrative genre right into the early 20th century, most prominently in Lukács ([1916] 1993). 3.2.3 Re-introducing the Formal Paradigm: Spielhagen and Friedemann Spielhagen ([1876] 1967) was one of the first to address formal features of narrative again, and he did so by distinguishing novel and novella in terms of the complexity and functionality of characters and the different economies of action and plot design. His study ([1883] 1967) introduced a fundamental taxonomic distinction between first- and thirdperson narration and also reflected on the author-narrator relation. Motivated by a dislike for anti-illusionary narrative devices, Spielhagen declared that the ideal narrative never alerts the reader to the ongoing process of narration. Friedemann ([1910] 1965) took exception to this normative postulate. For her, mediality was a constitutive element of narration rather than a defect, and the narrating instance an inherent feature of any narrative, whether (fictionally) present or logically implied. The methodological significance of this insight can hardly be overestimated: Friedemann had effectively defined the essence of narrative in structur-

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al terms, taking the principle of Plato’s phenomenological definition of the epos one step further. 3.2.4 From Catalogue to Formula: Aarne-Thompson vs. Propp Late 19th-century literary history and theory equated narrative with literary narrative, thus leaving research on the folktale to specialists. In the 1880s, the pioneers of a new empirical approach in folklore studies formed the “Finnish School,” and in 1910 Aarne, one of its members, published the first version of a catalogue known as the AarneThompson-Index (Aarne & Thompson [1928] 1961), used internationally to the present day (Uther 2004). The expanded catalogue now lists 2,500 summarized variants of folk tales across eight categories. A theoretical attempt to reduce literary narratives to basic principles was presented in Forster ([1927] 2005). He argued that the hypothetical minimal story “The king died, and then the queen died” could be transformed into a valid narrative plot by the addition of an explanatory clause such as “of grief.” Focusing on empirical folk tales, Propp ([1928] 1968) presented a model of the elementary components of narratives and the way they are combined. However, in contrast to his predecessors, Propp abstracted from the content plane altogether in order to describe a particular type of Russian fairy tales in terms of a sequence of thirty-one abstract “functions.” Propp’s approach was to receive considerable attention among the French structuralists who, while acknowledging the model’s originality, at the same time criticized it for its purely sequential, mono-linear logic of action and suggested replacing it with combinatory, multi-linear models (Lévi-Strauss [1976] 1964). Partly on the basis of such revisions, Propp’s functional model served as a fundamental point of reference for the elaboration of “story grammars,” Chomskian generative grammar being the other. The idea of a generative grammar of narrative was to be taken up not only by narratologists (Prince 1973, 1980; van Dijk 1975; Pavel 1985), but also by Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers who tried to design artificial story telling systems (Rumelhart 1980; Bringsjord & Ferrucci 1999). 3.2.5 Russian Formalism Russian formalism, which flourished from about 1916 until suppressed by the Stalinists in the late 1920s, had a more radical culturalideological agenda: its aim was to prove the autonomy of art as form. Literature in particular was considered a phenomenon sui generis that

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cannot be explained adequately in terms of content or of biographical or historical context. Šklovskij (1917] 1965) postulated the need to study literature in terms of purely formal features such as the principle of defamiliarization, which governs the literary use of language and accentuates the textual artifact as an autonomous signifying structure. The most influential contribution from a narratological perspective was the formalist differentiation of fabula and sujet (Tomaševskij [1925] 1971), in which the latter is defined as a defamiliarisation of the former. 3.2.6 Pre-structuralist Theories of Narrative: Perspective, Time, Logic and Rhetoric 3.2.6.1 Perspective Early in the last century, the question of narrative perspective (Niederhoff → Perspective – Point of View) became the subject of a poetological controversy initiated by the novelist and theorist Henry James. He advocated the scenic method of narration in which narrative perspective is strictly tied to the epistemological constraints of a particular character, a technique demonstrated particularly in The Ambassadors (1903). James’s admirer Lubbock ([1921] 1972) postulated that such characterbound “point of view” should in fact be considered the qualitative standard for narrative prose, thus elevating James’s technical distinction into one of principle, namely that of “showing” vs. “telling.” According to Lubbock, a coherent mimetic representation can only originate from the epistemological point of view of a character (i.e. from pure “showing”). Descriptive rather than prescriptive by design, Pouillon (1946) broadened the scope and distinguished three principal forms defined in terms of the narrator’s temporal and cognitive stance vis-à-vis the characters. Friedman (1955) extended the scope further, proposing a graded spectrum of eight modes of perspective in which each type is determined by its ratio of character to narrator-bound sequences. An even more complex stratified model in which the positions of character and narrator are correlated in the four dimensions of ideology, phraseology, spatio-temporal constraints, and psychology of perspective was developed by Uspenskij ([1970] 1973), a member of the Moscow-Tartu school of semiotics. The idea has been taken further in Schmid (2005), which represents the most comprehensive model of perspective to date. A phenomenological contribution to the theory of perspective was that of the Austrian Anglicist Stanzel, who identified three proto-typical “narrative situations” ([1955] 1971). In the “I narrative situation,” the

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narrator exists and acts within the narrated world; in the “authorial narrative situation,” he is positioned outside the narrated world but dominates the process of mediation by commenting on events; in the “figural narrative situation,” the third-person narrator remains unobtrusive while the narrative information is filtered through the internal perspective of the reflector character. Stanzel understood these three narrative situations to be ideal types and thus modeled them on a synthetic typological circle. Actual narratives, he observed, often occupy an intermediate position between these situations and are thus best modeled in terms of a synthetic typological circle. The controversy over the pragmatic merits of Stanzel’s approach versus its methodological constraints and inconsistencies continues to the present day (cf. Cohn 1981; Kindt & Müller 2006; Cornils 2007; Schernus 2007), as does the more general narratological general debate on the concept of narrative perspective (cf. van Peer & Chatman eds. 2001; Hühn et al., eds. 2009). 3.2.6.2 Time With respect to the category of time, Müller (1948) introduced an equally fundamental distinction between “narrated time” (erzählte Zeit) vs. “time of narration” (Erzählzeit). The correlation between the two dimensions, as he showed, characterizes the pace of a narrative. This approach was further explored by Lämmert (1955), one of the first large-scale taxonomies of narrative. For Lämmert, the phenomenology of individual narratives can be traced back to a stable, universal repertoire of elementary modes of narrating. He distinguished various types of narration which stretched, abbreviated, repeated, paused and interrupted, skipped and eliminated sub-sequences, while other types perfectly imitated the flow of narrated time. (The category of time in Genette [1972] 1980 is examined in similar terms.) Drawing on Lubbock’s ([1921] 1972) work as well as on Petsch (1934), Lämmert related these elementary forms of narrative temporality to the principal modes of narration such as scenic presentation, report, reflection, and description. Unfortunately, the systematic gain of his contribution was hampered by an overly complex and at times “fuzzy” taxonomy which tries to account for all forms of narrative flashbacks and flash forwards. 3.2.6.3 Logic and Rhetoric A philosophically more concise contribution to narrative theory was Hamburger ([1957] 1973), a book which explored the semantics and

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pragmatics of literary communication, and in particular the specific logic of the use of temporal and personal deixis under the conditions of fictional reference. Hamburger pointed out that neither the subject of an utterance nor the utterance’s temporal location and reference can be adequately inferred from the words and sentences of a literary narrative: literature overwrites the rules and conventions of everyday language use with its own logic. The question of the validity and reliability of narrative utterances was again raised by Booth ([1961] 1983), this time from a rhetorical and ethical perspective. He introduced the concept of “unreliable narrator,” interpreting cases of conflicting and self-contradicting narration as an aesthetic device aimed at signaling the author’s moral and normative distance from his narrator. However, the way in which Booth constructed his argument made it necessary to introduce a second, more speculative concept, namely that of the implied author (Schmid → Implied Author). While the concept of “unreliable narrator,” rejected by structuralists such as Genette ([1983] 1988), has become more accepted in post-classical narratology, the controversy over the implied author’s plausibility is ongoing (Booth 2005; Kindt & Müller 2006). 3.3 French Structuralism: 1966–1980 French structuralism eventually gave the decisive impulse for the formation of narratology as a methodologically coherent, structureoriented variant of narrative theory. This new paradigm was proclaimed in a 1966 special issue of the journal Communications, programmatically titled “L’analyse structurale du récit.” It contained articles by leading structuralists Barthes, Eco, Genette, Greimas, Todorov, and the film theorist Metz. Three traditions informed the new structuralist approach toward narrative: Russian Formalism and Proppian morphology; structural linguistics in the Saussurean tradition as well as the structural anthropology of Lévi-Strauss; the transformational generative grammar of Chomsky. Against this background, the structuralists engaged in a systematic reexamination of the two dimensions of narrative already identified by Šklovskij, fabula and sujet, re-labeled by Todorov in French as histoire and discours and by Genette as histoire and récit. From 1966 to 1972, narratology focused mainly on the former. At the most abstract level, the semiotician Greimas concentrated on the elementary structure of signification. Building on Lévi-Strauss’s (1955, [1958] 1963) structural analysis of myths, Greimas ([1966] 1983) proposed a deep-level model of signification termed the “semiotic square,”

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which represents the semiotic infrastructure of all signifying systems. The mapping of this universal deep structure onto a given narrative’s surface structure can then be explained in terms of transformational rules. Finally, a typology of six functional roles attributable to characters (main vs. secondary character, opponent vs. helper, sender vs. receiver; cf. Greimas [1973] 1987) complements the approach. Barthes ([1966] 1975) proposed a functional systematics of narrated events which distinguishes “kernels,” i.e. obligatory events that guarantee the story’s coherence, and optional “satellites” that serve to embellish the basic plot. Todorov (1969) furthered the linguistic analogy by equating actions to verbs, characters to nouns and their attributes to adjectives, and then by then linking these elements through modal operators. This narrative syntax operates on the abstract level of a narrative langue: instead of accounting only for the manifest sequence of events represented in a given fictional world, this “grammar” also included the logic of virtual action sequences, e.g. those imagined in a narrated character’s mind. Bremond (1973) explored the logic of represented action from yet another angle, modeling it as a series of binary choices in which an “eventuality” results in “action” or in “non-action” and, in the former case, in “completion” or in “non-completion.” The interest in questions of action logic and narrative grammar was taken up in Prince (1973) which synthesized and systematized the earlier approaches, and yet again in Pavel (1985), which combined Bremond’s abstract binary logic with game theory (cf. Herman 2002). While the theoretical ambition and level of abstraction of early structuralist models of narrative were impressive, their practical relevance was hard to prove to philologists. Greimassian semantics is a case in point: used as a descriptive grammar, its categories were defined with a degree of generality too broad to be faulted; put to the test as a generative grammar, its yield was too abstract to demonstrate the necessity or the explanatory power of the transformational process from semiotic deep structure to the surface structure of narrated events and characters. This systematic and methodological gap was addressed by Genette ([1972] 1980), who presented a comprehensive taxonomy of discourse phenomena developed alongside a detailed analysis of narrative composition and technique in Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. Broadly speaking, Genette’s narratological taxonomy covered three functional domains of literary narrative: the temporal structure and dynamics of representation (in the dual sense of product and process of representational activity); the mode of narration and its underlying logic of narrative communication; and the epistemological and normative

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constraints of the gathering and communication of information during the narrative process. The terminology and neologisms introduced by Genette in together with his taxonomy soon became the narratological lingua franca. In contrast to his formalist predecessors and structuralist colleagues, Genette had no intention of designing a fully coherent and selfcontained theory of narrative. This sparked fundamental narratological controversies over Genettian concepts such as “focalization” (Bal 1977; Jahn 1996, 1999b) and set the stage for numerous debates that were to result in postclassical narratology. Some of this criticism was addressed in Genette ([1983] 1988). 3.4 Poststructuralist Narratology: 1980–1990 The following decade was dominated by two major trends: a widening of narratology’s scope beyond literary narrative and the importing of concepts and theories from other disciplines (Ryan & van Alphen 1993: 112). The process thus mirrored the general shift from structuralist to poststructuralist methodologies that was taking place in the humanities at that time. Chatman (1978) demonstrated the applicability of narratology to visual narratives. Bal ([1985] 1997) and others proved narratology’s relevance in the analysis of cross-textual phenomena such as intertextuality and intermediality, as well as in that of intra-textual phenomena of polyvocality (Lanser 1981). Derridaen deconstruction was introduced by Culler (1981), who questioned the implicit genealogy from story (histoire, fabula) to discourse and argued that the relation of dependency between the two is the exact opposite: discourse generates story. The psychological motivation at play in this process of retrospective emplotting was explored in Brooks (1984). Another influence came from feminist studies: Lanser (1986) proposed to include gender as a systematic category for the narratological analysis of the narratorial profile as well as of point of view and mode of presentation. On a more abstract level, Pavel (1986) and Doležel (1988) extended the narratological model by introducing modal logic and the theory of possible worlds. These models accounted for the implicit, non-realized virtual narratives indicated by fictional characters’ hopes, wishes, etc. which may not materialize but nevertheless serve to point to the theoretical possibility of an alternative course of events. Ryan (1991) explored this line of reasoning even further, linking it to the simulation paradigm of AI. Finally, the postclassical phase of narratology saw an increase in the exporting of narratological concepts and theorems to other disciplines

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(Meuter → Narration in Various Disciplines), thus contributing to the “narrative turn” (cf. White 1980; Kreiswirth 1995). 3.5 Post-classical Narratology and “New” Narratologies: 1990 to Present With time, the tension between structuralist narratology’s original concern for systematicity and logical coherence and the need for a response to calls for a more pragmatically oriented theory of narrative could no longer be ignored, as observed by Prince (2003). Fludernik (1996) signaled a shift in focus from text-based phenomena to the cognitive functions of oral and non-literary narrative, thus opening a new chapter in the narratological project. In contrast, Gibson (1996) argued for a radical deconstruction of the entire conceptual apparatus developed by the structuralists. Whether such philosophical criticism in the Derridaen vein deserves to be classified “narratological” has however been met with skepticism (e.g. Nünning & Nünning 2002: 15). Even so, the deconstructionist and postmodernist onslaught stimulated a multitude of new approaches aimed at combining the structuralists’ concern for systematicity with a renewal of interest in the cultural and philosophical issues of history and ideology. The resulting wave of critically oriented narratological models and theories proved to be methodologically heterogeneous, prompting Herman (ed. 1999) to introduce the plural concept of “narratologies.” A comprehensive survey by Nünning & Nünning (2002) and by Nünning (2003) grouped the proliferation of “new narratologies” that got underway during the 1990s into eight categories, three of which have turned out to be the dominant methodological paradigms of contemporary narratology: (a) Contextualist narratology (Chatman 1990b; note that Chatman introduces the term, but criticizes the approach) relates the phenomena encountered in narrative to specific cultural, historical, thematic, and ideological contexts. This extends the focus from purely structural aspects to issues of narrated content. (b) Cognitive narratology (Herman 2000, ed. 2003) focuses on the human intellectual and emotional processing of narratives. This approach is not restricted to literary narratives: “natural” everyday and oral narratives are considered to represent an underlying anthropological competence in its original form (Fludernik 1996). Cognitivist approaches also play a crucial role in AI research, the aim of which is to model or simulate human narrative intelligence

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(Jahn 1999a; Mateas & Sengers eds. 2003; Meister 2003; Lönneker et al., eds. 2005). (c) Transgeneric approaches (Hühn & Sommer → Narration in Poetry and Drama) and intermedial approaches (Ryan → Narration in Various Media; cf. Ryan 2005, ed. 2004; Wolf 2004) explore the relevance of narratological concepts for the study of genres and media outside the traditional object domain of text-based literary narrative. Application, adaptation and reformulation of narratological concepts go hand in hand with the narratological analysis of drama (Fludernik 2000; Jahn 2001; Richardson 2007; Fludernik 2008; Nünning & Sommer 2008), poetry (Hühn 2004; Hühn & Kiefer 2005; Schönert et al. 2007), film (Bordwell 1985; Branigan 1992; Schlickers 1997; Mittell 2007; Eder 2008), music (Kramer 1991; Wolf 2002; Seaton 2005; Grabócz 2009), the visual and performing arts (Bal 1991; Ryan 2003, ed. 2004; Berns → Performativity), computer games (Ryan 2001, 2006, 2008) as well as other domains. This broadening of the narratological palette beyond specific media highlights the necessity for further research on narrativity (Abbott → Narrativity). 3.6 Outlook The development of narratology has been dependent not only on its theoretical or meta-theoretical advances, but has also emerged with the gradual consolidation of organizational and institutional structures. In this respect, three phases can be identified: Phase 1: The formation of cross-disciplinary narratological interest groups. Beginning with the contributors to the programmatic 1966 special issue of the journal Communications and the creation during the 1970s by Bremond, Genette, Todorov, Marin, and Metz of the Centre de recherches sur les arts et le langage (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique), informal organizational models (also represented by the Tel Aviv group with its influential journal Poetics Today, or in the Amsterdam School initiated by Bal) have played a decisive role in shaping narratology as a paradigmatic inter-discipline. Phase 2: The advent of officially funded narratological institutions for academic research and teaching since the late 1990s, such as the “Forschergruppe Narratologie” and the “Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology” at Hamburg University, the “Zentrum für Erzählforschung” at Wuppertal University as well as the “Center

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for Narratological Studies” at the University of Southern Denmark and the “Project Narrative” at Ohio State University in the US. Phase 3: The founding of national and international narratological umbrella organizations. These include the North American “International Society for the Study of Narrative,” the Scandinavian “Nordic Network,” and the “European Narratology Network.” To date, the theoretical definition of narratology has generally followed one of three lines of reasoning: the first upholds or questions narratology’s original formalist-structuralist credo; the second explores family resemblances among the old and the “new narratologies” and their various research paradigms; the third focuses on the methodological distinction between hermeneutic and heuristic functions, sometimes suggesting that narratology’s scope ought to be restricted to the latter and sometimes arguing that it ought to be defined in even more general terms. While the merit of these theoretical definitions is obvious, narratology’s potential for further development is perhaps better described in terms of an interaction of three concurrent processes: expansion of the body of domain-specific theories on which narratology is based; continuous broadening of its epistemic reach; consolidation of an institutional infrastructure, which has helped to transform a methodology into a discipline.

4 Topics for Further Investigation The diversification of narratology since the 1990s has not only borne witness to its continued relevance, but it has also underscored the need to address the problem of methodological identity. What exactly is narratology (cf. Kindt & Müller 2003)? How can it be defined in theoretical and methodological terms? The need for critical self-reflection by practicing narratologists can be argued from two angles. Even during the heyday of poststructuralism, it was observed that “visits to the tool shed of narratology may be of advantage even to those making critical theory their main residence” (Hoesterey 1991: 214). However, can conceptual imports taken from structuralist narratology retain their theoretical precision and integrity in a foreign methodological context, or are they not rather destined to degenerate into mere metaphoric labels? Descriptive concepts such as mise en abyme or metalepsis (Pier → Metalepsis) seem to be less at risk (cf. Wolf 2005; Schmid 2005a), while others―notably the core narratological concept

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of narrator―resist straightforward appropriation, as film or computer game studies (e.g. Neitzel 2005) have come to realize. Yet examples like these also point to a more fundamental issue that extends beyond the scope of individual concepts. What is the principal methodological status of the undertaking now that it has transformed into a “Narratology beyond Literary Studies” (Meister et al. 2005): is narratology a tool, a method, a program, a theory, or is it indeed a discipline (Schönert 2004)? Nünning and Nünning’s comprehensive 2002 survey (cf. Nünning 2003) of the multitude of “new narratologies” concluded with a list of six desiderata, calling for: (a) more studies in the history of narratology; (b) concrete examples of narratological analyses of texts; (c) detailed theoretical explication of narratological conceptual fundamentals; (d) narratological reconstructions of phenomena relevant to literary history; (e) narratological work in the field of cultural history; (f) research on intermedial aspects of narrative. In the intervening years, most of these desiderata have been addressed at least in part. For example, the Russian formalists’ constitutive role has been reconstructed in Schmid (ed. 2009), which includes seminal original texts in (German) translation. Others have investigated historical links between narratology and German Erzähltheorie (Cornils & Schernus 2003; Fludernik & Margolin 2004). Narratological analyses of texts, films, visual artifacts, etc. were undertaken starting in the 1970s and continue to nourish narratological reflection today. Numerous studies―some of them book-length―have been devoted to fundamental concepts such as event and eventfulness (Schmid 2003; Hühn → Event and Eventfulness), narrativity (Sturgess 1992; Sternberg 2001; Audet et al. [2006] 2007; Pier & García Landa eds. 2008; Abbott → Narrativity), action (Meister 2003), character (Jannidis 2004; Eder 2008; Jannidis → Character) and perspective (Hühn et al., eds. 2009; Niederhoff → Perspective – Point of View; Niederhoff → Focalization); research on procedural aspects of narrative that long remained unnoticed has emanated from digital media studies (Ryan 2002, 2006). By contrast, a narratologically based approach in literary history― called for repeatedly (Bal 1986; Pavel 1990; Nünning 2000; Fludernik 2003, etc.)―is still outstanding. Similarly, the potential for interdisciplinary cooperation between narratology and text linguistics has also not been fully exploited yet. After a promising start in the 1970s (van Dijk 1975) this work has been taken up only occasionally (e.g. Adam [1985] 1994; Karlgren & Cutting 1994; Toolan [1988] 2001). Recent contributions such as Adam (2005), Lehmann (2008) or Janik (2008) demonstrate the synergy of this approach.

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Contemporary narratology has clearly responded to the call to broaden the scope of methodology and object domain. At the same time, the last two desiderata underscore literary narrative’s paradigmatic status for the narratological study of narrative representation.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Aarne, Antti & Stith Thompson ([1928] 1961). The types of the folktale. A classification and bibliography. Helsinki: Suomaleisen Tiedeakatemia. Adam, Jean-Michel ([1985] 1994). Le texte narratif. Précis d’analyse textuelle. Paris: Nathan. – (2005). La linguistique textuelle. Introduction à l’analyse textuelle des discours. Paris: Colin. Audet, René et al. ([2006] 2007). Narrativity: How Visual Arts, Cinema and Literature are Telling the World Today. Paris: Dis Voir. Bal, Mieke (1977). Narratologie. Essais sur la signification narrative dans quatre romans modernes. Paris: Klincksieck. – ([1985] 1997). Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: U of Toronto P. – (1986). “Quelle est la faute de l’abbé Mouret ? Pour une narratologie diachronique et polémique.” Australian Journal of French Studies 23, 149–168. – (1991). Reading “Rembrandt”: Beyond the Word-Image Opposition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Barry, Jackson G. (1990). “Narratology’s Centrifugal Force: A Literary Perspective on the Extensions of Narrative Theory.” Poetics Today 11, 295–307. Barthes, Roland ([1966] 1975) “An Introduction to the Analysis of Narrative.” New Literary History 6, 237–272. Blanckenburg, Christian Friedrich von ([1774] 1965). Versuch über den Roman. Mit einem Nachwort von Eberhard Lämmert. Faks. der Originalausgabe. Stuttgart: Metzler. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P. – (2005). “Resurrection of the Implied Author: Why Bother?” J. Phelan & P. Rabinowitz (eds.). A Companion to Narrative Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 75–88. Bordwell, David (1985). Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Methuen. Branigan, Edward (1992). Narrative Comprehension and Film. London: Routledge. Bremond, Claude (1973). Logique du récit. Paris: Seuil. Bringsjord, Selmer & David Ferrucci (1999). Artificial Intelligence and Literary Creativity: Inside the Mind of BRUTUS, a storytelling machine. Mahwah: Erlbaum Associates. Brooks, Peter (1984). Reading for the Plot. Design and Intention in Narrative. Oxford: Clarendon P.

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Spielhagen, Friedrich ([1876] 1967). “Novelle oder Roman?” F. Spielhagen. Beiträge zur Theorie und Technik des Romans. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 245– 257. – ([1883] 1967). Beiträge zur Theorie und Technik des Romans. Faks. nach Erstausg. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Stanzel, Franz K. ([1955] 1971). Narrative Situations in the Novel: Tom Jones, MobyDick, The Ambassadors, Ulysses. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Sternberg, Meir (2001). “How Narrativity makes a Difference.” Narrative 9, 115–122. Sturgess, Philip J. M. (1992). Narrativity: Theory and Practice. Oxford: Clarendon P. Titzmann, Michael (2003). “The Systematic Place of Narratology in Literary Theory and Textual Theory.” T. Kindt & H.-H. Müller (eds.). What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: de Gruyter, 175–204. Todorov, Tzvetan (1969). Grammaire du Décaméron. The Hague: Mouton. Tomaševskij, Boris (Tomashevsky) ([1925] 1971). A Theory of Literature. Letchworth: Bradda Books. Toolan, Michael J. ([1988] 2001). Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction. London: Routledge. Uspenskij, Boris (Uspensky) ([1970] 1973). A Poetics of Composition. The Structure of the Artistic and Typology of A Compositional Form. Berkeley: U of California P. Uther, Hans-Jörg (2004). The Types of International Folktales. A Classification and Bibliography. Based on the system of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica. White, Hayden (1980). “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality.” Critical Inquiry 7, 5–29. Wolf, Werner (2002). “Das Problem der Narrativität in Literatur, bildender Kunst und Musik: ein Beitrag zu einer intermedialen Erzähltheorie.” V. Nünning & A. Nünning (eds.). Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär. Trier: WVT, 23–104. – (2004). “‘Cross the Border―Close that Gap’: Towards an Intermedial Narratology.” EJES: European Journal of English Studies 8, 81–103. – (2005). “Metalepsis as a Transgeneric and Transmedial Phenomenon. A Case Study of the Possibilities of ‘Exporting’ Narratological Concepts.” J. Ch. Meister (ed.). Narratology beyond Literary Criticism. Mediality, Disciplinarity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 83–107.

5.2 Web Resources NarrBib (short for “Narratological Bibliography”) www.icn.unihamburg.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=8&Itemid=13 ENN (European Narratology Network) www.narratology.net/ ICN (Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology, Hamburg University) www.icn.uni-hamburg.de Project Narrative (Ohio State University)

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www.projectnarrative.osu.edu/ Zentrum für Erzählforschung (Bergische University, Wuppertal) www.fba.uni-wuppertal.de/zef/ Center for Narratologiske Studier (University of Southern Denmark, Kolding) www.sdu.dk/Om_SDU/Institutter_centre/Ilkm/Forskning/Forskningsprojekter / C_Narratolo gi.aspx

Narrator Uri Margolin

1 Definition In the literal sense, the term “narrator” designates the inner-textual (textually encoded) highest-level speech position from which the current narrative discourse as a whole originates and from which references to the entities, actions and events that this discourse is about are being made. Through a dual process of metonymic transfer and anthropomorphization, the term narrator is then employed to designate a presumed textually projected occupant of this position, the hypothesized producer of the current discourse, the individual agent who serves as the answer to Genette’s question qui parle? The narrator, which is a strictly textual category, should be clearly distinguished from the author (Schönert → Author) who is of course an actual person.

2 Explication A narrator is a linguistically indicated, textually projected and readerly constructed function, slot or category whose occupant need not be thought of in any terms but those of a communicative role. Terms designating this role include discursive function or role, voice, source of narrative transmission, producer of current discourse, teller, reporter, narrating agent or instance. The position occupied by this presumed inner-textual originator of the discourse functions as a logico-linguistic center for all spatio-temporal and personal references occurring in the discourse, i.e. as highest-level center of the discourse. An inner-textual narrator can in principle be assigned to any narrative text, not just a fictional one, and such ascription does not require any knowledge about the actual world producer of the words of the text, be it a human being or a computer program. The linguistically projected narrator and the actual world producer will be confronted at a later stage (3.6). Good reasons, stemming from text linguistics, philosophy, narratology and common sense, can be adduced for the necessity or at least ad-

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visability of granting the narrator category as defined above a central place in the description and interpretation, both informal and professional, of literary narratives. In Benveniste’s (1966) and Jakobson’s (1971) text linguistics, any utterance is described as consisting of two indissoluble components: the speech event (énonciation, saying) and that which is said (énoncé) to which correspond, respectively, the sayer (sujet de l’énonciation) and the one spoken of (sujet de l’énoncé). Since narrative utterances are a subset of the universe of utterances, they too must therefore contain a sayer. For narrative, the terms thus translate into narration, narrated event, narrator and narrated agent(s), respectively. A narrator can thus be defined as the sujet de l’énonciation of one or more utterances that represents an event (Coste 1989: 166). In terms of linguistic pragmatics or speech act theory, any narrative, regardless of its length, is a macro speech act of the constative type, claiming that such and such happened. For a claim to be made, there needs to be an agent who makes this claim, hence the narrator. If narrative is a report of acts and events, we need a reporter behind it, and if it is a tale, we need a teller. In terms of communication theory, any act of communication consists of a sender sending a message to a receiver. A narrative consists of someone telling someone else that something happened, and no such act can be imagined without a sender-narrator position. Even a failed, confused or contradictory act of reporting presupposes a narrator no less than a successful one.

3 History of the Concept and its Study Plato was the first to claim that the underlying difference between narrative and drama as basic types of discourse consists in the difference between directly showing and indirectly telling or reporting, rooted in the absence or presence respectively of a mediating instance between the characters’ speech and the audience. And the narrator is precisely this mediating instance. Modern arguments for mediacy as the generic hallmark of narrative can be found in Friedemann ([1910] 1965) and Stanzel ([1955] 1971). In contemporary narratology it is customary to distinguish between three functions which are essential to give rise to any narrative: doing, seeing and saying (Bal 1981: 45). Thus, characters do certain things which are viewed from a certain perspective, and what is seen is then reported. To these three functions there correspond three roles: narrative agent, focalizer (which has been a subject of scholarly controversy) and narrator. Baxtin’s ([1934/35] 1981) influential theory of the novel, which can be generalized to all narrative, regards the nov-

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el as the site of interplay between two kinds of utterances: those stemming from the characters and those stemming from an inner textual narrator. The whole essence of narrative would be missed if one were to deny the textual existence of a narrator as a stylistic and ideological position. Finally, psychonarratology (e.g. Bortolussi & Dixon 2003) has shown that readers process literary narratives in the same way as they do ordinary communication insofar as they assume a textually encoded conversational partner responsible for the contents of the narrative. This mimetic-illusionist assumption a bout the nature and status of the narrator has recently come under scrutiny by cognitively-oriented narratologists (Nünning 2001; Fludernik 2003; Herman → Cognitive Narratology). On this view, both narrated world and narrator are not inherent to the text, but rather constructed in readers’ minds at the point of intersection of individual textual data and general cognitive categories possessed by these readers. A literary narrative is consequently a text capable of creating in the reader’s mind the representational illusion of observing an ongoing process of narrative communication in which a more or less personalized narrator plays a key role. Identifying and characterizing such a narrator is an optional naturalization or meaning creation strategy open to the reader and building upon two kinds of input: textual signals and storytelling scenarios (frames, schemes) the reader already possesses from his real-life experience and which are activated once a certain number of narrator indicators have been identified in the text (Emmott & Alexander → Schemata). Works which destroy the illusion of an independently existing narrated domain may still produce a powerful representational illusion of narrative activity with a narrator figure behind it. One can say in conclusion that the notion of narrator has been approached and defined in terms of three distinct theoretical frameworks (Grall 2007): rhetoric (speech act, communication); narratology (mediation, interplay of utterances); and cognitive science (reader psychology and models of text comprehension). 3.1 Identifying the Narrator: Constitutive Conditions Some narrators are more marked and individuated than others. But what are the minimal textual conditions under which one could identify a distinct narrating position or voice? Such conditions could be represented as a hierarchical series. The text must be capable of being naturalized as representing one or more reporting utterances or speech acts stemming from one or more agents. Some texts, classified as narratives in our culture, such as unframed interior monologues (Schnitzler’s Fräulein Else) or textes-limites of modernism or postmodernism, do not

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satisfy this requirement and consequently cannot be considered as possessing any inscribed originators. The second condition is that it should be possible to demarcate the utterances of which the text consists and assign each of them to a distinct voice or originator. (It is only in rare cases that all utterances recorded in a text were originally made by one speaker at one time.) The third condition is that one should be able to determine the hierarchical relations between the different utterances and their originators, as defined by such questions as who can quote whom, who can refer to whom and who can report about whom (Margolin 1991), but also to determine the total number of such originators and levels of speech in the text. Finally, and most crucially, one should be able to identify a single, highest-level originator of all originators, so to speak: one general, primary or global textual narrating voice, such that (a) the text as a whole can be seen as a macro speech act or utterance emanating from that voice, and (b) all textually occurring utterances originating with other speakers are embedded within this macro speech act, that is, are merely quoted or mentioned in it. There is no algorithm for deciding whether any or all of the above conditions are satisfied by a given text even though readers make such decisions semi-intuitively all the time. The muse who provides the answer to the epic question at the beginning of the Iliad is the earliest Western example of such a global narrator, but this occurs also with the anonymous voices relating the whole of War and Peace or Père Goriot. When it is not possible to identify a single highest-level narrator, we are dealing with multinarrator narratives (Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying or The Sound and the Fury, Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red) in which different textual segments consist of reports stemming from different speakers, none of whom occupy a position higher than the others. “Narrator” in the prototypical sense, however, designates the single, unified, stable, distinct human-like voice who produces the whole narrative discourse we are reading. In general, although not universally, this discourse assumes the shape of an account of independently existing and known facts. Going one step further, the narrator can be envisioned as a fictional agent who is part of the story world and whose task it is to report from within it on events in this world which are real or actual for him (Thomson-Jones 2007: 78). 3.1.1 “Unnatural Voices” in Postmodern Narratives Richardson (2006) described the difficulty in pinning down and defining a single or unified or stable highest-level narrator position in many postmodern texts, even though they contain numerous signs of narrator

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and narrational activity alike. In such texts, of which Beckett’s Trilogy is the showcase, it is sometimes impossible to locate a constant highestlevel narrator, and even if one is locatable, this utterer has no voice of his own or is mimetically impossible. The first case involves either a constant reversal of levels between quoter and quoted where “the one you invented has invented you” (Beckett), or an open-ended regression of levels where whenever we think we have finally reached the primary textual speaker, the unquoted quoter, it turns out that this discourse, too, is in fact being quoted by a still higher-level voice. In the second case, the highest-level speaker is a mere conduit or “mouth” (Beckett) voicing a discourse whose inscribed originator is someone else, so that all tokens of “I” in this discourse designate not the utterer, but that “cantankerous other” (Beckett). The net result is that “I seem to speak, it is not I; about me—but it is not about me” (Beckett). The supposedly highest-level voice ends up lacking all identity, as it is merely a “ghost writer” for another or the mere conduit for another’s discourse or an impersonator speaking as another (Margolin 1986/87). In the mimetically impossible case (Richardson 2006: 103–105), the primary speaker turns out to be a number of distinct voices which merge without any explanation, which contain so much incommensurable information that they cannot be unified into one speech position or whose level is indeterminate and floating between the character, narrator and persona of the biographical author, as when such a narrator claims to have invented figures in other texts by the same author (e.g. Beckett’s Trilogy). Finally, a specific highest-level individual voice cannot be identified in a discourse consisting of a verbal collage of recycled clichés from media reports, advertising and the like (Petersen 1993: 138). 3.2 Individuating the Narrator When a primary global narrator can be defined for a given narrative, the discourse as a whole can be viewed as its macro speech act. Individuating the narrator in a literary fictional context means constructing or inferring an image of the utterer with the sole means for so doing being the verbal record of his speech act. This task needs to be guided by two theoretical frameworks: linguistic pragmatics, which seeks to define the time, place, and context of utterance and the utterer’s capabilities, beliefs and communicative intentions; and the cognitive psychological theory of attribution, which seeks to infer from a behavior, including verbal, the dispositions and attitudes of the agent (Margolin 1986). Now literary texts vary enormously as regards the kinds and the amount of clues they provide for this purpose and the resultant textual marked-

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ness of the narrator or “degree of narratorhood” (Chatman’s term). At degree zero we have the impersonal or transparent mode of narration associated with an anonymous voice or covert (effaced, imperceptible) narrator coming from nowhere and announcing categorically that “once upon a time there was.” At the other end stands the perceptible, dramatized or personal mode of narration associated with an overt narrator who could say things like “Living now in my old age in the city of NN, I still remember with great affection what X did 30 years ago.” Obviously, the greater the number and diversity of the textual elements available for speaker indication, the richer the resultant speaker image. Once again, the two extremes would be a mere voice with no psychological person behind it and a concrete figure with both an inner life and a body. 3.2.1 Types of Utterances One major source of data for building the image of the narrator is claims occurring in his/her discourse that go beyond the strict reporting of individual facts. These include summaries, analyses, comments, and generalizations of various kinds, all concerning the narrated domain. Chatman (1978) has proposed a useful typology of such claims in ascending order from set descriptions and temporal summaries to reports of what characters did not do, say or think, then to explanations, interpretations and judgments of reported actions or characters, and ending with generalizations of any kind, including purported general truths, maxims and norms of action which go well beyond the reported events. The extent of such claims varies enormously from one author to the other, two extremes being Hemingway and Henry James. The aesthetic desirability of such narratorial “intrusions” or “telling” beyond mere “showing” has been the object of heated critical debate since the 19th century (e.g. Otto Ludwig [1977], Friedrich Spielhagen [1883] 1967, Käte Friedemann [1910] 1965, Percy Lubbock [1921] 1947 and Wayne C. Booth [1961] 1983). Critics for whom narratorial mediation is a mere handmaiden for showing camera-like what happened would advocate the avoidance of all such material and consider it a mere deviation detracting from the effectiveness of the narration. Conversely, those for whom mediation is the very essence of narrative as distinguished from drama would consider such material as radical enrichment of “mere reporting.”

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3.2.2 Situational Indicators The types of utterances just mentioned help us individuate the narrator as a mind, so to speak. But what about him/her as a person in a communicative situation? Here linguistic features play the major role. Doležel (1967) has outlined several such features, again in hierarchical order. First is the use of first- and second-person pronouns to indicate the presence of the originator and the inscribed addressee of the current speech event, both of whom are absent in third-person discourse. Next is the use of all three major tenses, especially of the present tense, to indicate the current communicative transaction relative to which all narrated events are temporally ordered. In pure third-person past-tense narration, on the other hand, the past tense is not related to any particular speech situation, but is more aspectual, merely indicative of the narrated events already having taken place. Third is the use of deictics (demonstratives, indexicals, shifters) of time and place such as “now,” “here,” “lately,” “yesterday,” etc. relating the narrated events to a present speaker and his embodied space-time position. Another major element is address to the inscribed narratee, such as the famous “Dear reader,” consisting of questions and admonitions and providing the speaking voice with immediacy, projecting an ongoing communicative exchange (telling) in addition to what is being narrated (told). Such address is part of the rhetorical strategy employed by the narrator, and embodies his/her communicative intentions. Equally important is the use of subjective semantics, expressing the narrating instance’s attitudes and reactions to the narrated events, which both adds a strong personal element and functions as part of the teller’s rhetorical strategy vis-à-vis the addressee. A final individuating feature is a personal style of narration, indicative of a particular mind style. 3.2.3 Narration-oriented Utterances Narratorial comments are focused on the narrated, while the linguistic features listed above may be indicative of the narrated or the narration. The fullest systematic picture of elements in the communicative situation (narration) which help characterize the narrator can be provided by using Jakobson’s model of verbal communication (1960), five of whose six functions are concerned with enunciation. The expressive function is concerned with the speaker’s self-reference, self-characterization, and expression of emotions and attitudes. The conative or appellative functions may create the illusion of face-to-face communication where the addressee is urged to listen, understand, sympathize, etc., not only

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with respect to the narrated, but also regarding the narrator and his current activity. Metalinguistic references to the medium employed (oral or written) and its limitations again highlight the narrator’s present act of telling, and so do discussions of the appropriateness and potentialities of the type of discourse selected (letter, diary, confession, report). And finally, there are of course references to the current narrating activity and its linguistic embodiment as it is being produced. As Prince (1982) and Nünning (1989) have noted, the greater the number of signs of the narration compared to those of the narrated, the more marked the narrator and his activity become. An extreme example is provided by postmodern narratives where hardly any story gets told, since most of the text is concerned with the process of telling and its difficulties and with the figure of the teller and his struggle to tell (Neumann & Nünning → Metanarration and Metafiction). Finally, when the telling process is foregrounded and presented as durative (taking days, months or years), it is possible to draw conclusions not only with respect to some of the narrator’s mental and physical traits, but also as regards possible changes to these features in the course of the narration. 3.3 Major Aspects of a Narrator’s Image Once a certain amount of individuating information about the narrator has been garnered from the textual data listed above, one could attempt to draw an image of this narrator as a human or human-like figure. Now in principle any physical, mental or behavioral aspect of the narrator could enter such a picture, but as regards those aspects most closely tied to the defining teller role, the following have been suggested by various narratologists: degree and kind(s) of knowledge possessed; reliability; relation to various components of the speech act performed; articulateness; attitude towards the narrated (straightforward, ironic, sympathetic, etc.); projected teller role. 3.3.1 Knowledge Once a global narrator has been identified in a discourse, all information about the narrated domain, including characters’ direct discourse, originates with that narrator. Now the knowledge a narrator may have about any of the characters may be restricted to what can be garnered from sense impressions, or it may include direct access to their minds, something not possible outside fiction (Niederhoff  Focalization). Even if restricted to external data, a narrator may know more, the

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same as or less than one or more of his characters, and he may also withhold information from his addressee. One egregious example is Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, where the narrator withholds the crucial information that he himself is the murderer. Some, but by no means all, anonymous narrating voices telling their story in the third-person past tense are endowed with omniscience: “Familiarity, in principle, with the characters’ innermost thought and feelings; knowledge of past, present and future; presence in locations where characters are supposed to be unaccompanied […]; and the knowledge of what happened in several places at the same time” (Rimmon-Kenan [1983] 2003: 96). And such panoramic or Olympian knowledge can be fully authoritative, not open to any challenge or enquiry. This is the maximal degree and kind of knowledge any narrator can possess, and the possibility of any narrating instance possessing such knowledge is the most basic constitutive convention of all fiction writing. As soon as the narrator becomes personalized, knowledge claims begin to be restricted in scope and kind to the humanly possible (unless the speaker is a supernatural entity) and are open to modalization (“it seems,” “probably,” “as far as can be known”) and thus the challenge of limited epistemic authority. Because of their rhetorical needs, authors sometimes endow personalized narrators with intermittent omniscience. The highly personalized narrator of Proust’s first-person novel À la Recherche du temps perdu can thus on occasion report with certainty about what another person thought or what happened when someone was all by himself. 3.3.2 Reliability Personalized narrators, and only personalized ones, may on occasion be deemed by the reader as unreliable, meaning that the validity of some or even all claims made by them is low or non-existent, that these claims need consequently to be rejected and, if possible, replaced by more valid, reader-formulated ones regarding the given topic. (Notice, though, that if the narrator is cast in the role not of a reporter of facts but of an inventor of tales, unreliability is inapplicable [Walton 1990: 374–375].) Following Phelan and Martin (1999), one can distinguish three axes of unreliability: facts and events of the narrated domain; the interpretation of such facts (i.e. supplied inferences, explanations or motivations); moral, practical, aesthetic, etc. judgments and evaluations of these facts. While the first two kinds of reliability are epistemic, the third is clearly axiological and normative. Moreover, unreliability of factual claims is the most radical, since it may prevent us from figuring

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out what the narrative world was “really” like. A narrator may himself alter the reliability of any of his claims by citing lack of information or inability on his part to fathom things. There are numerous indicators of narratorial factual unreliability (cf. D’hoker & Martens eds. 2008) including paratextual and intertextual elements such as title (Diary of a Madman) or a narrator figure falling clearly under a codified unreliable literary type (picaro, scoundrel). In multiple narrator texts (3.4), conflicts between the reports on the same events by different narrators indicate that at least one of them is unreliable. In realistic literature, a major clash between our world knowledge (extra-textual information) and claims made by the narrator may also serve as such an indicator (Hansen 2007). Inner-textual indicators of factual unreliability are inconsistency and incongruity between claims made by the narrator regarding the same events, while illogicality, invalid or non-sequitur inferences as well as explanations and generalizations lacking any evidence are grounds for deeming narratorial interpretations of fact unreliable. Strong conflict with the moral or aesthetic norms held by the reader are grounds for rejecting narratorial judgments. In the factual and interpretative cases, one also assumes that the events of the narrated domain are in and by themselves amenable to a consistent description and that valid generalizations and explanations of this domain are possible. Narratorial unreliability is ultimately a readerly computational hypothesis adopted in order to explain the origin of inconsistencies and incongruities in the narrated world, a crucial point first made by Yacobi (1981). To claim that the narration of a given story is unreliable is to assume the existence of a personalized mediator with human-like cognitive and sensory capabilities whose erroneous or aberrant mind can serve as the source of all textual incongruities with respect to the narrated domain (Marcus 2007). Once we are ready to psychologize the narrator, we could seek for mental explanations for the unreliability of some or all of his claims. Depending on the particular text, such grounds could be the narrator’s lack of knowledge or experience, mental deficiencies ranging from limited intelligence to insanity or drug-induced hallucinations, self-deception (in cases of autobiographical narration), a particular mental disposition (the chronic liar), and a deliberate deceptive strategy. Creating a narrator figure whom readers will deem unreliable redirects attention from the told to the telling and the teller, from what is known and evaluated to the circumstances and activities of informing and judging, and to the person failing to perform them properly.

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3.3.3 Relation to the Narrative Act From the speech act of narration one can construct an image of its performer along three major axes: status, involving the speaker’s relation to his speaking activity; contact, involving the speaker-audience relation; and stance, involving the relation between the speaker and the topic of his discourse. Such is the key thesis of Lanser (1981), the most comprehensive account to date of the narrator in terms of speech act theory. Status covers, among other things, social identity, extent of knowledge, presentation of the told as report or invention, and “mimetic authority” encompassing sincerity and honesty or their absence, trustworthiness (both intellectual and moral), and competence or skill at telling. Contact includes the teller’s attitude towards his inscribed addressee: formality to intimacy, deference to contempt; self-reference and direct address or the absence of both; the teller’s attitude towards his activity including self-confidence or hesitancy, consciousness of this activity of telling and reference to it or lack of both. Stance is a more heterogeneous category, but most important probably is the narrator’s relation to his characters: adopting or not adopting their language and/or spatio-temporal perspective and/or values (Lanser 1981: 224). Lanser’s pragmatics of narration follows in the footsteps of classical rhetoric where a speaker is regarded as a human subject with various emotions (pathos), values (ethos) and intentions and who, through the organization and manner of delivery of his discourse, seeks to mold in particular ways the attitudes, emotions and judgments of his addressees (Grall 2007: 253–254). 3.3.4 Articulateness Under this heading is understood the manner of telling, especially those stylistic choices that help characterize the speaker’s discourse and, by metonymic transfer, the speaker’s mind as sophisticated, abstract, complex and rational or their opposite, finely nuanced or simplistic, emotional and immediate or rational and distanced, and so on. While such qualifications cannot be strictly defined in any systematic and exhaustive manner, they form an important part of our personality sketch of the narrator as perceiver, chronicler and analyst of the narrated world. Our corresponding judgment of him as intelligent and perceptive or not will have a decisive influence on our assessment of his credibility and ultimately on how much of what he claims about the narrated domain we are ready to accept.

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3.3.5 Attitude to the Narrated Equally incapable of formal definition and failsafe determination, yet every bit as important, is the narrator’s attitude towards the told, as manifested in the way characters and events are represented. An openended list of qualifiers would include neutral vs. judgmental, sympathetic vs. detached, involved vs. distanced, cynical, sentimental, emotionally charged, curious, amused, bewildered, and so on. The relation between the tone or manner of telling and its subject matter can itself serve as the basis for second-order characterization of the speaker. Speaking in a cold, distanced manner about an atrocity may lead us to characterize the speaker as heartless or as doing his best to hide his emotions, depending on the context (Margolin 1986). The drawing of such inferences is not an exact science, for it depends on the specific inner-textual contexts as well as on the reader’s cultural context; even so, such inferencing plays an important role in any portrait of the narrator drawn by the reader. 3.3.6 Projected Teller Role The last key aspect of the narrator’s image is his/her textually projected role. Is the narrator presented as a reporter (chronicler, biographer, historian, eye witness) who vouches for the truth of his assertions regarding the narrated? Or as an editor or publisher transmitting and vouching for the prior existence and/or authenticity of the documents (letters, diaries) he is presenting (though not necessarily for the veracity of the claims made in them)? Or as an author-fabricator, a storyteller engaged in the invention of stories, perhaps with a playful attitude? Or maybe as an oral teller, as in the skaz tradition, presenting a story to a live audience with a focus on the performative or transmissive aspect, on oral address and unmediated audience response? (For the underlying functions, see Ryan 2001; for the key properties of the narrator in his teller role, see Booth [1961] 1983 and Petersen 1993.) 3.4 Plurivocal and Multi-level Narration Some narratives do not have a general or global narrator, so that the events on the narrated level are related by numerous independent partial narrators, neither of whom refers to the discourse of the others, thus creating “narrative parataxis” (Coste 1989: 173). Now these partial narrators need not be participants in the narrated events, as when three contemporary historians tell the story of Napoleon’s defeat in Russia.

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Furthermore, each of them may narrate a different phase of the total action sequence, a pattern labeled “narrative relay” (Coste 1989: 173), or the same events may be covered by all of them in converging or diverging ways. In fictional narratives, one encounters both patterns, but with the difference that the narrators are normally also participants in the events they narrate. Since each character-narrator possesses his own perspective or “take” on the events, the net result is multi-perspectival narration where there exist two or more narrating instances who portray the same events in different ways, each from his own standpoint (Nünning 2001: 18). An epistolary novel consisting entirely of correspondence between two or more persons is a plurivocal narration in which each letter writer reports on and discusses events concerning himself, his addressee or some third party. An epistolary novel with a framing editor’s discourse turns this editor into the global narrator, since all the embedded letters are basically quoted by him, the text as a whole constituting a two-level narrative. In general, a narrative can comprise several hierarchically ordered levels of narration, each with its own narrator. In such cases, the primary narrator is the one who introduces or quotes all the others, without himself being introduced by any of them; the secondary narrator is introduced or quoted by the first and introduces in his turn all lower-level narrators, and so on. This story-within-a-story phenomenon has been described by Nelles (2005: 134) as a “structure by which a character in a narrative text becomes the narrator of a second narrative text framed by the first one,” i.e. where one narrator’s discourse embeds that of another at a subordinate level. While the primary narrator may remain a disembodied voice, all lower-level narrators are characters with respect to the primary one and must therefore be individuated to some degree with respect to verbal, mental, behavioral and physical features. Embedded narrators (Pier  Narrative Levels), too, can function either as reporters, in which case issues of reliability are paramount, or as storytellers, where their skill at story telling and its impact on their destiny are key (Walton 1990: 369–372). 3.5 Narrators and Characters When a narrator employs tokens of “I” and “you” in his discourse, these tokens automatically refer to him in his current speaker role and to his inscribed addressee as participants in the ongoing communicative transaction. But these tokens may also refer to speaker and addressee as entities existing beyond the sphere of narration as objects of telling (=characters, narrative agents) in the narrated sphere. And as character

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(Jannidis → Character), they may be located at points in space and time beyond the narration’s here and now. Insofar as narrators have themselves as narrative agents, they are engaged in producing a first-person narrative, whereas if it is their addressees who act as narrative agents, a second-person narrative is being produced. If the entities referred to in the narrator’s discourse are not part of the current communicative situation, then a third-person narrative is produced. (Note that it is quite possible to have a third-person narrative in which the speaker and the addressee in their communicative roles are quite prominent.) Put differently, the referents of first- and second-person narratives participate in both story and discourse systems and those of third-person narratives in the story system only. Using the narrated system as our point of departure, the main distinction is between narratives in which the narrator also participates in the narrated events (first-person narrative) and those in which he does not (second- and third-person narratives). Several unusual forms of narration merit special attention with regard to the narrator-character relation. One is the impersonal “one” form where the pronoun can designate anyone and everybody who is or would be in the situation portrayed, including the narrator himself. But this particular pronoun endows narration with a depersonalized aura. The “you” form automatically picks out the inscribed addressee and can pick out any reader who is ready to put himself imaginatively in this addressee’s situation. But what if the narrator’s claims are about a “you” in a separate narrated sphere, possibly also distinct in space and time from the narrational sphere? Why tell the addressee his own life story? And how possible is it for a personalized narrator to have access to this “you’s” interiority? No one motivation is possible, only a series of local context-dependent ones (Fludernik ed. 1994). “We”-narrative concerning not speaker and addressee, but rather the speaker and other(s) in a distinct narrated sphere, is especially tricky. “We” is always I+other(s). So is it the whole group speaking in unison, like the chorus in Greek tragedy, or one speaker only? And if this speaker is one, is he an authorized spokesperson for the group? “We”-narratives may serve as tools for constructing a group’s sense of cohesion and identity, but mental access by the we-narrator is necessarily curtailed. Since we=I+other(s), whenever a text using a first-person plural pronoun seeks to depict the thoughts of other(s) beyond the speaker, it necessarily straddles the line between first- and third-person narration: a character discloses that which can only be known by an external, impersonal intelligence, that is, an omniscient narrative voice. Such narratives are thus simultaneously first- and third-person discourses, transcending this basic narratological divide (Richardson 2006: 60).

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When speaking about his own discourse, the narrator normally adopts his own current epistemic and evaluative perspective, although he can adopt the presumed perspective of his inscribed addressee, as in: “Is it ever boring, listening to you.” When making claims about the narrated domain, the narrator can engage his own perspective, but alternatively he may take on the perspective of a character, speaking “[a]s though he himself were […] in the epistemological position he attributes to a character, reporting what he takes this character to know” (Walton 1990: 379). In the case of the autodiegetic (=autobiographical) narrator, the character whose epistemological position he adopts may be himself at a different time, usually in the past, but possibly also a projected future version of himself. In his study of Dostoevskij’s poetics, Baxtin ([1929] 1984) showed the myriad ways in which a character’s perspective can be incorporated into the narrator’s discourse, ranging from harmony up to sharp internal dissonance and parodic inversion. Free indirect discourse, one of the hallmarks of fiction writing, is a linguistic form combining the narrator’s deictic position and the character’s idiom and semantics. Finally, a narrator can speak of himself qua narrative agent as of another, that is, in the second or third person (e.g. Caesar in De bello gallico). The reasons for such a deictic shift are numerous and local, but the transfer can never encompass the whole text; otherwise, it will not be identifiable. 3.6 Alternative Models The narrator figure presented so far is the one postulated or constructed in standard, classical narratology. As we have seen, it is based on three assumptions, namely, that for every work of narrative fiction: (a) There exists a specifiable inner-textual, highest -level speech or communication position functioning as the point of origin of the current discourse. In other words, all narrative fiction is communication. (b) There is always an individual figure or agency occupying this speech position and thus backing the assertions contained in the narrative discourse or presenting the fictional world to us (Kania 2005). (c) This individual figure or agency exists on the strictly fictional level, and is a distinct entity within the fictional universe projected by the text. Thus, in writing down his text, the flesh and blood author gives rise to a substitutionary speaker who performs the macro speech act of reporting

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and who is solely responsible for all claims, specific or general, made in this report (Ryan 1981, Martínez-Bonati 1996). In writing down his actual text and communicating it to actual readers, the author thus projects or evokes the image of an act(ivity) of narrative communication between a fictional narrator and his fictional narratee(s). (Schmid 2005: 45–46). This fictional narrator is assumed to be a constituent of every work of narrative fiction and hence a universal, indispensable component of any narratological model. Note that the three claims listed above form a hierarchical order, so that one cannot assert (c) without asserting (a) and (b), or assert (b) without asserting (a). Conversely, one can reject (c) and yet maintain (a) and (b), or deny both (c) and (b) and still keep (a). And of course one can deny all three claims. Over time, and even more so in the last decade, challenges to one or more of these three assumptions or claims have been issued by linguists (Banfield, Kuroda), philosophers (Hamburger, Currie, Wilson, Kania), and literary scholars (most prominently Patron [2010], but also Walsh [1977] and Köppe and Stühring [2011]). All of these challenges deny at least the pan-narrator claim, the claim about the “ubiquity of the non-actual fact telling narrator” (Alward), no matter how textually unmarked or effaced, by turning such a narrator into a mere option within the narratological model, to be applied to a given narrative only if warranted by the existence in the text of certain textual features. Hamburger ([1957] 1993) for example has argued on philosophical grounds that one can meaningfully speak of a narrator figure only in first person narratives, while in all other cases the narrator is a mere metonymy for a presentational textual function. Banfield (1982) has argued on linguistic grounds that the notion of narrator is meaningful and warranted only in cases of overt, foregrounded narration similar to the oral one, such as the skaz (which is of course third person narration). As soon as the universality of the fictional narrator is rejected, a uniform treatment of all varieties of narrative fiction is no longer possible, and the one, universal model is replaced with a whole set of options, alternatives or partial models, each of them being deemed the most appropriate or warranted in some case or another. But why stop with (c)? In fact, assumption (b) and even (a) can, and have been, rejected by some scholars at least for some (types of) texts. Sylvie Patron for example (Patron 2010) claims that not all works of narrative fiction can be justifiably regarded as acts of communication, thus denying the universality of (a). Some works of narrative fiction are similar to Benveniste’s histoire, and hence better regarded as non-communication, so the argument goes, since it is not possible to define in them a global, inner textual speech position functioning as point of origin of the discourse as

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a whole. In such works, one might add, the marginalized or non- existent communicative function is replaced by the dominance of the presentational one. And on this non-communicative (or semantic-oriented) view it is expressions by themselves that can refer, and the entities in the narrated domain can be established without recourse to a particular speech position. Accepting just assumption (a) as universal would imply viewing narrative texts as consisting of an interplay of two kinds of discourses, defined by such hierarchical (hence anti-symmetrical) relations as dominant and subordinate, embedded and embedding, quoting and quoted, referring and referred to. The dominant discourse is associated with the highest-level speech position and is for convenience’s sake referred to as the discourse of the narrator, while the subordinate discourses are associated with the speech positions of characters. Yet one deals here with linguistic and discursive functions or roles only, and stops short of any attempt to anthropomorphise them, to identify and characterize any specific human- or human-like individuals who occupy the respective positions. Stylistic and ideological features, rather than pragmatic or individual-psychological ones, are the ones to be associated with each speech position. (Baxtin). Accepting assumptions (a) and (b) while rejecting (c) opens up three options as to the identity of the occupant of the narrator position. One is obviously (c) itself, the maximalist view which is precisely the one being rejected. The other one is the minimalist: the occupant of the highest- level speech position in a work of narrative fiction is always the actual author, but in a ludic or make-believe guise, feigning the making of true assertions, and sometimes also pretending to be someone else. And there is also the middle position: if we replace essentialism with instrumentalism and universal claims with qualified existential ones, we can regard the author in a make-believe mode and the fictional narrator as two co-existing options. In some cases the first would be the better warranted by the text, while in others the second would be more appropriate. The choice is thus between a fictional individual who reports seriously of facts in the narrated domain as known to him, and the actual author-performer merely feigning, pretending or playing the role of a reporter of facts, or a maker of true factual assertions, while in actuality he is their inventor (Searle’s illocutionary pretense. See Searle 1975). In terms of rules of procedure or methodological norms, two opposing norms can be envisioned. The first would claim that the default case of the originator of the narration is the fictional narrator, and good reasons should be provided whenever one rejects this option in favour of the author-cum-fabulator one. The opposite norm, advocated by some philosophers, is that the default case is the author as fabulator-pretender,

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and good reasons should be provided whenever one posits instead a fictional individual as teller-reporter. The most crucial case is that of heterodiegetic (third person), impersonal narration, where the highest textual speaker position is occupied by an anonymous, unindividuated voice (“geistig und abstrakt” in Thomas Mann’s words) or, in other words, where the speaker position is unmarked. It is precisely in such cases, several scholars have argued, that it is totally unwarranted to fill the teller slot with a fictional individual figure of an “effaced” narrator. In such cases, so the argument goes, it makes much more sense to make the actual author in his role as pretender the originator of the discourse. Such narratives are hence “narratorless” in that they do not satisfy (c), while still possessing (b). If we adopt an instrumentalist view of theories, regarding them as cognitive tools rather than ontological commitments, once could now quickly assess the relative cost/benefit of postulating a fictional narrator vs. an author as pretender in cases of third person impersonal narration. Quite obviously, the advantages of one position are the shortcomings of the other and vice versa. The advantages of the author as pretender are as follows: this position conforms with Occam’s dictum that entities (and, one might add, especially fictional ones) should not be multiplied beyond necessity. It also conforms to David Lewis’ principle of minimal departure for fictional worlds, which states that a fictional world should be assumed to be as similar as possible to the actual one unless explicitly specified otherwise (Lewis 1978). And this view further enables us to tackle in a straightforward manner the issue of narrative style and composition. It is thus the actual author in his role as pretendreporter who makes all of the stylistic and compositional choices regarding the narration. And finally, adopting this view provides continuity with a long tradition harking back to Antiquity. Conversely, sticking with the always a fictional narrator position, even in the case of impersonal third person narration, preserves the absolute distinction between the fictional and the actual, as well as providing a uniform treatment along a continuum for all varieties of narrative fiction, instead of splitting the domain into radically heterogeneous sub-domains. And it is also simpler, since it involves a semantic consideration only, and does not require pragmatic considerations about actual people playing specific, culturally defined pretend roles. Arguments for and against each position keep being offered in the research literature, but it may be our deeply held fundamental views on the relation between art and actuality, rather than methodological considerations, which ultimately make us adopt one of the two positions.

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4 Topics for Further Investigation (a) The image of the textual speaker as constructed in the context of fiction writing should be examined in its relation to the projected speaker image in lyrical poetry (persona) and in non-fictional narratives. (b) It is assumed here that the diarist and letter writer are narrators, yet Chatman (1978) denies this: is it because he implicitly identifies narrator with global narrator? (c) Can narrators be focalizers, and if so, when and to what extent? This problem has not been touched upon here, yet is the subject of extensive debate in the critical literature. (d) This entry makes no use of the notion of implied author (Schmid  Implied Author), which the present writer finds redundant in a communication -based model. However, the implied author appears in almost every discussion of the narrator. Should this be the case? (e) Narrator unreliability as regards judgments and evaluations has been treated here entirely as a matter of readers’ criteria, unlike factual unreliability, for which there are objective inner-textual indicators. Why has this view emerged only recently, and is the resistance to it associated with the implied author postulate?

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Baxtin, Mixail (Bakhtin, Mikhail) ([1929] 1984). M. B. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. – ([1934/35] 1981). “Discourse in the Novel.” The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: U of Texas P, 259–422. Bal, Mieke (1981). “Notes on Narrative Embedding.” Poetics Today 2.2, 41–59. Banfield, Ann (1982). Unspeakable Sentences. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Benveniste, Émile (1966). Problèmes de linguistique générale. Paris: Gallimard. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Bortolussi, Marisa & Peter Dixon (2003). Psychonarratology. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Coste, Didier (1989). Narrative as Communication. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. D’hoker, Elke & Gunther Martens, eds. (2008). Narrative Unreliability in the Twentieth-Century First-Person Novel. Berlin: de Gruyter. Doležel, Lubomír (1967). “The Typology of the Narrator: Point of View in Fiction.” To Honor Roman Jakobson. The Hague: Mouton, vol. I, 541–552. Fludernik, Monika (2003). “Commentary: Narrative Voices—Ephemera or Bodied Beings.” New Literary History 32, 707–710.

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– ed. (1994). Second-Person Narrative. Special issue of Style 28.3. Friedemann, Käte ([1910] 1965). Die Rolle des Erzählers in der Epik. Darmstadt: WBG. Grall, Catherine (2007). “Rhetorique, narratologie et sciences cognitives: Quel status pour le narrateur?” J. Bessiere (ed). Litterature, Representation, Fiction. Paris: Honore Champion, 247–266. Hamburger, Käte ([1957] 1993). The Logic of Literature. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Hansen, Per Krogh (2007). “Recognising the Unreliable Narrator.” Semiotica 165, 227–246. Jakobson, Roman (1960). “Linguistics and Poetics.” Th. A. Sebeok (ed.). Style in Language. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 350–377. – (1971). “Shifters, Verbal Categories and the Russian Verb.” R. Jakobson. Selected Writings. The Hague: Mouton, vol. 2, 130–147. Köppe, Tilman & Jan Stühring (2011) “Against Pan-Narrator Theories.” Journal of Literary Semantics 40, 59–80. Lanser, Susan (1981). The Narrative Act. Princeton: Princeton UP. Lewis, David (1978). “Truth in Fiction.” American Philosophical Quarterly 15, 37–46. Lubbock, Percy ([1921] 1947). The Craft of Fiction. Smith: New York. Ludwig, Otto (1977). Romane und Romanstudien. München: Hanser. Marcus, Amit (2007). Self Deception in Literature and Philosophy. Trier: WVT. Margolin, Uri (1986). “The Doer and the Deed.” Poetics Today 7, 206–225. – (1986/87). “Dispersing/Voiding the Subject.” Texte 5/6, 181–210. – (1991). “Reference, Coreference, Referring, and the Dual Structure of Literary Narrative.” Poetics Today 12, 517–542. Martínez-Bonati, Félix (1996). “On Fictional Discourse.” C.-A. Mihailescu & W. Hamarneh (eds.). Fiction Updated. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 65–75. Nelles, William (2005). “Embedding.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 134–135. Nünning, Ansgar (1989). Grundzüge eines kommunikationstheoretischen Modells der erzählerischen Vermittlung. Trier: WVT. – (2001). “Mimesis des Erzählens.” J. Helbig (ed.). Erzählen und Erzähltheorie im 20. Jahrhundert. Heidelberg: Winter, 13–47. Patron, Sylvie (2010). “The Death of the Narrator and the Interpretation of the Novel. The Example of Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo.” Journal of Literary Theory 4, 217–233. Petersen, Jürgen H. (1993). Erzählsysteme. Stuttgart: Metzler. Phelan, James & Mary Patricia Martin (1999). “The Lessons of Weymouth.” D. Herman (ed.). Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 88–109. Prince, Gerald (1982). Narratology: The Form and Function of Narrative. Berlin: Mouton. Richardson, Brian (2006). Unnatural Voices. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith ([1983] 2003). Narrative Fiction. Contemporary Poetics. London: Methuen. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1981). “The Pragmatics of Personal and Impersonal Fiction.” Poetics 10, 517–539.

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– (2001). “The Narratorial Functions.” Narrative 9, 146–152. Searle, John (1975). “The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse.” New Literary History 6, 319–332. Schmid, Wolf (2005). Elemente der Narratologie. Berlin: de Gruyter. Spielhagen, Friedrich ([1883] 1967). Beiträge zur Theorie und Technik des Romans. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Stanzel, Franz ([1955] 1971). Narrative Situations in the Novel: Tom Jones, MobyDick, The Ambassadors, Ulysses. Bloomington: Inidiana UP. Thomson-Jones, Katherine (2007). “The Literary Origins of the Cinematic Narrator.” British Journal of Aesthetics 47, 76–95. Walsh, Richard (1997). “Who is the Narrator?” Poetics Today 18, 495–513. Walton, Kendall (1990). Mimesis as Make-believe. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Yacobi, Tamar (1981). “Fictional Reliability as a Communicative Problem.” Poetics Today 2.2, 113–126.

5.2 Further Reading Alward, Peter (2007). “For the Ubiquity of Nonactual Fact-Telling Narrators.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65, 401–404. Blödorn, Andreas et al., eds. (2006). Stimme(n) in Texten: Narratologische Positionsbestimmungen. Berlin: de Gruyter. Chatman, Seymour (1990). Coming to Terms. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Currie, Gregory (2010). Narratives and Narrators. Oxford: Oxford UP. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. Herman, Luc & Bart Vervaeck ([2001] 2005). Handbook of Narrative Analysis. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Jakobson, Roman (1990). “The Speech Event and the Functions of Language.” R. Jakobson. On Language. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 69–79. Kania, Andrew (2005) “Against the Ubiquity of Fictional Narrators.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63, 1, 47–54. Marcus, Amit (2008). “A Contextual View of Narrative Fiction in the First Person Plural.” Narrative 16, 46–64. Margolin, Uri (2011). “Necessarily a Narrator or Narrator if Necessary: A Short Note on a Long Subject.” Journal of Literary Semantics 40, 43–57. Nünning, Ansgar, ed. (1998). Unreliable Narration. Trier: WVT. Patron, Sylvie (2009). Le Narrateur. Introduction à la théorie du récit. Paris: Armand Colin. – (2012) “Reply.” Peer Bundgard et al. (eds.) Narrative Theories and Poetics: 5 Questions. Automatic Press, 159–169. Phelan, James (2001). “Why Narrators Can be Focalizers—and Why it Matters.” W. van Peer & S. Chatman (eds.). New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. Albany: State U of New York P, 51–64. Tacca, Oscar (1985). Voces de la novela. Madrid: Gredos. Wilson, George M. (2007). “Elusive Narrators in Literature and Film.” Philosophical Studies 135, 73–88.

Non-temporal Linking in Narration Wolf Schmid

1 Definition Besides the temporal linking of elements (including their more or less overt causal linking), which is constitutive of narrativity, there is also non-temporal linking, which is an important constructive device of narrative accounting for its semantic density. A linking is regarded as nontemporal if segments of the story or of the text, regardless of their position in time and irrespective of their causal embedding, are associated on the basis of properties they are perceived to share. The foremost manifestation of non-temporal linking, which is based on the paradigmatic structure of the text, is equivalence (Jakobson 1960), comprising both similarity and contrast. The dual nature of equivalence is expressed by Lotman’s ([1970] 1977) synonymous term “co-opposition” (so-protivopostavlenie).

2 Explication Equivalence means equality of two elements with regard to a certain value, i.e. identity of the elements in a particular feature and nonidentity in others. In verbal texts, equivalence refers to features either of the text itself (formal equivalence) or of what is depicted in it (thematic equivalence). Thematic equivalence can refer to situations, characters, and actions. Situational and actional equivalence refers either to one and the same character (isofigural equivalence) or to different characters (heterofigural equivalence). Whereas in poetry, formal equivalence is based mainly on sound instrumentation and rhythm dominates, in classical prose narration it is thematic equivalence that takes the lead. Equivalence has been promoted by Jakobson (1960) to a constitutive device of verbal art, i.e. of texts dominated by the poetic function. Although Jakobson does not restrict the sphere of poetic function to poetry, in his examples he concentrates on genres with a high degree of sound repetitions such as lyric verse, political slogans or common say-

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ings. Twenty years later Jakobson expands the range of equivalence or, as he says now, of parallelism. According to him, parallelism is constitutive of poetry, but also occurs in narrative prose, for while parallelism is not so dominant in the areas of prosody, metrics, grammar and lexis, it can be found in larger thematic structures: “the composition of the plot, the characterization of the subjects and objects of the action, and the sequence of themes in the narrative” (Jakobson & Pomorska [1980] 1983: 107). Equivalence produces, against the sequentiality of the story (Grabes → Sequentiality), a simultaneity (Margolin → Simultaneity in Narrative) of elements which are often distant from one another not only on the syntagmatic axis of the text, but also on the time axis of the story. As equivalences form non-temporal links between elements scattered across the text, the result could be called the work’s “spatial form,” to use Joseph Frank’s ([1945] 1963) mistakable and often misunderstood term. In any case, equivalence competes with temporal links such as sequentiality and causality. These cannot be transformed into equivalences. Being before or after, being cause or effect are ontological designations of a completely different nature to being equivalent. The categorical difference between temporal and non-temporal linking cannot be dissolved.

3 Aspects of the Phenomenon and History of its Study 3.1 Perception of Equivalence in Narrative Similarity and contrast, the manifestations of equivalence, can be represented as bundles of identities and non-identities concerning those features actualized by the story. Whether an equivalence appears as similarity or contrast is not decided by the number of identities and nonidentities, but solely by the position that the corresponding features take in the story’s hierarchy. The process of hierarchization undergone by the features in a story can be very dynamic. When the story emphasizes a feature x in which two elements A and B are identical, the equivalence of A and B appears as a similarity. In another phase of the story, a feature y can be highlighted. If the elements A and B are non-identical in y, the equivalence appears as a contrast, regardless of in how many other, non-actualized features A and B coincide. An equivalence, in particular a thematic equivalence, must be actualized in order for it to be noticed. The safest way to actualize an equiv-

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alence and to ensure its noticeability is its intersection with other equivalences, either on the same structural level or on another level. The highlighting of specific features and the assignment of equivalences is a matter of interpretation. Although the equivalences do characterize and reciprocally determine one another, their identification and integration into a semantic thread remains an action to be performed by the reader. The actualization of potential equivalences contained in the work will always be only partial. This partialness is not only based on the number of equivalences, but also on their multiple relatability, which produces new results from each different analytical perspective. Of all the equivalences and equivalence relations available in a text, the reader will always select only the ones that correspond to the meaning s/he expects or wishes. Reception reduces the complexity of the work in that it selects those relations that become identifiable as meaningful within its particular horizon. In reading and interpreting, we therefore draw a thread through the thematic and formal equivalences and the thematic features that can be actualized in them, and we necessarily disregard an abundance of other features and equivalences (Schmid 1984). 3.2 Equivalence in Poetic and Classical Narrative Prose Once euphonic and rhythmical repetitions enter into the formal equivalence, the narrative text approaches a prose type which is widespread in the literatures of post-realist modernism. That type is called “poetic” or, in Russian philology, “ornamental” prose (Schmid → Poetic or Ornamental Prose). Ornamentalism, however, is not merely a stylistic, but also a structural phenomenon which manifests itself as fully in the narrated story as in the texture. The formal equivalences overlay the linguistic syntagma of the narrative text, resulting in rhythmic patterns and sound repetition. The thematic equivalences project a network of nontemporal concatenation onto the temporal sequence of the story. In extreme ornamental prose, narrativity can be weakened to such a degree that no story whatsoever is told any more. The temporal links are then merely embryonic and no longer align the happenings with the continuity of a story. The unity of the work is provided instead by, as it were, simultaneously given equivalences. An example is the “Symphonies” by the Russian symbolist Andrej Belyj, which strive to implement musical composition in verbal art. Equivalence plays an essential role not only in ornamental, but also in ‘normal,’ action-oriented classical narrative prose without a peculiar sound elaboration of the texture, as in the novels of Tolstoj or Dostoev-

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skij. These novels are by no means ornamental, yet they do contain a more or less overt paradigmatic design, as in the oppositions found in Tolstoj’s War and Peace (1868–69), for example. The situations denoted in the work’s title form an opposition that organizes the whole work, as do the juxtapositions of town and country, Petersburg and Moscow, French and Russian, Napoleon and Kutuzov. Not by chance, in a letter, Tolstoj (1936–64: LXII, 269) mentions the “labyrinth of linkages” that determines the message of his novel Anna Karenina (1875–77). In Dostoevskij’s Brothers Karamazov (1879–80) there is a superficial similarity between Ivan Karamazov and his followers such as Smerdjakov, Rakitin and Kolja Krasotkin. But on closer examination it appears that all of Ivan’s adepts realize only one of his different positions, whereas Ivan himself keeps changing his positions with each of the many treatises he writes. So instead of a similarity of views, we get a contrast of the adherents’ highly selective and fixed, if not to say petrified, worldviews on the one hand, and an ever-changing one of their idol on the other. In both cases, equivalence, whether in the form of dominating similarity or of contrast, plays a seminal role in the works’ signifying structures. 3.3 Functions of Equivalence in Narrative Among the functions of equivalence in narrative, at least five can be distinguished. 3.3.1 Rhetorical Function The first function is shared by narrative with persuasive texts, characterized by advertising and rhetoric. Such texts tend to use equivalence abundantly, either in the form of leitmotifs, where similarity clearly dominates, or in the form of equivalences proper, where the relationship between similarity and contrast is balanced. In both cases, parallelism serves the purpose of persuasion, as in Marc Antony’s “But Brutus is an honorable man.” An intermediate means to this aim is increased memorability and heightening of the power of suggestion. Increased memorability and heightening of the power of suggestion are effective in narrative prose, as well. It is not seldom that leitmotifs contribute to these effects. For example, leitmotifs function as carriers of connotations. Tolstoj’s novels provide numerous cases of connotative leitmotifs: in War and Peace, to mention just one example, the “shortened upper lip of the little princess Bolkonskaja,” Andrej Bolkonkij’s wife, who is doomed to die during her first childbirth.

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Another device that rhetoric and narrative have in common is shaping an equivalence between the beginning and the end of the text. However irrelevant the similar and dissimilar passages may be for the core of the message, the listener will get the impression that the speech is well structured. The effect of a well-wrought construction gives not only a certain aesthetic satisfaction, but will also be interpreted by the listener in the sense that the speech is well-thought-out and that its arguments are well-founded. This, of course, enhances the persuasiveness of the orator’s theses. Comparable effects can be observed in narrative where the ending, for the sake of an effect of well-structuredness, density, and closeness, is constructed equivalent to the beginning, sometimes leading authors to implement a “false ending” (Šklovskij [1921c] 1991: 56) consisting, say, of a description of nature which compensates for a lack of a real conclusion. 3.3.2 Shaping Archisituations Equivalence of situations in a narrative can be compared to rhyme in verse. This is known as “situation rhyme” (Meijer 1958). According to Jakobson (1960: 372), “in poetry, any conspicuous similarity in sound is evaluated in respect to similarity and/or dissimilarity in meaning.” The linkage of two words by the similarity of their sounds produces hybrid semantic associations that Lotman ([1970] 1977: 146) calls archisemes. It would be more correct to say “archisememes.” An archisememe is an intersection or set union of sememes, or meanings of words. An archisememe can unite contrasting but compatible sememes such as “north” and “south” or “birth” and “death,” containing semantic features common to both sememes. In poetry an archisememe can unite sememes that may be completely incompatible. From a poem “I am Goya” by Andrej Voznesenskij, Lotman cites the sememes Goya (the name of the painter), gore (“grief”), golos (“voice”) and golod (“hunger”), all united into an archisememe. This archisememe exists solely on the basis of the sound similarity of the signifiers, is found only in this poem, is completely bound to its structure and is hard to explain in words. A comparable semantic process can be observed in situation rhymes of narrative prose. We can thus speak of archisituations based on the equivalence of two or more situations. In Anna Karenina, we have a striking resemblance of dream motifs that are shared by both Anna and Vronsky. It is the vision of a little and dreadful-looking peasant with a disheveled beard, working on something made of iron and murmuring some incomprehensible words in

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French. This vision enters Anna’s mind after her first encounter with Vronsky when a railway worker was run over by the train. After several occurrences, it reappears at her suicide under the wheels of the train. In this way, the nightmare contributes to the fatal end of Anna’s story. Another example of Tolstoy’s art of shaping significant and psychologically motivated chains of equivalences is the motif of cutting a body into pieces. This motif establishes a tripartite chain that stretches across the whole part of the novel devoted to Anna. The motif occurs for the first time when Anna’s acquaintance with Vronsky is overshadowed by the accident in which the rail worker’s body is cut in two. The second occurrence is after the lovers’ consummation of their love. Vronsky is compared, evidently from Anna’s point of view, to a murderer, who “with fury, as it were with passion, […] falls on the body [he has robbed of life] and drags it and cuts it; so he covered her face and shoulders with kisses” (Part II, Chapter 11). Anna carries this image within herself until her destiny has been fulfilled under the slicing wheels of the train. With this concatenation of motifs, Anna’s death under the wheels of the train appears as the fulfillment of a schema of her fate which was sealed as early as her first encounter with Vronsky. 3.3.3 Shaping Categorical Frames Thematic equivalences contribute to the semantic framework of a story in that they do not only shape a bridge between more or less remote passages of the text, but can convey certain connotations. Features foregrounded in them determine the categorical frames of the storyworld functioning as carriers of symbolic or symptomatic meanings. In Anna Karenina, there is a set of physical details characterizing the heroine: “the little willful tendrils of her curly hair that would always break free about her neck and temples”; her “small, skillful, magic hands”; her “easy, resolute steps”—everything metonymically representing her liveliness and life force, and above all her often mentioned “narrowed eyes,” symbolizing her narrow perception of reality. During Anna’s lifetime, Vronsky’s even strong teeth are mentioned several times, but after her death he goes to the Serbian war with toothache. Anna’s hair and Vronsky’s teeth forming chains of leitmotifs, on the one hand, and contributing to a series of similarities and dissimilarities, on the other, become indicators of the characters’ inner situations.

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3.3.4 Marking Eventfulness To be narrative implies 1) a temporal structure with two states, the initial state and the final state, and 2) an equivalence of the initial and final states. With every story, the reader will concentrate primarily on the temporal links and their logic. In the interpretation of a narrative text, the first question to be asked is in what way initial and final states of the storyworld differ (cf. Stierle 1977: 217). The ascription of meaning in the reading of narrative texts aims to identify changes to the initial situation as well as the logic that underpins these changes. Not only the determining causes, but even the changes themselves are only rarely described explicitly and reliably and must therefore usually be reconstructed. In their reconstruction, the reader is called on to draw on equivalences. In many cases, it is only non-temporal linking that brings temporal changes and their logic to the surface. It is not seldom that a change of state underlying a whole novel can be tracked only in many small and inconspicuous steps. An example is Thomas Mann’s novel Buddenbrooks, depicting the “decline of a family,” as stated in the subtitle of the German original. The changes between the many steps, however inconsiderable they may seem, manifest themselves in symptoms appearing not only in the characters and their behavior but also in small details of the setting. In Mann’s Buddenbrooks such symptomatic details form pairs of similarity and contrast that make the changes observable. 3.3.5 Forming Gestalten As in poetry, so in prose: equivalence generates structures which can be described in terms of gestalt psychology (Schmid 1977). But whereas in poetry the gestalt emerges from sound and rhythm, in prose it is mainly thematic units that form the material of the gestalten. Equivalences, together with their configurations and concatenations, project their patterns onto the storyworlds, giving them a specific character of structuredness. The effect is that Tolstoy’s worlds, for example, evoke an impression very different from Dostoevskij’s or Puškin’s. 3.4 History of the Study 3.4.1 Russian Formalism and its Ambiance The study of equivalence or parallelism in narrative was developed primarily by Russian formalists and scholars close to them. The essays

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by Šklovskij gathered in his collections (1921a, [1921b] 1991, [1921c] 1991, [1925] 1991) drew attention to the fundamental devices of sjužet construction such as parallelism, stepped construction, and the opposition of action and counter-action (cf. Hansen-Löve 1978). The representatives of the Russian theory of composition (esp. Petrovskij [1921] 1987, 1925, 1927; cf. Aumüller 2009) concentrated on functional aspects of novella composition. In postformalist times, Vinogradov (1934, 1941), inspired by sjužet and composition theory, made extensive observations on the paradigmatic construction of Puškin’s narrative prose. Jakobson, who as early as 1921 ([1921] 1979) had studied varying forms of parallelism in poetry, including the “realization of an inverse parallelism” as a sjužet construction, introduced in 1935 the dichotomy of the paradigmatic chains—metaphor/similarity/poetry vs. metonymy/contiguity/prose—and he demonstrated their hybridization with the example of the poet Pasternak’s prose (1935). 3.4.2 Western Research Due to the fact that the theory of equivalence and parallelism had been formulated in Russia and that those phenomena took a significant position in Russian literature from Puškin to Tolstoj and to postrealist prose (Čexov, symbolism, avant-garde of the 1920s), further theoretical development of the concept in the West and its practical application to texts took place predominantly in the context of Russian philology. A prominent part was played by Dutch Slavists. As early as 1958, Meijer examined “situation rhyme” in a novel by Dostoevskij (1958). Van Holk examined Puškin’s Coffin-maker, demonstrating that the tale is a “typical specimen of a poet’s prose in that its composition turns out to be extremely rigorous, while on the other hand the relationships between the personages remain elementary” (1968: 109). Van der Eng dealt theoretically with juxtapositions of motifs and chains of oppositions in narrative prose (1973, 1978a, 1993) and also analyzed different forms of paradigmatization in the prose of Puškin (1968) and Čexov (1978b, 1981), examining in particular progressive and regressive semantic accumulation. In the vein of the Dutch research and referring to the Slavic tradition, Schmid formulated a theory of equivalence in prose narrative (1984), analyzed the semantic effects of intratextual motif paradigms in Puškin’s Tales of Belkin ([1991] 2013), and provided interpretations of ornamental narrative in Čexov and Russian writers of the 1920s (1992, 1998).

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4 Topics for Further Investigation The question that needs to be addressed most urgently is the sensual aspects of non-temporal linking. Formalist and structuralist interpretations are mostly satisfied with exploring the semantic results of the paradigmatic arrangement, but at the same time neglecting the noncognitive side of the sjužet construction. This aspect is difficult to describe, but it exists nonetheless and plays a not insignificant role in our perception of narratives.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Aumüller, Matthias (2009). “Die russische Kompositionstheorie.” W. Schmid (ed.). Slavische Erzähltheorie. Russische und tschechische Ansätze. Berlin: de Gruyter, 91–140. Eng, Jan van der (1968). “Les récits de Belkin. Analogie des procédés de construction.” J. v. d. Eng et al. The Tales of Belkin by A.S. Puškin. The Hague: Mouton, 9–60. – (1973). “Priem: central’nyj faktor semantičeskogo postroenija povestvovatel’nogo teksta.” J. v. d. Eng & M. Grygar (eds.). Structure of Texts and Semiotics of Culture. The Hague: Mouton, 29–59. – (1978a). “The Dynamic and Complex Structure of a Narrative Text.” J. v. d. Eng et al. On the Theory of Descriptive Poetics: Anton P. Chekhov as Story-Teller and Playwright. Lisse: de Ridder, 33–58. – (1978b). “The Semantic Structure of ‘Lady with Lapdog’.” J. v. d. Eng et al. On the Theory of Descriptive Poetics: Anton P. Chekhov as Story-Teller and Playwright. Lisse: de Ridder, 59–94. – (1981). “Dynamic Narrative Construction—Čechov as an Example.” Slavica Hierosolymitana 5/6, 137–150. – (1993). “Iskusstvo novelly. Obrazovanie variacionnych rjadov motivov kak fundamental’nyj princip povestvovatel’nogo postroenija.” V. M. Markovič & W. Schmid (eds.). Russkaja novella. Problemy teorii i istorii. Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo S-Peterburgskogo universiteta, 195–209. Frank, Joseph ([1945] 1963). “Spatial Form in Modern Literature.” The Widening Gyre: Crisis and Mastery in Modern Literature. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 3–62. Hansen-Löve, Aage (1978). “Die formalistische Sujettheorie.” Der russische Formalismus. Wien: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 238– 273. Holk, André van (1968). “A Semantic Discourse Analysis of ‘The Coffin-Maker’.” The Tales of Belkin by A. S. Puškin. The Hague: Mouton, 86–109. Jakobson, Roman ([1921] 1979). Novejšaja russkaja poėzija. Podstupy k Xlebnikovu. Selected Writings. Vol. 5. The Hague: Mouton, 299–354.

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(1935). “Randbemerkungen zur Prosa des Dichters Pasternak.” Slavische Rundschau (Praha) 7, 357–374. – (1960). “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics.” Th. A. Sebeok (ed.). Style in Language. Cambridge: MIT Press, 350–377. – & Krystyna Pomorska ([1980] 1983). Dialogues. Cambridge: MIT Press. Lotman, Jurij ([1970] 1977). The Structure of the Artistic Text. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. Meijer, Jan (1958). “Situation Rhyme in a Novel of Dostoevsky.” Dutch Contributions to the IVth International Congress of Slavistics. The Hague: Mouton, 1–15. Petrovskij, Michail ([1921] 1987). “Short Story Composition in Maupassant: Toward a Theoretical Description and Analysis.” Essays in Poetics 12, 1–21. – (1925). “Morfologija puškinskogo ‘Vystrela’.” V. Brjusov (ed.). Problemy poėtiki. Sbornik statej. Moskva: Zemlja i fabrika, 173–204. – (1927). “Morfologija novelly.” Ars Poetica 1, Moskva, 69–100. Schmid, Wolf (1977). Der ästhetische Inhalt. Zur semantischen Funktion poetischer Verfahren. Lisse: de Ridder. – (1984). “Thematische und narrative Äquivalenz: Dargelegt an Erzählungen Puškins und Čechovs.” R. Grübel (ed.). Russische Erzählung. Russian Short Story. Russkij rasskaz. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 79–118. – ([1991] 2013). Proza Puškina v poėtičeskom pročtenii. ‘Povesti Belkina’ and ‘Pikovaja dama.’ Sankt-Peterburg: Izdatel’stvo S-Peterburgskogo universiteta. – (1992). Ornamentales Erzählen in der russischen Moderne. Čechov—Babel— Zamjatin. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang. – (1998). Proza kak poėzija. Puškin—Dostoevskij—Čexov—avangard. Saint Petersburg: Inapress. Šklovskij, Viktor (1921a). Razvertyvanie sjužeta. Petrograd: Opojaz. – ([1921b] 1991). “The Relationship between Devices of Plot Construction and General Devices of Style.” Theory of Prose. Elmwood Park: Dalkey Archive Press. 15–51. – ([1921c] 1991). “The Structure of Fiction.” Theory of Prose. Elmwood Park: Dalkey Archive Press. 52–71. – ([1925] 1991). Theory of Prose. Elmwood Park: Dalkey Archive Press. Stierle, Karlheinz (1977). “Die Struktur narrativer Texte: Am Beispiel von J. P. Hebels Kalendergeschichte ‘Unverhofftes Wiedersehen’.” H. Brackert & E. Lämmert (eds.). Funk-Kolleg Literatur 1. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 210–233. Tolstoj, Lev (1936–64). Polnoe sobranie sočinenij v 91 t. Moskva: Xudožestvennaja literatura. Vinogradov, Viktor (1934). “O stile Puškina.” Literaturnoe nasledstvo 16–18, Xud, 135–214. – (1941). Stil’ Puškina. Moskva: Xudožestvennaja literatura.

5.2 Further Reading Veldhues, Christoph (1995). “‘Gleich- und Gegenüberstellung’: Intratextuelle und intertextuelle Bedeutung in der Literatur.“ Zeitschrift für Slawistik 40, 243–267.

Performativity Ute Berns

1 Definition The terms “performativity” and “performance” derive from the verb “to perform.” They denote the capacity to execute an action, to carry something out actually and thoroughly, as well as to do according to prescribed ritual. “To perform” may also be used in the sense of “to perform an artistic work,” i.e. to act in a play, to play an instrument, to sing or dance. In narratology, performativity denotes modes of presenting or evoking action. A performance, i.e. the embodied live presentation of events in the co-presence of an audience at a specific place and time, is performative in the narrow sense: performativity I. Here the audience experiences the actors and the action directly, i.e. visually and acoustically at a minimum. Performance can take place in the real world (as in a wedding ceremony or a court trial) or it can depict fictional events (as in a theater performance). Verbal or visual scripts can prepare the performance in playtexts and stage directions, film scripts and choreographic sketches. These may also detail gestures, facial expressions and voice. In a wider sense, the term performativity can also be applied to non-corporeal presentations, e.g. in written narratives: performativity II. Here performativity refers to the imitation or illusion of a performance. In this case, readers reconstruct the performance dimension in their minds―the performance is imagined. In systematic terms, actions can be conveyed on two different levels of the presentational process. They can be located, first, on the level of histoire (the story that is presented). This aspect of performativity is called “performativity I.i or II.i.” Here the spectator’s or reader’s attention is directed to the actions taking place in the story, actions that can be conveyed with varying degrees of immediacy. Secondly, the actions can be located on the level of the narration (the narrator’s act of mediation). This is called “performativity I.ii or II.ii.” In this case, the reader’s or spectator’s attention is directed to the act of narration itself, or to the actions of the narrator, which can be foregrounded to a greater or lesser degree. When the performativity of the act of narration is consid-

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ered in a wider pragmatic and cultural context, aspects of the empirical author (e.g. gender) can also become pertinent to the reception and appreciation of narrative as a form of cultural agency.

2 Explication Performativity and performance are interdisciplinary concepts that have emerged in linguistics and the philosophy of language, in performance, theater and literary studies, as well as in ethnology, sociology and cultural studies (Loxley 2007). Although the terms “performative,” “performance” and “performativity” are frequently referred to across a broad range of narratological investigations, they have received no systematic treatment in this field to date. Therefore, this article will aim above all to provide a systematic account of how the concept of performativity currently pertains to narratology. Performativity I refers to the performance of a narrative, i.e. to its fully embodied, live enactment in front of an audience in a real world context or on stage. The audience, co-present with the presenters or actors, can experience this performance visually (as in a pantomime) or both visually and acoustically (as in most theatrical, musical and realworld performances); there may be physical contact between audience and presenters, and some performances even affect the audience’s olfactory sense. Performativity II refers to the illusion of a performance created in non-corporeal presentations of a narrative (Wolf → Illusion (Aesthetic)), e.g. in writing, cartoons or film. These presentations of narratives evoke a performance in the mind of the reader or spectator. In narrative, performativity can be located on two levels: the level of the story, or histoire (i); the level of the act of narration or narrator’s action (ii). Performativity I.i refers to the level of histoire (the story that is presented) in the performance, i.e. in the fully embodied enactment of a narrative. The spectator of the performance perceives the unfolding of a story in a scenic transmission, bodily presented by one or more actors. Performativity II.i refers to the level of histoire (the story that is presented) in the non-corporeal presentation of actions not mediated by a narrator (Alber & Fludernik → Mediacy and Narrative Mediation). In the strictest sense, this denotes direct speech only, as in dramatic writing, dialogue quoted verbatim, etc. (McHale → Speech Representation). Yet performativity can also refer to the level of the narrator’s agency or act of narration (ii). In the case of performativity I.ii, the spectator of a performance perceives an act of narration taking place. Here the performance consists in the presentation of a story by a narra-

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tor or presenter, e.g. in the figure of the rhapsodist vis-à-vis an audience. The story is mediated in a plurimedial manner by a single narrator/presenter. His or her voice, body or actions rather than those of individually embodied persons or characters form the core of the performance, which allows for different degrees of impersonation. Performativity II.ii (e.g. in written narratives) refers to the narrator’s selfthematizations, to his or her explicit comments on the story or the act of narration and to addresses to the reader (Neumann & Nünning → Metanarration and Metafiction). The two levels of performativity (histoire [i] and act of narration [ii]) thus introduce a relation of partial congruity between live performances and evocations of the illusion of performativity in purely verbal narrative―a congruity that can also be investigated in a historical perspective (Fludernik → Conversational Narration – Oral Narration). The performativity of the illusion of dramatic presentation in written narrative corresponds to or appears to be modeled on scenic performances. Likewise the performativity of the act of presentation or narration, especially in feigned orality or skaz narration, corresponds to or appears to be modeled on performances by an embodied storyteller. Understood as the capacity to generate in the reader’s mind the notion of a performance, performativity on both levels (histoire and act of presentation) can be graded according to a scale of greater or lesser performativity. Direct presentation on the story level (II.i) can be more or less absolute (e.g. mental processes can be presented as an interior monologue or as free indirect speech). Analogously, mediation of the act of narration on the level of the narration (II.ii) can be either more obvious or less so (overt vs. covert). When performativity evokes action in the mind of the reader or viewer, the demands it makes on the audience’s imagination vary according to the media in which that action is presented. Arguably, the performativity of films and cartoons, thanks to the immediacy of the imagined actions to which they give rise, is greater than that of purely verbal narratives, except when mental actions such as thoughts are presented (Ryan → Narration in Various Media). In the case of both performativity I.ii and II.ii, the actual or implied act of narration can itself present a story or “story of narration” (Erzählgeschichte, Schmid 2005). This story tells of changes in the situation, attitude or behavior of the narrator. Some critics here also apply the term “mimesis” when they speak of the “mimesis of storytelling” (Mimesis des Erzählens, Nünning 2001), or when they distinguish between “process mimesis” and “product mimesis” (Hutcheon 1984: 36– 47). On this level, the act of narration is thematized in a self-reflexive

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manner. Performative in this sense is often used synonymously with self-conscious and reflexive or with metanarrative and metafictional. The two basic levels of performativity can also be re-conceptualized in speech act terminology that describes utterances as a mode of action. According to the philosopher Austin ([1962] 1975), utterances not only have a propositional content―they do not only say something―but they do something as well, provided that they fulfill specific conventions. Searle ([1969] 1995) further formalizes the felicity conditions of utterances while foregrounding the successful communication of the speaker’s intention against a complex and contingent background. In the context of narratology, the performativity of speech acts is relevant on two levels. First, speech acts directly precipitate action on the storylevel (promises, threats, wooing, etc), whether in court-rooms or dramatic dialogue (Pfister [1977] 1993: 118–119). Second, the narrator deploys speech acts (to identify and report, generalize and promise, etc.) on the level of narration (Chatman 1978: 161–166). On this level, whole narratives can also be treated as metaphorical “utterances” or “complex speech acts” (e.g. Pratt 1977; Todorov [1978] 1990); in this perspective, a novel, too, is a speech act. Analyses of the act of narration in this sense tend to emphasize the narrative’s performativity in a larger pragmatic and cultural context, possibly taking account of the empirical author or of paratextual matter and stressing the narrative act as a mode of cultural agency that engages with cultural conventions and shapes collective identities. Since speech act theory remains language-based, it applies only to verbal narratives. Yet other media, e.g. painting or film, rely on visual or on visual and acoustic performativity, which may involve pointer or narrator figures. The specific demand performativity makes on the spectator’s imagination thus varies according to the medium. Though used primarily to denote the co-presence and live interaction between the presenter(s) of a narrative and the audience, the notion of performance is sometimes deployed in a looser sense. With a view to media in which the narrative is encountered as already given and complete, as in a novel, film or painting, the term performance is also used to describe the process of realization or mental performance of the recipient. In this case, the term becomes synonymous with the individual reading or viewing process.

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3 Concepts and their Study 3.1 Performativity I: Corporeal Presentation of Action When performativity is realized in a performance―performativity I―actions are presented in all their plurimedial dimensions (McAuley 2007). Nevertheless, the intensity with which they are experienced may vary. The spatial proximity between performance and audience as well as the possible manipulation of light and sound bear on this experience. The impact of styles of acting or ritualized behavior within given conventions of presenting and viewing may also enhance or lessen the impact of performativity in a performance. Disciplines that study the performativity of narratives in cultural or theatrical performances rarely draw on narratology, although they do focus on the performativity of narratives in a wider, communicational and context-sensitive framework. Ethnographic and anthropological work (Turner 1982) investigates the way in which a society performatively constructs, preserves or changes its traditions, identity and cultural memory. Theater and performance studies (Auslander ed. 2003) complement this research as they analyze the processual nature and liminality of these performative constructions, i.e. their capacity to dramatize moments of transition and change. These studies emphasize the significance of material embodiment and re-contextualization, paying attention to the impact of foregrounded theatricality, audience interaction and the transitoriness of the performance (Fischer-Lichte 2004). However, studies of oral narratives presented by a corporeal teller tend to focus on performativity I.ii, i.e. on the level of the narrator’s agency rather than on the story level, as they investigate how narratives produce―in a performative and interactive manner―individual and group identity on a pragmatic and cultural plane. Since Labov (1972), research on oral narrative and face-to-face narration in linguistic discourse analysis and sociolinguistics has been concerned with specific characteristics of the oral format. More recent investigations have become increasingly sensitive to cultural contexts, analyzing how narrative performances constitute or index individual, social and cultural identities (Georgakopoulou 1997: 123–197), as well as roles, relationships, stances and activities (Bamberg → Identity and Narration). Moreover, some analyses of the provisional character of narratives-inperformance indicate that the act of narration, understood as a social, communicational event, acquires collaborative aspects. From an ethnological perspective, Bauman (1986) looks at narrators in closely-knit communal settings and shows how the narrated events are shaped in the

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narrative event. And the sociolinguists Ochs and Capps (2001) analyze how performances of provisional narratives negotiate the teller’s desire for coherence and identity while acknowledging contradictory human experiences in open collaborative forms of narration. This focus on oral narratives as performative modes of embodied social communication and interaction has sparked interdisciplinary work which Herman (1999: 219) describes as “socionarratological.” Performances can be scripted as well as mediatized. Some aspects of the performativity actualized in a performance may be scripted in a play- or filmscript or in visual sketches or even in community-based guidelines for the performance of ritual acts. In play- or filmscripts, numerous aspects of the performance are encoded through deictic references to the hic et nunc of the dramatic situation in the main text, but also through stage directions detailing spaces, bodily movements, light and sounds (Elam 1980; De Marinis [1978] 1993). Drawing on the work of Elam, Fludernik has recently explored the implications of locating discourse either at the level of the playtext or at the level of the performance. She also suggests that we revise the general narrative communication model for all written narratives so that it includes performance as an additional optional level (Fludernik 2008: 365). In lyrical poetry, performativity can be traced in the visual layout (length of lines, stanzas) that serves to structure the oral performance of the poem as well as in the foregrounded acoustic potential or “musicality” of the language (Wolf 2003: 78; Hühn & Sommer → Narration in Poetry and Drama). However, performances are not only prepared in various ways. They can also be recorded or mediatized. This again inflects the degree of their performativity in the new medium and involves modifications of meaning (Auslander [1999] 2005). 3.2 Performativity II: Non-corporeal Presentation of Action 3.2.1 Performativity II.i: Histoire or Story Performativity as performativity II is also manifest in non-corporeal representations of action. The term performative in the wide sense of dramatic or unmediated roughly coincides with the term “mimetic” as opposed to “diegetic.” In book III of Plato’s The Republic, Socrates speaks of pure diegesis when the poet represents the action in his own voice only. In the mixed mode of the epic, the poet combines his authorial descriptions and comments with mimetic elements, i.e. direct speech representing the characters’ speech. And when the poet completely effaces his own voice and represents the action in the imitated

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voices of the characters only, this is called pure mimesis, to be found in drama (Plato 1997: 394c). Plato thus confines his notion of mimesis to the level of histoire as specified by Genette and singles out drama as the mimetic (or performative) genre par excellence. However, Plato (395c–398b) attacks and devalues the mimetic mode for its corrupting effects on a strictly ordered society. Aristotle (1995: 1448a, 20), too, distinguishes between pure narrative, mixed narrative and dialogue, and pure dialogue. In contrast to Plato, however, Aristotle (1448b, 5–20) endorses the mimetic mode specified by Plato on account of its strong imitative force, which, he argues, gives pleasure and is pedagogically valuable. On this account, he lauds Homer’s epic writing for its generous use of the mimetic mode (1460a, 5–10). The major classical authorities thus describe the dramatic genre as performative because it presents the story in an unmediated or direct manner. This description has been repeated throughout critical appreciations of the genre, leading Pfister ([1977] 1993: 4) to draw attention to the “absolute nature” or unmediated presentation as a necessary criterion in his classic model of dramatic communication. Yet Pfister admits that unmediated or “absolute” presentation is an idealization, and in fact research on forms of mediation to be found in drama has greatly expanded (see below). Performativity in the sense of direct or mimetic performativity can also become a feature of narratives that are regarded as mediated such as short stories or novels. In the 18th century, readers juxtaposed the “dramatic illusion” (performativity II.i) attributed to Richardson’s novels and the “epic” impact (performativity II.ii) ascribed to the work of Fielding who foregrounds the narrator. In 19th-century definitions, narrative realism had to be “dramatic,” “impersonal,” or “objective.” And in the early 20th century, the mimetic mode of “showing” as opposed to the diegetic mode of “telling” turns into a well-nigh obligatory and defining characteristic of modernist writing and poetics. Henry James ([1909] 1986: 45–51) gives explicit priority to modes of immediacy such as rendering the characters in their own voices or portraying the events through their eyes and minds in order to achieve empathy (Keen → Narrative Empathy) and a “scenic” impression of life. At about the same time, Lubbock ([1921] 1957: 200) attempted an extensive analysis of the methods of presentation involved in the creation of this illusion of an immediate encounter with “life,” which “gives validity, gives direct force to a story.” Historicizing the modernist era’s normative aesthetics, Lodge (1996) suggests that its adherence to a mimetic manner of representation has given way, in postmodernist fiction, to a preference for the mediated, diegetic mode.

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Without using the term, Booth and Genette both take a closer look at the concept of performativity underlying these normative assumptions. Though opposing showing and telling, Booth points out that authorial agency is not conveyed merely in addresses to the reader or in comments and direct judgments, but also through the direct speech of reliable characters, the ordering of the narrative discourse or through any shifting of the point of view. “Everything he [the author] shows will serve to tell” ([1961] 1983: 29). Yet, as Genette points out, this does not impair the performativity of “showing.” While drawing on Booth, Genette ([1972] 1980) nevertheless distinguishes the representation of action and of speech. He argues that within the diegetic mode, mimetic or direct speech does not represent speech at all, but rather repeats speech or, in literary narrative, directly constitutes it: “narrative will efface itself before the direct quotations where all representational function has been abolished, just as when a judicial orator interrupts his discourse to allow the tribunal itself to examine an exhibit” ([1972] 1980: 5). Genette treats the phenomenon of performativity under the heading of “mood” and “distance” (161–164), where he refers to the “illusion of mimesis” (164) thus conveyed. Other theorists pursue the question as to whether performativity can be graded on the story level. In his early writing, Chatman (1978) distinguishes between “non-narrated stories” and stories deploying a covert or an overt narrator, arguing for the existence of conventions to the effect that the narrator should be considered as absent. He claims that conventions of non-narration hold for the epistolary novel, for gradable possibilities of representing a character’s speech and thought, for the neutral reporting of action, or for descriptions that seem to emerge through a character’s internal focalization (Niederhoff → Focalization; 1978: 146–196; for a linguistic construction of this argument, see Banfield 1982). Standard examples of narratives with an absent narrator are Hemingway’s “The Killers” or some of Dorothy Parker’s stories containing only dialogue and action not commented upon. Chatman later drops the concept of the non-narrated narrative, arguing that every narrative is by definition narrated or presented by either an agent or an instrument which need not be human (1990: 115–116). Whereas Chatman’s argument suggests that performativity, especially in the representation of speech, can be graded in a fairly straightforward way, Sternberg, focusing on speech, argues that the communicative functions of reported discourse, such as e.g. the impression of greater or lesser immediacy or liveness, cannot be correlated straightforwardly with specific linguistic features such as direct, free indirect, or indirect speech. After all, the unmediated representation of untagged

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direct dialogue in written narrative does not necessarily convey a greater degree of immediacy than reported dialogue with a narrator specifying, for instance, the facial expressions and gestures accompanying the utterances or the tone of the voices. Sternberg thus abandons graded correlations of linguistic form and performative effect in favor of an account of the full range of the communication. Its transposition into written language always remains selective and implies choices; quoting always involves mediation (1982: 145). This insight can be extended from the representation of speech to that of visual detail (Chatman 1978: 28–31). Whereas written descriptions of characters (“a woman”) and settings (“a room”) have to be “built from nothing,” cinematic descriptions of characters or settings start with a plethora of detail which the camera may reduce in many ways. As a consequence, there is always more than one approach to creating the illusion of immediacy, and the conventions determining what counts as a successful achievement of this illusion may vary (Wolf 1993). The opposition of showing and telling is particularly relevant to the discussion of film (Kuhn & Schmidt → Narration in Film), where language and camera may operate independently from each other (Chatman 1990: 124–160). 3.2.2 Performativity II.ii: Narrator and Act of Narration As far as discourse level or act of narration are concerned, the concept of performativity II.ii refers to the narrator’s agency or the act of presentation and to the pragmatic context of this act. The capacity at issue thus inheres in all modes of the act or process of presenting the story. Writing about Baudelaire and Sterne respectively, MacLean (1988) and Pfister (2001) emphasize that the foregrounding of the act of narration can feign a performance in which narrator and audience are conceived as fully embodied, co-present and interactive. Moreover, Schmid (2005: 268–270) argues that the act of narration implies both the story narrated (die erzählte Geschichte) and the story of narration (Erzählgeschichte). This “story of narration” usually remains a fragment, but in some cases it offers a great many details and may even take precedence over the story proper, as in Tristram Shandy. The performativity that refers to the act of presenting includes forms of selfreflexivity such as metanarration and metafictionality that effectively dramatize or foreground the act of narration. As Nünning and Fludernik point out, the accumulation of a large number of metanarrative comments results in a “deliberate meta-narrative act of celebration of the act of narration” (Fludernik 1996: 275) or a “mimesis of narration” (Mimesis des Erzählens, Nünning 2001).

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The notion of the absolute nature of drama, as indicated above, amounts to an idealization, since the act of presenting can be traced in dramatic writing, too. The play within the play and other metatheatrical devices in Hamlet, or the heightened intertextuality of Stoppard’s Travesties direct our interest to the narrative act. Pfister discusses chorus, prologue and epilogue as narratorial devices along with Brecht’s use of song and montage, his deployment of a presenter figure as well as his anti-illusionist approach to the theater apparatus ([1977] 1993: 69–84). Recent studies focus on onstage narrators in memory plays or on narrative insets including the telling of anecdotes, jokes and dreams, but they also thematize the narrator as an abstract structural agency. Jahn (2001) even assimilates the concept of overt or covert narratorial agency in plays to the narratorial agency we associate with the novel, thus sketching a transgeneric perspective for drama and novel that is further elaborated by Nünning & Sommer (2008) and Fludernik (2008). All of this work strongly suggests that the performativity of drama is a much more “mixed” affair than has previously been thought. Conversely, forms of poetry that display great immediacy of consciousness or achieve scenic presentations in different voices do not square with the notion of poetry as pure diegesis (Wolf 2003; Pfister 2005). Performativity is at stake also when narrative discourse as a whole is treated as a speech act, or when the attention shifts to the pragmatic relations within which the narrative itself turns into an act. Pratt (1977: 2, 86) treats literature as a “speech context” in which the individual work or speech act is deciphered according to “unspoken, culturallyshared knowledge of the rules and conventions.” Incidentally, her alignment of natural and literary language is diametrically opposed to Austin’s and Searle’s position, notorious for describing what Searle calls “fictional discourse” as “parasitic” on ordinary language (Austin [1962] 1975: 22), or as a series of pretended, make-believe speech acts (Searle [1969] 1995). Pratt (1977: 152–224) and later Todorov ([1978] 1990) focus on the performativity of genre conventions in particular. And in a historical perspective, Petrey (1988) traces the specific conventions of the “realist speech act” in 19th-century French novels, while Esterhammer (2000) investigates the shape of the “Romantic performative” in Britain and Germany. Taking Pratt’s considerations into a different theoretical arena, Rudrum (2008) posits that the concept of narrativity itself should be de-essentialized and rethought as convention- and community-based performativity (Abbott → Narrativity). Iser ([1972] 1974]) and Kearns (1999) theorize the reader’s response in general terms when they argue that literary narratives, by performing illocutionary acts and implicatures, trigger interpretive choices in the

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act of reading. Moreover, Iser ([1991] 1993: 281–296) also discusses the narrative act or “fictionalizing acts” in an anthropological perspective. He points out that the Aristotelian notion of mimesis already implies a teleological thrust exceeding mere imitation, which is increasingly complemented in the course of history by a performative dimension in the process of reception. Here the concept of performativity seems to combine the formalized features of performativity in speech act theory with the contingent aspects of (mental) performances in the reader’s relation to the text (Prince → Reader). Finally, a number of critics have explored how gender bears on the performativity of the narrative act and its pragmatic relations. Lanser (1981) draws on speech act concepts of performativity to reappraise the gendered relation between author, narrator and point of view. She later argues for a contextualist narratology that aims to investigate how “texts, like bodies, perform sex, gender and sexuality” ([1999] 2004: 127). Page (2006: 94–142) complements this approach by insisting that the performativity of gender in narratives possesses an ideological dimension that cannot be appreciated without attending to the specific social functions of these narratives.

4 Topics for Further Investigation As this brief survey has shown, the notion of performativity cuts across a wide spectrum of fruitful research in narratology that calls for more systematic investigation. Rather than aiming to replace the categories that have served to label some of this research so far (“mimesis,” “aesthetic illusion,” “metanarrativity,” etc.), such investigations could further explore the relations between them. For instance, this survey suggests that the concept of performativity could serve as an ideal site for studying the interrelation between the degree of narrative performativity in visual or verbal forms of presentation and the more or less determinate visual and kinesthetic mental performance taking place in the mind of the reader or spectator. How do different media or specific cultural environments affect this interrelation? Furthermore, the survey indicates that the concept of performativity and the two levels of narrative to which it refers provide a distinct inroad into research on written narratives. In this perspective, investigation into the textual illusion of scenic presentation and the textual illusion of orality can be pursued as accounts of complementary types of textual performativity. At the same time, the capacity of speech acts to shape gendered as well as social or cultural identities (Butler 1997) seems to merit closer analysis in written narratives, too.

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Yet the concept of performativity also introduces a theoretical query. In narratology, the notion of performativity is indebted both to the concept of the speech act and to the concept of performance. Speech act analysis, when restricted to verbal narratives, demands a certain degree of idealized formalization, while the analysis of performance deals with highly contingent and embodied interactions as processes. The relation between these two points of reference and their integration into narratological research needs to be developed further. Considering the fully embodied and specifically situated performance of utterances, we must ask what precisely the abstractions of speech act theory involve and how they shape narratological analysis drawing on speech act theory. In any case, the study of performativity in narratology supplements the analysis of performativity in narrative with the analysis of the performativity of narratives. On this account, the narratological study of performativity offers the potential of complementing structural analysis of narrative with analysis of its communication situation that is culturally and historically specific.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Aristotle (1995). “Poetics.” The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Vol. 2. Ed. J. Barnes. Princeton: Princeton UP. Auslander, Philip ([1999] 2005). Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. New York: Routledge. – ed. (2003). Performance: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies. 4 vols. London: Routledge. Austin, John L. ([1962] 1975). How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Banfield, Ann (1982). Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bauman, Richard (1986). Story, Performance and Event: Contextual Studies of Oral Narratives. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Butler, Judith (1997). Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – (1990). Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. De Marinis, Marco ([1978] 1993). The Semiotics of Performance. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Elam, Keir ([1980] 1987). The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. London: Methuen.

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Esterhammer, Angela (2000). The Romantic Performative: Language and Action in British and German Romanticism. Stanford: Stanford UP. Fischer-Lichte, Erika (2004). Ästhetik des Performativen. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. – (2008). “Narrative and Drama.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 355–383. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra (1997). Narrative Performances: A Study of Modern Greek Storytelling. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Herman, David (1999). “Toward a Socionarratology: New Ways of Analyzing NaturalLanguage Narratives.” D. Herman (ed.). Narratologies: New Perspectives. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 218–246. Hutcheon, Linda (1984). Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. New York: Methuen. Iser, Wolfgang ([1972] 1974). The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – ([1991] 1993). The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Jahn, Manfred (2001). “Narrative Voice and Agency in Drama: Aspects of a Narratology of Drama.” New Literary History 32, 659–679. James, Henry ([1909] 1986). “Preface to the New York Edition.” H. James. The Ambassadors. London: Penguin. Kearns, Michael (1999). Rhetorical Narratology. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Labov, William (1972). Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. Lanser, Susan Sniader (1981). The Narrative Act: Point of View in Prose Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP. – ([1999] 2004). “Sexing Narratology: Toward a Gendered Poetics of Narrative Voice.” M. Bal (ed.). Narrative Theory: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, vol. 3, 123–139. Lodge, David (1996). “Mimesis and Diegesis in Modern Fiction.” M. J. Hoffman & P. D. Murphy (eds.). Essentials of the Theory of Fiction. Durham: Duke UP, 348– 371. Loxley, James (2007). Performativity. London: Routledge. Lubbock, Percy ([1921] 1957). The Craft of Fiction. London: Viking. MacLean, Marie (1988). Narrative as Performance: The Baudelairean Experiment. London: Routledge. McAuley, Gay (2007). “State of the Art: Performance Studies.” SemiotiX 10 . Nünning, Ansgar (2001). “Mimesis des Erzählens: Prolegomena zu einer Wirkungsästhetik, Typologie und Funktionsgeschichte des Akts des Erzählens und der Metanarration.” J. Helbig (ed.). Erzählen und Erzähltheorie im 20. Jahrhundert: Festschrift für Wilhelm Füger. Heidelberg: Winter, 13–47. – & Roy Sommer (2008). “Narrative and Drama.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 331–354.

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Ochs, Elinor & Lisa Capps (2001). Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Page, Ruth E. (2006). Literary and Linguistic Approaches to Feminist Narratology. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Petrey, Sandy (1988). Realism and Revolution: Balzac, Stendhal, Zola, and the Performances of History. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Pfister, Manfred ([1977] 1993). The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. – (2001). Laurence Sterne. Horndon: Northcote House. – (2005) “‘As an unperfect actor on the stage’: Notes Towards a Definition of Performance and Performativity in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” E. Müller-Zettelmann & M. Rubik (eds.). Theory Into Poetry: New Approaches to the Lyric. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 207–228. Plato (1997). “Republic.” Complete Works. Ed. J. M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett. Pratt, Mary Louise (1977). Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Rudrum, David (2008). “Narrativity and Performativity. From Cervantes to Star Trek.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 253–276. Schmid, Wolf (2005). Elemente der Narratologie. Berlin: de Gruyter. Searle, John R. ([1969] 1995). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Sternberg, Meir (1982). “Proteus in Quotation-Land: Mimesis and the Forms of Reported Discourse.” Poetics Today 3, 107–156. Todorov, Tzvetan ([1978] 1990). Genres in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Turner, Victor (1982). From Ritual to Theater: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ. Wolf, Werner (1993). Ästhetische Illusionen und Illusionsdurchbrechung in der Erzählkunst. Tübingen: Niemeyer. – (2003). “The Lyric―An Elusive Genre: Problems of Definition and a Proposal for Reconceptualization.” Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 28, 59–91.

5.2 Further Reading Butler, Judith (1990). “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” S.-E. Case (ed.). Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theater. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 270–283. Felman, Shoshana ([1980] 2003). The Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juan with J.L. Austin, or, Seduction in Two Languages. Stanford: Stanford UP. Fishelov, David (1989). Metaphors of Genre: The Role of Analogies in Genre Theory. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP. Gaudreault, André ([1990] 2004). “Showing and Telling: Image and Word in Early Cinema.” M. Bal (ed.). Narrative Theory: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, vol. 4, 359–367. Haesenbrouck, Karel van, ed. (2004). “Performance.” Online-Journal Image & Narrative No. 9 .

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Nünning, Ansgar (2004). “On Metanarrative: Towards a Definition, a Typology and an Outline of the Functions of Metanarrative Commentary.” J. Pier (ed.). The Dynamics of Narrative Form. Berlin: de Gruyter, 11–57. Wirth, Uwe, ed. (2002). Performanz: Zwischen Sprachphilosophie und Kulturwissenschaften. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.

Perspective – Point of View Burkhard Niederhoff

1 Definition Perspective in narrative may be defined as the way the representation of the story is influenced by the position, personality and values of the narrator, the characters and, possibly, other, more hypothetical entities in the storyworld. The more common term in Anglo-American criticism, which will be treated as equivalent here, is “point of view.”

2 Explication In the visual arts, perspective refers to a method that presents a scene as perceived from a “single fixed viewpoint” (Carter 1970: 840), creating the impression of three-dimensional depth on a two-dimensional surface. In a painting of this sort, parallel lines converge as they recede from the viewer; objects gain or lose in size depending on whether they are near or far; and in the background, colors lose their intensity and acquire a bluish tinge. That the concept of perspective can also be applied to language is made evident by the following sentence, assumed to be spoken by a boy: “My father towered above me.” The man in question need not be a giant; the impression of his great height might simply result from the boy’s viewpoint. The example also shows that the concept of perspective may be extended from vision in the literal sense to vision in the figurative sense, i.e. to interpretation and evaluation. Thus the verb “towered” suggests that the father is threatening the boy. Again, this impression need not be shared by other observers, as it might be an interpretation of the father’s body language by a son who has a difficult relationship with his parent. Most narratologists use perspective in the broader sense that includes visual data without being limited to them. The concept of perspective is especially pertinent to narrative. Narratives have at least one narrator and usually more than one character and thus offer the possibility for a range of, and a change of, perspec-

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tives. A narrator may tell the story from his own point of view, as in the following example: “A long time ago, little Stephen Dedalus, an inhabitant of Dublin, was eagerly listening to a story told to him by his father.” But a narrator may also tell the story from the point of view of a character, as is shown by Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; the Joycean narrator adopts the perspective of little Stephen: “His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face” ([1916] 1926: 7). The point of view of a small child is indicated by the simple, repetitive syntax and by the periphrases “glass” for monocle and “hairy face” for beard. Perspective is a complex and controversial concept, as is attested by the proliferation of rival metaphors such as “reflector” (James [1908] 1972: 247), “focalization” (Genette [1972] 1980; Niederhoff → Focalization), “slant,” “filter,” and “interest-focus” (Chatman 1990), or “window” (Jahn 1996; Fludernik 1996). One source of confusion and controversy, which is related to the spatio-visual origin of the term, is the ambiguity of the attributes “external” and “internal,” pointed out by a number of scholars (e.g. Edmiston 1991: 155) but ignored by many more. In narratology, these terms are not used with reference to welldefined spaces (inside or outside a box) but with reference to minds (inside or outside a character’s consciousness). However, the boundaries of a mind are less easily determined than those of a box. A character’s consciousness can be directed inwards, as in meditation, but it can also be directed outwards, as in perception. In the latter case, the “internal” perspective pulls us straight back into the “external” world. A further difficulty is that the terms may refer both to points from which the action is viewed and to regions that are viewed from these points. Describing a point of view as “external,” for example, suggests that we are viewing a character from the outside, from a spatial and possibly from an emotional and ideological distance. But this does not tell us how far our vision extends. In the case of the so-called camera perspective, it is extremely limited: we only learn what a newcomer to the scene might observe and thus have no way of knowing what the characters feel or think. In the case of omniscient narration, our vision is not limited at all. We have access to the characters’ thoughts and feelings, including subconscious ones, as well as to every other conceivable region of the storyworld. Thus it is important, in analyzing perspective, to indicate not only a point or position from which the events are viewed, but also the kind of mind located at this position and the kind of “privilege” (Booth [1961] 1983: 160–163) this mind enjoys, i.e. its access, or lack of such, to the different regions of the storyworld.

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A second reason why perspective is a difficult concept has been pointed out by Lanser. “Unlike such textual elements as character, plot, or imagery, point of view is essentially a relationship rather than a concrete entity. As it tends to evade stabilization into the language of ‘things’, it has been difficult to grasp and codify” (1981: 13). Analyzing an image in terms of perspective means analyzing it as a view, i.e. as the result of a relation between a viewing subject and a viewed object. Narratologists have occasionally succumbed to the temptation of simplifying things by reducing the relation to one of the elements connected by it.

3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 From James to Stanzel: Pre-structuralist Typologies Point of view is used in its technical sense, with reference to a narrative method, as early as 1866 (Stang [1959] 1961: 107–111). The first sustained discussion of the subject in English is to be found in the writings of James. However, “point of view” in James usually refers to a writer’s temperament and outlook on life (cf. Morrison 1961/62: 247–248). When James discusses narrative method, he uses such related spatiovisual metaphors as “centre (of consciousness),” “window,” “reflector,” or “mirror,” all of which refer to a character whose experience governs the presentation of the story. James prefers this kind of presentation to a first-person narrator ([1908] 1972: 249), and he also advocates consistency in point of view, deploring his own deviation from such consistency in one of his tales as a “lapse from artistic dignity” ([1908] 1972: 244). James’s disciple Lubbock ([1921] 1972) systematized the master’s critical observations into a coherent theory organized around an opposition between telling and showing, i.e. the traditional method of relating a story, in which the narrator is prominent (Plato’s diegesis), and a new, quasi-dramatic method, in which the narrator retreats to the background (Plato’s mimesis). Lubbock distinguishes four points of view, arranged here in a sequence from telling to showing and paraphrased in more upto-date terms: (a) third-person narration with a prominent or authorial narrator; (b) first-person narration; (c) third-person narration from the point of view of a character, a Jamesian “reflector;” (d) third-person narration without comments or inside views (called “the dramatic method”). Lubbock does not recommend the fourth type, as one might expect an advocate of showing to do. He points out the sacrifices that

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this type entails, such as the difficulty of depicting the mental life of characters (256–257), and he comes down in favor of the third type, the reflector mode, which is also preferred by James. This type combines access to the mental life of the reflector character with a withdrawal of the narrator. Lubbock is a spokesman for the Zeitgeist, especially as regards his predilection for showing over telling and the withdrawal of the narrator. The only conspicuous dissenter is Forster, who argues that novelists need not be consistent in their point of view and that narratorial comments and intrusions are legitimate ([1927] 1990: 81–84). But this is a minority opinion. Even three decades later the premises and preferences established by James and Lubbock are still going strong. Friedman continues to advocate consistency in point of view and expresses a somewhat qualified predilection for showing as against telling. Like Lubbock, he uses this opposition as the principle underlying a range of no less than eight points of view ([1955] 1967: 119–131): (1) “editorial omniscience” (third-person narration with an intrusive narrator); (2) “neutral omniscience” (similar to the first, with a less intrusive narrator); (3) “‘I’ as witness” (minor character as first-person narrator); (4) “‘I’ as protagonist” (protagonist as first-person narrator); (5) “multiple selective omniscience” (third-person narration from the point of view of several characters in succession, as in Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway); (6) “selective omniscience” (third-person narration from the point of view of one character); (7) “the dramatic mode” (third-person narration in scenic mode without inside views); (8) “the camera” (like the previous, without a clear distinction). Friedman’s typology includes several different criteria: the knowledge of the narrator (which distinguishes 1 and 2 from 5 and 6); the frequency with which a narrator comments on or interrupts the story (1 vs. 2); the question of whether a narrator is also a character (3 and 4 vs. the rest); the narrator’s importance as a character (3 vs. 4); constancy or change of point of view (5 vs. 6); etc. It is a moot point whether all of these criteria should be subsumed under the one umbrella term of point of view. Furthermore, it may be doubted whether each of the eight types can be situated at a particular point on a scale ranging from telling to showing. Why the “‘I’ as witness” should tell more and show less

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than the “‘I’ as protagonist” is far from evident. Nor is it obvious why these two are more remote from the telling mode than types (1) and (2). A first-person narrator who tells the story with hindsight and frequently comments on the action is a better example of the telling mode than “neutral omniscience,” Friedman’s second type. A major objective of the Lubbock-Friedman school is the elimination of the narrator, in particular the avoidance of narratorial comment, which they regard as intrusive moralizing. A novel, according to these critics, should make the readers see or experience the story instead of telling them what to think about it. Booth delivers a trenchant critique of such claims in The Rhetoric of Fiction ([1961] 1983), arguing that the elimination of ideology envisaged by the advocates of showing is a delusion. Narrative has, as the title of his book implies, a rhetorical dimension: it communicates views and values. Doing so in an overt way, with a visible narrator making explicit comments, is just as legitimate as doing so in a covert way, by opting for a first-person narrator or adopting the point of view of a character. In a similar vein, Weimann (1962) traces the historical development from narrators who speak their minds to narrators who adopt the point of view of a character; to Weimann, this development is a story of decadence and decline. Twenty years after these critics, Lanser (1981) restates their arguments with some new inflections. While Weimann argues from a Marxist standpoint, Lanser is inspired by feminism, and where Booth draws on rhetoric to situate the techniques of fiction within a broader framework, Lanser relies on speech act theory. Furthermore, she is no longer concerned with repudiating Lubbock and Friedman, but rather responds to structuralists such as Chatman and Genette. These differences notwithstanding, Lanser continues the case made by Booth and Weimann in that she endorses a study of point of view that includes its sociopolitical implications and the writer’s ideological agenda. A model that has been highly influential in the German-speaking world is Stanzel’s typological circle, which was first proposed in [1955] 1971 and presented in its most elaborate form in [1979] 1984. In this version, the circle is organized around three diametrical lines (see illustr.). They represent three criteria, each of which results in a binary opposition yielding two terms: mode (narrator vs. reflector); perspective (internal vs. external); person (identity vs. non-identity of the narrator’s and the characters’ realms, i.e. first person vs. third person). The six terms resulting from the three criteria are placed at equidistant points on the typological circle. Three of them define the “narrative situations” that are privileged in that, empirically speaking, most extant narratives cluster around them. The external perspective corresponds to

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the authorial situation, the reflector mode to the figural situation, and the identity of the realms of existence of narrator and characters to the first-person situation. Thus each narrative situation is defined by one of the poles in the binary opposition resulting from the three criteria and also, to a lesser extent, by the two adjacent poles. The figural situation, for example, consists in the dominance of the reflector mode and is additionally characterized by an internal perspective and by the nonidentity of the worlds of narrator and character ([1979] 1984: 55).

Stanzel has always been given credit as an eloquent critic; his typological system, however, has not won much approval. Cohn, for example, points out that the criteria of mode and perspective are so close that they can be regarded as equivalent: a reflectorial mode implies an internal perspective, a narratorial mode an external one (1981: 176–180; cf. Genette [1983] 1988: 78–79). Cohn and other critics, such as Leibfried (1970: 246), have also suggested that Stanzel should allow for a free combination of his oppositions instead of enclosing them in a circle. This is especially obvious in the case of first-person narration, which comes in two different forms: an authorial one, in which narrators tell the story as they see it at the time of the narration, i.e. with hindsight; and a figural one, in which they render it the way they experienced it as characters in the story. In the typological circle, these two forms can be accommodated only as intermediate cases between the narrative situations, which is awkward. While it makes sense to posit a range of transitional cases between the authorial and the figural situation, no such range exists between the I-situation and the two other situations. A nar-

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rative may be a perfect example of both first-person and figural narration. Cohn, for one, has shown that free indirect thought, a form of thought presentation associated with the figural narrative situation, occurs in first-person narrative (1978: 166–172). 3.2 Genette and his Critics The free combination of distinctions is the hallmark of Genette’s Narrative Discourse, the most influential contribution to narrative theory from the quarters of French structuralism. Genette attacks theorists like Friedman and Stanzel for locating such terms as first-person narration, the dramatic mode or figural narration within the same category as “points of view” or “narrative situations.” Genette insists on separating questions and distinctions relating to the narrator (“voice” in his terminology) from those relating to perspective, arguing in favor of a free combination of narrator types and point-of-view types. Furthermore, Genette introduces a neologism, replacing perspective with focalization ([1972] 1980: 185–211). He distinguishes three types of focalization, which differ primarily in the amount of information they allow the narrator to communicate. Zero or non-focalization, a reformulation of the traditional idea of omniscience, grants the narrator access to every conceivable region of the storyworld; internal focalization, roughly equivalent to Stanzel’s figural narrative situation, means a restriction to the experience of one character; external focalization, similar to Friedman’s camera, imposes an even greater restriction, for it precludes inside views and limits narration to what an ignorant and uninvolved observer might perceive. Genette adds a further distinction to the second or internal type, which may be either fixed (adhering to one character throughout the text), variable (shifting between different characters) or multiple (shifting between different characters while retelling the same event). Genette’s rigorous separation of narrators and focalizations has more than once been hailed as a Copernican breakthrough in narrative theory, but surprisingly few narratologists have been willing to accept the consequences of this separation. After all, it makes sense only if narrators and perspectives are distinct categories, in other words if the choice of a particular kind of narrator does not entail a particular perspective. Genette suggests that, in principle at least, his three focalizations may occur in first-person narration just as much as in third-person narration ([1983] 1988: 114–129). However, scholars such as Fludernik (2001b: 621) or Cordesse (1988) disagree with this homological model. They argue that omniscience or zero focalization is not an option for

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first-person narrators, since they do not have access to other minds and are restricted to what they have learnt in the course of the story. Furthermore, Fludernik claims, following a suggestion by Cohn, that firstperson narrators cannot exclude their own thoughts and feelings (Cohn & Genette [1985] 1992: 263). Even when a first-person narrator does not reveal them, rendering the story in the camera mode, the reader will attribute thoughts and feelings to him or her in the process of reading (Fludernik 2001a: 103). A comprehensive treatment of focalization or perspective in firstperson narrative is given by Edmiston, who comes to the following conclusions (1991: 168): zero focalization is possible (but has to be regarded as an infraction of a literary norm); internal focalization is also possible, with the experiencing I as the point-of-view character; external focalization in the Genettean sense is not an option, but there is the additional option of telling the story from the point of view of the narrating I (for which Edmiston enlists the now-unemployed term of external focalization). While these conclusions do not precisely confirm the homological model suggested by Genette, they would appear to corroborate his general stance of allowing for a relatively free combination of narrator and point-of-view options. It should also be kept in mind that the case for a restriction of point of view or focalization in firstperson narrative is always based on the knowledge of the narrator. This, however, is only one facet or parameter of point of view. Furthermore, this case rests on rather commonsensical or realistic assumptions. Since most of us are willing to abandon such assumptions when it comes to narrative content, it is hard to see why we should be less broad-minded about narrative discourse. If we are willing to be entertained by invisibility cloaks, we should not demur at first-person narrators who are omniscient. In addition to the debate about the applicability of Genette’s classification of focalizations to first-person narration, there has also been a more general debate about the triple nature of this typology. Most narratologists seem to prefer a dual model to a triple one: see, e.g., Bal ([1985] 1997: 148), Vitoux (1982), Rabatel (1997) or Schmid ([2005] 2008: 137–138), all of whom distinguish, in different terms, between a narratorial and a figural perspective. What is eliminated from these dual typologies is the camera mode (Genette’s external focalization), which, however, has been defended by Broich (1983). Interestingly, even some of those who are skeptical about the camera mode make subordinate concessions or distinctions which would appear to indicate that this mode is not a figment of the narratological imagination. While Bal compensates for the elimination of Genette’s external focalization by

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introducing the concept of the focalized object, Vitoux grants the narrator a “play of focalization” (359), which includes external focalization as one of its options. Finally, Rabatel allows for an external vision both within narratorial and figural focalization (101–102). 3.3 Parameters, Perspective Structure and the Foregrounding of Perspective A major tendency in recent work on perspective is an increasing awareness of the diversity of the phenomenon. Scholars elaborate on the basic types of the various classifications by discussing changes from one type to another, intermediate cases, embeddings, transgressions or unusual combinations. One method of accounting for the complexity of narrative perspective is to distinguish its different facets or parameters. Schmid, who builds on earlier studies along these lines by Uspenskij, Lintvelt and Rimmon-Kenan, discerns five such parameters: space; ideology; time; language; perception ([2005] 2008: 123–137). The point of distinguishing these parameters is that they are not necessarily in line with each other. A narrative may report events as they are perceived by a character, while at the same time using language that is very remote from that of the character. This is the case of James, as was pointed out long ago by Scholes et al. ([1966] 2006: 270) and recently reiterated by Aczel (1998). James’s novel What Maisie Knew tells us what Maisie knew, but it does not show us how Maisie spoke. Of course, the different parameters may also be in line, as in the beginning of A Portrait of the Artist, where the narrator renders a child’s perceptions in a child’s language. The alignment of parameters is referred to as “compact perspective” by Schmid, their dissociation as “distributive perspective” ([2005] 2008: 151–152). It should be added that scholars who favor the parameter approach to perspective are not in full agreement about the distinction and the number of parameters. Thus Fowler, who reviews Uspenskij in similarly favorable terms as Schmid, argues that the parameter of “phraseology” (corresponding to “language” in Schmid’s quintuple division) is not a separate parameter, but is inextricably bound up with the others. “By separating off ‘phraseology,’ the theorist simply expresses nostalgia for the text as decorative form” (Fowler 1982: 226). An interesting recent development initiated by Nünning (2001) and followed up by Surkamp (2003) is an attempt to enlist Pfister’s theory of perspective in drama for the study of narrative. Ironically, this theory was initially motivated by the inverse attempt to enlist a narratological concept for the study of drama (Pfister [1977] 2000: 57). According to

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Pfister, the perspective of a character in a play is constituted by psychological disposition, ideology and the awareness of what the other characters are up to. As the combination of these three factors will differ from one character to another, they will view and judge the same event in different ways. Pfister’s interest is not so much in individual perspectives as it is in the differences or similarities between them. The point is to establish the structure of perspectives, to hear the more or less harmonious concert that is performed by the voices of a play. Structure may be non-perspectival, approximately realized in some medieval moralities (all of the characters function as authorial mouthpieces, lacking individual perspectives); it may be closed (different perspectives are hierarchically structured around a privileged perspective, which is either explicit, i.e. articulated by one of the characters, or implicit); finally, it may be open (a hierarchy between the different perspectives is lacking so that no privileged perspective emerges). Nünning transfers Pfister’s theory to narrative, with some minor adjustments concerning the relations between the perspectives and one major adjustment. Narrative features not only characters, but also a narrator whose perspective is defined, in similarly broad terms as that of a character, as a set of “psychological idiosyncrasies, attitudes, norms and values, a set of mental properties, and a world-model” (Nünning 2001: 213). Nünning certainly has a point, for one thing because the texts that most narratologists deal with include dialogue and are thus partly dramatic. Even as far as the strictly narrative portions of the text are concerned, Nünning’s approach is valuable in that it alerts us to the potential plurality and diversity of perspectives. However, the dramatic analogy can also be misleading. In drama there are roughly as many perspectives as there are characters who speak. In narrative, however, the mere existence of a character does not imply that his or her perspective is of any importance. If we learn that a character is a teenage girl, we can make certain assumptions about her knowledge, her interests, her values, etc. But this only turns into a perspective when we learn about her views of the world around her. How prominent her perspective becomes also depends, of course, on the way her views are represented—with lofty disdain, with amusement, or with sympathy. Another problem in Nünning’s approach to perspective is a potential loss of the relational quality of the concept. When he writes that character perspective “embraces everything that exists in the mind of the character” (2001: 211), there is a strong shift in the direction of the viewing subject and a danger of abandoning the relational character of the concept pointed out by Lanser (1981: 13). To sum up, perspective structure provides us with a chart of the potential perspectival reference points of

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a text, whereas the more traditional narratological accounts of perspective analyze where the narrator situates the representation of the story in relation to these points or how he or she makes it move between them. An intriguing question about perspective is asked by Bonheim: Why is it that in some narratives point of view seems to be highly important and significant, while in others it appears to be negligible? (1990: 300). In other words, can there be narrative without perspective or with a less conspicuous one? If we think of the concept in purely spatio-visual terms, the answer is not difficult. One can tell a story without a fixed viewpoint in the literal sense, just as one can paint a landscape without perspective. This has been demonstrated by Stanzel ([1979] 1984: 117– 122) and by Jahn (1999: 95–100), who elaborates on Stanzel’s binary distinction between perspectival and non-perspectival depiction of space with a scalar model. Similarly, if one thinks of focalization in terms of restriction of information, then Genette’s zero focalization, the equivalent of non-perspectival narrative, would appear to be a possibility; at the very least, focalizations may be more or less restricted. Based on these premises, the answer to Bonheim’s question is that narrative can be perspectival and non-perspectival, focalized or non-focalized, and also something in-between. However, the answer becomes more difficult if we follow Uspenskij or Lanser in defining perspective in a more inclusive manner. If perspective also has an ideological dimension, a narrative without perspective is hardly possible. However, even on the premise of a more inclusive definition, perspective may be more or less conspicuous. A writer can foreground it by assigning it to a character not usually selected for such purposes, e.g. a toddler, as in A Portrait of the Artist, or an animal, an interesting case discussed by Nelles (2001) and Burns (2002). Arguably, every shift of perspective from a narrator to a character has a foregrounding effect, even if the character is of a thoroughly unremarkable sort. Schmid argues that in comparison with narrator perspective, character perspective is “marked” in the linguistic sense ([2005] 2008: 138). Perspective is foregrounded precisely when it is perceived as a perspective, i.e. as a limited or partial view among other views of the matter that are equally possible. When a narrator adopts a character’s perspective, the latter’s view will be contextualized and qualified by the mere fact of the narrator’s presence: it will appear not as the view, but as one view. Of all literary genres or modes, narrative seems to be the one most suited to create this effect, which is not the least of its attractions.

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4 Topics for Further Investigation (a) It has been observed that camera narration alias external focalization is employed only for part of a text, very often the beginning. It would be interesting to study the transitions where this mode is abandoned. Is the transition to a narratorial or to a figural point of view? The former possibility would confirm Vitoux’s (1982) claim that camera narration is merely an option in the play of narratorial focalization. (b) The study of perspective has focused almost exclusively on fictional narrative. An exploration of the subject in non-fictional narrative genres might yield interesting results in its own right and also throw new light on the phenomenon in fiction. (c) When narratologists review the work of their predecessors, they usually focus on the gaps and the mistakes. Previous theories are demolished or quarried for the purpose of building a new one. This does not make for a fair appraisal of the critical tradition. Perhaps it is time for a non-partisan history of theories of point of view and related metaphors from James (or earlier) to the present day, preferably by someone who makes a vow not to conclude the study with a new theory or typology of their own.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Aczel, Richard (1998). “Hearing Voices in Narrative Texts.” New Literary History 29, 467–500. Bal, Mieke ([1985] 1997). Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Bonheim, Helmut (1990). “Point of View Models.” H. Bonheim. Literary Systematics. Cambridge: Brewer, 285–307. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Broich, Ulrich (1983). “Gibt es eine ‘neutrale Erzählsituation’?” GermanischRomanische Monatsschrift 33, 129–145. Burns, Allan (2002). “Extensions of Vision: The Representation of Non-Human Points of View.” Papers on Language and Literature: A Journal for Scholars and Critics of Language and Literature 38, 339–350. Carter, B.A.R. (1970). “Perspective.” H. Osborne (ed.). The Oxford Companion to Art. Oxford: Oxford UP, 840–861. Chatman, Seymour (1990). Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Cohn, Dorrit (1978). Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP.

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(1981). “The Encirclement of Narrative: On Franz Stanzel’s Theorie des Erzählens.” Poetics Today 2, 157–182. – & Gérard Genette ([1985] 1992). “A Narratological Exchange.” A. Fehn et al. (eds.). Neverending Stories. Toward a Critical Narratology. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 258–266. Cordesse, Gérard (1988). “Narration et focalisation.” Poétique 19, 487–498. Edmiston, William F. (1991). Hindsight and Insight: Focalization in Four EighteenthCentury French Novels. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. – (2001a). “The Establishment of Internal Focalization in Odd Pronominal Contexts.” W. van Peer & S. Chatman (eds.). New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. Albany: SUNY, 101–113. – (2001b). “New Wine in Old Bottles? Voice, Focalization, and New Writing.” New Literary History 32, 619–638. Forster, Edward M. ([1927] 1990). Aspects of the Novel. London: Penguin. Fowler, Roger (1982). “How to See through Language: Perspective in Fiction.” Poetics 11, 213–235. Friedman, Norman ([1955] 1967). “Point of View in Fiction: The Development of a Critical Concept.” Ph. Stevick (ed.). The Theory of the Novel. New York: Free, 108–137. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Oxford: Blackwell. – ([1983] 1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Jahn, Manfred (1996). “Windows of Focalization: Deconstructing and Reconstructing a Narratological Concept.” Style 30, 241–267. – (1999). “More Aspects of Focalization: Refinements and Applications.” J. Pier (ed.). Recent Trends in Narratological Research. Tours: GRAAT, 85–110. James, Henry ([1908] 1972). Theory of Fiction. Ed. J. E. Miller. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Joyce, James ([1916] 1926). A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. London: Cape. Lanser, Susan Sniader (1981). The Narrative Act: Point of View in Prose Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP. Leibfried, Erwin (1970). Kritische Wissenschaft vom Text. Manipulation, Reflexion, transparanente Poetologie. Stuttgart: Metzler. Lubbock, Percy ([1921] 1972). The Craft of Fiction. London: Cape. Morrison, Kristin (1961/62). “James’s and Lubbock’s Differing Points of View.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 16, 245–255. Nelles, William (2001). “Beyond the Bird’s Eye: Animal Focalization.” Narrative 9, 188–194. Nünning, Ansgar (2001). “On the Perspective Structure of Narrative Texts.” W. van Peer & S. Chatman (eds.). New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. Albany: SUNY, 207–223. Pfister, Manfred ([1977] 2000). The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Rabatel, Alain (1997). “L’introuvable focalisation externe: De la subordination de la vision externe au point de vue du personnage ou au point de vue du narrateur.” Littérature 107, 88–113.

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Schmid, Wolf ([2005] 2008). Elemente der Narratologie. Berlin: de Gruyter. Scholes, Robert et al. ([1966] 2006). The Nature of Narrative. 40th anniversary ed. London: Oxford UP. Stang, Richard ([1959] 1961). The Theory of the Novel in England: 1850–1870. London: Routledge. Stanzel, Franz K. ([1955] 1971). Narrative Situations in the Novel: Tom Jones, MobyDick, The Ambassadors, Ulysses. Bloomington: Indiana UP. – ([1979] 1984). A Theory of Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Surkamp, Carola (2003). Die Perspektivenstruktur narrativer Texte: Zu ihrer Theorie und Geschichte im englischen Roman zwischen Viktorianismus und Moderne. Trier: WVT. Vitoux, Pierre (1982). “Le jeu de la focalisation.” Poétique, 13, 359–468. Weimann, Robert (1962). “Erzählerstandpunkt und point of view: Zu Geschichte und Ästhetik der Perspektive im englischen Roman.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 10, 369–416.

5.2 Further Reading Bärtschi, Willy A. (1976). Perspektive: Geschichte, Konstruktionsanleitung und Erscheinungsformen in Umwelt und bildender Kunst. Ravensburg: Maier. Breuer, Horst (1998). “Typenkreise und Kreuztabellen: Modelle erzählerischer Vermittlung.” Poetica 30, 233–249. Guillén, Claudio (1971). “On the Concept and Metaphor of Perspective.” C. Guillén. Literature as System. Essays toward the Theory of Literary History. Princeton: Princeton UP, 283–371. Lintvelt, Jaap ([1981] 1989). Essai de typologie narrative. Le “Point de vue.” Paris: José Corti. Nünning, Vera & Ansgar Nünning (2000). Multiperspektivisches Erzählen: Zur Theorie und Geschichte der Perspektiven-Struktur im englischen Roman des 18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts. Trier: WVT. Peer, Willie van & Seymour Chatman, eds. (2001). New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. Albany: SUNY. Petersen, Jürgen H. (1993). Erzählsysteme: Eine Poetik epischer Texte. Stuttgart: Metzler. Rabatel, Alain (1997). Une Histoire du Point de Vue. Metz: U de Metz. Rossholm, Göran, ed. (2004). Essays on Fiction and Perspective. Bern: Lang. Röttgers, Kurt & Monika Schmitz-Emans, eds. (1999). Perspektive in Literatur und bildender Kunst. Essen: Die Blaue Eule.

Plot Karin Kukkonen

1 Definition The term “plot” designates the ways in which the events and characters’ actions in a story are arranged and how this arrangement in turn facilitates identification of their motivations and consequences. These causal and temporal patterns can be foregrounded by the narrative discourse itself or inferred by readers. Plot therefore lies between the events of a narrative on the level of story and their presentation on the level of discourse. It is not tied to a particular mode of narrative expression, and it can be observed across media and genres. While plot constitutes one of the few narratological terms current in everyday discourse and in literary criticism, the term has been used in so many contexts that narratologists struggle to define its purview and grapple with its terminology. Nevertheless, three basic ways of conceptualising plot can be distinguished: (1) Plot as a fixed, global structure. The configuration of the arrangement of all story events, from beginning, middle to end, is considered. (2a) Plot as progressive structuration. The connections between story events, motivations and consequences as readers perceive them are considered. (2b) Plot as part of the authorial design. The author’s way of structuring the narrative to achieve particular effects is considered. In critical practice, these different conceptualisations of plot are often combined.

2 Explication Plot is a term employed in many different contexts, and the different uses of the word in English (see OED 2013) resonate in its multiple

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meanings. A brief survey of the terms for (literary) plot in other European languages unfolds some aspects of the concept: from the deeplyengrained narrativity of Aristotle’s “mythos” to the careful scheming evoked by French “intrigue” and the action-based matter-of-factness implied by German “Handlung.” Plot can be approached as that feature of narrative which facilitates the mental operations that translate story events into a meaningful narrative. If one conceives of it as a fixed structure (conceptualisation 1), then plot becomes a pattern which yields coherence to the narrative. In the formalist and structuralist traditions, plot enchains story events in typical sequences (see Propp [1928] 1968; Kafalenos 2006), or it reestablishes an equilibrium that has been upset (see Todorov 1971: 51). Other critics, foregrounding plot as structure, distinguish sets of plot types that correspond to basic elements of human experience and shape them into patterns (see Frye 1957; Hogan 2003). In this conceptualisation, plot also has strong ideological salience because it might rehearse particular patterns of thinking in readers and endorse particular gender roles, group identities and parameters of ethical behaviour implied by these plots (see Abbott [2002] 2008; Miller 1980). If one conceives of plot as a structuration, then it traces the thoughts of readers as they ponder the reasons for events and the motivations of characters and consider the consequences of actions in their quest to make sense of the narrative as a whole (conceptualisation 2a). In this conceptualisation, plot spans the time through which the narrative unfolds. It develops dynamically as readers reconsider the motivation and credibility of the actions and events they read about (see Brooks & Warren 1943; Phelan 1989, 2007), recalibrate their expectations in sequences of surprise, curiosity and suspense (see Sternberg 1978; Baroni 2007) and follow the paths which their Freudian desires (see Brooks [1984] 1992) or needs of meaning-making (see Dannenberg 2008) might chart. Such processes of establishing plots in the tapestry of the given can be considered as the mediating strategy of narrative which translates between everyday experience and fictional artefacts (“mise en intrigue”; see Ricœur [1983–85] 1984–88) and gives history its shape and moral relevance (see White 1981). If one conceives of plot as part of the authorial design (conceptualisation 2b), then it becomes the means through which authors interest readers, keep their attention as the narrative unfolds and bring it to a surprising yet possibly satisfying conclusion. Such authorial design prefigures the mental operations which lead readers to a meaningful narrative. Hence plot might display itself in the discourse of loquacious narrators and emerge as the artistic feat of a particular author (see Crane

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[1950] 1952). Plots can be designed to create elaborate patterns of coincidence, reversals and recognitions which lead to readers’ insights about what is at stake in the narrative (see Aristotle 1996), to present the different courses a narrative could take in forking plot paths (see Bordwell 2002) or to lead readers away from their expectations about narrative processes (see Richardson 1997, 2005). The basic divergence in the discussion around plot occurs between critics who consider plot as the fixed pattern that will have emerged at the end of the narrative (conceptualisation 1) and critics who consider plot as a dynamic development in the progress of the narrative (conceptualisations 2a and 2b). Making the claim that plot is often used exclusively for the summative pattern of a narrative, alternative terms for the dynamic side of plot have been put forward such as “emplotment” (“mise en intrigue”; see Ricœur [1983–85] 1984–88) and “progression” (see Phelan 1989). It seems important, however, to remember that plot is both the process that facilitates readers’ engagement with a story and its target, a pattern of meaning (see also Dannenberg 2008: 13).

3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 Plot in Western Poetics and Criticism Plot as a critical term takes us back to Aristotle’s Poetics. Aristotle defines mythos, usually translated as “plot” in English, as the arrangement of events (synthesis/systasis ton pragmaton) (see Poetics 1450a; 1996: 13), and when he lists the features of tragedy, he gives plot the most important role. Plot allows characters to come to the fore through their actions, brings about the emotional involvement of readers through reversal and recognition and generally constitutes “the soul and (as it were) source of tragedy” (1996: 12). To fulfil these functions, plots should be complete, unified and of a magnitude “such as can readily be held in memory” (14). Plots can be simple or complex, involving reversals (when actions have unintended consequences) and recognitions (when the proper relationship between characters are disclosed), with the latter, complex, type of plot being preferred for creating an effect of surprise and moving audiences to pity and fear. In his Poetics, Aristotle extends the discussion of plot to genres of narrative beyond tragedy (in particular, to the epic with The Odyssey). Later critics developed Aristotle’s principles further for epic, drama and the novel. The neoclassical criticism of Italy and France in the 16th and 17th centuries demotes plot from the single governing principle of nar-

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rative to one of the features which authors need to master in order to achieve verisimilitude (vraisemblance). At the same time, their detailed consideration of Aristotle’s Poetics (and of Horace’s Art of Poetry) diversifies our understanding of plot. The French neoclassical critics, for example, distinguish between the protagonist’s exploits (the “action”) and their structuration, establishing links that are both necessary and probable through the author’s “design.” The “fable” of a narrative describes both its plot and the moral instruction it is supposed to provide (see e.g. Le Bossu [1675] 1708; Swedenberg 1944). The neoclassical metaphor of the thread (“file”) of a plot, featuring the knot (“nœud”) of the complication of the action and its resolution (“dénouement”), leaving no “loose ends” behind, brings greater analytical sharpness to descriptions of plot (see e.g. Scanlan 1977 on Racine; Scherer 1950: 62– 90, 125–148); it also offers colourful descriptions of plots that fail (see e.g. Scudéry’s remark that the “Gordian knot” of the plot of Corneille’s Le Cid “needs no Alexander” [1638] 1899: 74; translation by K.K.). An understanding of different possible kinds of plots emerges for example in John Dryden’s “Essay of Dramatick Poesie” (1668), where critics distinguished between the tightly-constructed plots of French tragedy and the profuse, more varied plots of English drama. The assessment of plots for the quality of the links they establish, the moral instruction they provide and the trade-off between coherence and variability they achieve was to remain a key feature of English literary criticism until well into the 19th century: Sir Walter Scott describes (the complex) plot in his review of Austen’s Emma as “the object of every skilful novelist” ([1815] 2009: 308); and Fielding’s Tom Jones, a novel profoundly engaged with the neoclassical heritage, is praised by Coleridge as “one of the three most perfect plots ever planned” (see Crane [1950] 1952; the other two plots being Oedipus Rex and Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist). In the course of the 19th century, character begins to gain precedence over plot as the most important feature of narrative. Plot becomes associated with the simplicity of the potboiler and the aesthetic shortsightedness of reader caricatures like Miss Prism in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest who declares, “The good end happily, and the bad end unhappily. That is what Fiction means.” Henry James develops his famous juxtaposition of character and incident (“What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?” [1884] 1999: 392) against such reductive understandings of plot. E. M. Forster, even though he provides one of the key definitions of plot as the causal enchainment of story events, stresses the primacy of character. For the genre of the novel in particular,

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“we have already decided that Aristotle is wrong” (Forster [1927] 1953: 80). Plot, Forster says, works as a “sort of higher government official” (81) who constantly calls upon characters to explain themselves. This goes against the aesthetic ambitions of the novel, with its deep and complex characters, which need not be consistent if it is sufficiently convincing (see also Brooks & Warren 1943). 3.2 Plot as Global Structure Models of the basic structure of plot have aimed to systematise the development of narrative interest, such as Freytag’s (1908) pyramid of rising and falling dramatic action (building on Horace’s remarks on the five-act structure in Ars Poetica). But with the rise of structuralism, these efforts were directed towards tracing global sequences of events in narrative, such as Propp’s ([1928] 1968) thirty-one narrative functions and Todorov’s (1971: 51) scheme of equilibrium – disturbance – re-establishing the equilibrium. The issue of narrative interest has been more prominent in the debates around canonicity and breach, tellability and eventfulness (Baroni → Tellability; Hühn → Event and Eventfulness). The perspective on plot as structure, on the other hand, has led to critics distinguishing between different kinds of plot and their comparison. Such typologies of plot differentiate for example between fortunate and fatal outcomes (Miller 1980), constellations of storyworlds and characters’ private worlds (Ryan 1991) and patterns of coincidence (Dannenberg 2008). Kafalenos (2006) diversifies the structuralist idea of a fixed prototypical sequence of story events in Propp and Todorov into a more complex and general model of narrative. In a thematic vein, Frye (1957) establishes a typology of genres and their plots on the basis of the seasons. More recently, Booker (2004) has reduced all narrative to seven basic plot structures: “overcoming the monster,” “rags to riches,” “quest,” “voyage and return,” “comedy,” “tragedy” and “rebirth.” In both their accounts and their terminology, Frye and Booker stress the perennial mythic nature of these plots, which relate to general features of the human experience. Evolutionary literary criticism has taken a similar approach to plots, detailing the evolutionary relevance of particular kinds of plot (Boyd 2009; Carroll 1999; Gottschall 2008). Cognitive approaches to narrative have categorised generic plots according to the typical emotions their narrative structure elicits (Grodal 1997) as well as for the general emotional patterns they correspond to (Hogan 2003). As condensations of human experience, such plot types are also bound to political and social situations which come to the fore in the

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actions that promise (social) success and the options for action that are open to male and female characters. Abbott’s ([2002] 2008) notion of a “master plot,” the structure behind social narratives, more commonly called “metanarratives” (after Lyotard’s “grands récits”), refers to the political power and seductiveness of particular narrative constellations. Feminist narratology (see DuPlessis 1985; Gutenberg 2000; Page 2006) has worked towards plot typologies based on gender issues, especially the distinction between the romance plot (with its telos of love and marriage) and the quest plot (with its telos of adventure and heroics). 3.3 Plot as Progressive Structuration The structuration of narrative by plot becomes a topic of inquiry in several strands of narratology. In particular, E. M. Forster’s definition of plot as causally connected story events is foundational for many discussions of the phenomenon. According to Forster, story describes: “The king died, and then the queen died,” whereas a plot motivates: “The kind died, and then the queen died of grief” ([1927] 1953: 82). The plot “demands intelligence and memory” of readers in order to solve the “mystery” it proposes (83; see also Barthes’ “hermeneutic code” in S/Z [1970] 1985). The causal aspect of plot has been discussed in several contexts: Aristotle (1996) distinguishes between necessary and probable dimensions of causality while Barthes considers the “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” fallacy (i.e. mistaking sequence for consequence) as the “mainspring of narrative” ([1966] 1977: 94; see also Pier 2008); Richardson (1997) distinguishes between kinds of narrative causality connected to different world views. The mainstream Western tradition of considering plot as a progressing force, as facilitating the mental operations of readers in narrative, tends to rest this idea on the assumption that the paradigmatic plot establishes causality (see Wellek & Warren [1949] 1968). In response to Propp ([1928]1968) and his reception in structuralism (see e.g. Todorov 1969 on the Decameron and Barthes [(1966) 1977] on Fleming’s Goldfinger) Bremond (1973) stresses the importance of different available possibilities for the connections between plot motifs, thereby offering an alternative to Propp’s model of a single track of enchainment. Ryan (1991) brings Bremond’s optional model together with possible-worlds theory when she suggests that plot tracks the path by which the textual actual world is realised out of the mental worlds of characters. In a next step, Dannenberg (2008) identifies two characteristic patterns of such actualizing plot paths: coincidental convergence (i.e. fortuitously merging plot paths for the characters) and counterfac-

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tual divergence (i.e. “what if?” scenarios in which alternative plot options are explored). Her model combines the heuristic strengths of the reduction of plot patterns with the importance of considering their unfolding through the story. Dannenberg also discusses the historical developments of such constellations of convergence and counterfactuality. The Russian formalist term “sjužet” has been related repeatedly to the Western notion of plot. In the English translation of Šklovskij’s treatment of sjužet as a (quasi-musical) theme uniting different “motifssituations” in narrative, “constitut[ing] a form no less than rhyme” ([1925] 1990: 46), sjužet becomes “plot.” Also in Lotman’s ([1970] 1977) definition of sjužet as providing the transgressive salience that constitutes a narrative event, the term is translated as “plot.” Chatman’s (1978: 43) discussion of plot as “story-as-discoursed,” which stresses that story events are reordered through narrative discourse, draws on Tomaševskij’s ([1925]1965: 66–68) distinction between fabula (events in the actual temporal and causal order) and sjužet (events in the order presented in the narrative, which establishes its own temporal and causal relations) (cf. Schmid 2009; also Tomaševskij’s translators use the term “plot” for sjužet). For his discussion of film, Bordwell (1985) pries apart sjužet from style (story presentation in cinematic techniques) in an important conceptual move which separates plot from discourse. The distinction between sjužet as story events reordered (i.e. plot) and sjužet as the rich, detailed texture of the narrative (i.e. discourse) is not always clearly made, which is partly due to the terminological complications with Genette’s “histoire” and “discours” (and particularly the translation of his work into English; Genette [1972] 1980). Between the Russian, French and Anglo-Saxon traditions of narrative analysis, the constitution of narrative levels and the role of plot within them has developed into a rather complex and confusing field (cf. Pier 2003; Scheffel → Narrative Constitution). Not only causal but temporal sequence, too, invites structuration of the plot. Sternberg (1978) distinguishes four such processes of temporality between plot-type fabula and sjužet (causal) and story-type fabula and sjužet (additive). His discussion also brings to the fore three cognitive effects of readers’ engagement with this temporal arrangement of events, which to some extent chart readers’ tracing of the structuration of the plot: surprise (when readers discover a gap in their hypothesisbuilding), curiosity (retrospection; when the gap lies in the antecedent story events) and suspense (prospection; when the gap lies in the story events to follow). As he stresses the importance of plot (“intrigue”) for the development of tension in narrative texts and their effects on read-

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ers, Baroni (2007) expands Sternberg’s model by calling attention to the contextual knowledge which facilitates gap-filling hypotheses as well as to the emotional dimension of plot. Models of the unfolding emotional appraisals of narrative situations (Hogan 2011) and the economy of emotional arousal in narrative (Warhol 2003) have been developed more generally in recent cognitive and feminist narratology, thus providing important complements to the traditional focus on plot as predominantly concerned with the processing of narrative information. The plot and its structuration of story events have also been discussed for the telos they establish, and closure has often been considered as the most important element in the Aristotelian sequence of beginning, middle and end because everything leads up to it in the arc of tension which the narrative spreads throughout the plot. From this perspective, Kermode defines plot as follows: “The clock’s tick-tock I take to be a model of what we call a plot, an organization that humanizes time by giving it form” (1967: 45). He relates the “tock,” and the importance narratives take from their ending, to death and the notion of apocalypse. Brooks inscribes the importance of the ending for narrative dynamics within a psychoanalytical model. Drawing on Freud’s “pleasure principle” and its relation to eros and thanatos, Brooks identifies in reading a “desire for the end reached only through the at least minimally complicated detour [i.e. retardations and repetitions], the intentional deviance, [...] which is the plot of narrative” ([1984] 1992: 104). This focus on the ending has been criticised as foreshortening the reading experience (see Phelan 1989: 111), but it also constitutes one way of thinking about the double nature of plot which, on the one hand, unfolds as a (temporal, causal) sequence and, on the other hand, is designed to lead to a certain meaningful ending. 3.4 Plot as Authorial Design R. S. Crane ([1950] 1952) moves the discussion of plot from (what he perceives as) the neoclassical checklist of the well-formed plot to a better understanding of the intrinsic connectedness of plot with other features of narrative. He distinguishes between three “synthesizing principles”: action (a change in the protagonist’s situation brought about by her actions), character (a change in the moral character of the protagonist) and thought (a change in the protagonist’s mode of thinking). Plots of action, of character and of thought constitute the “working power” of a narrative, and it is thus, according to Crane, a key requirement of criticism to study the form of plot as it unfolds. Crane’s own analysis of Tom Jones does not establish a fixed structure but traces how Fielding

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builds up the plot of his narrative, taking into account what readers know at any given point in the narrative and what their expectations are. Also Brooks and Warren (1943) emphasise the need for such close attention to authorial design. Two strands of narratology in particular stress plot’s aspect of authorial design: rhetorical narratology and unnatural narratology. Rhetorical narratology focuses on how plot is arranged to engage readers and their judgements as the narrative unfolds. Phelan takes up Crane’s analytical perspective when he develops his own notion of “progression” (1989). “Progression” looks in particular at the authorial design directing readers’ exposure to story events and the temporal sequence and structuration through the plot in reading. It describes both the internal development of a narrative (“textual dynamics”) and the response of readers as this development unfolds (“readerly dynamics”). Each of these dynamics applies both to story and discourse levels, leaving Phelan (2007) with four tracks of “progression.” For each of these dynamics, he distinguishes between positions of beginning, middle and end. In their contribution to Herman et al. 2012, Phelan and Rabinowitz confine plot, termed “plot dynamics,” to the story-level in “textual dynamics.” Unnatural narratology focuses on how plot design challenges and confounds readers’ expectations through the wilful deformation of anticipated plot events, narrative sequences that have to be reassembled by readers themselves, unnatural temporalities and forking-path plots (Richardson 2005; Herman et al. 2012; but see Bordwell 2002 on how forking-path narratives can be naturalised). Both of these strands of narratology, rhetorical and unnatural, favour the term “progression” because it seems to be a more adequate way to capture the dynamic nature of plot development, as becomes apparent in Herman et al. (2012: 57–81) in a section devoted to time, plot and progression. However, Warhol’s discussion (in the same collection) of the gender implications of plot as a structure or constellation of options for action and roles underlines the continuing importance of considering all aspects of plot. 3.5 Plot beyond Fictional Narrative Philosophically inflected treatments of plot stress the interaction between plot as structure and structuration and its importance for shaping human thought. Discussing Ricœur and White, Dorrit Cohn highlights the “signposts of fictionality” when she differentiates between historical narrative, which “emplots” the actual events, and fictional narrative, which is simply “plotted” without reference to actual events (1990:

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781). White defines plot as “a structure of relationships by which the events contained in the account are endowed with a meaning by being identified as part of a whole” (1981: 9). According to White, this double nature of plot relates the (historical) text to the social and moral system it endorses and which it reveals to be already immanent in reality (19). Ricœur ([1983–85] 1984–88) creates a comprehensive model of the hermeneutic loop between designing and understanding narrative on the basis of plot. The experience of time, according to Ricœur, needs to be articulated in narrative through the process of emplotment (“mise en intrigue”). Emplotment describes how the everyday experience of mimesis 1 (“prefigured time”) is integrated—structurally, symbolically and temporally—into the meaningful narrative constellations of mimesis 2 (“configured time”). The narrative design of mimesis 2, “the kingdom of the as if,” is then the basis of the hermeneutic process which translates back into a refined grasp of the real world, mimesis 3. In Ricœur’s model, the process of emplotment facilitates the transitions between the levels of mimesis. The social and political dimension of such “emplotment” is inscribed in Ricœur’s model (Abbott → Narrativity). Ricœur is careful to stress that he is interested in the dynamics of plot rather than in its fixed structure, i.e. the pattern that will have emerged at the end of the narrative; however, his culturally embedded model also offers a framework for how masterplots can emerge and why authors might draw on the sedimented configurations of established plot patterns as short-cuts to cultural relevance.

4 Topics for Further Investigation At the core of narrative inquiry since Aristotle, reconceptualised and refined (sometimes beyond recognition) since, it seems that there might not be a lot left to say about plot. Nevertheless, plot remains a key constituent of narrative. As new kinds of narrative, such as the large narratives of TV series and serialised comic books or the ludic interactions of computer games, gain cultural relevance, their plot structures and structurations need to be explored (Neitzel → Narrativity of Computer Games). The mutual dependence between plot and the constitution of the fictional world, already at the core of the plot concept of Dannenberg (2008), can be reconsidered from the perspective of cognitive probability theory (Kukkonen forthcoming). Plot is understood as part of a “probability design” in which the pacing of how story events are revealed to readers and the verisimilitude of the fictional world form a

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feedback loop that leads to the (sometimes) profound change in what readers accept as likely outcomes between the beginning and the end of a narrative. Introducing the notion of “negative plotting,” Lanser (2011) outlines how competing plots, “one shadowing the other,” become meaningful in their mutual contrast, negotiate different narrative perspectives and broker the struggle for interpretive dominance. She distinguishes between explicit, implicit and imposed kinds of negative plotting. Despite the rich repertoire of narratives which play with different plot types, or reject a well-wrought plot altogether, and apart from unnatural narratology and a few forays into plot tricks and plot holes (see Ryan 2009) as well as plotless narratives (see Pettersson 2012), most critical attention has been directed to successful and prototypical plots. The dark underbelly of negative plots, failed plots and plotless narratives offer a vast, yet largely untapped area open for narratological inquiry.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Abbott, H. Porter ([2002] 2008). The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Aristotle (1996). Poetics. Trans. M. Heath. London: Penguin. Baroni, Raphaël (2007). La tension narrative. Suspense, curiosité et surprise. Paris: Seuil. Barthes, Roland ([1966] 1977). “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives.” R. Barthes. Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 79–124. – ([1970] 1985). S/Z: An Essay. New York: Hill and Wang. Booker, Christopher (2004). The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. London: Continuum. Bordwell, David (1985). Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Routledge. – (2002). “Film Futures.” SubStance 31.1, 88–104. Boyd, Brian (2009). On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Belknap. Bremond, Claude (1973). Logique du récit. Paris: Seuil. Brooks, Cleanth & Robert Penn Warren (1943). Understanding Fiction. New York: Crofts. Brooks, Peter ([1984] 1992). Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard UP. Carroll, Joseph (1999). “The Deep Structure of Literary Representations.” Evolution and Human Behavior 20.3, 159–173. doi:10.1016/S1090-5138(99)00004-5.

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Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Cohn, Dorrit (1990). “Signposts of Fictionality: A Narratological Perspective.” Poetics Today 11.4, 775–804. Crane, R. S. ([1950] 1952). “The Concept of Plot and the Plot of Tom Jones.” R. S. Crane. Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 62– 93. Dannenberg, Hilary P. (2008). Coincidence and Counterfactuality: Plotting Time and Space in Narrative Fiction. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Dryden, John (1668). “Essay of Dramatick Poesie.” J. Lynch (ed.). New Brunswick: Rutgers UP. Accessed Dec. 19, 2013. http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/drampoet.html DuPlessis, Rachel Blau (1985). Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-century Women Writers. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Forster, E. M. ([1927] 1953). Aspects of the Novel. London: E. Arnold. Freytag, Gustav (1908). Freytag’s Technique of the Drama: An Exposition of Dramatic Composition and Art. 4th ed. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Co. Frye, Northrop (1957). Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton: Princeton UP. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Gottschall, Jonathan (2008). The Rape of Troy: Evolution, Violence, and the World of Homer. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Grodal, Torben Kragh (1997). Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings and Cognition. Oxford: Clarendon P. Gutenberg, Andrea. (2000). Mögliche Welten: Plot und Sinnstiftung im englischen Frauenroman. Heidelberg: C. Winter. Herman, David et al. (2012). Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Hogan, Patrick Colm (2003). The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. – (2011). Affective Narratology: The Emotional Structure of Stories. Lincoln/ London: U of Nebraska P. James, Henry ([1884] 1999). “The Art of Fiction.” Literature Online. Accessed Dec. 19, 2013. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.882003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:lion&rft_id=xri:lion:ft:pr:Z000731381:0 Kafalenos, Emma (2006). Narrative Causalities. Ohio State UP. Kermode, Frank (1967). The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford UP. Kukkonen, Karin (forthcoming). “Bayesian Narrative: Probability, Plot and the Shape of the Fictional World.” Anglia. Lanser, Susan (2011). “‘The Shadow Knows’: Negative Plotting and Feminist Thought.” Keynote Lecture, 2nd ENN Conference, Kolding. Le Bossu, René ([1675] 1708). Traité du poëme épique. Paris. Electronic resource. BNF: Gallica. Last accessed 29 Jan 2014.http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6275412r.r=+Le+Bossu%2C+Ren%C3%A9.langEN

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Lotman, Juri M. ([1970] 1977). The Structure of the Artistic Text. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. Miller, Nancy K. (1980). The Heroine’s Text: Readings in the French and English Novel, 1722-1782. New York: Columbia UP. OED Online (2013) “Plot, n.” Oxford UP. Electronic Resource. Accessed July 31, 2013. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/145915 Page, Ruth E. (2006). Literary and Linguistic Approaches to Feminist Narratology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pettersson, Bo (2012). “What Happens When Nothing Happens: Interpreting Narrative Technique in the Plotless Novels of Nicholson Baker.” M. Lehtimäki et al. (eds.). Narrative, Interrupted: The Plotless, the Disturbing and the Trivial in Literature. Berlin: de Gruyter, 43–56. Phelan, James (1989). Reading People, Reading Plots: Character, Progression, and the Interpretation of Narrative. Chicago: U of Chicago P. – (2007). Experiencing Fiction: Judgments, Progressions, and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Pier, John (2003). “On the Semiotic Parameters of Discourse: A Critique of Story and Discourse.” T. Kindt & H.-H. Müller (eds.). What is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: de Gruyter, 73–99. – (2008). “After This, Therefore Because of This.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 109–140. Propp, Vladimir J. ([1928] 1968). Morphology of the Folktale. Austin: U of Texas P. Richardson, Brian (1997). Unlikely Stories: Causality and the Nature of Modern Narrative. Newark: U of Delaware P; London: Associated UP. – (2005). “Beyond the Poetics of Plot: Alternative Forms of Narrative Progression and the Multiple Trajectories of Ulysses.” J. Phelan & P. Rabinowitz (eds.). A Companion to Narrative Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Electronic Version. Accessed July 31, 2013. doi: 10.1111/b.9781405114769.2005.00012.x Ricœur, Paul ([1983–85] 1984–88). Time and Narrative. 3 vols. Chicago/London: U of Chicago P. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP. – (2009). “Cheap Plot Tricks, Plot Holes, and Narrative Design.” Narrative 17.1, 56–75. doi:10.1353/nar.0.0016. Scanlan, Timothy M. (1977). “Racine’s ‘Bajazet’: ‘Nœuds’ and ‘Dénouement’.” South Atlantic Bulletin 42.4, 13–20. doi:10.2307/3199021. Scherer, Jacques (1950). La Dramaturgie classique en France. Paris: Nizet. Schmid, Wolf (2009). “‘Fabel’ und ‘Sujet’.” W. Schmid (ed.). Slavische Erzähltheorie, Russische und tschechische Ansätze. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1–45. Scott, Walter ([1815] 2009). “Review of Emma in Quarterly Review, Oct 1815.” C. Nixon (ed.). Novel Definitions: An Anthology of Commentary on the Novel, 16881815. Peterborough: Broadview P, 306–313. Scudéry, Georges de ([1638] 1899). “Observations sur Le Cid” A. Gasté (ed.). La Querelle du Cid: Pièces et Pamphlets. Paris: Welter, 71–111.

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Šklovskij, Viktor (Shklovsky, Victor) ([1925] 1990). “The Relationship between Devices of Plot Construction and General Devices of Style.” V. Š. Theory of Prose. Elmwood Park, IL: Dalkey Archive P, 15–51. Sternberg, Meir (1978). Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Swedenberg, H. T. (1944). The Theory of the Epic in England, 1650-1800. Berkeley: U of California P. Todorov, Tzvetan (1969). “Structural Analysis of Narrative.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 3.1, 70–76. doi:10.2307/1345003. – (1971). Poétique de la prose. Paris: Seuil. Tomaševskij, Boris (Tomashevsky) ([1925] 1965). “Thematics.” L. T. Lemon & M. J. Reis (eds.). Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 61–95. Warhol, Robyn R. (2003). Having a Good Cry: Effeminate Feelings and Pop-Culture Forms. Ohio State UP. Wellek, René & Austin Warren ([1949] 1968). Theory of Literature. London: Peregrine Books. White, Hayden (1981). “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality.” W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.). On Narrative. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1–23.

5.2 Further Reading Abbott, H. Porter (2007). “Story, plot, and narration.” D. Herman (ed.). Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 39–51. Bordwell, David (1988). The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. London: Routledge. Dannenberg, Hilary (2005). “Plot.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 435–439. Dipple, Elizabeth (1970). Plot. London: Methuen. Sternberg, Meir (2008). “If-Plots: Narrativity and the Law-Code.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 29–107.

Poetic or Ornamental Prose Wolf Schmid

1 Definition The term poetic or ornamental prose denotes the result of an overdetermination of the narrative text with specifically poetic devices such as rhythmicizing and sound repetition.

2 Explication Such overdetermination generally occurs with the creation of thematic and formal equivalence, i.e. with the strengthening of the paradigmatic order or even the dominance of non-temporal over temporal linking (Schmid → Non-temporal Linking in Narration). In ornamental prose it is as though the author, behind the narrator’s back, so to speak, were to cast a net of formal and thematic linkages over the text, overruling the narrator and his point of view and conferring on the text a poetic fabric with the effect of neutralizing all individual linguistic points of view. Such poetization of narrative takes place during epochs in which the poetic pole dominates, i.e. when the equivalence principle, characteristic of poetry (Jakobson 1960), tends to extend its reach into the field of narrative prose.

3 History of the Phenomenon and of its Study 3.1 Manifestations in Various Literatures In Russian literature between 1890 and 1930, ornamental prose took the lead among narrative genres. Originally used as a negative label for the plotless prose of Pil’njak’s novel The Naked Year (1921), “ornamental prose” became a neutral term. So stated Šklovskij in [1924] 1991: “Contemporary Russian prose is to a large extent ornamental in charac-

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ter.” Many of the later “socialist realists” also paid homage to ornamentalism in their earlier work, during the 1920s. Whereas realism and its world view, shaped by the empirical sciences, found their expression in the hegemony of “narrative art,” postrealist modernism tended to generalize the poetic principle, realized as “verbal art” (on this dichotomy, cf. Hansen-Löve 1978; Schmid 2008). In contrast to realist prose, characterized by consequent perspectivization, psychological motivation, and stylistic diversification, verbal art unfolds the archaic, mythic-unconscious imagination. In texts of verbal art, the difference of points of view is abolished, the psychological motivation is, at best, weakened, and the style is homogenized in a poetic way. Being a “hypertrophy of literariness” (Koževnikova 1971, 115– 117), Russian ornamental prose in the 1920s paradoxically tended to combine with the opposite, or “hypertrophy of characterization,” i.e. skaz (Schmid → Skaz), and this led to a highly complex structured hybrid texture. In English literature, forms of ornamental prose can be found as an ingredient in D. H. Lawrence’s novels The Rainbow (1915) and Women in Love (1920). A high-water mark for the poetization of narrative prose is Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (1931). In these examples, however, perspectivization remains active. In French literature the most comparable example is the “poème en prose” starting with Baudelaire. But whereas this hybrid genre ultimately remains poetry written in prose form, ornamental prose incorporating poetic devices remains prose narrative. In German literature, the high point of this type of narrative, characterized in German philology as “lyrical,” “poetical,” or “rhythmical,” coincides with the epoch of symbolism, at a time when the genre system was dominated by the poetic pole. Ornamental traces are borne particularly by the narrative prose of lyricists such as Stefan George, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Rainer Maria Rilke. An example of German ornamentalism is Rilke’s The Lay of Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke (1906). This text, in “verse-infected prose,” as Rilke later called it, is an extreme case of poetic stylization of a narrative text, with its dense instrumentation of sounds in which rhythmicizing, alliteration, assonance and paronomasias play a large part. In the Rilke text, one can observe the aperspectivism of ornamental prose and weakening of the expressive function. The ascription of text segments to the narratorial or figural perspective is barely perceptible. This is because the opposition of narrator’s text and characters’ text is, when at all present, only weakly marked, since overdetermining ornamentalization largely abolishes

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the function of ideological and linguistic expression of narrating and speaking subjects. The narrative text directs the reader’s attention toward the authorial poetic principle, which organizes both of its two components in the same way. This principle is not the expression of realistic, objective thinking, but rather evokes a poetic, mythical mode of thought. 3.2 Ornamentalism and Mythical Thought Ornamentalism is an artistic icon of myth whereby poetic experience and mythical thought are assumed to be in close harmony. What makes poetic and mythical thought analogous is their common tendency to abolish the non-motivation of signs adhered to in realism. The word, which in the realistic approach to language is only an arbitrary symbol determined by convention, tends to become, in ornamentalism as well as in mythical thought, an icon, an image of its own meaning. The iconicity that poetry imparts to prose partakes of magical speaking in myth. There is no mediative convention between name and thing, not even a relationship of reference or representation: the name does not mean the thing, it is the thing (Cassirer [1925] 1971: 38). The presemiotic approach of myth to language and the mythical identification of word and thing are displayed in ornamental prose as a result of the narrative text’s tendency to favor iconicity and literalize tropes and images, as well as to take proverbs and sayings literally (Hansen-Löve 1982). The iconicity of ornamental prose results from co-occurrence or isotopy between the orders of discourse and story. This means that every equivalence of the signantia suggests an analogous or contrasting equivalence of the signata (Jakobson 1960). Paronomasia becomes the basic form, a sound repetition that produces an occasional relationship of meaning between words that, in themselves, have neither a genetic, etymological nor semantic connection. It is in paronomasia that the law of mythical thought, as formulated by Cassirer ([1925] 1971: 67), takes effect, according to which “every perceptible similarity is an immediate expression of an identity of essence.” The tendency toward iconicity, indeed toward the reification of all signs, ultimately results in a relaxation of the border, strictly drawn in realist narrative, between words and things, between discourse and story. Ornamental prose forms crossing points between the two levels: metamorphoses of pure sound patterns into characters and objects (the best examples of this are provided by the prose of Andrej Belyj, particularly his novel Petersburg [1916]; cf.

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Holthusen 1979), and the narrative transformation of verbal figures into sujet motifs (Puškin’s Tales of Belkin [1830]; cf. Schmid 1991 [2013]). 3.3 Ornamentalizing Prose or Ornamental Narrative The ornamentalization of prose inevitably results in the weakening of narrativity. The restriction of narrativity can go so far that no eventful story is formed at all, so that the text merely denotes fragments of a story whose interrelations are no longer narrative-syntagmatic but only poetic-paradigmatic, produced in line with principles of association, similarity and contrast. In purely ornamental prose, a story is no longer being told, as is the case in Andrej Belyj’s “Symphonies” (1902–04) which, according to Belyj himself ([1934] 1969: 228–234), were inspired by the “decorative ornamentality” of Nikolaj Gogol’s prose and by the “musical prose” and “Asian style” of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. In purely ornamental prose, the techniques of iteration and equivalence remain the only factors of the text’s cohesion and thus serve as decisive guarantors of thematic coherence and crucial semantic operators. Ornamental prose does not attain great semantic complexity in the total dissolution of its narrative substratum, but rather there where paradigmatization encounters the successful resistance of an eventful narrative. This intermediate type can be called ornamentalizing prose or ornamental narrative (Schmid 1992a). When poetic techniques constructively reshape the narrative, the possibilities of meaning in the two text types enrich each other by way of mutual determination and relativization. On the one hand, the poetic links which, as it were, draw a net over the narrative substratum disclose new aspects and relationships among the narrated situations, characters and actions, while on the other hand, the archaic, imaginative thought of verbal art, where it is integrated into a fictional-narrative context, is subordinated to perspectivization and psychological motivation. Before the heyday of hypertrophic ornamentalization (Belyj), we find this intermediate type in the postrealist prose of Anton Čexov, and after that in the prose of the 1920s (Evgenij Zamjatin, Isaak Babel’). Russian ornamental narrative uses the hybridization of verbal art and narrative art for the modeling of a complex, simultaneously archaic and modern image of man. 3.4 History of the Concept and its Study Poetic or ornamental prose was studied intensely by the Russian formalists. Žirmunskij ([1921] 1962) called it “poetic prose” or “purely esthetic prose,” and Tynjanov ([1922] 1977) “poeticized prose.” Only

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in Šklovskij ([1924] 1991: 180) do we find the term “ornamental prose,” defined by him as an art where “the imagery prevails over the plot.” A term used in Western Slavic philology is “dynamic prose” (Struve 1951; Oulanoff 1966: 53). Nevertheless, in Russia, the problematic term “ornamental prosa” has become conventional and is now generally accepted. For the equivalent phenomenon in Western literatures, however, one should prefer the term “poetic prose.” The most important contributions to the study of poetic or ornamental prose, by Koževnikova (1971, 1976), reopened examination of a phenomenon which, by then, had become politically unwelcome in the Soviet Union. Koževnikova explored the structures of ornamental prose, paying particular attention to the relationship between ornamental prose and skaz. Levin (1981) examined the position of this “nonclassical” type of narration in the history of Russian literary language from the viewpoint of linguistics and stylistics. Jensen (1984) studied the relationship between the archaic traits of ornamentalism and analogous trends in avant-garde culture. Szilárd (1986) stressed the importance of the symbolist tradition and investigated the typical themes and world views of ornamental prose. Schmid (1992b) outlined the homology between ornamental prose, mythical thought and subliminal structures, and he demonstrated (1992c) the connection between ornamental structure and archaic world view using the example of Zamjatin’s story “The Flood” (1929).

4 Topics for Further Investigation To date, the spread of ornamentalism in various cultures and literatures remains unexplored. Is the development of this type of prose peculiar to Russian literature, or has the lack of corresponding research outside Russian scholarship made it seem that other literatures are less affected by the poetization of story and discourse?

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Belyj, Andrej ([1934] 1969). Masterstvo Gogolja. München: Fink. Cassirer, Ernst ([1925] 1971). The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Vol. 2: Mythical Thought. New Haven: Yale UP.

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Hansen-Löve, Aage (1978). Der russische Formalismus. Wien: Verlag der österreichischen Akad. der Wissenschaften. – (1982). “Die ‘Realisierung’ und ‘Entfaltung’ semantischer Figuren zu Texten.” Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 10, 197–252. Holthusen, Johannes (1979). “Andrej Belyj: Peterburg.” B. Zelinsky (ed.). Der russische Roman. Düsseldorf: Bagel, 265–289. Jakobson, Roman (1960). “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics.” Th. A. Sebeok (ed.). Style in Language. Cambridge: MIT Press, 350–377. Jensen, Peter Alberg (1984). “The Thing as Such: Boris Pil’njak’s ‘Ornamentalism’.” Russian Literature 16, 81–100. Koževnikova, Natal’ja (1971). “O tipach povestvovanija v sovetskoj proze.” Voprosy jazyka sovremennoj russkoj literatury. Moskva: Nauka, 97–163. – (1976). “Iz nabljudenij nad neklassičeskoj (‘ornamental’noj’) prozoj.” Izvestija AN SSSR. Serija literatury i jazyka 35, 55–66. Levin, V. (1981). “‘Neklassičeskie’ tipy povestvovanija načala XX veka v istorii russkogo literaturnogo jazyka.” Slavica Hierosolymitana 5–6, 245–275. Oulanoff, Hongor (1966). The Serapion Brothers. Theory and Practice. ’s-Gravenhage: Mouton. Schmid, Wolf ([1991] 2013). Proza Puškina v poėtičeskom pročtenii. ‘Povesti Belkina’ i ‘Pikovaja dama’. S-Peterburg: Izdatel’stvo S-Peterburgskogo gos. un-ta. – (1992a). Ornamentales Erzählen in der russischen Moderne. Čechov—Babel— Zamjatin. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang. – (1992b). “Ornament—poėzija—mif—podsoznanie.” V. Š. Proza kak poėzija. Puškin—Dostoevskij—Čexov—avangard. S.-Peterburg: Inapress, 297–308. – (1992c). “Ornamental’nyj tekst i mifičeskoe myšlenie v rasskaze E. I. Zamjatina ‘Navodnenie’.” V. Š. Proza kak poėzija. Puškin—Dostoevskij—Čexov— avangard. S.-Peterburg: Inapress, 328–344. – (2008). “‘Wortkunst’ und ‘Erzählkunst’ im Lichte der Narratologie.” R. Grübel & W. Schmid (eds.). Wortkunst—Erzählkunst—Bildkunst. Festschrift für Aage A. Hansen-Löve. München: Sagner, 23–37. Šklovskij, Viktor ([1924] 1991). “Bely and Ornamental Prose.” Theory of Prose. Tr. by B. Sher. Elmwood Park: Dalkey Archive Press, 171–188. Struve, Gleb (1951). Soviet Russian Literature 1917–1950. Norman: U of Oklahoma P. Szilárd, Léna (1986). “Ornamental’nost’/ornamentalizm.” Russian Literature 19, 65–78. Tynjanov, Jurij ([1922] 1977). “‘Serapionovy brat’ja.’ Al’manax I.” Ju. Tynjanov. Poėtika. Istorija literatury. Kino. Moskva: Nauka, 132–136. Žirmunskij, Viktor ([1921] 1962) “Zadači poėtiki.” V. Žirmunskij. Voprosy teorii literatury. Stat’i 1916–1926. Reprint: ’s-Gravenhage: Mouton 1962, 17–88.

5.2 Further Reading Browning, Gary (1979). “Russian Ornamental Prose.” Slavic and East European Journal 23, 346–352. Carden, Patricia (1976). “Ornamentalism and Modernism.” G. Gibian & H. W. Tjalsma (eds.). Russian Modernism. Culture and Avantgarde. 1900–1930. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 49–64.

Possible Worlds Marie-Laure Ryan

1 Definition The concept of possible worlds (henceforth PW), loosely inspired by Leibniz’ philosophy, was developed in the second half of the 20th century by philosophers of the analytic school (Kripke, Lewis, Hintikka [1989], Plantinga [1976], Rescher) as a means to solve problems in formal semantics. These problems are the truth conditions of counterfactual statements (“If a couple hundred more Florida voters had voted for Gore in 2000, the Iraq war would not have happened”) and of sentences modified by modal operators expressing necessity and possibility (hence the close relationship between possible worlds theory and modal logic). Other modal systems have been built around operators expressing what is known as “propositional attitudes” such as beliefs, obligation, and desires. Starting in the mid-70s, PW theory was adapted to the fictional worlds of narrative by the philosopher David Lewis, as well as by a number of literary theorists, including Eco, Pavel, Doležel, and Ryan. Through the questions they ask, PW-inspired approaches have also influenced critics such as McHale, Margolin, Palmer, and Dannenberg. A thorough exposition of the philosophical applications of the notion of possible worlds, as well as a critique of the use of the concept by literary theorists, can be found in Ronen 1994.

2 Explication The foundation of PW theory is the idea that reality—conceived as the sum of the imaginable rather than as the sum of what exists physically—is a universe composed of a plurality of distinct worlds. This universe is hierarchically structured by the opposition of one element, which functions as the center of the system, to all the other members of the set (Kripke 1963). The central element is known as the “actual” or “real” world (henceforth AW) while the other members of the system are alternative, or non-actual possible worlds (APWs). For a world to

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be possible, it must be linked to the actual world by a relation of accessibility. The boundaries of the possible depend on the particular interpretation given to this notion of accessibility. The most common interpretation associates possibility with logical laws: every world that respects the principles of non-contradiction and of the excluded middle is a possible world. On the basis of this model, we can define a proposition as necessary if it is true in all worlds linked to the actual world (including this actual world itself); as possible if it is true in only some of these worlds; as impossible (e.g., contradictory) if it is false in all of them; and as true, without being necessary, if it is verified in the actual world of the system but not in some other possible world. The major question raised by this model concerns the nature of the properties that make one of the worlds of the system the actual world. Two main theories of actuality have been proposed. According to the first, which could be called the absolutist view, the actual world differs in ontological status from merely possible ones in that this world alone presents an autonomous existence (Rescher [1973] 1979). All other worlds are the product of a mental activity, such as dreaming, imagining, foretelling, promising, or storytelling. The other interpretation, proposed by Lewis (1973: 84–91), regards actuality as an indexical notion with variable reference, similar in this respect to linguistic expressions such as “I,” “you,” “here,” “now.” According to Lewis, “the actual world” means “the world where I am situated,” and all PWs are actualized from the point of view of their inhabitants. This view, known as “modal realism,” makes a distinction between “real” and “actual”: for Lewis, all possible worlds are real in the sense that they exist independently of whether or not a member of AW imagines them, but only one world can be actual from a given point of view.

3 History of the Concept and its Study Applications of PW theory to narrative fall into two main categories: the theory of fiction, and the semantic description of storyworlds (or rather, narrative universes), whether fictional or not. The discussion that follows focuses on literary, i.e. language-based narrative and fiction, but the observations and concepts developed by the various advocates of PW theory can now be seen as equally valid for narratives realized in other media such as drama, film, comics, or video games.

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3.1 Pioneering Scholars 3.1.1 David Lewis In a 1978 article titled “Truth in Fiction,” Lewis applied PW theory to the problem of defining under what conditions a statement concerning a fictional world which is not necessarily included in the text, such as “Emma Bovary despised her husband,” can be regarded as true. He defines fiction as stories “told as true” of a world other than the one we regard as actual. Fictional stories differ from counterfactual statements in that they are told from the point of view of an APW which readers regard as the actual world in make-believe, while counterfactuals describe an APW—say, the world in which Al Gore is elected US president in 2000—from the point of view of AW, acknowledging their alternative status through markers of irreality such as if… then operators, or the conditional mode. Despite this difference, however, Lewis adapts his account of the truth conditions of counterfactuals to the case of fiction. According to him, a statement in the form of “if p then q” is true for an evaluator if the APW where both p and q are true is closer, on balance, to AW than the world where p is true and q is false. For instance, people will agree with the statement “If a couple hundred more Florida voters had voted for Gore in 2000, the Iraq war would not have happened” if they think that George Bush was personally responsible for the Iraq war; on the other hand, if they believe that Al Gore would also have declared war on Iraq, they will think that the world where (a) “a couple hundred more Florida voters vote for Gore in 2000” (thereby electing Gore US President) and (b) “the Iraq war happens” is closer to AW, and they will regard the counterfactual as false. According to Lewis, this criterion can also be applied to statements about fictional worlds (Schaeffer → Fictional vs. Factual Narration). For instance, “Emma Bovary admired her husband” is false because a world where a woman behaves like Emma Bovary and admires her husband is far more remote from AW in its human psychology than the world where Emma despises her husband. This analysis has important consequences for literary theory for the following reasons: (1) it regards statements about fiction as capable of truth and falsity, against the formerly prevalent views among philosophers that they are either false (for lack of referent) or indeterminate; (2) it assumes that the real world serves as a model for the mental construction of fictional storyworlds; but (3) it does not limit the fictional text to an imitation of reality, maintaining, on the contrary, that texts are free to construct fictional worlds that differ from AW. Readers im-

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agine fictional worlds as the closest possible to AW, and they only make changes that are mandated by the text. For instance, if a fiction mentions a winged horse, readers will imagine a creature that looks like real world horses in every respect except for the fact that this creature has wings. Ryan (1991) calls this interpretive rule “the principle of minimal departure,” and Walton (1990) calls it “the reality principle.” 3.1.2 Thomas Pavel Pavel was the first literary critic to understand the potential of the concept of PW for narrative theory. In his 1975 article “Possible Worlds in Literary Semantics” (further developed in his 1986 book Fictional Worlds), he sees in the concept of PW a way to put an end to the structuralist moratorium on questions of reference. In creating what is objectively an APW, the literary text establishes for the reader a new actual world which imposes its own laws on the surrounding system, thereby defining its own horizon of possibilities. In order to become immersed in this world, the reader must adopt a new ontological perspective, thereby entailing a new model of what exists and what does not. “In this precise sense,” writes Pavel, “one can say that literary worlds are autonomous.” Any comparison between art and reality is legitimate but “logically secondary to the unique ontological perspective posited by the work” (1975: 175). By placing fictional worlds at the center of its modal system, the literary semantics envisioned by Pavel avoids the extreme isolationism imposed by the structuralist and deconstructionist doctrine of textual immanence without falling into the pitfall of a naïve realism which would reduce fictional worlds to representations of the actual world. While naïve realism (a stance that is more a strawman than a view which is actually defended) would divide the fictional text into propositions that are true or false with respect to AW and use this truth value as a criterion of validity, a literary semantics based on the concept of PW regards all propositions originating in a fictional world as constitutive of this world and therefore as automatically true in it. (Under this view, an exception must be made for the declarations of unreliable narrators.) But Pavel also warns against a “segregationist” view that erects an impermeable boundary between fictional worlds and the actual world, for such a boundary would prevent fictions from providing insights about our world, thereby depriving literature of any ethical, existential, political, or didactic value. Moreover, since, according to PW theory, the truth value of a proposition can be evaluated with respect to different worlds, nothing prevents readers from assessing the truth within AW of ersatz propositions stripped of their mark of origin.

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In a work like Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann, for instance, we are entitled to regard the musicological discussions as (potentially) reliable information about aspects of AW with which we are unfamiliar. It is the possibility of varying the reference world of propositions that enables fictions to make relevant statements about the actual world. Yet while fiction can provide valuable insights about reality, literary characters such as Don Quixote and Emma Bovary exemplify the danger of uncritically inverting minimal departure and constructing reality as the closest possible to a fictional world. 3.1.3 Lubomír Doležel In a series of articles starting in 1976 (1976a, 1976b) and culminating in the 1998 book Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds, Doležel proposes a conception of fictional semantics quite different from the view that emerges from Lewis’ analysis of truth in fiction and from its implication, the principle of minimal departure. While minimal departure assumes that fictional entities possess the same ontological fullness as real objects, Doležel invokes PW theory in support of a semantic model that stresses the radical incompleteness of fictional worlds: because it is impossible for the human mind to imagine an object (much less a world) in all of its properties, every fictional world presents areas of radical indeterminacy. It is a waste of time to ask how many children Lady Macbeth had, because the number of her children is never specified. As can be seen from this example, such a lack of information constitutes an ontological gap inherent to fictional worlds. (Minimal departure, by contrast, would regard Lady Macbeth as compatible with many different worlds: one in which she had a single child, another in which she had two children, and so on, up to the number of children a woman can be reasonably expected to bear. It would also regard the number of her children as unknowable information.) Doležel’s conception of literary meaning is based on an opposition between what he calls an “extensional” and an “intensional” (not to be confused with intentional) narrative world. The extensional narrative world consists in a set of “compossible narrative agents” (i.e., agents created by the same text) together with the actions and properties ascribed to these agents. The intensional narrative world is the sum of all the meanings expressed by the text; for instance, “Hamlet” and “the Prince of Denmark” refer to the same individual in the extensional narrative world, but they carry different intensional meanings. (One recognizes here Frege’s opposition between sense and reference.) The reader passes from the intensional to the extensional narrative world by assuming the existence of

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an “intensional function” that links referring expressions to fictional existents. The relation between the intensional and the extensional narrative world determines what Doležel calls the “texture” of the text. Against theories that advocate the filling in of the gaps in the text, Doležel stresses the aesthetic importance of the strategies of showing and hiding that regulate the disclosure of narrative information. It is not insignificant, for instance, that Goethe’s Elective Affinities “suppresses the material and organic levels and constructs explicitly only the mental and spiritual levels” (1998: 184). While Doležel’s model accounts much better than theories based on minimal departure for the aesthetic significance of the formal features of the text, it leaves unresolved the location of the incompleteness of fictional objects: is it a feature of the extensional or of the intensional narrative world? Despite the lack of information concerning the realm of the physical, readers do not imagine Goethe’s characters as disembodied minds floating ghostlike in the fictional world. While Doležel’s stated purpose is to prevent a reduction of fictional worlds to “the uniform structure of the complete, Carnapian world” (1998: 171), one could argue that it is by assuming the completeness of the extensional world that the gaps in its representation (i.e., in the intensional world) become noticeable and acquire significance. Another aspect of narrative semantics that Doležel (1976b) explores with the help of PW theory is the typology of plot. He proposes a classificatory system based on various possible interpretations of modal logic: the alethic system, based on the operators possible, impossible, and necessary; the deontic system (permitted, prohibited, and obligatory); the axiological system (good, bad, indifferent); and the epistemic system (known, unknown, believed). Doležel links each of these systems to a different type of plot. The alethic system is shown to be responsible for the division of the population of fictional worlds into groups of different abilities (gods versus humans, the seeing among the blind, etc.), as well as for the categorization of fictional worlds as a whole as realist, fantastic, or nonsensical. Constraints of the deontic type generate plots of obligation, crime, and punishment; the axiological system underlies stories of quest and moral dilemma; and the manipulation of the categories of the epistemic system produces mystery stories, narratives of learning (the Bildungsroman), comedies of errors, as well as the all-important function of deceit.

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3.1.4 Umberto Eco Developing a very short but dense and highly influential article by Vaina (1977), Eco regards the semantic domain of narrative not as a possible world, but as a universe made up of a constellation of possible worlds. A literary text, he writes, is not a single possible world, but “a machine for producing possible worlds (of the fabula, of the characters within the fabula, and of the reader outside the fabula” (1984: 246; italics original). These three types of worlds can be defined as follows: 1. 2. 3.

The possible worlds imagined and asserted by the author. These worlds correspond to all the states of the fabula. The possible subworlds that are imagined, believed, wished, and so on by the characters of the fabula. The possible worlds that, at every disjunction of probability, the Model Reader imagines, believes, wishes, and so on, and that further states of the fabula must either approve or disapprove.

The first type of worlds describes the fabula as a succession of distinct states mediated by events. These states correspond to objectively occurring physical states, and they can be regarded as the actual world of the narrative system. The second type of worlds corresponds to the mental activity of the characters, a mental activity through which they react to the changes of state that occur in the physical world or to their idea of what happens in the mind of other characters. The third type of worlds describes the dynamic unfolding of the story in the reader’s mind. When type-3 worlds are disapproved by the fabula, they disappear from the narrative universe but remain as “ghost chapters” in a wider semantic domain that encompasses not only the events narrated as fact, but all the virtual stories brought to mind by the text. By monitoring the construction of possible worlds by the reader, the narrative text creates such effects as suspense, curiosity, and surprise, or it may trick the reader into false assumptions. A text, claims Eco, tells at least three stories: (a) the story of what happens to the dramatis personae; (b) the story of what happens to the naïve reader; and (c) the story of what happens to itself as text (this third story being potentially the same as what happens to the critical reader). The possible differentiation of (b) and (c) is demonstrated by trick texts that leads the reader to false assumptions.

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3.2 Areas of Application In a second wave of development, the concept of PW gradually emancipates itself from its origins in logic and analytic philosophy and comes to designate more broadly the imaginary, the virtual, the mental, and the potential. Below is an overview of these developments organized by topic. 3.2.1 Narrative Semantics Inspired by Eco’s view of the narrative text as “a machine for producing possible worlds” as well as by models used in artificial intelligence, Ryan (1985, 1991) describes narrative universes—whether fictional or not—as modal systems in which the external (i.e., physical) facts asserted by the narrator play the role of “textual actual world.” Surrounding this ontological center are the little solar systems formed by the private universes of the characters. Each of these subsystems is centered around an epistemic world, or K (for knowledge) world, which contains the character’s representation of the entire system—that is, of both the actual world and the private worlds of the other characters (which themselves contain images of the private worlds of the character under consideration in a mirroring process that would lead to endless recursion if it weren’t for the limitations of the human mind). From the reader’s point of view, the K-world of characters contains a potentially inaccurate image of the actual world of the narrative universe, but from the character’s point of view this image is the actual world itself. The private universes of characters also include model worlds, such as desires (W-world) and obligations (O-world), which capture how the character would like the actual world to be: active goals and plans, which capture projected courses of actions leading to the fulfillment of the model worlds; and fantasy worlds such as dreams, hallucinations, and stories within stories which embed, recursively, new modal systems. A narrative, however, cannot be reduced to a static snapshot of a certain state of a modal system. During the course of the story, the distance between the various worlds of the system undergoes constant fluctuations. Whenever a proposition in a model world is not satisfied in the actual word, the narrative universe falls into a state of conflict. The motor that operates the narrative machine is the attempt by characters to eliminate conflict by reducing the distance between their model worlds and the actual world. Conflict can also exist between the model worlds of different characters. For instance, the hero and the villain are antagonists because they have incompatible W-worlds and work toward

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incompatible states. Or a character may experience conflict between her W-world and her O-world and have to choose which one to try to satisfy. PW theory thus models narrative dynamics as the movement of individual worlds within the global narrative universe. This movement does not end when all conflicts are resolved, for conflict is a permanent state of any universe, but when all the remaining conflicts cease to be productive because their experiencer is no longer willing or able to take steps toward their resolution. Trying to establish what holds as fact in the actual domain of the narrative universe, distinguishing the factual and physical from the possible and virtual located in the mental representations of characters, and building an image of these mental representations as a way to grasp the human significance of physical events and actions are some of the most fundamental of the cognitive operations that lead to the construction of narrative meaning. Readers are not always—indeed, rarely—able to fill out all of the component worlds of the narrative universe, but the better they fill them out, the better they will grasp the logic of the story and the better they will remember the plot. 3.2.2 Poetics of Plot Plot is traditionally—and superficially—conceived as a sequence of physical events that take place in a certain world. The concept of PW expands this vision by regarding plot as a complex network of relations between the factual and the non-factual, the actual and the virtual. The French structuralists Bremond and Todorov were the first to point out the importance of the non-factual for the understanding of plot. While Bremond (1973) described plots as possibility trees representing the various courses of action open to characters at crucial decision points, Todorov (1969) anticipated the propositional operators of modal logic by constructing a narrative grammar that distinguishes a factual mode from a variety of hypothetical modes: optative, predictive, conditional, and obligatory. The importance of the strategic opposition between the actual and the merely possible is demonstrated by the quintessential narrative of knowledge, the mystery story. The art of writing a mystery story lies in suggesting a variety of possible sequences of events, one of which gradually emerges as actual, thanks to the sagacity of the detective. Ryan (1991) regards the ability of a narrative to evoke multiple nonactual possible worlds as a major principle of tellability (Baroni → Tellability). For instance, a narrative based on deception is usually more interesting than a narrative based on cooperation, because decep-

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tion relies on a contrast between a feigned and a real intent, while asking for collaboration requires only the consideration of an actual goal. Similarly, a goal achieved in an unexpected way is narratively more interesting than a goal achieved through the successful execution of a plan, because the unexpected solution contrasts with the anticipated events. In this way, the reader is led to contemplate a richer semantic universe. The various functions and manifestations of counterfactual events in narrative plots have been systematically studied by Dannenberg (2008). She identifies the major narrative strategies that underlie the design of plot as coincidence and counterfactuality. While coincidence knots together the destinies of characters and creates networks of interpersonal relations, counterfactuality is a principle of divergence that makes visible a vast horizon of alternative stories. As Dannenberg shows, the counterfactual in narrative can take many forms and fulfill many functions. In realist narrative, it appears as the “what if” reasoning through which the narrator or the characters themselves evaluate situations or ponder the future. In alternative history (i.e., narrative ascribing a different life to historical figures), counterfactuality invites the reader to make a comparison between the fictional world and the actual world that precludes total immersion in the fictional world, since the reader must keep an eye on actual history. In 20th-century literature, the classical ontological model that underlies realism gives way to an ontology that questions its central tenet: the hierarchical relation that places a single actual world at the center of the system and subordinates merely possible worlds to this actual world. Some science fiction texts build an ontology inspired by the so-called “many-worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics (see also Ryan 2006). In this ontology, which relies on the idea of parallel universes, all possibilities are realized in some world, and the distinction between the factual and the counterfactual disappears. This distinction is also challenged when a postmodern narrative presents many incompatible versions of certain events without singling out one of these versions as corresponding to the actual world (cf. Robert Coover’s short story “The Babysitter” or films like The Butterfly Effect). 3.2.3 Theory of Fictional Characters As Margolin, a leading theorist of fictional characters (Jannidis → Character), has shown, the individuals whose actions, experience, and destiny form the central concern of narrative fiction can be approached in a number of different ways: (1) as the referents of linguistic expres-

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sions (names, pronouns, definite descriptions); (2) as aggregates of “semes,” i.e. of properties specified by the text; (3) as bearers of general ideas, a view that turns characters into allegories; (4) as entities fulfilling actantial functions within the plot such as agent, desired object, helper, and opponent; and (5) as “non-actual individuals, designated by means of referring expressions,” who are “members of some nonactual state of affairs or possible world” (Margolin 1989: 4). The last conception, inspired by PW theory, differs from the first four in that it does not regard characters as purely semiotic constructs, as did structuralism, but as make-believe life-like persons “endowed with inner states, knowledge, and belief sets, memories, attitudes and intentions— that is, a consciousness, interiority and personhood” (Margolin 1990: 455). Each of these conceptions accounts for different aspects of fictional characters—presentation, identification, thematic function, function within the plot, and ontological status—but it is only the fifth that explains their ability to arouse emotions in the reader, an aspect of narrative that is currently generating considerable interest (Keen → Narrative Empathy). In recent years, the conception of characters as non-actual individuals has led to new approaches to the representation of minds. Studies of fictional minds used to be concerned with explicit forms of representation, such as stream of consciousness or free indirect discourse (Cohn 1978). These studies are based on the assumption that we can know the mind of fictional characters much better than the mind of real people, because thought is something contained within the head. Omniscient narrators can penetrate into the mind of characters, while we cannot do so with actual individuals. Invoking what is known in cognitive psychology as “theory of mind” or “mental simulation,” Palmer (2004) has denied the view that it takes some form of psycho-narration to enable readers to know the thoughts of fictional characters. According to cognitive psychologists, we have an innate ability to attribute thoughts and motivations to other people on the basis of their external behavior. The mind, in Palmer’s felicitous expression, is not contained within the skull but manifests itself in interpersonal relations and in people’s interaction with the surrounding world. It is the same inferential skills that enable us to construct the mind of real people and fictional people. To apply to literary characters our innate mind-reading abilities, or “theory of mind,” amounts therefore to subjecting them to the principle of minimal departure. It could be objected that minimal departure imposes a uniform realistic frame that denies distinctions between round and flat characters, or between life-like ones and conventional literary types or fantastic creatures. But the behavior of non-realistic character

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types such as space aliens, vampires, and zombies, of anthropomorphized animals, or of standard literary types such as invincible superheroes, femmes fatales, and detectives able to solve any problem would not make sense to the reader without assuming that their mode of thinking is similar to ours in its broad strategies for implementing their values in AW, however different these values may be from ours. 3.2.4 Transfictionality Transfictionality (Saint-Gelais 2005; Ryan 2008) is the migration of elements such as characters, plot structures, or setting from one fictional text to another. It can be thought of as a relation between possible worlds. PW philosophy provides tools for describing this phenomenon through the concept of counterparts relations (Lewis 1986) and through the so-called “causal theory” of names (Kripke 1972). The causal theory holds that names do not stand for clusters of properties but are “rigid designators” inalienably attached to individuals through an original act of baptism. As rigid designators, names refer to individuals regardless of changes in their properties. Since the function of names, in a PW model, is to pick one and only one individual in every PW where this individual exists, the same name can refer to individuals in different worlds with different properties: in world 1, Napoleon loses the battle of Waterloo; in world 2 (perhaps created by a novelist), he wins; in world 3, he never leaves his native Corsica. All these Napoleons are linked to each other by counterpart relations. (A dog named Napoleon, by contrast, would not be perceived by the reader of a novel as a counterpart of the emperor, because he would lack the essential property of being human). The same variations can obtain with fictional characters: if an author writes a novel about Anna Karenina in which she finds a new lover after her break with Vronsky rather than throwing herself in front of a train, this new Anna Karenina will be regarded as a counterpart of Tolstoy’s heroine rather than as a simple homonym. The reader will consequently imagine her according to the principle of minimal departure with respect to Tolstoy’s novel. Transfictionality is a phenomenon as old as print narrative (one need only think of the multiple apocryphal versions inspired by popular early modern novels such as Don Quixote or Robinson Crusoe), perhaps even as old as narrative itself (cf. the multiple tellings of myths in oral cultures), but it has become particularly prominent in postmodern culture. In his 1998 book Heterocosmica, Doležel presents a theory of what he calls “postmodern rewrites” which can be extended to all forms of transfictionality. This theory distinguishes three types of relations be-

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tween fictional worlds. The first, “expansion,” “extends the scope of the protoworld by filling its gaps, constructing a prehistory or posthistory, and so on” (1998: 207). This operation manifests itself in prequels, sequels, or in narratives that borrow a secondary character from another work and turn it into a main character. The example of expansion proposed by Doležel is Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, which tells the life story of the “madwoman hidden in the attic” in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The second type of transfictional relation is what Doležel calls “displacement” (I would suggest calling it “modification”): here the setting, the characters, and most of the plot are taken over from another fictional world, but the fate of the characters is modified. For instance, the Robinson of J.M. Coetzee’s Foe never engages in the civilizing activities of his 18th-century counterpart, and he does not write a diary. The third relation, “transposition,” transports the plot of a story to a different historical or geographical setting. Doležel’s example of this operation is Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. (The New Sufferings of Young W.) by Ulrich Plenzdorf (1973), a novel which relocates the plot of Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sufferings of Young Werther) into the German Democratic Republic of the 1960s. These three operations provide a solid theoretical basis for the study of a prominent phenomenon of contemporary culture (Jenkins 2006): the exploitation of popular narratives by multi-media franchises as well as the deliberate creation of narrative worlds that spread across multiple media. 3.2.5 Text Typology As Maître (1983) and Ryan (1991) have shown, relations between AW and fictional worlds are constitutive of certain types of text. Taking possibility in AW as criterion, Maître distinguishes four basic types of text: (a) works that refer to historical events; (b) works that deal with imaginary states of affairs which could be actual; (c) works in which there is an oscillation between could-be-actual and could-never-beactual worlds; (d) works that deal straight away with states of affairs which could never be actual. Ryan (1991) builds a typology based on various interpretations of accessibility. In fictionalized history, accessibility ties the fictional world to AW through a common past history, geography, and inventory of individuals; in realism (including historical fiction), laws of nature are respected, but additional individuals are added to the population of the fictional world; in medieval fantasy and fairy tales, natural laws are broken but the laws of logic hold; and in nonsense rhymes and in some postmodernist fictions, logic itself is transgressed, resulting in impossible worlds.

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3.2.6 Poetics of Postmodernism According to McHale (1987), the dominant feature of postmodernist fiction is its preoccupation with ontological questions (“what exists?”), as opposed to the epistemological questions (“what can I know?”) that dominated modernism. This preoccupation can take many forms: a rejection of classical ontology through the assertion of mutually incompatible facts; the meeting in the same world of non-compossible characters originating in different fictional worlds (e.g., in Jasper Fforde’s novels); the creation of impossible objects (e.g., Borges’ Aleph and Book of Sand in the stories by the same name); or the entanglement of ontological levels through metalepsis (Pier → Metalepsis). 3.2.7 Digital Culture In digital culture, “world” (whether “online” or “virtual”) stands for immersive/interactive environments that allow a much more active participation of the experiencer—and consequently a different kind of membership—than the worlds of literary or cinematic fiction, which limit the role of the experiencer to that of an observer. The term “possible worlds” has been used to describe virtual reality technology (Schroeder 1996) in a loose way that is not particularly indebted to PW theory. But the ability of interactive texts and games to generate multiple different worlds, depending on the actions of the user, predisposes them to an approach inspired by PW theory (cf. Bell 2010 on hypertext fiction). The PW model can also strengthen the theoretical basis of the notion of “world,” whether it is conceived as digital virtual world or as narratological storyworld.

4 Topics for Further Investigation 4.1. The “worldness” of fictional worlds needs to be explored from a phenomenological rather than a purely logical point of view. The thesis of the radical incompleteness of fictional worlds is undoubtedly correct from a logical perspective, but we also need to describe fictional worlds as a lived imaginative experience. The dilemma here is between a conception of fictional worlds as “small worlds” defined over a limited number of facts (pace minimal departure) or as “full worlds” which, like the real world, can never be completely explored and known. Is it the smallness of its world that makes E.M. Forster’s example of plot, “The king died then the queen died of grief,” narratively so uninteresting, as compared to the rich world of a novel like War and Peace? Do

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we imagine some fictional worlds as ontologically incomplete and others as complete, or should the same ontological model apply to all fictions? If ontological fullness varies from text to text, is this fullness purely a matter of quantity of information, or can a short story create a world so rich that the reader feels it will never yield all of its secrets? 4.2.The problems investigated by the PW school of narratology need to be placed in a wider context—a context that will relate fictionmaking and narrative to phenomena such as play, make-believe, impersonation, simulation, and the use of counterfactual scenarios in reasoning (cf. Schaeffer [1999] 2010). While the philosophical tradition of PW theory can be an inspiration for such a project, it should not be a limitation: it is through a collaboration of PW theory with cognitive science (Herman → Cognitive Narratology), evolutionary psychology, philosophy of mind, speech act theory, and the study of games (ludology) that we will be able to understand the importance of the non-factual and of that which “does not count” for human thought and behavior. 4.3.The applications of PW theory to narrative have relied for many years on an invariant core of philosophical writings (especially Kripke and Lewis). This basis needs to be revisited and possibly expanded or revised by taking into consideration more recent philosophical developments in PW philosophy. A return to the philosophical sources may not only provide new ideas, but also help resolve the question of the legitimacy of associating fictional worlds with PWs: is this association a rather loose metaphorical transfer between objects of a distinct nature (as Ronen 1994 and Monneret 2010 have argued), or is the philosophical concept of PW broad enough to accept fictional worlds as full members? Yet even if the relation between the philosophical concept of PW and narrative worlds turns out to be a metaphorical transfer, the narratological applications of PW theory will not be invalidated, for the value of the concept of PW for narratology depends not on a literal application, but on whether or not “specific features of fictional worlds can be identified only against the background of this model frame” (Doležel 1988: 486).

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5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Bell, Alice (2010). The Possible Worlds of Hypertext Fiction. New York: Palgrave McMillan. Bremond, Claude (1973). Logique du récit. Paris: Seuil. Cohn, Dorrit (1978). Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP. Dannenberg, Hilary (2008). Coincidence and Counterfactuality: Plotting Time and Space in Narrative Fiction. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Doležel, Lubomír (1976a).”Extensional and Intensional Narrative Worlds.” Poetics 8, 193–212. – (1976b). “Narrative Modalities.” Journal of Literary Semantics 5, 5–14. – (1988). “Mimesis and Possible Worlds.” Poetics Today 9, 475–496. – (1998). Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Eco, Umberto (1984). The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Hintikka, Jaakko (1989). “Exploring Possible Worlds.” S. Allén (ed.). Possible Worlds in Humanities, Arts and Science: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 65. New York: de Gruyter, 52–73. Jenkins, Henry (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP. Kripke, Saul (1963). “Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic.” Acta Philosophica Fennica 16, 83–94. – (1972). “Naming and Necessity.” D. Davidson & G. Harman (eds.). Semantics of Natural Language. Dordrecht: Reidel, 253–355. Lewis, David (1973). Counterfactuals. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP. – (1978). “Truth in Fiction.” American Philosophical Quarterly 15, 37–46. – (1986). On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell. Maître, Doreen (1983). Literature and Possible Worlds. Middlesex: Middlesex UP. Margolin, Uri (1989). “Structuralist Approaches to Character in Narrative: The State of the Art.” Semiotica 75.1-2, 1–24. – (1990). “The What, the When, and the How of Being a Character in Literary Narrative.” Style 24, 453–468. McHale, Brian (1987). Postmodernist Fiction. London: Methuen. Monneret, Philippe (2010). “Fiction et croyance: les mondes possibles fictionnels comme facteurs de plasticité des croyances.” F. Lavocat (ed.). La Théorie littéraire des mondes possibles. Paris: CNRS Editions, 259–292. Palmer, Alan (2004). Fictional Minds. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Pavel, Thomas (1975). “Possible Worlds in Literary Semantics.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 34, 165–176. – (1986). Fictional Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Plantinga, Alvin (1976). “Actualism and Possible Worlds.” Theoria 42, 139–160.

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Rescher, Nicholas ([1973] 1979). “The Ontology of the Possible.” M. Loux (ed.). The Possible and the Actual: Readings in the Metaphysics of Modality. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 166–181. Ronen, Ruth (1994). Possible Worlds in Literary Theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1985). “The Modal Structure of Narrative Universes.” Poetics Today 6.4, 717–756. –

(1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: U of Indiana P. – (2006). “From Parallel Universes to Possible Worlds : Ontological Pluralism in Physics, Narratology and Narrative.” Poetics Today 27.4, 633–674. – (2008). “Transfictionality Across Media.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 385–417. Saint-Gelais, Richard (2005). “Transfictionality.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 612–613. Schaeffer, Jean-Marie ([1999] 2010). Why Fiction? Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Schroeder, Ralph (1996). Possible Worlds: The Social Dynamics of Virtual Reality Technology. Boulder: Westview P. Todorov, Tzvetan (1969). Grammaire du Décameron. The Hague: Mouton. Vaina, Lucia (1977). “Les Mondes possible du texte.” Versus 17, 3–13. Walton, Kendall (1990). Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Art. Cambridge: Harvard UP.

5.2 Further Reading Allén, Sture, ed. (1989). Possible Worlds in Humanities, Arts and Science: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 65. New York: de Gruyter. Divers, John (2002). Possible Worlds. London: Routledge. Lavocat, Françoise (2010). “Les Genres de la fiction : état des lieux et propositions.” F. Lavocat (ed.). La Théorie littéraire des mondes possibles. Paris : CNRS Editions, 15–51. Martin, Thomas (2004). Poesis and Possible Worlds. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Saint-Gelais, Richard. (2011) Fictions transfuges: La transfictionalité et ses enjeux. Paris: Seuil. Semino, Elena (1997). Language and World Creation in Poems and Other Texts. London: Longman. Traill, Nancy H. (1996). Possible Worlds of the Fantastic: The Rise of the Paranormal in Fiction. Toronto: Toronto UP. Werth, Paul (1999). Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Longman.

Reader Gerald Prince

1 Definition A reader is a decoder, decipherer, interpreter of written (narrative) texts or, more generally, of any text in the broad sense of signifying matter.

2 Explication Real, concrete readers—who have been studied from a variety of points of view (Groeben 1977; Manguel 1996; Franzmann et al., eds. 1999; Schneider 2004)—should be distinguished from more abstract readers. These include, inter alia, the authors’ ideal readers, who understand perfectly and approve entirely every authorial word or intention (Schönert → Author). They include the various readers posited by students of texts and constituting interpretive devices, like Riffaterre’s superreader (1966: 215) or the plain “reader” invoked by so many critics. In addition, they include readers inferrable from texts or explicitly characterized as their addressees, such as Booth’s postulated reader ([1961] 1983: 137–144, 177), Gibson’s mock reader (1950), Iser’s implied reader ([1972] 1974), or the narratee discussed by Genette ([1972] 1980: 259–262, [1983] 1988: 130–134) and Prince (1971, [1973] 1980).

3 History of the Concept and its Study In the Western tradition, concern with the reader has a long history. It goes back to Plato (e.g. the attack against the negative influence of poetry) and Aristotle (the concept of catharsis), famously manifests itself in Horace, Longinus, the Greco-Roman rhetoricians and their descendants, is found throughout the Renaissance, and persists in the modern period. In fact, though it decreased with the New Criticism’s focus on the text itself and denunciation of the intentional and affective fallacies, concern

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with the reader acquired unprecedented critical prominence in the 1970s. For most of this history, interest in readers pertains more specifically to the effects of texts on real audiences. Depending on views of the nature and power of language, literature, or art, these effects are thought to be moral, sociopolitical, psychological, intellectual, esthetic; and real readers are seen as passive instead of active, objects rather than subjects, creatures to entertain, teach, move, reform, or redeem. This orientation changes radically in the second half of the 20th century, when attention is also paid to textually inscribed addressees as well as to the role of audiences in interpretation and evaluation. 3.1 Precursors Paradoxically, one important precursor of this change is Richards (1929), who is widely regarded as the father of the New Criticism and its objectivist poetics. In a study which also deals with the influence of poetry on the reader and proposes tools for the analysis of literature, Richards analyzed students’ interpretive reactions to poems and isolated some of the factors that lead to misreadings, such as critical preconceptions, stock responses, and irrelevant associations. Another important precursor of this change is Rosenblatt (1938). Her preoccupation with the teaching of literature and with the real reader’s ability to take part in the literary experience led her to examine that experience, to reject the objectivist position of the New Criticism, and to underline in her transactional theory the interaction between what the reader contributes to the text and the latter’s specificity. For Rosenblatt, interpretation crucially depends on the reader’s experience and, to be valid, it must not contradict the text or yield conclusions that have no textual basis. Gibson (1950) is a third critic whose work anticipates the readeroriented theory and criticism of the 1970s. By focusing on the mock reader—a figure implied by the text, a part which flesh-and-blood readers are asked to play and in terms of which they situate themselves visà-vis the text and its values—Gibson also pointed to the real audience’s interpretive and evaluative role. Among other students of literature who, before the flowering of audience-oriented criticism, similarly drew attention to readers and their relation to textual meaning, at least Booth ([1961] 1983), Ingarden ([1931] 1973, [1937] 1973), and Sartre ([1948] 1949) should be briefly discussed. Like Gibson, Booth distinguished the real reader of fiction from what he called the reader’s second self, a figure created by the author and postulated by the text, which the real reader must be willing to become and with whose views and beliefs s/he must agree in order to

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enjoy that text. By emphasizing the rhetorical dimension of fiction, Booth departed from the New Critical formalist stance and its attention to texts severed from their authors and readers. Ingarden belonged to a very different tradition, since it is as a phenomenologist that he considered questions of poetics and esthetics. As early as [1931] 1973, he studied the ways in which readers (adequately) realize or concretize a work of art, the ways in which they transform a text or mere series of sentences into an esthetic object by filling gaps or places of indeterminacy in that text. As for Sartre, in seeking to define literature and the necessary commitment it constitutes and entails, he argued that writers write for their time, for real, historical readers whose freedom they address and depend upon rather than for universal, eternal, ideal readers. He further argued that writing and reading are intimately connected and that the literary object results from their combined action. Indeed, he insisted that, while every text contains the image of the reader toward whom it is directed, every concrete reader is a creator, necessary for the renewed emergence of the literary object and situated between what is given by the writer and what is not. 3.2 The Blossoming of Reader-oriented Criticism If these various precursors (and others, like Baxtin [1929] 1984 or Burke 1931: 38–56) explore fundamental questions pertaining to the nature of readers and reading, it is in the 1970s that audience-oriented theory or criticism flourishes and that the reader becomes a central figure for many students of literature. Of the many possible reasons for this flourishing, perhaps the most general one is the rejection promoted by various sociopolitical movements in Europe and the United States (the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the German student movement, May 68) of established institutions and authority figures. The spread of anti-authoritarianism and attendant calls for democratizing the academy, aspirations to relevant curricula, reanalyses of the construction, circulation, or distribution of knowledge would result in the questioning of various entrenched principles and methods of textual interpretation and evaluation (New Critical strictures, Marxist injunctions, humanist directives). Indeed, there is no unity among reader-oriented theorists and critics. They differ not only in terms of national origins or contexts but also in terms of presuppositions, programs, aims, and, more particularly, interest in narrative and narratology. As a matter of fact, many of them are not (specifically) concerned with narrative and their work has no (specifically) narratological implications.

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Riffaterre (1959, 1966, 1971, 1978), for example, who argued that the style of a text is revealed by the reactions of the “superreader”—a composite of the text’s real readers, akin to what he once called the “average reader” (1959: 164–165)—to textual unpredictabilities, was trying to establish objective criteria for the analysis of style, to develop a structural stylistics, and to account more generally for the semiotics of literature. Culler (1975), much of whose work can also be regarded as semiotico-structuralist, focused on characterizing literary (rather than narrative) competence and conventions of reading. Similarly, the psychoanalytic critic Holland (1968, 1975), whose investigations led him to conclude that the meaning of a literary text is a function of the real reader’s basic “identity theme” or psychological makeup (1975: 56– 62), was primarily interested in the effects of personality on interpretation. Another proponent of “subjective criticism,” Bleich (1975, 1978), who emphasized the influence of reading on self-understanding and the links between reader response and interpretation, was interested in the bases of humanistic knowledge and the reform of the teaching of literature. Jauss (1970, [1977] 1982, 1978), the highly influential advocate of Rezeptionsästhetik—which is different from the German tradition of empirical research on real readers (e.g. Groeben 1977; Franzmann et al., eds. 1999)—wanted to reinvigorate literary history when he called for the study of readers’ horizons of expectations and for the elaboration of a history of esthetic response. Like these critics or theorists, Fish (1967, 1980) was not concerned with narratological issues, but with the nature of literature, the goals of criticism, the bases of interpretation. Proposing a feminist approach, Fetterley (1978) developed the notion of a “resisting reader”: according to her, American literature “immasculates” its readers (forces them to think and feel in masculine terms), and she encourages resistance to this male rhetoric by devising ways of reading not as a man but as a woman. Last though by no means least, Radway (1984), who directed her attention to readers of narrative romances, insisted on the different reading assumptions of (lower middle class) women and (academic) men. 3.3 The Implied Reader Although not working in a narratological vein and although primarily aiming to revitalize literary study by concentrating on readers instead of texts or authors, some theorists and critics in the 1970s produced work of considerable significance for narratology. Perhaps the most influential reader figure in this context is Iser’s implied reader. A leader of the Constance School along with Jauss, Iser, who used a phenomenological

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approach and a corpus of prose fiction, investigated the act of reading and the contributions of both text and reader to textual meaning ([1970] 1971, 1972, [1976] 1978). Much like Ingarden, he distinguished between the text, its concretization by the reader, and the work of art resulting from their convergence. He argued that the text pre-structures and guides the production of meaning by gradually supplying skeletal aspects or schematized views of what will become the work of art, while leaving between them areas of indeterminacy or gaps to be filled by the reader completing the artwork. The implied reader, which is not to be confused with a real reader ([1976] 1978: 34), allows Iser to take the text as well as the reading activity into account. Patterned, at least terminologically, after Booth’s implied author (Schmid → Implied Author), the implied reader ([1972] 1974: xii) is both a textual element, an entity deducible from the text, and a meaning-producing mechanism, a set of mental operations involved in sense-making (selecting and organizing information, relating past and present knowledge, anticipating facts and outcomes, constructing and modifying patterns). It includes the schematized aspects, the gaps, and the processes eliminating them, the constraints and directions set by the text as well as the mental activities of reading. Iser was criticized for distinguishing unproblematically between determinate and indeterminate parts of texts (Fish 1981) and for not sufficiently specifying the nature of the gaps or studying their raison d’être (cf. Kloepfer [1979] 1982; Stierle [1975] 1980). He was also criticized for overemphasizing textual input and inadequately exploring the freedom (and variable results) that reading may entail (Mailloux 1982: 51–53). Indeed, the implied reader could even be considered a kind of equivalent to authorial intention and textual meaning or to a set of preferred (Iserian) interpretations. Whatever the validity of these criticisms—and others, directed at Iser’s liberal ideological assumptions (Holub 1984: 97–100) or at his failure to give his reader figure a (significant) historical dimension (Suleiman 1980: 25–26)—it remains that the implied reader not only supplied a handy term for students of narrative; it also pointed to the room any (narrative) text provides for the reader and often came to represent the counterpart of the implied author in the structure of narrative transmission (from real author to real reader through implied author, narrator, narratee, and implied reader). Moreover, it helped to emphasize the dynamics of narrative semiosis, to characterize a number of narrative techniques or strategies, to draw attention to the role of virtuality in narrative, and to promote taxonomies of narrative according to the number (or kind) of gaps obtaining.

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3.4 The Model Reader While Iser was more interested in narrative fiction than in narrative and drew mainly on phenomenology to elaborate his implied reader, Eco (1979) explicitly claimed to be interested in narrativity (12) and drew primarily on semiotics to develop the model reader (7–10). Paradoxically, the latter resembles the Iserian figure in many ways. According to Eco, a text is the result of two components, the information which the author supplies and the information which the model reader adds and which is more or less strictly determined by the author’s input (206). The model reader, which corresponds to the set of felicity conditions that must be satisfied for the text’s potential to be actualized (11), removes indeterminacies. It fills in blanks with (modifiable and replaceable) sets of propositions or “ghost chapters” (214–215) that derive from codes, conventions, interpretive procedures, and knowledge shared with the author. Though Eco may not always succeed in distinguishing clearly between the model reader and actual readers (including himself as reader), between description, interpretation, and prescription, his analysis, like that of Iser, directs attention to the play of narrative semiosis. More notably, through its characterization of “ghost chapters” and the “possible worlds” they constitute, it underlines the role of virtuality in narrative and foreshadows significant developments in narrative semantics (Ryan 1991: 169–174). 3.5 The Voice of Reading Another famous semiotician (or semiologist), Barthes, proclaimed the author’s death and the reader’s birth as the locus of textual meaning, the place where the various texts constituting a text are united ([1967] 1977). Moreover, he drew attention to the erotic quality of reading and distinguished between pleasurable and rapturous texts ([1973] 1975), just as he had previously distinguished between readerly and writerly texts ([1970] 1974). The former as opposed to the latter make room for the voice of reading ([1970] 1974: 151–152). They are “traditional” and can be read or understood in terms of established codes and modes. The latter are “modern,” unfamiliar, strange; they can be written, but they cannot be grasped in terms of these codes and modes. In his reading of “Sarrasine,” Barthes ([1970] 1974) characterized five major codes through which Balzac’s novella (or, presumably, any narrative) is interpretable: the proairetic code, according to which narratives can be structured as sequences of actions; the hermeneutic code, according to which they can be structured as paths leading from questions or enig-

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mas to (possible) answers or solutions; the referential code, in terms of which they are related to various bodies of knowledge and cultural objects; the semic code, which allows for the construction of characters and settings; and the symbolic code, which governs the production and reception of symbolic meaning. Barthes’s account exerted considerable influence on theorists and critics interested in poetics as a theory of reading and in the rules and operations underlying literary competence or the ability to read texts literarily (cf. Culler 1975). Though it was widely taken to reject the assumptions and goals of narratology (e.g. the view of texts as structured products rather than productive structurations, or the ambition to develop a science of narrative), it was also highly influential on narratologists. They viewed many of its arguments as elaborations of points made in Barthes’s earlier “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative” ([1966] 1975). In particular, they regarded its comments on the voice of reading as developments of the brief remarks through which Barthes had drawn attention, in that famous narratological manifesto, to the signs of “the reader’s presence […] within the narrative itself” ([1966] 1975: 260) as well as to the narratively signified communication between narrator and audience (249, 260–261, 264; Margolin → Narrator). 3.6 The Narratee These brief remarks—along with similar comments by Todorov (1966: 146–147) and parallel work by Genette in his outstanding investigation of narrative discourse ([1972] 1980) as well as Gibson’s notion of the mock reader and Booth’s discussion of the reader’s second self— proved particularly relevant for Prince’s exploration of the narratee, a reader figure explicitly tied to narrative and developed in terms of narratological parameters (1971, [1973] 1980). Guided by formalist, structuralist, and semiotic principles, Prince sought to describe more accurately the structural properties of narrative and the nature of its constitutive elements. Specifically, he argued that, just as narrators are distinguished from real or implied authors, narratees should be distinguished from real, implied, or other kinds of readers. The narratee is the audience (of one or more than one) that the narrator in a given narrative addresses. Like the enunciatee (or inscribed addressee of the textual I) in any text, the narratee is different from the real reader (the flesh-andblood person actually reading the text) and the implied reader (since it is neither the equivalent of the reader’s second self nor the counterpart or complement of the implied author and since it has no privileged position or role with regard to interpretation). The narratee also differs

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from the ideal reader (who grasps and approves every aspect of the text), the virtual reader (for whom the real author believes s/he is writing and to whom s/he assigns various characteristics and abilities) and from such interpretive notions as superreaders, informed readers, or competent readers (inscribed in the text, it may, in fact, prove incompetent and uninformed). It is constituted and signified by textual signs of the “you” narrated to (just as the narrator is constituted and signified by textual signs of the “I” narrating): second-person pronouns and other forms of address designating that “you” as well as signs functioning in more intricate ways, such as negative passages explicitly contradicting its stated beliefs or correcting its mistakes and metanarrative explanations emphasizing the gaps in its understanding or knowledge. Analyzable along the same lines as narrators, narratees can prove more or less (temporally, intellectually, morally, emotionally) distant from the latter and more or less prominent, dramatized, familiar with the situations and events narrated, or changeable. As part of the makeup of any narrative—and in addition to representing a fundamental link and relay between real author and real reader, calling attention to the communication circuits within texts, and allowing for a more precise typology of narrative based on the kind of audience they constitute—they always help to characterize narrators through their links with them and can contribute to plot development as well as underscore various themes. Besides the narratee, Prince (1982: 103–143) discussed the real readers of narratives and the act of reading narratively—stressing not only the constraints imposed by the text, but also the ways in which the readers’ nature, interests, and goals partly determine the assumptions they make about texts, the questions they ask of them, the answers they formulate—and he also discussed how (narrative) texts partly read themselves, as it were, by commenting explicitly on some of their constituents (1980). 3.7 Other Audiences The narratee, which was examined further by Piwowarczyk (1976), integrated into Chatman’s account of the various participants in narrative transactions (1978: 147–151, 253–262) and revisited by Prince (1985), who distinguished a narration’s enunciatee from its ostensible (though not real) addressee and from its receiver, resembles what Rabinowitz (1977, 1987) called the “narrative audience” in his characterization of audiences of fictional narratives. Working in Booth’s rhetorical tradition, Rabinowitz explored the beliefs, values, and reception positions that readers (must) have or adopt when reading fiction. Rabinowitz dis-

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tinguished between the actual audience, the authorial audience or hypothetical audience for whom the text is composed, the ideal narrative audience for whom the narrator (rather than the real author or the implied author) wishes s/he were narrating, and the narrative audience for whom s/he is narrating. As opposed to the actual audience and the authorial audience, the narrative audience considers the represented characters and events to be real and believes that the fiction narrated is a history. As opposed to the narratee, it is not so much a figure “out there” in the text as a role that the text asks (or requires) the real reader to play. Rabinowitz’s model was largely adopted by Booth ([1961] 1983: 422–431) and clarified by Phelan (1996: 135–153). It not only constitutes a tool for discussing various kinds of mimetic effects, various types of narrative ambiguity, various sources of misreading, but also captures the interplay of different belief systems at work in the act of reading narrative fiction. Alhough the prominence of reader-oriented criticism began to abate by the mid-1980s, partly because many of its views of texts, their interpretation, and their evaluation became commonplace, interest in readers and reading continues to be significant (cf. Nardocchio ed. 1992; Machor & Goldstein eds. 2001; Schweickart & Flynn eds. 2004; Schmid 2007). In the area of narrative study, in particular, secondperson narrative (and its blurring of distinctions between, say, the protagonist, the narratee, and the narrative audience) has been further explored (Fludernik ed. 1994), different manifestations of textual audiences have been further examined (Richardson 1997), and the reader’s gradual construction of narrative meaning has been further investigated (Kafalenos 2006). Through the integration of research in cognitive science and discourse processing, “natural” narratology has linked readers’ narrativization of texts with parameters derived from their real-life experience (Fludernik 1996); psychonarratology has studied the psychological factors and operations underlying readers’ immersion in and understanding of narrative (Gerrig 1993; Bortolussi & Dixon 2003); cognitive narratology (Herman → Cognitive Narratology) has aimed to analyze and characterize narrative situations and moves in terms of scripts, schemata (Emmott & Alexander → Schemata), and preferencerule systems activated during the reading process (Jahn 1997); and, in general, postclassical narratology has paid considerable attention to the interface between narratives and their readers (Herman 2002).

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4 Topics for Further Investigation The various lines of inquiry mentioned above should be elaborated and complemented by further experimental studies of the different kinds of effect (physical, intellectual, emotional) produced by different kinds of text (narrative or non-narrative, literary or non-literary, fictional or nonfictional, in a book or online) and different kinds of (narrative) technique on readers differing in terms of class, gender, race, sexuality, aim, or ability. As for narratologists in particular, they should develop formal accounts of narrative and its functioning that explicitly make room for the voice of the real reader. In other words, they should devise models indicating how, for instance, certain (portions of) texts can function as iterative or singulative narrative, as free indirect or narratized discourse, as presenting synchronous or asynchronous events, and therefore can yield different meanings depending on the interpretive decisions of that reader.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Barthes, Roland ([1966] 1975). “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative.” New Literary History 6, 237–262. – ([1967] 1977). “The Death of the Author.”R. Barthes. Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill & Wang, 142–148. – ([1970] 1974). S/Z. New York: Hill & Wang. – ([1973] 1975). The Pleasure of the Text. New York: Hill & Wang. Baxtin, Mixail (Bakhtin, Mikhail) ([1929] 1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Bleich, David (1975). Readings and Feelings: An Introduction to Subjective Criticism. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English. – (1978). Subjective Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Bortolussi, Marisa & Peter Dixon (2003). Psychonarratology: Foundations for the Empirical Study of Literary Response. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Burke, Kenneth (1931). Counter-Statement. New York: Harcourt. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Culler, Jonathan (1975). Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Eco, Umberto (1979). The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington: Indiana UP.

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Fetterley, Judith (1978). The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Fish, Stanley (1967). Surprised by Sin: The Reader in “Paradise Lost.” New York: St. Martin’s P. – (1980). Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge: Harvard UP. – (1981). “Why No One’s Afraid of Wolfgang Iser.” Diacritics 11, 2–13. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‛Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. – ed. (1994). “Second-Person Narrative.” Special Issue of Style 28, 281–479. Franzmann, Bodo et al., eds. (1999). Handbuch Lesen. München: Saur. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – ([1983] 1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Gerrig, Richard J. (1993). Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven: Yale UP. Gibson, Walker (1950). “Authors, Speakers, Readers, and Mock Readers.” College English 11, 265–269. Groeben, Norbert (1977). Rezeptionforschung als empirische Literaturwissenschaft: Paradigma- durch Methodendiskussion an Untersuchungspielen. Kronberg/Ts.: Athenäum. Herman, David (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Holland, Norman (1968). The Dynamics of Literary Response. New York: Oxford UP. – (1975). 5 Readers Reading. New Haven: Yale UP. Holub, Robert C. (1984). Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction. London: Methuen. Ingarden, Roman ([1931] 1973). The Literary Work of Art: An Investigation on the Borderlines of Ontology, Logic, and Theory of Literature. Evanston: Northwestern UP. – ([1937] 1973). The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art. Evanston: Northwestern UP. Iser, Wolfgang ([1970] 1971). “Indeterminacy and the Reader’s Response” J. H. Miller (ed.). Aspects of Narrative: Selected Papers from the English Institute. New York: Columbia UP, 1–45. – ([1972] 1974). The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – ([1976] 1978). The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Jahn, Manfred (1997). “Frames, References, and the Reading of Third-Person Narratives: Towards a Cognitive Narratology.” Poetics Today 18, 441–468. Jauss, Hans Robert (1970). “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory.” New Literary History 2, 7–37. – ([1977] 1982). Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Jauss, Hans Robert (1978). “Theses on the Transition from the Aesthetics of Literary Works to a Theory of Aesthetic Experience.” M. J. Valdés & O. J. Miller (eds.). Interpretation of Narrative. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 137–147.

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Kafalenos, Emma (2006). Narrative Causalities. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Kloepfer, Rolf ([1979] 1982). “Escape into Reception: The Scientistic and Hermeneutic Schools of German Literary Theory.” Poetics Today 3, 47–75. Machor, James L. & Philip Goldstein, eds. (2001). Reception Study: From Literary Theory to Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge. Mailloux, Steven J. (1982). Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Manguel, Alberto (1996). A History of Reading. New York: Viking. Nardocchio, Elaine F., ed. (1992). Reader Response to Literature: The Empirical Dimension. Berlin: Mouton. Phelan, James (1996). Narrative as Rhetoric: Technique, Audiences, Ethics, Ideology. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Piwowarczyk, Mary Ann (1976). “The Narratee and the Situation of Enunciation: A Reconsideration of Prince’s Theory.” Genre 9, 161–177. Prince, Gerald (1971). “Notes towards a Preliminary Categorization of Fictional ‘Narratees.’” Genre 4, 100–106. – ([1973] 1980). “Introduction to the Study of the Narratee.” J. P. Tompkins (ed.). Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 7–25. – (1980). “Notes on the Text as Reader.” S. R. Suleiman & I. Crosman (eds.). The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation. Princeton: Princeton UP, 225–240. – (1982). Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative. Berlin: Mouton. – (1985). “The Narratee Revisited.” Style 19, 299–303. Rabinowitz, Peter J. (1977). “Truth in Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences.” Critical Inquiry 4, 121–141. – (1987). Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Radway, Janice (1984). Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P. Richards, I. A. (1929). Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgement. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner. Richardson, Brian (1997). “The Other Reader’s Response: On Multiple, Divided, and Oppositional Audiences.” Criticism 39, 31–53. Riffaterre, Michael (1959). “Criteria for Style Analysis.” Word 15, 154–174. – (1966). “Describing Poetic Structures: Two Approaches to Baudelaire’s ‘Les Chats.’” Yale French Studies No. 36–37, 200–242. – (1971). Essais de stylistique structurale. Paris: Flammarion. – (1978). Semiotics of Poetry. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Rosenblatt, Louise M. (1938). Literature as Exploration. New York: Appleton. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Sartre, Jean-Paul ([1948] 1949). What is Literature? New York: Philosophical Library. Schmid, Wolf (2007). “Textadressat.” Th. Anz (ed.). Handbuch Literaturwissenschaft. Stuttgart: Metzler, vol. 1, 171–181. Schneider, Jost (2004). Sozialgeschichte des Lesens. Berlin: de Gruyter.

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Schweickart, Patrocinio P. & Elizabeth A. Flynn, eds. (2004). Reading Sites: Social Difference and Reader Response. New York: Modern Language Association of America. Stierle, Karlheinz ([1975] 1980). “The Reading of Fictional Texts.” S. R. Suleiman & I. Crosman (eds.). The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation. Princeton: Princeton UP, 83–105. Suleiman, Susan R. (1980). “Introduction: Varieties of Audience-Oriented Criticism.” S. R. Suleiman & I. Crosman (eds.). The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation. Princeton: Princeton UP, 3–45. Todorov, Tzvetan (1966). “Les Catégories du récit littéraire.” Communications No. 8, 125–151.

5.2 Further Reading Bennett, Andrew, ed. (1995). Readers and Reading. London: Longman. Corti, Maria ([1976] 1978). An Introduction to Literary Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Culler, Jonathan (1981). The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. – (1982). On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Eder, Jens (2003). “Narratology and Cognitive Reception Theories.” T. Kindt & H.-H. Müller (eds.). What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: de Gruyter, 277–301. Herman, David, ed. (2003). Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Ong, Walter J. (1975). “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 90, 9–21. Rosenblatt, Louise M. (1978). The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP. Rousset, Jean (1986). Le Lecteur intime: de Balzac au journal. Paris: Corti. Smith, Frank (1971). Understanding Reading. Mahwah: L. Erlbaum Associates, 2004. Suleiman, Susan R. & Inge Crosman, eds. (1980). The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation. Princeton: Princeton UP. Tompkins, Jane P., ed. (1980). Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to PostStructuralism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.

Schemata Catherine Emmott & Marc Alexander

1 Definition Schemata are cognitive structures representing generic knowledge, i.e. structures which do not contain information about particular entities, instances or events, but rather about their general form. Readers use schemata to make sense of events and descriptions by providing default background information for comprehension, as it is rare and often unnecessary for texts to contain all the detail required for them to be fully understood. Usually, many or even most of the details are omitted, and readers’ schemata compensate for any gaps in the text. As schemata represent the knowledge base of individuals, they are often culturally and temporally specific, and are ordinarily discussed as collective stores of knowledge shared by prototypical members of a given or assumed community. The term was used in the 1930s in both psychology and literary theory, but entered wider currency in the 1970s in Artificial Intelligence research, later being re-incorporated into psychology and thence into linguistics, within the general area of cognitive science.

2 Explication The terms used in this area have historically been highly variable and differ across disciplines. The term “schema” is often used as a superordinate label for a broad range of knowledge structures, including frames, scenarios, scripts and plans, as described below. “Schema” is also used as a synonym for “frame” (Minsky 1975) to refer to mental representations of objects, settings or situations. A restaurant schema/frame, for example, would contain information about types of restaurants, what objects are to be found inside a restaurant, and so on. The term “scenario” is also sometimes used for situational knowledge (Sanford & Garrod 1981). A “script” (Schank & Abelson 1977) is a temporally-ordered schema; it describes a reader’s knowledge of stereotypical goal-oriented event sequences “that define a well-known situa-

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tion” (422), so that a restaurant script would contain knowledge of the actions and sequence of ordering food, paying bills, and so on. In addition to a sequence of events, most scripts have further “slots” to describe the “roles” (customers, waiters, chefs, etc.), “props” (menu, table, food, money, bill, etc.), “entry conditions” (customer is hungry, restaurant has food, etc.) and “results” (customer is no longer hungry, restaurant has less food, etc.) within the script. A “plan” (Schank & Abelson 1977) consists of knowledge about sets of actions needed to accomplish objectives and is used in non-stereotypical situations where there is no adequate script available. Linguists, psychologists and narrative scholars employ schema theory to account for the interpretation of a text where the discourse itself does not provide all the information necessary for the discourse to be processed. Consider the following example: “John went to a restaurant for lunch. He ordered a salad, had a coffee and then went to the park for a walk.” This short text cannot describe all the actions, activities and situational information which a reader requires to comprehend it. Schemata and scripts supply the gaps in reader knowledge (that, for example, a restaurant is a place which serves food, that food once ordered is supplied, and that one must pay before leaving). The general notion of gap-filling has long been recognized in literary studies. Ingarden ([1931] 1973) refers to “spots of indeterminacy,” an idea later adopted by Iser ([1976] 1978), and Sternberg (1978, 1985) discusses “expositional gaps.” Research in Artificial Intelligence on schemata adds a detailed explanation of how inferences are made by utilizing generic knowledge in processing specific parts of a text. As schemata are situational and socioculturally dependent, some readers may supply more information from their schemata than others. Schemata are therefore essential for establishing the coherence of a text (Toolan → Coherence). Furthermore, schemata are dynamic (Schank 1982) to the extent that they accumulate details and are altered in the course of experience. If changing circumstances and new events contradict existing schemata or make them appear inadequate in a relatively minor way, they can be “tuned” (Rumelhart 1980: 52) to accommodate new generalizations. The relationship between texts and schemata is two-way: while schemata tend to lay the ground rules for how a discourse will be interpreted, discourses themselves may prompt readers to “tune” existing schemata and create new ones (Rumelhart & Norman 1978; Cook 1994: 182–184).

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3 History of the Concept and its Study Some schema researchers (e.g. Cook 1994; Semino 1997) trace the philosophical notion of schemata back to Immanuel Kant. Another antecedent is Gestalt theory in psychology (Wertheimer [1923] 1938, [1925] 1938; Köhler 1930; Koffka 1935). Also in psychology, Bartlett (1932) used the term (which he credits to the earlier work of the neurologist Sir Henry Head) to explain speakers’ unknowing alteration of folktale details during retellings, with such alterations being made in line with the speakers’ schemata. In literary theory in the 1930s, Ingarden ([1931] 1973) argued that there was a stratum of “schematized aspects” in the perception of literary works of art. After a lull of many years, schema theory re-emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, when schemata were refined within Artificial Intelligence as mental constructs of knowledge derived from an individual’s experience and learning (in this sense often called “frames,” e.g. Minsky 1975). While scripts were first identified by Schank and Abelson (1977), the focus of their work was mainly on computational aspects of comprehension. Bower et al. (1979) then provided evidence within cognitive psychology that readers employed scripts during their processing of a discourse. Later, Schank (1982) employed scripts in more detail as dynamic tools for discourse processing, breaking scripts down into component parts (Memory Organization Packets, MOPs) which could be combined into larger structures when required. In narrative studies, schema theory has been important not only for its role in explaining gap-filling in reading, as discussed above, but also in relation to a reader’s knowledge of the overall structure of stories, termed “story schemata” (e.g. Rumelhart 1975; Mandler & Johnson 1977; Mandler 1984), the cognitive equivalent of text-based story grammars. According to their proponents, story schemata contain sets of expectations about how stories will continue, although some psychologists (e.g. Black & Wilensky 1979; Johnson-Laird 1983) have questioned whether special cognitive structures are required beyond general reasoning. Knowledge of the form of texts has also been studied in the analysis of “super-coherence,” de Beaugrande’s (1987) term for thematic awareness, in postulating schemata for specific genres (Fludernik 1996; Herman 2002) and in the examination of knowledge of intertextual links (Eco 1984; Genette [1982] 1997). Schema theory has also been used to construct new theories about the nature of narrative. Fludernik (1996) employs it to redefine narrativity (Abbott → Narrativity), suggesting that cognitive parameters which are “constitutive of prototypical human experience” (12) are the main

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criteria for what makes a story a story, not action sequences as traditionally thought. In her model, “there can therefore be narratives without plot, but there cannot be any narratives without a human (anthropomorphic) experiencer” (13). Herman (2002: 85–86) defines “narrative-hood,” his term for the difference between narratives and non-narratives, using scripts. As scripts represent only stereotypical and expected information, the gaps in a text which a script can supply are not unique and hence do not produce narratives in their own right. By contrast, where a gap cannot be filled by stereotypical information, it “focus[es] attention on the unusual and the remarkable” (90) and requires a narrative explanation. For Herman, narrativehood is a binary distinction in contrast to the scalar nature of narrativity, the property of being more or less prototypically a narrative. He argues (91) that maximal narrativity is achieved by balancing the appropriate amount of “canonicity and breach,” using Bruner’s (1991) terms. If the majority of events in a story are too stereotypical, they will be untellable and/or uninteresting, but if events are too unusual, the text may not readily be interpreted as a story. Hühn and Kiefer (2005) use the term “eventfulness” for deviations from scripts, viewing these deviations as both unexpected events and instances when an expected event does not occur (Hühn → Event and Eventfulness). For them, deviations must be judged by viewing sequences in the context of cultural and historical factors, using schemata to assess the degree of deviation (see also Hühn 2010). Another important theoretical contribution of schema theory lies in discussions of literariness. Cook (1994) has defined “literariness” as “discourse deviation,” stating that a narrative acquires literary status when it “bring[s] about a change in the schemata of a reader” (182). Cook sees literary discourse as “schema refreshing,” meaning that old schemata may be destroyed, new ones constructed and that new connections may be made between existing schemata (191), in contrast to “schema preserving” or “schema reinforcing” forms of discourse. His theory echoes the Russian formalist idea of defamiliarization as an essential aspect of literary writing and comprehending. Cook’s definition is controversial because texts which are not literary may nevertheless disrupt existing schemata, as Cook himself admits (47, 192) in relation to journalism, science writing and conversation. In addition, Semino (1997: 175) argues that literary texts can both challenge and confirm existing beliefs, suggesting a scale of schema refreshment for those which are challenging. This does, however, depend on the historical period: during medieval times, confirmation seems to have dominated, whereas in modern times deviation is generally more prominent (see

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Lotman’s ([1970] 1977: 288–296) concepts of “aesthetics of identity and opposition”). Jeffries (2001), though, highlights the extent to which particular sub-cultures nowadays may still delight in “schema affirmation,” her term for a reader’s “thrill of recognition” of familiar experience in literary texts. A different perspective on the role of schemata is provided by Miall (1989), who argues that it is a reader’s emotions that primarily help the reader make sense of a defamiliarizing literary text, suggesting that affect is primary in reading and that emotions drive the construction of new schemata rather than being an after-effect of cognitive processing. One major use of schema theory has been in the description of “mind style” (Fowler [1986] 1996) by stylisticians, who use linguistic analysis to study the thought representations of characters who have difficulty comprehending the world around them, such as primitive humans, the mentally impaired, and those alien to a culture (see Semino 2006 for a summary). Often the technique used by writers is to underspecify (Emmott 2006) the references to key aspects of the focalizing character’s context so that the character’s lack of understanding is conveyed, but nevertheless writers still need to give readers enough clues to construe the situation by using familiar schemata. Palmer (2004) goes beyond the focus on special types of mind style by suggesting that all fictional minds need to be cognitively constructed by means of “continuing-consciousness frames” in order to bring together diverse mentions of the thoughts of individual characters and groups of characters throughout a story. In addition to the above theoretical and descriptive uses, the notion of schemata has an extremely wide range of applications in narrative studies. In feminist stylistics, Mills (1995: 187–194), has used it to challenge the sexist schemata that she claims are needed to read some literary texts written by men. In humor studies, oddly incongruous frames are often regarded as the source of humor (e.g. Semino 1997; Hidalgo-Downing 2000; Simpson 2003; Ermida 2008). In detective and mystery stories, clues can be buried by making descriptions heavily schema consistent, then subsequently highlighted by adding information over and above the schema (Alexander 2006; Emmott et al. 2010). In the analysis of science fiction (Stockwell 2003) and absurdist texts (Semino 1997; Hidalgo-Downing 2000), schema theory can explain how alternative and bizarre worlds are created. In educational psychology, schemata and scripts explain how children develop their storytelling and comprehension skills (e.g. McCabe & Peterson eds. 1991). In film studies (Kuhn & Schmidt → Narration in Film), schema theory has been used in discussions of text coherence, genre, and char-

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acter construction (Bordwell 1989: 129–195; Branigan 1992: 1–32). This list is not intended to be comprehensive, but gives an indication of the importance of schema theory across a number of areas. In recent years, the emphasis within the cognitive study of narrative has shifted somewhat (Herman → Cognitive Narratology). Schema theory is still viewed as important, but there has been a growing interest in how a reader needs to supplement general knowledge with the knowledge accumulated from the text itself. So readers will normally gather together a large store of information about characters and contexts as they read a text. Emmott (1997) calls this “text-specific knowledge” and argues that readers must not only build mental representations (termed “contextual frames”) using this knowledge, but update these representations where necessary and utilize the information at later stages in a text. Similar ideas can be found in Gerrig’s (1993) examination of narrative worlds, Werth’s (1999) text world theory, and Herman’s (2002) study of storyworlds.

4 Topics for Further Investigation (a) The inter-relation between schema knowledge and other knowledge (e.g. expert, autobiographical, and text world knowledge) needs to be explored further and built into an overall model with empirical testing of texts which are more complex than traditional psychological and Artificial Intelligence materials. (b) More psychological research is needed to establish how generic knowledge derived from the real world is utilized in building counterfactual worlds, since the findings from current empirical work are not consistent (Nieuwland & van Berkum 2006; Ferguson & Sanford 2008; Sanford & Emmott 2012). (c) There needs to be additional investigation of how readers use schemata similarly or differently in reading factual and fictional texts. (d) Frames based on “intertextual knowledge” (Eco 1984; Genette [1982] 1997) need further empirical study.

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5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Alexander, Marc (2006). Cognitive-Linguistic Manipulation and Persuasion in Agatha Christie, M.Phil. thesis. Glasgow: U of Glasgow. Bartlett, Frederick C. (1932). Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Black, John B. & Robert Wilensky (1979). “An Evaluation of Story Grammars.” Cognitive Science 3, 213–230. Bordwell, David (1989). Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Bower, Gordon, John B. Black & Terrence J. Turner (1979). “Scripts in Memory for Text.” Cognitive Psychology 11, 177–220. Branigan, David (1992). Narrative Comprehension and Film. London: Routledge. Bruner, Jerome (1991). “The Narrative Construction of Reality.” Critical Inquiry 18, 1–21. Cook, Guy (1994). Discourse and Literature: The Interplay of Form and Mind. Oxford: Oxford UP. de Beaugrande, Robert (1987). “Schemas for Literary Communication.” L. Halász (ed.). Literary Discourse: Aspects of Cognitive and Social Psychological Approaches. Berlin: de Gruyter, 49–99. Eco, Umberto (1984). The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Emmott, Catherine (1997). Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Oxford: Oxford UP. – (2006). “Reference: Stylistic Aspects.” K. Brown (ed.). Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition. Oxford: Elsevier, vol. 10, 441–450. – Anthony J. Sanford & Marc Alexander (2010). “Scenarios, Characters’ Roles and Plot Status. Readers’ Assumtions and Writers’ Manipulations of Assumtions in Narrative Texts.” J. Eder, F. Jannidis & R. Schneider (eds.). Characters in Fictional Worlds. Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film, and Other Media. Berlin: de Gruyter, 377–399. Ermida, Isabel (2008). The Language of Comic Narratives: Humor Construction in Short Stories. Berlin: de Gruyter. Ferguson, Heather J. & Anthony J. Sanford (2008). “Anomalies in Real and Counterfactual Worlds: An Eye-Movement Investigation.” Journal of Memory and Language 58, 609–626. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. Fowler, Roger ([1986] 1996). Linguistic Criticism. Oxford: Oxford UP. Genette, Gérard ([1982] 1997). Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Gerrig, Richard J. (1993). Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven: Yale UP.

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Herman, David (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Hidalgo-Downing, Laura (2000). Negation, Text Worlds, and Discourse: The Pragmatics of Fiction. Stamford: Ablex. Hühn, Peter (2010). Eventfulness in British Fiction. Berlin: de Gruyter. – & Jens Kiefer (2005). The Narratological Analysis of Lyric Poetry: Studies in English Poetry from the 16th to the 20th Century. Berlin: de Gruyter. Ingarden, Roman ([1931] 1973). The Literary Work of Art: An Investigation on the Borderlines of Ontology, Logic and Theory of Literature. Evanston: Northwestern UP. Iser, Wolfgang ([1976] 1978). The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jeffries, Lesley (2001). “Schema Theory and White Asparagus: Cultural Multilingualism among Readers of Texts.” Language and Literature 10, 325–343. Johnson-Laird, Philip (1983). Mental Models. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Koffka, Kurt (1935). Principles of Gestalt Psychology. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner. Köhler, Wolfgang (1930). Gestalt Psychology. London: Bell. Lotman, Jurij ([1970] 1977). The Structure of the Artistic Text. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. Mandler, Jean M. (1984). Scripts, Stories and Scenes: Aspects of Schema Theory. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. – & Nancy S. Johnson (1977). “Remembrance of Things Parsed: Story Structure and Recall.” Cognitive Psychology 9, 111–151. McCabe, Allyssa & Carole Peterson, eds. (1991). Developing Narrative Structure. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. Miall, David S. (1989). “Beyond the Schema Given: Affective Comprehension of Literary Narratives.” Cognition and Emotion 3, 55–78. Mills, Sara (1995). Feminist Stylistics. London: Routledge. Minsky, Marvin (1975). “A Framework for Representing Knowledge.” P. H. Winston (ed.). The Psychology of Computer Vision. New York: McGraw-Hill, 211–277. Nieuwland, Mante S. & Jos J. A. van Berkum (2006). “When Peanuts Fall in Love: N400 Evidence for the Power of Discourse.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 19, 1098–1111. Palmer, Alan (2004). Fictional Minds. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Rumelhart, David E. (1975). “Notes on a Schema for Stories.” D. G. Bobrow & A. Collins (eds). Representation and Understanding: Studies in Cognitive Science. New York: Academic P, 211–235. – (1980). “Schemata: The Building Blocks of Cognition.” R. Spiro, B. Bruce & W. Brewer (eds.). Theoretical Issues in Reading Comprehension. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 33–58. – & Donald A. Norman (1978). “Accretion, Tuning and Restructuring: Three Modes of Learning.” J. W. Cotton & R. Klatzky (eds.). Semantic Factors in Cognition. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 37–53. Sanford, Anthony J. & Catherine Emmott (2012). Mind, Brain and Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

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& Simon C. Garrod (1981). Understanding Written Language: Explorations in Comprehension Beyond the Sentence. Chichester: Wiley. Schank, Roger C. (1982). Dynamic Memory: A Theory of Reminding and Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. – & Robert P. Abelson (1977). Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. Semino, Elena (1997). Language and World Creation in Poems and Other Texts. London: Longman. – (2006). “Mind Style.” K. Brown (ed.). Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition. Oxford: Elsevier, vol. 8, 142–148. Simpson, Paul (2003). On the Discourse of Satire: Towards a Stylistic Model of Satirical Humour. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Sternberg, Meir (1978). Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – (1985). The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Stockwell, Peter (2003). “Schema Poetics and Speculative Cosmology.” Language and Literature 12.3, 252–271. Werth, Paul (1999). Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Longman. Wertheimer, Max ([1923] 1938). “Laws of Organization in Perceptual Forms.” W. D. Ellis (ed). A Source Book of Gestalt Psychology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 71–88. – ([1925] 1938). “Gestalt Theory.” W. D. Ellis (ed). A Source Book of Gestalt Psychology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1–11.

5.2 Further Reading Emmott, Catherine, Marc Alexander & Agnes Marszalek (2014). “Schema Theory in Stylistics.” M. Burke (ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics. London: Routledge, 268–283. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Semino, Elena (2001). “On Readings, Literariness and Schema Theory: A Reply to Jeffries.” Language and Literature 10, 345–355. Stockwell, Peter (2006). “Schema Theory: Stylistic Applications.” K. Brown (ed.). Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition. Oxford: Elsevier, vol. 11, 8–73.

Acknowledgement The authors are grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding for this work, which was conducted as part of the STACS Project (Stylistics, Text Analysis and Cognitive Science: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Nature of Reading).

Sequentiality Herbert Grabes

1 Definition Sequentiality is the linear, unidirectional succession of elements or events, either reversible (as with motion in space) or irreversible (as in the flow of time). Regarding language texts, it is the irreversible sequence of signs from beginning to end, i.e. the succession of “these words in this order” (Cameron 1962: 145). In narration it is the sequence in which events are presented (discourse); also essential are the sequence of the narrated events in the real or imagined world (story) and the sequence in which they are received by listeners or readers.

2 Explication Sequentiality is an essential trait of narration and narrative on every level of investigation: on that of the author or production (in terms of the processes of telling or writing); on that of the presentation or discourse (in terms of the sequence of signifiers); on that of the presented events in their individual shape or story (in terms of their chronological or otherwise meaningful sequence); on that of the underlying bare scheme of successive narrative events or fabula (as defined by Bal [1985] 1997); on that of the listener or reader (in terms of the processes of listening or reading); and on that of the relations between these levels. Closer inspection reveals that the identity of any narrative depends on its particular sequentiality on all these levels—with the exception of the process of writing on the level of production. Verbal narration is a temporal medium: telling or writing as well as listening or reading are temporal processes that take place in time, and the real or imagined world in which narrated events are placed is held to be governed by temporality. Consequently, the important relation between the sequence of presentation and that of presented events is mostly discussed in temporal terms. In the case of a concurrence of these sequences, one speaks of ‘chronological’ telling; otherwise,

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‘anachrony’ obtains (Genette [1972] 1980). This seems logical and is indeed perfectly adequate with regard to oral narration. However, when narratives are recorded or written, they are to a considerable extent freed of that temporal anchoring. Not only can they be made accessible at different times in different places in the story, but it is also possible for listeners or readers to deviate from the notational sequence of presentation and approach the various parts of a narrative text in a sequence of their own determination. Although authors usually structure their narratives in the expectation that readers will read them in the sequence in which they are written, they also know that, for instance, more than a few readers of detective stories read the ending early on in order to know ‘whodunnit.’ What is rarely realized is that, owing to the dynamic character of the construction of meaning in the process of reading, such a change in the sequence of reception actually results in the creation of a new text from the elements of a given one—hence, of a different narrative of the reader’s own making. It follows that it is more appropriate to discuss discursive sequence in terms of sequentiality than in terms of temporality. On closer inspection, this can also be seen to hold true regarding the order of events on the story level. Of course, the assumption that, in analogy to real-life experience, this order must be temporal—events occurring either simultaneously or in chronological sequence—is well founded, and the construction of this temporal order in the process of listening or reading is not only commonplace but also conducive to the further assumption that succession implies causality (Chatman 1978; Kafalenos 2006; Pier 2008). Temporal sequence is not the only way of meaningfully arranging narrated events, however. Sternberg (1990, 1992) has listed the further options of simultaneity (e.g. in terms of addition or alternation of multiple strands), non-temporal sequentiality (as in case of a hierarchical order, e.g. proceeding from the more general to the particular, or vice versa), functional sequentiality (e.g. in terms of multiperspectivity), and ‘suprasegmentiality’ (e.g. ‘spatiality’ or, rather, a strategy for creating the illusion of spatial arrangement). It has also been shown that with “polychronic narration” (Herman 1998, 2002), the creation of order becomes problematic.

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3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 Narrative Uses of Sequence Thanks to the impressive amount of historical writing, from diaries, autobiographies and biographies to chronicles and historiography proper, as well as to fictional autobiographies, biographies and historical tales and novels, the most common kind of narrative sequentiality is concurrence between the sequence of presentation and the temporal sequence of narrated events or ‘chronology.’ From Thucydides in the 5th century BC to Gibbon in the 17th and Ranke in the 19th century, the writing of history has been marked by a chronological presentation of the past “as it really was” (Ranke [1824] 1909)—at least in intention. The same holds true for biographical writing from late antiquity (Plutarch, Suetonius, Tacitus) to the present day, for fictional biographies and autobiographies such as Graves’s I, Claudius (1934) and a host of fictitious biographies from Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus (1669) and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1709) onwards. Even when the presentational sequence in a narrative frame happens not to be chronological, it is normally thus in the framed stories (of which there are many examples from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1378) to Brautigan’s 1970 postmodern Trout Fishing in America). On the other hand, ever since the Homeric epic (8th century B.C.), authors have deviated from this concurrence between the sequence of presentation and that of the events told; the Homeric method of beginning in medias res was long the norm for the epic genre. A yet more audacious and even playful experimentation with narrative sequence was encouraged by the novel because of its rather loose generic form. Significant interruptions of chronological telling can be found in Britain from Fielding onwards; Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1767) is already an example of deliberate and excessive play with presentational sequence. It was, however, only with the turn to modernism, when authors began to write with the deliberate aim of making reading difficult, that experimenting with the sequence of presentation became a prominent feature of literary narrative. A major tendency was to write “against time” (cf. Grabes 1996), a practice that led to weakening sequential structure through fragmentation and collage and the concomitant deviation from the traditional rule of apprehension. Well-known examples of what Frank (1945, 1991) was to call “spatial form” are Belyj’s cubist novel Petersburg (1913) with its attempt to achieve a ‘spatial’ effect, Faulkner’s sequential creation of the effect of synchronicity in The

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Sound and the Fury (1929) and of multi-perspectivity in As I Lay Dying (1930), and the use of the collage by Dos Passos in his trilogy USA (1930–36) to display a broad panorama of the United States during the first three decades of the 20th century. Even more radically experimental was some postmodern writers’ willful avoidance of a definite narrative sequence by adopting particular kinds of notation, a strategy exploited by offering the option of reading the parts of a literary text in several sequences and thus creating several works on the basis of one written text (cf. McHale 1987: 190–193, on the “schizoid text”). In the blurb to the 1962 Weidenfeld and Nicholson edition of Nabokov’s Pale Fire, the book is fittingly called a “do-ityourself detective story” because the reader can choose among the several possible sequences in which the various parts of a novel (disguised as a critical edition of a narrative poem) are read. Cortázar, in the introduction to his novel Rayuela (trans. Hopscotch, 1966), suggests two sequential patterns, making two works created from the same text. A similar strategy is used by Michel Butor in Boomerang (1978) by having parts of the text printed in different colors, so that one may either follow the sequence of parts in one color only or read the whole book without paying any heed to the colors. Even in such cases, however, “[t]he author is the one who proposed a number of possibilities which had already been rationally organized, oriented, and endowed with specifications for proper development” (Eco [1962] 1989: 19). This, however, no longer obtains when the potential sequences of apprehension become practically countless, as was the case when experimentation reached a further stage. B.S. Johnson, for instance, went so far as to present the 29 chapters of his novel The Unfortunates (1969) loosely in a box, with only the first and last marked as such, and Mark Saporta in his Composition No. 1 (1962) offered his readers no more than a batch of unnumbered pages, printed on one side, which, according to the author’s instruction on the cover of the box, “may be read in any order. The reader is requested to shuffle them like a deck of cards.” A much more elegant and widespread option was the appearance of hypertext, an interactive kind of textuality, embedded in a digital environment, which permits the generation of multiple stories by leaving the sequential order of textual elements or events to the ‘reader’ (or, rather, co-author). In a Storyspace hypertext like Michael Joyce’s afternoon: a story (1987), a great number of textual units, called ‘lexias’, were offered for various kinds of arrangement, though conditions could be placed on the activation of links. In such web-based HTML-Frames from the 1990s as Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back from the War (1996), a computer page is subdivided into several frames that re-

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main synchronically given, so that the sequence in which they are explored and manipulated is left to the discretion of the user. In artificial intelligence-driven texts like Façade (2002) by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern, not only can the user act as co-author but he or she can ‘enter’ the created artificial world and move around in it like a character in a play. No wonder that particular kinds of computer games are also regarded as narratives! What must be kept in mind, however, is the fact that both a particular sequence of presentation and a particular sequence of events are such important structuring devices of a narrative that we are actually dealing with different narratives when one or both of these sequences are changed. Postmodern textual experiments like those by Johnson or Saporta and, even more so, the various kinds of hypertexts and computer games, are therefore programs for the creation of a multiplicity of narratives, not narratives per se. 3.2 Sequentiality in Narratology I: Theorizing Structural Sequence Attention to sequence was already given in the rhetoric and poetics of classical antiquity (Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herrenium, 55 B.C.; Horace, Ars poetica, 14 B.C.) when dealing with disposition, or the order of speech, and the distinction between ordo naturalis and ordo artificialis, thus anticipating the later differentiation between chronological and non-chronological narrating. Another, albeit indirect, focus on sequence is found later in Lessing’s Laokoon ([1766] 1901), where literature is defined as a temporal art, the domain of which, from a mimetic point of view, is therefore the rendering of actions and events. And although this definition may be too narrow to apply to literature in general, it fits well for narrative, where the presentation of some sort of change seems indispensable. Beginning with the discovery by Propp ([1928] 1968) that, in a corpus of 100 Russian folktales, invariant functions are linked in particular sequences, sequentiality—often under the name of temporality or causal sequence (in the sense of causa efficiens)—has played a crucial role in the various attempts to explain narrative structure, ranging from the assumption of a “universal plot” (Raglan 1936) or a “monomyth” (Campbell [1949] 1990) to that of an underlying “narrative grammar” (Todorov 1969; Greimas 1971), and the models inspired by generativetransformational linguistics (Prince 1973; Pavel 1976, 1985; van Dijk 1976; Doležel 1979) and schema theory (Rumelhart 1975; Schank & Abelson 1977; Ryan 1991; Herman 1997; Emmott 1997; Hühn 2008). This pertains in particular to the relation between the chronological se-

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quence of told events and the sequence of their presentation in a narrative, a relation discussed by the Russian formalists in the 1920s in terms of the distinction between fabula and sjužet and defined by Genette ([1972] 1980) as that between histoire (or narrative content) and récit (or narrative discourse). Using different terms for distinctions already made by Müller ([1948] 1968) and Lämmert (1955), Genette ([1972] 1980: 35, 40) distinguished between “the temporal order of succession of the events in the story and the pseudo-temporal order of their arrangement in the narrative,” drawing attention to “anachronies,” or “forms of discordance between the two temporal orders of story and narrative” that result from “analepses” (flashbacks) and “prolepses” (flashforwards), as well as to the special case known as “achrony,” an incident deprived of any temporal anchoring in the chronological sequence (84). Richardson (2002) was able to show how great the variety of temporal sequences of told events in a narrative can actually be: circular, contradictory, antinomic, differential, conflated, and dual or multiple. He also introduced the term “metatemporal” for unusual or impossible temporalities (or, rather, sequences which cannot be imagined in terms of temporal relations). A narrative text allowing the imagining of multiple sequences of events became for Barthes in S/Z ([1970] 1974) the ideal of a “writerly text” that turns the reader from a consumer into a producer. After a few attempts by authors to reach this goal with printed texts by leaving the sequence of discourse undetermined to some extent, readers generally become co-producers with the advent of interactive hypertexts that require subjective choices or interaction between concurrent processes instead of following a particular, fully author-determined line of discourse (cf. Ryan 1991, 2006). Even computer games, with their guided text production yet still wide-open sequentiality, are treated by some narratologists as narratives (Neitzel → Narrativity of Computer Games; cf. Ryan 2006). More recently, the emphases of structuralist narratology have been influenced by including the perspective of the reader, who is held to construct the fabula from the discourse, and this has led to bringing the traditionally more text-oriented structuralist view of sequentiality into line with the theory of reading (see Rimmon-Kenan 1977; Sternberg 1978; Perry 1979; Bremond [1966] 1980; Culler 1980; Ryan 1991 and 2006; Ireland 2001; Dannenberg 2004; Kafalenos 2006; Baroni 2007; Pier 2008). Sternberg, Ireland and Kafalenos, in particular, have extensively discussed sequence in a way in which the structuralist paradigm is opened to the more comprehensive one of a theory of reading.

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3.3 Sequentiality in Narratology II: Theory of Reading While the linearity of the discourse of written narratives (cf. Miller 1992) suggests reading word by word, line by line, and page by page according to the culturally determined code of writing and reading, it is often forgotten that, once written, all these words, lines and pages of a text exist synchronously in a spatial arrangement and can be approached in a temporal sequence more or less determined by the reader. This ‘spatiality’ of the written text tends to obscure the fact that a particular discursive sequentiality is an essential feature of the identity of a narrative and that readers who do not stick to the conventional rule of approaching the text in the sequence presented by the author will actually read a different narrative of their own making (Grabes 2013). This has to do with the dynamic character of sequential perception: apart from the ‘primacy’ and ‘recency’ effect (Luchins 1957; Perry 1979), cognitive psychology has shown that later deviations from schemata or semantic models, once they have been introduced, tend to be distrusted or wholly overlooked (Hovland, ed. 1957; Grabes 1978). To be reckoned with is what Iser ([1976] 1978) has termed the “wandering viewpoint,” with its continuously changing “retentions” (or looks back at what has already been read) and “protentions” (or assumptions of what may happen in the future; cf. Toolan 2004, 2009) and the ongoing process of re-evaluation motivated by new information (cf. Grabes 1978, 2004, 2013; van Dijk 1980; Sternberg 1992, 2001; Margolin 1999; Kafalenos 2006).The stance taken by earlier structuralist narratology that tends to keep in view all features and parts of a narrative “at the same time” is therefore an artificial one designed to obtain valuable scientific insights but which remains far removed from the actual experience of reading a narrative. The perspective of the reader had already been introduced by Kermode (1967, 1978) and by Eco (1979), but the processual and dynamic character of imaginary worldmaking during reading has also been investigated by reception theory, following up the insights of Ingarden ([1937] 1973), Iser ([1976] 1978), and Ruthrof (1981). Also to be mentioned are the investigations into the creation of fictional “characters” during the reading process (Grabes 1978, 2004; Margolin 1987, 1995). With the advent of interactive hypertexts, the processual character of narration has by necessity become foregrounded, since the ‘reader’ or consumer is also a ‘writer’ or producer (cf. Barthes [1970] 1974;Yellowlees 2000). This is a field which is still under discussion, and the growth of digital media will ensure than it remains in focus. A most useful survey of the various forms of interactive narrative texts has already been provided by Ryan (2006).

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4 Topics for Further Investigation The more recent tendency of having authors present their narratives in the form of public readings has strengthened the general awareness that narration is a processual and thus a sequential art, and it is to be hoped that this aspect of narration (“performance-culture orality”) will receive more attention in narratological research. One question that deserves more attention is the sequential building up of varieties of imaginary space and of more or less static objects in space. The fact that the particular sequential creation of such varieties in discourse has an impact on the imagined products has not been sufficiently studied. It will thus be fruitful to develop models of how particular sequences of signs are transformed into synchronous systems of meaning by processes in which each succeeding stage incorporates all previous stages. Due to the sequentiality of language in general and its importance for the study of literature (cf. Grabes 2013), such models are of particular interest for narratology, since the sequences of signs in narratives, which can be quite lengthy, require potent strategies for keeping track of earlier stages of the story and revising them as the text advances. They are, in fact, indispensable, not least for the critic, who, in interpreting particular works, must remain highly attentive to sequence—not merely in detective stories but in narratives at large. Among the early attempts to tackle this problem was work on the primacy-recency effect (Luchins 1957; Perry 1979), but also Holloway (1979) who, using set theory, described each phase in the reading process as a set of sets, a continually actualized reconfiguration of the entire sequence of information up to that point. More recently, important aspects of this process have also been studied from a cognitive perspective by Emmott (1997) on the basis of “contextual frames” and from a text semiotic perspective by Pier (2004) in his study of “narrative configurations” as well as within the framework of “narrative progression,” notably by Toolan (2004, 2009) employing advances in corpus linguistics, and by Phelan (2007) in his work on rhetorical narratology.

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5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Bal, Mieke ([1985] 1997). Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. 2nd ed. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Baroni, Raphaël (2007). La tension narrative. Suspense, curiosité et surprise. Paris: Seuil. Barthes, Roland ([1970] 1974). S/Z. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Bremond, Claude ([1966] 1980). “The Logic of Narrative Possibilities.” New Literary History 11, 387–411. Cameron, J. M. (1962). The Night Battle. Essays. London: The Catholic Book Club. Campbell, Joseph ([1949] 1990). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Harper & Row. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Culler, Jonathan (1980). “Prolegomena to a Theory of Reading.” S. R. Suleiman & I. Crosman (eds.). The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation. Princeton: Princeton UP, 46–66. Dannenberg, Hilary P. (2004). “Ontological Plotting: Narrative as a Multiplicity of Temporal Dimensions.” J. Pier (ed.). The Dynamics of Narrative Form: Studies in Anglo-American Narratology. Berlin: de Gruyter, 159–190. Dijk, Teun A. van (1976 ). “Narrative Macro-Structures: Logical and Cognitive Foundations.” Poetics and Theory of Literature 1, 547–568. – (1980). “Cognitive Processing of Literary Discourse.” Poetics Today 1, 143–159. Doležel, Lubomír (1979). Essays in Structural Poetics and Narrative Semantics. Toronto: Victoria University. Eco, Umberto ([1962] 1989). The Open Work. Cambridge: Harvard UP. – (1979). The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Emmott Catherine (1997). Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Oxford: Oxford UP. Frank, Joseph (1945). “Spatial Form in Modern Literature.” Sewanee Review 53, 221– 240; 433–456; 643–653. – (1991). The Idea of Spatial Form. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Grabes, Herbert (1978). “Wie aus Sätzen Personen werden… Über die Erforschung literarischer Figuren.” Poetica 10, 405–428. – (1996). “Writing Against Time: The Paradox of Temporality in Modernist and Postmodern Aesthetics.” Poetica 28, 368–385. – (2004). “Turning Words on the Page into ‘Real’ People.” Style 38.2, 221–235. [rev. and trans. of Grabes 1978] – (2013). “The Processualities of Literature.” Journal of Literature and Art Studies 3.1, 1–8.

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Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1971). “Narrative Grammar: Units and Levels.” Modern Language Notes 86, 793–806. Herman, David (1997). “Scripts, Sequences, and Stories: Elements of a Postclassical Narratology.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 112, 1046–1059. – (1998). “Limits of Order: Toward a Theory of Polychronic Narration.” Narrative 6, 72–95. – (2002). Story Logic. Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Holloway, John (1979). Narrative and Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Hovland, Carl I., ed. (1957). The Order of Presentation in Persuasion. New Haven: Yale UP. Hühn, Peter (2008). “Functions and Forms of Eventfulness in Narrative Fiction.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 141–144. Ingarden, Roman ([1937] 1973). The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art. Evanston: Northwestern UP. Ireland, Ken (2001). The Sequential Dynamics of Literature. Madison: Farleigh Dickinson UP; London: Associated U Presses. Iser, Wolfgang ([1976] 1978). The Act of Reading. Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP. Kafalenos, Emma (2006). Narrative Causalities. Theory and Interpretation of Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Kermode, Frank (1967). The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. New York: Oxford UP. – (1978). “Sensing Endings.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 33, 144–158. Lämmert, Eberhard (1955). Bauformen des Erzählens. Stuttgart: Metzler. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim ([1766] 1901). Laokoon. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Luchins, Abraham S. (1957). “Primacy-Recency in Impression Formation.” C. I. Hovland (ed.). The Order of Presentation in Persuasion. New Haven: Yale UP. Margolin, Uri (1987). “Introducing and Sustaining Character in Literary Narrative. A Set of Conditions.” Style 21, 107–124. – (1995) “Characters in Literary Narrative: Representation and Signification.” Semiotica 106, 373–92. – (1999). “Of What Is Past, Is Passing, or to Come: Temporality, Aspectuality, Modality, and the Nature of Literary Narrative.” D. Herman (ed.). Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 142–166. McHale, Brian (1987). Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Methuen. Miller, J. Hillis (1992). Ariadne’s Thread: Story Lines. New Haven: Yale UP. Müller, Günther ([1948] 1968). “Erzählzeit und erzählte Zeit.” E. Müller & H. Egner (eds.). Günther Müller: Morphologische Poetik. Darmstadt: WBG, 269–286. Pavel, Thomas G. (1976). La syntaxe narrative des tragedies de Corneille. Paris: Klincksieck. – (1985). “Literary Narratives.” T. A. van Dijk (ed.). Discourse and Literature. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 85–103. Perry, Menakhem (1979). “Literary Dynamics: How the Order of a Text Creates its Meanings.” Poetics Today 1.1, 35–64; 311–361.

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Phelan. James (2007). Experiencing Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Pier, John (2004). “Narrative Configurations.” J. Pier (ed.). The Dynamics of Literary Form. Berlin: de Gruyter, 239–268. – (2008). “After this, therefore because of this.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 109–140. Prince, Gerald (1973). A Grammar of Stories. The Hague: Mouton. Propp, Vladimir ([1928] 1968). Morphology of the Folk Tale. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Raglan, Lord (1936). The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth, and Drama. New York: Vintage. Ranke, Leopold von ([1824] 1909). History of Latin and Teutonic Nations, 1494–1514. London: George Bell & Sons. Richardson, Brian (2002). “Beyond Story and Discourse: Narrative Time in Postmodern and Nonmimetic Fiction.” B. Richardson (ed.). Narrative Dynamics. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 47–63. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith (1977). The Concept of Ambiguity – The Example of James. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Rumelhart, David E. (1975). “Notes on a Schema for Stories.” D. G. Bobrow & A. Collins (eds.). Representations and Understanding: Studies in Cognitive Science. New York: Academic P, 211–236. Ruthrof, Horst (1981). The Reader’s Construction of Narrative. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP. – (2006). Avatars of Story. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota P. Schank, Roger & Robert P. Abelson (1977). Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. Sternberg, Meir (1978). Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – (1990). “Telling in Time (I): Chronology and Narrative Theory.” Poetics Today 11, 901–948. – (1992). “Telling in Time (II): Chronology, Teleology, Narrativity.” Poetics Today, 13, 463–541. – (2001). “Why Narrativity Makes a Difference.” Narrativ, 9, 115–122. Todorov, Tzvetan (1969). Grammaire du Décaméron. The Hague: Mouton. Toolan, Michael (2004). “Graded Expectations: On the Textual and Structural Shaping of Readers’ Narrative Experience.” J. Pier (ed.) The Dynamics of Narrative Form. Berlin: de Gruyter, 214–237. – (2009). Narrative Progression in the Short Story: A corpus stylistic approach. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Yellowlees, Douglas J. (2000). The End of Books, or Books without End? Reading Interaction Narratives. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P.

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5.2 Further Reading Branigan, Edward (1992). Narrative Comprehension and Film. London: Routledge. Grabes, Herbert (2008). “Encountering People Through Literature.” J. Schlaeger & G. Stedman (eds.). REAL—Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 24: The Literary Mind. Tübingen: Narr, 125–140. Kroeber, Karl (1992). Reading/Rereading: The Fate of Storytelling in Modern Times. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP. Middeke, Martin, ed. (2002). Zeit und Roman. Zeiterfahrung im historischen Wandel und ästhetischer Paradigmenwechsel vom sechzehnten Jahrhundert bis zur Postmoderne. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann. Schlaeger, Jürgen & Gesa Stedman, eds. (2008). REAL—Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 24: The Literary Mind. Tübingen: Narr. Strasen, Sven (2008). Rezeptionstheorien. Literatur-, sprach- und kulturwissenschaftliche Ansätze und kulturelle Modelle. Trier: WVT.

Simultaneity in Narrative Uri Margolin

1 Definition In the strict, literal sense simultaneity is the property of two or more events, actions or processes which satisfy the following formula for temporal location: x is simultaneous with y if and only if for every time point or interval in which x is (or was or will be) present, y is (or was or will be) present (Le Poidevin [1996] 2011: 55). In other words, events are simultaneous if they are isochronous or occupy exactly the same temporal interval. In a more relaxed sense, if the time interval of event b is a proper subset of that of event a, b can be said to be simultaneous with a, but not vice versa. In the context of narrative, simultaneity may refer to events on the histoire or the discours levels as well as to the relation between events or actions on these two levels.

2 Explication In narrative, simultaneity is a relation which can obtain between two or more events/actions on the level of the narrated, of narration (= concurrent acts of speech by two or more narrating instances) and at the nexus of the two levels (= concurrent narration). On the narrated level, the simultaneous events or actions can be physical, mental (including focalization) or verbal and may involve one or more agents. In the case of one agent, it is usually the pairing of simultaneous mental and physical, mental and verbal, and physical and verbal activities which is portrayed, because it is obviously possible to carry out at the same time more than one physical or mental act, or even activities of all three kinds. When two or more agents are concerned, comparisons and contrasts are meaningful only if the same kind of simultaneous activity is undertaken by all of them. Collective narratives (Margolin 2000) emphasize the identity or at least marked similarity of the activities of any kind undertaken by all agents involved in a given scene, thus creating the image of a supra-individual collective agent. In

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the majority of cases, however, such as in big city novels or in crowd and battle scenes, it is the diversity or contrast of the simultaneous actions of the participants which is of the essence. Multi-strand narratives, especially novels, are based on several long-term chains of events (e. g. the Anna and Levin strands in Anna Karenina involving different groups of people (such as families), sometimes at different locations, running in parallel, and intersecting every now and again. While simultaneous actions by themselves are a most obvious phenomenon, their scenic representation in a unilinear medium, where only one action can be represented at any given moment (i.e. in any given text segment), has been a major challenge to writers from the Iliad to postmodernist narratives. It is true that coexisting static rather than dynamic elements (e.g. features of a complex object, landscape, etc.) can also be represented one at a time only. But in this case there is not the sense of missing out, of loss of immediacy, which is inevitable when simultaneous transitory activities have to be rendered in succession. The scenic representation of simultaneous narrated acts, or of acts of narration for that matter, can proceed in one of the following three manners: (1) Alternating block presentation in different successive paragraphs, chapters or even books of different concurrent processes or activities, the successive textual parts thus retracing the same temporal interval. This obvious and rather unsophisticated procedure is mockingly referred to as “Meanwhile, back on the ranch.” (2) Repeated intercutting, sometimes with ever increasing frequency, between two or more simultaneous narrated actions or acts of narration (Flaubert’s commice agricole in Madame Bovary, book 22 of the Iliad). (3) Turning the text on the page from a one- into a twodimensional object by splitting the page into two or more distinct rows or columns running in parallel, each representing one of the concurrent activities or acts of narration (Butor’s Niagara, Josipovici’s “Mobius the Stripper”). Concurrent narration, “I say it as I see it” in Beckett’s terms, whether hetero-, homo- or autodiegetic, is faced with the inexorable difficulty of configuring into a meaningful whole that which is still in the process of becoming at narration time.

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3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 Studies of Simultaneity There seems to be no systematic study of the different kinds of simultaneous actions in narrative and the modes of their presentation, even though close readings of individual texts involving this issue abound. The first scholar to tackle this phenomenon explicitly, more than a century ago, seems to have been Zielinski (1901). In newer scholarship, several fundamental distinctions are made by Harweg ([1991] 2011: 159), who distinguishes between the following: a “longitudinal” sequence, where events are presented in chronological order; a “latitudinal” sequence, where isochronous strands of events run in parallel, i.e. in a point-by-point co-presentation of isochronous, parallel factsequences occurring in different places or with different agents, resulting in “spatial” distribution (159); and an “altitudinal,” side-by-side or intermittent presentation without distinction of different tokens of the same type of event located at the same place with the same agents but at different points in time. This is telescoping, synchronization or blending of events, often produced by acts of recollection and giving an impression of simultaneity, while at the same time creating an occasional paradigm with an underlying abstract arch-event. De Toro ([1991] 2011: 130–131) enlarges on this, noting that any side-by-side presentation of events from different times and, one might add, without clear temporal indexing, tends to create the impression that everything is narrated as happening at the same time. Present-tense narration tends to enhance this impression. De Toro also alludes to the possibility of simultaneous narrations, as when a story is presented through several narrators whose perspectives and speech cannot be separated, when different speech acts merge into one speech act and hence into one single temporal interval. This can occur on the highest level of embedding, but it is more frequent on the level of the narrated, where different intercutting voices would be reporting on or reacting to one and the same recent occurrence. (One example is Wittig’s Les guérillères.) Frank’s much celebrated essay “Spatial Form in Modern Literature” ([1945] 1991) is concerned in part with the rendering of simultaneous actions. The author notes modern writers’ desire to force readers to perceive story elements as juxtaposed in space rather than unfolding in time. In the famous agricultural fair scene in Madame Bovary, for example, “The flow of time is thus stopped and one’s attention is directed to the interplay between the levels inside the scene. The significance of the scene resides precisely in the interrelations between these levels and in

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the simultaneous perception of all three” (16–17). On a much larger scale, it was Joyce’s purpose in Ulysses to create an overall portrayal of a city in one day, juxtaposing people, locations, sights and voices, and thus to project a sense of simultaneous activity occurring in different places. And it is to this end that Joyce created the elaborate network of cross-references subtending his novel (17–18). 3.2 Narrating Simultaneous Events The representation of simultaneous events in a unilinear medium is most problematic when the scenic representation of two or more ongoing activities or sequences of events is at stake, while both the summary presentation of simultaneous durative activities as well as the scenic presentation of momentary/punctual ones can be accomplished within the confines of a single complex sentence. An adequate profile of any given set of simultaneous activities would involve numerous parameters. These include the number of agents involved: one, two or three, or a multiplicity; the nature of their actions (physical, mental, verbal); and the unity or multiplicity of location(s). In drama and opera, the simultaneous activities, verbal or physical, of multiple agents are usually in the same location and are necessarily presented on the page sequentially. But in performance they all take place at the same physical and represented time, while the unitary actual space of the stage can be partitioned into different represented sub-spaces so that the different agents cannot see or hear each other, while the full effect of the multiple simultaneous actions is preserved for the audience. In the cinema, with its split-screen option, simultaneous actions in different locations, or an agent’s actual speech and the mental images crossing his mind at the same time, can be presented side by side as a matter of course. When the intercutting method of presentation, rather than the block or split page, is employed, several more considerations come into play. First is the total duration of the simultaneous action sequence and second is the frequency of switching from one agent to another or between different kinds of activities of the same agent. Equally important is the degree of markedness of each transition (how easily it can be identified), and closely related to this is the ability to construct a coherent longitudinal sequence for each of the intermittently presented action strands. When simultaneous actions or events in a single but extended space (such as a battlefield) are concerned, the position of the observer (unrestricted, internal-fixed or internal-variable) is of major significance, since it determines how fine-grained any given action description can be. And the same applies to simultaneous actions or events oc-

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curring in different locations. On the thematic level, one of series, ranging from close affinity to randomness. No less important are the cognitive and emotive effects of juxtaposing simultaneous activities: from reinforcement to sharp irony and deflation or even a global effect of fragmentation and chaos. Not all logically possible combinations of parameters have been actualized in literary practice, or at least not to the same extent, possibly because they are not all equally effective mimetically or aesthetically. When two simultaneous actions of one individual are in focus, the juxtaposition of outer speech and inner mental activity, necessarily represented as inner speech, is the most frequent. The method of presentation is intercutting, the duration is minutes or at most several hours, and the switches from inner to outer and vice versa are frequent. The contents of the two sequences may be closely related (e.g. thinking what to say next) or entirely unrelated. In some cases, a different kind of font is employed for each sequence, and when this is not done and the two series are related in content, it may become progressively more difficult to tell them apart—a confusion which may well be intended by the author. When the simultaneous speech activities of two or more agents are involved and no clear speaker identification is provided, distinguishing them may become well-nigh impossible, sometimes creating the effect of verbal overload, cacophony, etc. (Tjupa → Heteroglossia). A multiplicity of activities by numerous agents who are all in the same location and whose activities, both verbal and physical, may be coordinated or uncoordinated is the standard fare of battle and crowd scenes from Homer to Tolstoi and Zola. And with the total space being divided into distinct sub-spaces, this is also the case of the big city novels of Dos Passos, Döblin and many other 20th-century novelists. Here, too, intercutting is the preferred method, and the diverse actions are designed to create an impression of fragmentation, alienation and randomness or, conversely, that of a vast network of underlying interconnections, an overall unified mechanism. However, since intercutting excludes linear coherence between any two adjacent action-descriptions, any overall unified patterns can be grasped only in retrospect. The block representation of the simultaneous activities of (groups of) agents is typically associated with multi-strand narratives. By its very nature, it creates a much weaker sense of simultaneity, since distinct scenes or groups of scenes are frequently encountered here, each with its own location and set of characters, and of a duration that may extend over days or weeks. The simultaneity of events often needs to be foregrounded at the switching point through such expressions as “at the same time that…,” “while…,” and the like.

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3.3 Simultaneity of Acts of Narration Multiple simultaneous acts of narration are encountered in the narrated domain whenever several characters, all talking at once, but each in his own words, report on a recent event or action, something frequently encountered in daily life. Choric narration, i.e. several narrative agents talking in unison and reporting on the same event, is rare, but examples can be found in Wittig’s Les guérillères in the passages starting “Elles disent.” On the cusp between narrator and narrative agent is the chorus in Greek tragedy, which speaks in unison and refers to itself sometimes as an “I,” i.e. a supra-individual collective body, and sometimes as “we,” i.e. a group of like-minded individuals. In modern literature, one encounters novels (e.g. Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying) consisting of a series of monologues by narrators reporting different phases or aspects of an extended action in which they themselves are participants or observers. But in the absence of any indication of an overall situation of narration, it is doubtful whether one can regard this series as an instance of simultaneous narration. Simultaneous narration of sorts occurs in Butor’s Niagara, which looks more like a script for a stereophonic radio play for a collection of voices: here, the two constant voices, those of the Announcer and the Reader, alternate with the voices of various other characters, who change from one section to the next. Each of the voices relates some fact or event, past or present, associated with the Niagara Falls. Gabriel Josipovici’s short story “Mobius the Stripper” tells in the upper part of each page and in the third person the story of Mobius, and in the lower part in the first person the story of a young writer suffering from writer’s block. Mobius’ suicide, with which the upper part concludes, releases the writer’s block and he starts writing—presumably the text of the story just read in the upper part of the page. Two sequences of events which occupy the same time frame are now also told at the same time and within the bound of the same page(s). Yet the text which relates the events of Mobius’ life just read could be generated only after Mobius’ death! Simultaneity and succession thus seem to clash here and to form a strange loop known as the Möbius strip. And a Möbius strip is by definition non-orientable! Succession, simultaneity and the activity of writing are all thematized and problematized in this brilliant postmodern story.

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3.4 Concurrence of Narration and the Narrated The difficulty of representing two or more simultaneously occurring events in a verbal medium stems from the medium’s inability in principle to reflect temporally overlapping occurrences iconically, irrespective of the narrating instance’s temporal position relative to the narrated events. On the other hand, when concurrent narration is concerned, the problem clearly becomes one of the use of deixis, created precisely by the narrating instance’s temporal position relative to the action sequence. This is due to the fact that the events are still ongoing (inchoative or incomplete) at the time they are being represented, and the ensuing epistemic impossibility of fully representing, and especially configuring, that which is not yet concluded at the time of reporting. Moreover, when the concurrent narration of two or more simultaneous ongoing processes is involved, both kinds of problems and attendant limitations inevitably come into play. Concurrent narration is by necessity durative, scenic and coterminous with the events being reported (cf. Genette [1972] 1980: 216–217: “simultaneous narration,” defined as “narrative in the present contemporaneous with the action”). It consists of a series of NOW intervals which, put together, make up the ongoing narrational process; in contrast, the object of this process is an unfolding sequence of concurrent temporal stages or intervals which, put together, make up the course of events being reported (Margolin 1999: 151). Stages of the narration are accordingly matched with those of the narrated, and these matched pairs define the overlapping NOW of discursive and reported situations. The correlated ongoing stepwise passage of time on the two levels is the specific constitutive factor of concurrent narration. Since the action is inevitably represented as a series of successive events as they occur, the reporting is endowed with scenic immediacy, which in turn lends it superior immersive power with respect to the reader, who can imagine himself as being on the scene then and there, viewing the events as they unfold, experiencing them together with narrator and characters. Being viewed from within and in the midst of the action, the narrated domain is necessarily represented as a succession of unconfigured particulars, while narration itself becomes the gradual figuring out of what the case is as it evolves. Narration here is a record of what is seen, of what is happening at the moment, and is the antithesis of the historian’s narrative statements which, retrospectively, invest acts and actions with meaning (Margolin 1999: 151). Accordingly, individual constitutive acts or occurrences can be reported, but their role in the overall action sequence and their significance in it, as well as the shape and

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outcome of this sequence, are not known as yet. Even the certain and complete reporting of immediate scenes and of punctual (as opposed to durative) actions that occur in these scenes is normally restricted to reporting them as mere doings or happenings, since they cannot as yet be defined in terms of action type, motivation, human significance and value. A situation can thus be recorded as it takes place but not interpreted as, say, an error or a brilliant move. Since events are reported as they occur, as a sequence of NOW moments, the sequence as a whole may have an additive, paratactic quality. Local cohesion between adjacent events can often be established, but not macro-coherence, since the series as a whole has not yet reached its terminal point. In concurrent narration, the reporting instance does not possess any temporal distance from the actions or events nor any external, later vantage point from which the structuredness and significance of the reported sequence can be surveyed and defined as an integrated whole. The narrated domain takes shape as it is being narrated and is not a bounded whole. One cannot yet elicit a pattern from the incomplete succession, but only project one tentatively, if at all. Finally, it is necessary to distinguish between authentic and apparent concurrent narration, the criterion being whether or not the ostensible concurrent narration is embedded in a higher deictic frame. Thus in Greek tragedy we have teichoscopy, where a character such as a watchman on a tower observes events occurring in a location inaccessible to his co-agents and the audience alike, reporting on them in ‘real time’ to these co-agents and hence indirectly to the audience, as well. Speech time overlaps here with event time, and there is no higher temporal frame or level. Not only are the events being reported as they occur, but their immediate impact on the co-agents is also of major importance. Apparent concurrent narration involves a deictic shift in that the events being ostensibly reported in real time as they unfold are in fact past or future with respect to the speaker’s temporal position. Past events may be re-lived by the speaker or conjured before his mind’s eye (the clairvoyant), while future events may be experienced in their full immediacy by a speaker-prophet, as is the case of Cassandra’s vision at the conclusion of the Agamemnon. The so-called historical present may also be understood as a case of the highest narrating instance in a thirdperson retrospective narration performing a temporary deictic shift whereby it places itself in the time and place of the events being reported, becoming the immediate observer of the events as well as their reporter. Now in all cases of apparent concurrent narration (unlike authentic ones), a coherent, well-configured sequence of events can be presented, since the apparently on-going, open sequence is in fact a

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rounded-off unit, embedded in a higher-level and more all-embracing discourse with a different temporal anchoring (Pier → Narrative Levels).

4 Topics for Further Investigation As remarked above, block alternation among simultaneous strings of actions is not particularly challenging to either author or reader. Intercutting, on the other hand, seems to be worthy of further detailed investigation. One fascinating topic would be to investigate this variety of the narration of the simultaneous events throughout the ages, from the Iliad up to at least Modernism. Another topic would be the correlation between intercutting and a fixed or moving observer’s position, especially in scenes of wider spatial scope such as battle scenes or big city activities. A related question would be whether each of the interwoven strands of simultaneous events or actions is rendered through a different narrator, or whether one voice is reporting on all of them. And finally, the relations between simultaneously occurring inner and outer speech of a character or between concurrently running streams of thought within an individual mind are worth examining both historically and typologically.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Primary Sources Aeschylus (1979). Agamemnon. Tr. H. Lloyd-Jones. London: Duckworth. Butor, Michel (1965). Niagara. Tr. E. Miller. Chicago: Henry Regency. Faulkner, William (1964). As I Lay Dying. New York: Random House. Flaubert, Gustave (1951). Madame Bovary. Ed. A. Thibaudet & R. Dumesnil. Oeuvres, Vol. 1. Paris: Gallimard. Homer (2011). Iliad. Tr. A. Verity. Oxford: Oxford UP. Josipovici, Gabriel (1974). “Mobius the Stripper.” In: Mobius the Stripper: Stories and Short Plays. London: Gollancz. Joyce, James (1997). Ulysses. Ed. D. Rose. London: Picador. Tolstoi, Lev (1999). Anna Karenina. Moscow: Exmo-Press. Wittig, Monique (1969). Les guérillères. Paris: Éditions de minuit.

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5.2 Works Cited Frank, Joseph ([1945] 1991). “Spatial Form in Literature.” J. Frank. The Idea of Spatial Form. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP. Genette, Gerard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Harweg, Roland ([1991] 2011). “Story Time and Fact-sequence-time.” J. Ch. Meister & W.Schernus (eds.). Time. From Concept to Narrative Construct: A Reader. Berlin: de Gruyter, 143–170. Le Poidevin, Robin ([1996] 2011). “Time, Tense and Typology.” J. Ch. Meister & W. Schernus (eds.). Time. From Concept to Narrative Construct: A Reader. Berlin: de Gruyter, 49–65. Margolin, Uri (1999). “Of What Is Past, Is Passing or to Come.” D. Herman (ed). Narratologies. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State UP, 142–166. – (2000). “Telling in the Plural: From Grammar to Ideology.” Poetics Today 21: 591–618. Toro, Alfonso de ([1991] 2011). “Time Structure in the Contemporary Novel.” J. Ch. Meister & W. Schernus (eds.). Time. From Concept to Narrative Construct. A Reader. Berlin: de Gruyter, 109–142. Zielinski, Thaddeus (1901). “Die Behandlung gleichzeitiger Ereignisse im antiken Epos.” Philologus, Suppl. 8, 405–449.

Skaz Wolf Schmid

1 Definition Skaz (from Russian skazat’ “to say, to tell”) is a special type of narration cultivated particularly in Russian literature since 1830 (although, with certain differences, it can also be found in other Slavic as well in Western European and American literatures) whose roots date back to oral folklore traditions. It is characterized by a personal narrator, a simple man of the people with restricted intellectual horizons and linguistic competence, addressing listeners from his own social milieu in a markedly oral speech.

2 Explication Although skaz has enjoyed particular interest ever since the work of the Russian formalists, who thought of it as a form of defamiliarization, there is still no consensus today on what is meant by the term and what characteristics should be ascribed to it. According to tradition, two basic types of skaz can be distinguished: (1) characterizing skaz, which is motivated by the narrator’s linguisticideological point of view; (2) ornamental skaz, which does not indicate a particular personal narrator but must be referred to an entire spectrum of heterogeneous voices and masks and often shows traces of authorial (not narratorial!) ornamentalization (Schmid → Poetic or Ornamental Prose). However, the ornamental type can be reasonably assigned to skaz only if the discourse spread out among heterogeneous voices and visions retains marks of a personal narrator who is clearly dissociated from the author. The internationalized concept of skaz refers mainly to the first, perspectivized type.

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3 Aspects of the Phenomenon and History of its Study 3.1 Features of Characterizing Skaz Characterizing skaz can be referred to when the following features are present: 1. Narratoriality Skaz should be understood as an exclusively narratorial phenomenon. It appears in the text of the narrating entity (regardless of whether this is a primary, secondary or tertiary instance), and not in a character’s text. This basic definition excludes from the domain of skaz all semanticstylistic phenomena that have their origins in the text of a narrated character and are based on an “infection” of the narrator with the style of his protagonist (or of the narrated milieu) or on a conscious reproduction of individual features of the characters’ discourse. The interpretation of skaz as a manifestation of free indirect discourse and similar techniques as suggested, for instance, by Titunik (1963, 1977) and McLean (1985), must be rejected. 2. Restrictedness of intellectual horizons An obligatory feature of characterizing skaz is the intellectual distance between the author and the narrator, a non-professional teller, a man of the people, whose narration stands out due to a certain naiveté and clumsiness. This inexperienced narrator does not control all shades of his discourse. The result is a tension, characteristic of skaz, between what the narrator would like to say and what he actually reveals unintentionally (Šklovskij [1928] 1970: 17). 3. Double-voicedness The distance between narrator and author determines a narratorialauthorial double-voicedness of the narrator’s text. In it, the naive narrator and the author, who presents the former’s discourse with particular semantic—not rarely ironic or humorous—accentuation, express themselves simultaneously. The double-voicedness also means there is a bifunctionality in the narrator’s discourse: it functions as both the representing medium and as represented discourse. 4. Orality Oral presentation of the narrator’s text has been regarded as a fundamental feature of skaz since the beginning. Naturally, oral discourse does not preclude the imitation of written discourse. Many skaz narra-

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tors, such as Mixail Zoščenko, like to use forms of expression belonging to official written discourse. However, this practice bears traces of non-authentic, sometimes awkward reproduction. 5. Spontaneity Skaz should be understood as a spontaneous oral discourse, and not as something consciously thought-out. Spontaneity means the representation of the discourse as a developing process that is not necessarily linear, consistent or goal-oriented. 6. Colloquialism The spontaneous oral discourse of a narrator who is a man of the people bears, as a rule, the characteristics of colloquial language and often takes on features of vulgar, non-grammatical or slightly aphasic speech. On the other hand, colloquialism in no way rules out the occasional use of written style. Zoščenko’s “little man” likes to employ the Soviet idiom he has learned from newspapers and propaganda. The use of literary or official language in his mouth is “defamiliarizing,” however, and receives ironic authorial accentuation. 7. Dialogicity The orientation of the speaker toward his listener and his reactions is characteristic of skaz. So long as the narrator assumes a well-disposed listener from the same milieu, dialogicity does not, as a rule, create any particular tension. In any case, the speaker will give explanations, anticipate questions and answer them. However, as soon as the skaz-speaker ascribes a critical stance to his public, tension will build between him and the addressee. The features listed above do not all have the same relevance. Orality, spontaneity, colloquialism and dialogicity are developed to varying degrees in works traditionally classified as skaz. A weaker development of one does not mean the work is necessarily not skaz. However, the first three features should be seen as obligatory: narratoriality, restricted intellectual horizons and double-voicedness. Without them, the term (characterizing) skaz loses its meaning. In Russian literature the main representatives of skaz are N. Gogol’, N. Leskov, A. Remizov, M. Zoščenko, I. Babel’, A. Platonov, V. Šukšin, V. Belov. Phenomena comparable to characterizing skaz can also be found in Western literatures. The lyric sub-genre of the dramatic monologue in 19th-century Britain features an unreliable speaker (Shen → Unreliability) with a restricted view in a communication situa-

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tion, although he neither speaks dialect nor does he come from an inferior social class (cf. Rohwer-Happe 2011). Examples are Robert Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover” and “My Last Duchess.” In American literature, examples of a skaz-like narration are Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Ring Lardner’s “Haircut” and J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (cf. Prince 1987; Banfield 2005). In contemporary German literature, Christian Kracht’s novel Faserland is a clear example of skaz stylisation. Although the teller is no simple man of the people, his shallow drivel about parties and bars, brand names and celebrities makes him an equivalent of the Russian simple-minded “democratic hero” (cf. Schmid [2005] 2008: 177–178). 3.2 Ornamental Skaz Ornamental skaz is a hybrid phenomenon based on a paradoxical mixture of the mutually excluding principles of characterization and poetization (Koževnikova 1971, 1976, 1994: 64–74). In contrast to characterizing skaz, ornamental skaz does not indicate a personal narrator endowed with non-professional characteristics, but rather calls into being an impersonal narrating entity which appears in various roles and masks. Of the features of characterizing skaz, the basic oral tone, traces of colloquialism and the narrative gestures of a personal narrator can remain in ornamental skaz; however, these traits no longer indicate the unified figure of a teller, but are oriented toward a broad spectrum of heterogeneous voices. Ornamental skaz is thus multi-faceted and polystylistic, fluctuating between orality and literacy, colloquialism and poetry, folklore and literature. Ornamental skaz combines narrativity with poeticity. To the extent, however, that poeticity, along with the non-temporal links (Schmid → Non-temporal Linking in Narration) that constitute it, supplants the story’s temporal links, ornamental prose moves from the domain of “narrative art” into that of “verbal art” (on this dichotomy, cf. Hansen-Löve 1978; Schmid 2008). The impersonal narrator then appears only as the intersection of heterogeneous verbal gestures, as the point at which different stylistic lines converge. In ornamental skaz, not only is the expressive function (sensu Bühler [1934] 1990: 35) of the text in reference to the narrator decreased, but the role of perspective is generally weakened. Characters’ discourses tend to remain stylistically subordinated to homogenizing poetization and to display no linguistic individuality. Whereas characterizing skaz is conclusively motivated by the ideological and linguistic physiognomy of the concrete speaker, ornamental skaz distinguishes itself by reduced, diffuse perspective and

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weak characterological motivation. To speak of a variety of skaz in the case of ornamental texts, however, makes sense only when the text comprises at least some traces of the above-mentioned obligatory features of characterizing skaz. 3.3 History of the Concept and its Study The forms and functions of skaz were a central topic in Russian formalist narrative theory (Hansen-Löve 1978: 274–303). The discussion was opened with Ėjxenbaum’s “The Illusion of Skaz,” one of the key essays of early formalism. Here, skaz is regarded above all as the emancipation of verbal art from “literariness, which is not always valuable for the verbal artist,” as a means of introducing into literature the word as “a living, dynamic act which is formed by voice, articulation, and intonation and is also accompanied by gestures and mimicry” (Ėjxenbaum [1918] 1978: 233). In the subsequent famous essay “How Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’ is Made,” Ėjxenbaum underlines the shift of the center of gravity from the plot to devices which make language as such “perceptible.” In this essay, Ėjxenbaum distinguishes two types of skaz: (1) “narrating skaz” and (2) “reproducing skaz” ([1919] 1974: 269). The first type refers to skaz motivated by the narrator, his language and ideology. The second type consists of “devices of verbal mimicry and verbal gesture, in the form of specially devised comic articulations, wordplays based on sounds, capricious arrangements of syntax and so on” (ibid.). Analyzing the “Overcoat,” with its montage-structure and ornamental stylization, Ėjxenbaum is interested only in the second type. By contrast, in the later work on Leskov ([1925] 1975: 214), he defines skaz as a “form of narrative prose which, in vocabulary, syntax, and choice of speech rhythms, displays an orientation toward the narrator’s oral speech.” Here, he explicitly excludes from skaz all narrative forms “which have a declamatory character or the character of ‘poetic prose’ and which at the same time are not oriented toward telling, but toward oratorical speech or lyrical monologue.” With this definition, he restricts skaz to the first, characterizing, perspectivized type. Nevertheless, he does concede the existence of such paradoxical forms as “ornamental skaz,” which preserves “traces of a folkloric foundation and of skaz intonation,” but where there is actually “no narrator as such” ([1925] 1975: 221). In the end, however, skaz does not interest Ėjxenbaum as a specific narrative phenomenon, but as a “demonstration” of the more general principle of verbal art: “Skaz in itself is not important; what is important is the orientation toward the word, toward intonation, toward voice, be it even in written transformation. […] We are

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starting in large measure from the beginning, as it were […] Our relationship toward the word has become more concrete, more sensitive, more physiological” ([1925] 1975: 223; italics in the original). Tynjanov also distinguishes two variants of skaz in the literature of his time: (1) the older, humorous skaz, which goes back to Leskov and was cultivated by Zoščenko; (2) the “Remizov-skaz,” a “lyrical, almost poetical” variant. In the same way as Ėjxenbaum, Tynjanov sees the function of skaz, in one variant as in the other, as making the word perceptible, “palpable,” but he places his emphasis somewhat differently insofar as he stresses the role of the reader: “The entire narrative becomes a monologue and the reader enters into the narration, starts to intone, to gesticulate, to smile. He does not read skaz, he plays it. Skaz introduces into prose not the hero, but the reader” (Tynjanov [1924] 1977: 160–161). Vinogradov calls it inadequate to define the technique with orientation toward oral or colloquial speech, since skaz was also possible without any kind of orientation on these types of language: “Skaz is a self-willed literary, artistic orientation toward an oral monologue of the narrative type; it is an artistic imitation of monological speech which contains a narrative plot and is constructed, as it were, as if it were being directly spoken” (Vinogradov [1925] 1978: 244). Similarly to Ėjxenbaum and Tynjanov, Vinogradov distinguishes two types of skaz: (1) skaz that is bound to a character; (2) “authorial skaz,” “preceding from the author’s ‘I’.” Whereas in the first type, “the illusion of an everyday situation is created, […] the amplitude of lexical oscillations grows narrow [and] the stylistic motion leads a secluded life within the narrow confines of a linguistic consciousness that is dominated by the conditions of the social mode of life that is to be presented,” in the second type, authorial skaz, the author is “free”: “In the literary masquerade the writer can freely change stylistic masks within a single artistic work” (Vinogradov [1925] 1978: 248–249). Ėjxenbaum’s conception of skaz as an orientation toward oral speech is contradicted by Baxtin, who sets new emphasis on the phenomenon by focusing only on the “narrating” type (in Ėjxenbaum’s terminology): “[Ėjxenbaum] completely fails to take into account the fact that in the majority of cases skaz is above all an orientation toward someone else’s speech, and only then, as a consequence, toward oral speech. […] It seems to us that in most cases skaz is introduced precisely for the sake of someone else’s voice, a voice socially distinct, carrying with it precisely those points of view and evaluations necessary to the author” (Baxtin [1929] 1984: 191–192; italics in the original).

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For Baxtin, someone else’s speech is, above all, the bearer of a different “evaluative position” (smyslovaja pozicija). If, however, the orientation toward someone else’s speech is elevated to a basic feature of skaz, phenomena will be ascribed to it that could not be reconciled with it according to a traditional understanding. To these phenomena belongs, for example, the intellectual, oratorical speech that appeals directly to the listener’s evaluative position, as is the case in Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground. Koževnikova (1971: 100) is right to state that, in Baxtin’s conception, “skaz disappears as an independent narrative form.” 3.4 Relevance to Narratology Skaz is not simply a stylistic or rhetorical issue. In its sharp linguistic and ideological dissociation of implied author, narrator, fictive addressee, and implied reader, it lays bare the fundamental communicative structures of narrative. The relationship between the skaz-teller and his fictive listener(s) mirrors communication in an exemplary way. Particularly relevant to narratology is the shift in the center of gravity from the story to the discourse, a move which, as a rule, says more about the teller than he intended, thus bringing the telling process, with all its conscious and unconscious motives, into sharp focus. One important issue is the functions of skaz in its different varieties. Formalists concentrated on the aesthetic function: defamilarization, increase of the text’s perceptibleness, deviation from literary tradition by introduction of non-traditional, low narrators and language material, activization of the reader. Baxtin emphasized the conflict of values accompanying multivoicedness and heteroglossia (Tjupa → Heteroglossia). Zoščenko, one of the main representatives of skaz in Russian literature of the 1920s, used the technique as a means to criticize either the official political ideology that could not be understood by the simple man or the philistine thinking that was not able to fathom the revolutionary changes in the Soviet Union (cf. Günther 1979). Narratologists should be interested in the aspects of embedded narration, in the demonstration of the process of telling with its clearly pronounced functions of representation, expression, and appeal. Of particular interest for narratology are cases of an active feedback of the imagined addressee on the skaz-teller and his narration.

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4 Topics for Further Investigation An issue not yet sufficiently explored is empirical research on readers’ interest and reactions with regard to skaz. Does characterizing skaz imitating the simple man’s intellectual and linguistic behavior really reach uneducated readers, or is it rather typical reading material of the welleducated strata? A related question would be to analyze to what degree the implied reader as an ideal recipient (Schmid → Implied Reader) is to identify with the narrator’s fictive addressee, and whether the relationship between implied reader and fictive addressee echoes the relationship between author and narrator. Also underexplored is the question of the genesis of skaz, its development and its social functions in varying cultural and political situations.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Banfield, Ann (2005). “Skaz.” D. Herman et al. (eds.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 535–536. Baxtin, Mixail (Bakhtin, Mikhail) ([1929] 1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis: Manchester UP. Bühler, Karl ([1934] (1990). Theory of Language. The Representational Function of Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ėjxenbaum, Boris (Eikhenbaum) ([1918] 1978). “The Illusion of Skaz.” Russian Literature Triquarterly 12, 233–236. – ([1919] 1974). “How Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’ is Made.” R. A. Maguire (ed.). Gogol’ from the Twentieth Century. Eleven Essays. Princeton: Princeton UP, 269–291. – ([1925] 1975). “Leskov and Contemporary Prose.” Russian Literature Triquarterly 11, 211–224. Günther, Hans (1979). “Zur Semantik und Funktion des Skaz bei M. Zosčenko.” G. Erler (ed.). Von der Revolution zum Schriftstellerkongreß. Berlin: Harrassowitz, 326–353. Hansen-Löve, Aage (1978). Der russische Formalismus. Wien: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Koževnikova, Natal’ja (1971). “O tipax povestvovanija v sovetskoj proze.” Voprosy jazyka sovremennoj russkoj literatury. Moskva: Nauka, 97–163. – (1976). “Iz nabljudenii nad neklassicheskoj (‘ornamental’noj’) prozoj.” Izvestija AN SSSR. Serija literatury i jazyka 35, 55–66. – (1994). Tipy povestvovanija v russkoj literature XIX–XX vv. Moskva: Institut russkogo jazyka RAN.

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McLean, Hugh (1985). “Skaz.” V. Terras (ed.). Handbook of Russian Literature. New Haven: Yale UP, 420. Prince, Gerald (1987). “Skaz.” A Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 87–88. Rohwer-Happe, Gislind (2011). Unreliable Narration im dramatischen Monolog des Viktorianismus: Konzepte und Funktionen. Bonn: University Press. Schmid, Wolf ([2005] 2008). Elemente der Narratologie. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. – (2008). “‘Wortkunst’ und ‘Erzählkunst’ im Lichte der Narratologie.” R. Grübel & W. Schmid (eds.). Wortkunst – Erzählkunst – Bildkunst. Festschrift für Aage A. Hansen-Löve. München: Sagner, 23–37. Šklovskij, Viktor ([1928] 1970). Material i stil’ v romane L’va Tolstogo Vojna i mir. Reprint: The Hague: Mouton. Titunik, Irwin (1963). The Problem of Skaz in Russian Literature. Ph.D. Dissertation. Univ. of California. – (1977). “The Problem of Skaz: Critique and Theory.” B. A. Stolz (ed.). Papers in Slavic Philology. Vol. 1. Ann Arbor, MI: Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures, 276–301. Tynjanov, Jurij ([1924] 1977). “Literaturnoe segodnja.” Ju. T. Poėtika. Istorija literatury. Kino. Moskva: Nauka, 150–166. Vinogradov, Viktor ([1925] 1978). “The Problem of Skaz in Stylistics.” Russian Literature Triquarterly 12, 237–250.

5.2 Further Reading Čudakov, Aleksandr & Mariėtta Čudakova (1971). “Skaz.” Kratkaja literaturnaja ėnciklopedija. Vol. 6. Moskva: Sovetskaja enciklopedija, 876. Hodel, Robert (1994). Betrachtungen zum skaz bei N. S. Leskov und Dragoslav Mihailović. Bern: Lang. Hodgson, Peter (1983). “More on the Matter of Skaz: The Formalist Model” V. Markov & D. S. Worth (eds.). From Los Angeles to Kiev. Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 119–154. Muščenko, E. G. et al. (1978). Poėtika skaza. Voronež: Izd. Voronežskogo un-ta. Schmid, Wolf (2003). “Skaz.” Russian Literature 44, 267–278. Szilárd, Léna (1989). “‘Skaz’ as a Form of Narration in Russian and Czech Literature.” J. Bessiere (ed.). Fiction, texte, narratologie, genre. New York: Lang, 181–189.

Space Marie-Laure Ryan

1 Definition Kantian philosophy regards time and space as the two fundamental categories that structure human experience. Narrative is widely recognized as the discourse of human experience (Fludernik 1996); yet most definitions, by characterizing stories as the representation of a sequence of events, foreground time at the expense of space. Events, however, are changes of state that affect individuated existents, which are themselves bodies that both occupy space and are situated in space. Representations of space are not necessarily narratives—think of geographical maps, landscape paintings, etc.—but all narratives imply a world with spatial extension, even when spatial information is withheld (as in Forster’s: “The king died, and then the queen died of grief”). The inseparability of space and time in narrative is suggested, among other ideas, by Baxtin’s ([1938] 1981) polysemic concept of chronotope, by Werth’s (1999) “text world,” by Herman’s (2005) “storyworld,” and by Genette’s ([1972] 1980) “diégèse.” All of these concepts cover both the space-occupying existents and the temporally extending events referred to by narrative discourse (Hühn → Event and Eventfulness). When speaking of space in narratology and other fields, a distinction should be made between literal and metaphorical uses of the concept. As an a-priori form of intuition, space is particularly difficult to capture in its literal sense. The OED defines it, somewhat tautologically (since it uses the spatial concept “within”), as “the dimensions of height, width and depth within which all things exist.” The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy’s more mathematical definition avoids tautology, but its greater abstraction does not capture our intuitive sense of space as the universal container of things: “An extended manifold of several dimensions, where the number of dimensions corresponds to the number of variable magnitudes needed to specify the location in the manifold” (DiSalle [1996] 1999: 866–867). Many of the spatial concepts developed in literary and cognitive theory (Herman → Cognitive Narratology) are metaphorical because

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they fail to account for physical existence. Among such uses are Fauconnier’s (1985) mental spaces, which are constellations of meanings held together in the mind; his notion of mapping (1997), whose origin in the visual representation of space has been overshadowed by its extension to any kind of analogical thinking; Friedman’s “spatial reading” of narrative (1993), an approach which she describes as paying attention not only to a “horizontal axis” of plot, but also to a “vertical axis” standing for a variety of other literary dimensions: author-reader relations, literary-historical considerations, and intertextual allusions. Turner’s concept of “spatial stories” (1996) is metaphorical for another reason: the term designates expressions based on space-implying movements (e.g. “the stockmarket sank”) and it is “story” rather than “spatial” that functions metaphorically.

2 Explication The importance of the concept of space for narratology is not limited to the representation of a world (a notion to be refined below) serving as container for existents and as location for events. We can distinguish at least four forms of textual spatiality. Of these four forms, the first will be the main focus of this entry. 2.1 Narrative Space This is the physically existing environment in which characters live and move (Buchholz & Jahn 2005). We may call it “setting,” but this intuitive notion of setting needs to be further refined: just as, in the theater, we can distinguish the stage on which events are shown from the broader world alluded to by the characters, in written narrative we can distinguish the individual locations in which narratively significant events take place from the total space implied by these events (Ronen 1986). Since there is no established terminology to distinguish the laminations of narrative space, I will synthesize existing work through the following categories, illustrating them all with the short story “Eveline” by James Joyce: (a) Spatial frames: the immediate surroundings of actual events, the various locations shown by the narrative discourse or by the image (cf. Ronen’s [1986] “settings”; Zoran’s [1984] “fields of vision”). Spatial frames are shifting scenes of action, and they may flow into each other: e.g. a “salon” frame can turn into a

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“bedroom” frame as the characters move within a house. They are hierarchically organized by relations of containment (a room is a subspace of a house), and their boundaries may be either clear-cut (the bedroom is separated from the salon by a hallway) or fuzzy (e.g. a landscape may slowly change as a character moves through it). Examples of spatial frames in “Eveline” are the living room of Eveline’s house and the Dublin harbor. Setting: the general socio-historico-geographical environment in which the action takes place. In contrast to spatial frames, this is a relatively stable category which embraces the entire text. We may for instance say that the setting of “Eveline” is early 20thcentury lower-middle-class Dublin. Story space: the space relevant to the plot, as mapped by the actions and thoughts of the characters. It consists of all the spatial frames plus all the locations mentioned by the text that are not the scene of actually occurring events. In “Eveline,” the story space comprises not only Eveline’s house and the Dublin harbor, but also South America, where Eveline dreams of escaping with her lover. Narrative (or story) world: the story space completed by the reader’s imagination on the basis of cultural knowledge and real world experience (cf. Ryan’s [1991] principle of minimal departure). While story space consists of selected places separated by voids, the narrative world is conceived by the imagination as a coherent, unified, ontologically full and materially existing geographical entity, even when it is a fictional world that possesses none of these properties (Schaeffer → Fictional vs. Factual Narration). In Eveline’s world, we assume that Dublin and South America are separated by the Atlantic, even though the ocean is not mentioned by name. In a story that refers to both real and imaginary locations, the narrative world superimposes the locations specific to the text onto the geography of the actual world. In a story that takes place in wholly imaginary landscapes (e.g. Lord of the Rings), readers assume that the narrative world extends beyond the locations named in the text and that there is continuous space between them, even though they cannot fill out this space with geographic features. Narrative universe: the world (in the spatio-temporal sense of the term) presented as actual by the text, plus all the counterfactual worlds constructed by characters as beliefs, wishes, fears, speculations, hypothetical thinking, dreams, and fantasies. The narrative universe of “Eveline” contains one world where she

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boards a ship to South America and lives happily ever after with her lover, and another where she is emotionally unable to leave Dublin. For a possible world to be part of the metaphorical concept of narrative universe, it must be textually activated (e.g. the world where Eveline becomes Queen of England does not belong to the narrative universe of the story because it is never mentioned or presupposed by the text). All of these levels are described here from a static perspective as the final products of interpretation, but they are progressively disclosed to the reader through the temporal unfolding of the text. We may call the dynamic presentation of spatial information the textualization of space (cf. Zoran’s “textual level” of space [1984]). This textualization becomes a narrativization when space is not described for its own sake, as it would be in a tourist guide, but becomes the setting of an action that develops in time. 2.2 The Spatial Extension of the Text Chatman (1978: 96–107) proposes a distinction between “story space” and “discourse space” through which he tries to transpose into the spatial domain the well justified distinction between “story time” (“the duration of the purported events of the narrative”) and “discourse time” (“the time it takes to peruse the discourse”; 62). “Discourse time” is a useful concept because language (or film) is a temporal medium. But Chatman’s notion of “discourse space” does not involve space in the same way as “discourse time” involves time, for it does not concern the space physically occupied by narrative discourse but, rather, describes the disclosure by discourse of the space in which the story takes place (3.2). The concept of “spatial extension of the text” offers a more satisfactory spatial correlate of the notion of “discourse time,” since it refers to the spatiality of the text as material object and to the dimensionality of the interface with the reader, spectator or user. Spatial extension ranges from zero spatial dimensions (oral narratives, excluding gestures and facial expressions; music) to quasi one-dimensionality (a text displayed on a single line with letters moving from right to left, as in television news lines, electronic billboards, and some digital literary texts), two-dimensionality (printed narratives, film, painting) all the way to genuine three-dimensionality (theatre, ballet, sculpture) (Ryan → Narration in Various Media). Particularly relevant to narrative is the organization of twodimensional space. Topics of interest include the integration of text into

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image and the division of time into distinct frames in comics and cartoons (McCloud 1993); the integration of image into text in illustrated books; and the “hypermediated displays” (i.e. distribution of information into separate windows) of newspapers, avant-garde fiction, Web pages, and digital narratives, especially computer games (Bolter & Grusin 1999). In pictorial narratives, the study of spatial organization distinguishes paintings that capture a single moment, leaving it to the spectator to reconstruct the temporal sequence that makes it part of a story (cf. Lessing’s notion of “pregnant moment”), from images that distribute narrative content into multiple scenes separated from each other by framing devices, such as architectural features (Steiner [1988] 2004). 2.3 The Space that Serves as Context and Container for the Text Narratives are not only inscribed on spatial objects, they are also situated within real-world space, and their relations to their environment go far beyond mimetic representation. When a nonfictional story is told where it happened, gestures and deictic elements may be used to point to the actual location of events. By telling us how certain striking landscape features came into being or what happened on certain sites, narratives of myth, legend and oral history build a “spirit” of place, what the Romans called genius loci. In aboriginal Australia, stories, known as song lines, marked salient landscape features and helped people remember routes through what may look to outsiders as a monotonous desert. Another form of spatial situatedness for narrative are museum commentaries transmitted though earphones: each part of the text relates to a certain object, and users must coordinate playing the tape with their own progression through the space of the exhibit. With historical landscapes, memorial areas or heritage sites, the spatial situation of the narrative corresponds to the real-world location of the commemorated events, and the design of the visitor’s tour must take into consideration the constraints of historical reality (Azaryahu & Foote 2008). More recently, GPS and wireless technology have made it possible to create stories on mobile phones, attach them to particular geographic locations, upload them on the Internet, and make them accessible only to people who happen to be in the right place (Ryan 2003a). Whereas ordinary print narratives are nomadic texts that can be taken anywhere because they describe absent objects, the new digital technologies reconnect stories with physical space by creating texts that must be read in the presence of their referent.

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As Page (2011) and Herman (2009) have shown, when narrators and their audience are situated on location, narrators can use narrative techniques that are not available in distant storytelling, such as gestures and deictic expressions. Pointing at certain object or areas in space can for instance take the place of extended descriptions, or allow audiences to better imagine character movements. 2.4 The Spatial Form of the Text The term “spatial form” was introduced by the literary critic Frank ([1945] 1991) to describe a type of narrative organization characteristic of modernism that deemphasizes temporality and causality through compositional devices such as fragmentation, montage of disparate elements, and juxtaposition of parallel plot lines. The notion of spatial form can be extended to any kind of design formed by networks of semantic, phonetic or more broadly thematic relations between nonadjacent textual units. When the notion of space refers to a formal pattern, it is taken in a metaphorical sense, since it is not a system of dimensions that determines physical position, but a network of analogical or oppositional relations perceived by the mind. It is the synchronic perspective necessitated for the perception of these designs and the tendency to associate the synchronic with the spatial that categorizes them as spatial phenomena. In digital texts, the notion of spatial design rests upon the hyperlink, a machine-language command that instructs the computer to display a certain fragment of text in response to a certain user action: clicking on specially marked buttons. Rather than forming a synchronically perceived pattern, digital links are navigational tools that control the temporal unfolding of the text. Yet hypertext narratives have been widely described as spatial (Bolter 1991) because the multiple connections between textual units prevent a linear progression through the text and thus disturb the chronological presentation of the story.

3 History of Approaches to Narrative Space 3.1 Spatial Imagery The study of spatial imagery was pioneered by Bachelard’s Poetics of Space ([1957] 1994). Despite its title, this work is not a systematic study of how literature represents space, but a highly personal meditation on certain images that “resonate” in the imagination of the author,

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conjuring a quasi-mystical sense of connectedness to the environment and of the presence of things. In recent years, the study of spatial imagery has become increasingly focused on the basic spatial schemata that underlie language and cognition (Emmott & Alexander → Schemata). As early as 1970, Lotman argued that “the language of spatial relations” is a “basic means for comprehending reality” ([1970] 1977: 218). He showed that in literary texts, especially poetry, spatial oppositions such as high and low, right-left, near-far or open-closed are invested with non-spatial meaning, such as valuable-non-valuable, good-bad, accessible-inaccessible, or mortal-immortal. While Lotman concentrates on verbal art, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Turner (1996) focus their attention on spatial metaphors frozen into ordinary language. True to phenomenologist doctrine, these authors believe that the most fundamental human experience consists of apprehending oneself as a body located in space. The embodied nature of mind is reflected in language by families of metaphors that concretize abstract concepts in terms of bodies moving through or situated in space. Words like up and down, front and back, high and low, organize space using the body as point of reference. Due to the erect position of the body, up and down are the most prolific sources of metaphors: e.g. happy is up, sad is down; more is up, less is down; etc. Front and back are mainly used as metaphors of time: in our culture, the future is ahead and the past is behind. Other spatial schemata that provide important sources of metaphors are the conduit, the journey, the path, and the container (space as a whole can be seen as a container). Though these approaches are not specifically narratological, they can be applied to narrative texts as well as to poetry or to language in general. A case in point is Dannenberg’s (2008) study of the spatial schemata of the portal and the container in narrative scenes that involve the recognition of identity. On a meta-narrative level, the blending of two common metaphors, “life is a story” and “life is a journey,” produces a widespread spatial conceptualization of narrative as a journey (Mikkonen 2007). 3.2 The Textualization of Space The various techniques of space presentation (Niederhoff → Perspective – Point of View) give flesh and shape to the visualizations that immerse the reader in the narrative world. Though description is often regarded by text typologists as the antithesis of narration, it is also the major discourse strategy for the disclosure of spatial information. In description, the report of the narrative action is temporarily suspended to afford the reader a more or less detailed glimpse at the current spatial

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frame. This interruption can, however, be minimized by more dynamic ways of constructing narrative space such as object or character movements (“he left his house, and turned right toward the harbor”); characters’ perceptions (“from the balcony, a tree blocked her view”); narrativized descriptions (e.g. revealing the floor plan of a house by describing the building process); and implications from reports of events (“the bullet missed its target, crossed the town square and broke a window of the church”). Zubin and Hewitt’s (1995) notion of deictic shift explains how narratives transport the reader’s imagination from the “here and now” of the illocutionary act—the normal reference of deictic expression—to the place and time of the narrated scene. Through effects of zooming in and out, narrative texts may vary the distance between the observer’s spatial situation and the narrated events, and through shifts in focus, they can move objects of description from the foreground to the background or vice versa (Herman 2002: 274–277). Perspective itself, as Uspenskij ([1970] 1973: 57–65) observes, is a particular positioning of the narrator within the story space; this positioning may coincide with the location of a specific character whose movements are followed by the narrator, or it may move across a certain area that contains several characters as the focus of the discourse alternates between different individuals. In film (Kuhn & Schmidt → Narration in Film), the presentation of space encounters the problem of giving the spectator a sense of what lies beyond what is framed by the current screen, and of how the individual frames are interconnected. This can be done through techniques such as panning and zooming, mounting a camera on a moving support, providing a shot establishing a general location before zooming in, or showing the same location in a shot-reverse shot sequence from the perspective of different characters. On the macro-level, spatial information can be organized according to two basic strategies: the map and the tour (Linde & Labov 1975), also known as the survey and the route. In the map strategy, space is represented panoramically from a perspective ranging from the disembodied god’s eye point of view of pure vertical projection to the panoramic view of an observer situated on an elevated point. In this mode of presentation, space is divided into segments and the text covers them in systematic fashion, e.g. left to right, north to south, front to back. The tour strategy, by contrast, represents space dynamically from a mobile point of view. Thus an apartment will for instance be described room by room, following the itinerary of somebody who is showing the apartment. In contrast to the pure vision of the map view, the tour simulates the embodied experience of a traveler. Of the two strategies, the

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tour is the more common in narrative fiction, although some postmodern texts have experimented with the map view: e.g. Georges Perec’s La Vie mode d’emploi describes the parallel lives of the inhabitants of an apartment building by jumping across the building as if the narrator were a knight on a chessboard—a strategy that presupposes a map-like vertical projection—rather than creating a natural walkthrough. As readers or spectators progress through the narrative text, they gather spatial information into a cognitive map or mental model of narrative space (Ryan 2003b). Through a feed-back loop effect, these mental models, which are built to a large extent on the basis of the movements of characters, enable readers to visualize these movements within a containing space. Mental maps, in other words, are both dynamically constructed in the course of reading and consulted by the reader to orient himself in the narrative world. The various landmarks shown or mentioned in the story are made into a coherent world through an awareness of the relations that situate them with respect to each other. To understand events, the reader may for instance need to know that the hero’s house is located on the town square and close to the harbor. But media that temporalize the release of information, such as language and film, do not facilitate the mental construction of spatial relations because, unlike paintings or the stage setting of drama, they display objects successively rather than simultaneously. A mental model of narrative space is a construct held in long-term memory, but it is built from images of individual spatial frames that replace each other in short-term memory. This explains why readers are not always able to situate individual frames within the narrative world. But a mental map does not have to be nearly as consistent as a graphic map in its representation of spatial relations. While some locations need to be precisely situated with respect to each other because they are the stage of events that involve space in a strategic way, others may occupy free-floating positions in the reader’s mind. In many cases, readers will be able to understand stories with only a rudimentary representation of their global geography because, as Schneider (2001) observes, space in narrative usually serves as a background for characters and their actions, and not as a focus of interest. When topography is of prime importance for the logic of the plot, as it may be in detective fiction, the limitations of language as a medium of spatial representation can be remediated by a graphic map of the narrative world. Another function of graphic maps, particularly prominent in children’s narratives, travel stories and fantastic literature, is to spare the reader the effort of building a cognitive map, thereby facilitating the mental visualizations that produce immersion.

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3.3 The Thematization of Space An important aspect of the cognitive mapping of narrative texts is the attribution of symbolic meaning to the various regions and landmarks of the narrative world. This meaning should not be considered a metaphorization of the concept of space, since it is attached to specific areas of the narrative world, contrary to spatial metaphors, which suppress connections to particular territories. In the cosmology of archaic societies, space is ontologically divided into a profane world, the realm of everyday life, and a sacred world, inhabited by supernatural beings, with holy sites functioning as portals between the two. The narrative response to these cosmologies and topologies is a symbolic geography diversified into regions where different events and experiences take place—where life, in other words, is governed by different physical, psychological, social or cultural rules. In fairy tales or computer games, for instance, the symbolic map of the narrative world may associate the castle with power, mountain tops with confrontations between the forces of good and evil, open areas with danger, closed areas with security, etc. This symbolic organization of space is not limited to fantastic texts: narrative worlds can be structured by oppositions between colonizing countries and colonized regions; between town and country (Tolstoj’s Anna Karenina); between life in the capital and life in the province (Balzac’s Comédie Humaine); between home and away from home (The Odyssey); between the knowable and the unknowable (the town vs. the castle in Kafkas’ Das Schloss); or between landscapes that speak differently to the imagination (Swann’s way vs. Guermantes’s way in Proust’s À La Recherche du temps perdu). According to Lotman, narrative is born when a character crosses the boundary between these symbolically charged spaces: “A plot can always be reduced to a basic episode—the crossing of the basic topological border in the plot’s spatial structure” ([1970] 1977: 238). Architecturally as well as plot-functionally, narrative space can be described in terms of the partitions, both natural and cultural, that organize it into thematically relevant subspaces: walls, hallways, political boundaries, rivers and mountains, as well as in terms of the openings and passageways that allow these subspaces to communicate: doors, windows, bridges, highways, tunnels and passes. Besides horizontal partitions, narrative can also present vertical ones, corresponding to what Pavel (1986) calls “salient ontologies”: these ontologies can oppose the world of everyday life to a world of magic, dreams to reality, images to existents or, in narratives with embedded stories, the different levels of fictionality. Whereas horizontal partitions divide the geogra-

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phy of the narrative world, vertical partitions create ontological layers within the narrative universe. The lived experience of space offers a particularly rich source of thematization. Some stories present space as closed and confining (prison narratives; Anne Frank’s diary), others as open and liberating (narratives of exploration; many travel narratives), and still others as open and alienating (stories of wandering aimlessly in a hostile environment). Confined space occasionally turns into a field of endless discoveries, as does Robinson Crusoe’s island. Through its immensity, space may be perceived as separating (narratives of exile; Odyssey), or its existence may be denied by technology (telecommunications; travel through teletransportation). Narrative may also focus on place, a concept commonly opposed to space by geographers, by immersing the reader in a particular landscape or cityscape. And finally, narratives may highlight the importance of our sense of embodiment for the experience of space by featuring a protagonist whose body grows or shrinks out of human proportions. Novels like Gulliver’s Travels or Alice in Wonderland de-automatize our relation to space by showing how movement, navigation, the handling of objects and interpersonal relations are affected by a change of scale. The most radical thematizations of space are those that involve alternative or logically inconsistent worlds. While the mind can theoretically conceive spaces of any number of dimensions (string theory postulates 9 or 10, depending on the version), the “imagining imagination” can only picture objects within a space of three dimensions or less. An example of experimentation with the dimensionality of space is Edwin Abbott’s 1884 novella Flatland, a narrative that depicts everyday life and cognition issues within a world of two dimensions: how, for instance, do the members of this world distinguish each other, since the recognition of flat shapes normally involves an elevated point of view that presupposes a third dimension? The narrator then migrates to a one-dimensional world, and his puzzlement mirrors the reader’s experience of two-dimensional reality. He is finally transported into a threedimensional world and describes in amazement an experience that is taken for granted by the members of this world (as well as by the reader); but when he asks to visit a four-dimensional world, the threedimensional creatures tell him that no such thing exists. One way for a text to circumvent the limitations of the imagination is to project a cosmology with multiple parallel worlds. This cosmology, inspired by the “many-worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics and explored by many science-fiction texts, does not strain our faculties of mental visualization because every one of the parallel realities is itself a standard

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three-dimensional space. By allowing the existence of multiple counterparts of the same individual and by staging transworld travel that allow these counterparts to meet, the many-worlds cosmology is a goldmine of intriguing narrative situations (Ryan 2006). Logically impossible story spaces are the narrative equivalent of M.C. Escher’s pictorial representations of worlds that violate the laws of perspective. The most common form of logical impossibility in literature is metalepsis, the transgression of ontological boundaries through which imaginary creatures of pen and paper can penetrate into the fictionally “real” world of their creator, or vice-versa (Pier → Metalepsis). Metalepsis can lead to a spatial effect described by Hofstadter (1979: passim) as a strange loop: rising higher and higher through the levels of a hierarchical system, only to find oneself right where one began. But a narrative space cannot be wholly inconsistent, for fear of preventing any kind of mental representation—for fear, in other words, of losing its spatial quality. Logical contradiction is normally limited to some areas of the narrative world, piercing the fabric of space like the holes in a Swiss cheese. In Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, for instance, a certain house is bigger on the inside than on the outside, and the inside is the gateway to a seemingly infinite alternative space where horrific events occur; even so, readers can still draw on their normal experience of space in some regions of the narrative world, despite its topological heterogeneity.

4 Recent Trends Of all the types of space defined in section 2, the one that has recently inspired the greatest creative and theoretical activity is 2.3: the realworld space that serves as context and referent to narrative texts. One form of spatial situatedness for narrative are museum commentaries transmitted though earphones: each part of the text relates to a certain object, and users must coordinate the playing of the tape with their own progression through the space of the exhibit. With historical landscapes, memorial areas or heritage sites, the spatial situation of the narrative corresponds to the real-world location of the commemorated events, and the design of the visitor’s tour must take into consideration the constraints of historical reality (Azaryahu & Foote 2008). These socalled “landscape narratives” can be relatively punctual, when the events took place in a restricted area or spread out in space, when the events took place over large areas or periods of time; they can be either

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thematically arranged, leaving the visitor a choice of itinerary, or they can guide her along a chronologically arranged storyline. Whereas ordinary print narratives are nomadic texts that can be taken anywhere because they describe absent objects, the new digital technologies reconnect stories with physical space by creating texts that must be read in the presence of their referent (Ryan 2003b). For instance, the Canadian project [murmur] consist of oral stories told by citizens of Toronto and other cities about urban features. The locations of stories in the actual city are marked by visible signs that display phone numbers where the stories can be accessed. Equipped with a paper map that shows these locations, participants walk through the city in search of the landmarks to which stories are connected. The purpose of this project, which exemplifies a genre known as “locative narrative” (Ruston 2010) is to capture the genius loci of a city by giving participants an appreciation of its rich narrative legacy. Just as legends from the past and tales about the ancestors create a sense of place, the stories told by citizens about seemingly ordinary buildings and neighborhoods make the everyday captivating and give a soul to the city. A type of project greatly facilitated by digital technology is the creation of large archives that map literary texts on real-world geography on the basis of the actual place names found in the narratives. An early, print form of this kind of project was the Atlas of the European Novel edited by Franco Moretti (1998). More recently, an Atlas of European Literature that maps hundreds of texts, using advanced cartographic methods, and associated with interactive tools, has been developed by the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation, ETH Zuric in collaboration with the Georg August University in Göttingen and the Karl University in Prague. As Barabara Piatti (2009) argues, the mapping is not an end in itself but a research tool that should help the investigation of many new questions: for instance, how do landscapes imprint themselves in the human imagination, what areas are heavily populated with literary texts and which ones are relatively empty, or how far-ranging is the network of place-names mentioned in the stories inspired by a certain area. (A comparative study shows that stories whose main action is located in Prague cast a much wider network than North Friesland stories.) Such databases—which could include folklore and narratives in visual media as well as literature—will be essential to the development of a type of investigation that the French literary scholar Bertrand Westphal (2011) calls geocriticism.

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5 Topics for Further Investigation Because narratologists have long privileged time over space, narrative space remains a relatively unexplored territory. The most promising areas of investigation appear at the present time to be: (a) the anchoring of stories in real-world space, as described in section 2.3; (b) the design of “spatial architectures” (Jenkins 2004) for computer games, allowing players to participate actively in a story while exploring a fictional world more or less freely; (c) comparative studies of the mediumspecific techniques that enable people to construct mental images of narrative space; (d) empirical studies of the importance of mental visualizations and cognitive mapping for the understanding of plot and the experience of immersion; (e) studies of the historical and cultural variability of the semiotic oppositions (such as “high-low,” “inside-outside,” “closed-open”) that determine the topology of narrative worlds.

6 Bibliography 6.1 Works Cited Azaryahu, Maoz & Kenneth E. Foote (2008). “Historical Space as Narrative Medium: On the Configuration of Spatial Narratives of Time and Historical Sites.” GeoJournal 73, 179–194. Bachelard, Gaston ([1957] 1994). The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places. Boston: Beacon P. Baxtin, Mixail (Bakhtin, Mikhail) ([1938] 1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: U of Texas P. Bolter, Jay David (1991). Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. – & Richard Grusin (1999). Remediations: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT P. Buchholz, Sabine & Manfred Jahn (2005). “Space.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 551–554. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Dannenberg, Hilary (2008). Convergent and Divergent Lives: Plotting Coincidence and Counterfactuality in Narrative Fiction. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. DiSalle, Robert ([1996] 1999). “Space.” R. Audi (ed.). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 866–867. Fauconnier, Gilles (1985). Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language. Cambridge: MIT P. – (1997). Mapping in Thought and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge.

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Frank, Joseph ([1945] 1991). “Spatial Form in Modern Literature.” J. Frank. The Idea of Spatial Form. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP. Friedman, Susan Stanford (1993). “Spatialization: A Strategy for Reading Narrative.” Narrative 1, 12–23. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Herman, David (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. – (2005). “Storyworld.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 569–570. – (2009). Basic Elements of Narrative. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Hofstadter, Douglas (1979). Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Vintage Books. Jenkins, Henry (2004). “Game Design as Narrative Architecture.” N. Wardrip-Fruin et al. (eds.). First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge: MIT P, 118–130. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Linde, Charlotte & William Labov (1975). “Spatial Networks as a Site for the Study of Language and Thought.” Language 51, 924–939. Lotman, Jurij M. ([1970] 1977). The Structure of the Artistic Text. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. McCloud, Scott (1993). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Perennials. Mikkonen, Kai (2007). “The ‘Narrative is Travel’ Metaphor: Between Spatial Sequence and Open Consequence.” Narrative 15, 286–305. Moretti, Franco (1998). Atlas of the European Novel, 1800–1900. London: Verso. Page, Ruth (2011). Stories and Social Media: Identities and Interaction. London: Routledge. Pavel, Thomas (1986). Fictional Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Piatti, Barbara (2009). "Mapping Literature: Toward a Geography of Fiction." ftp://cartography.ch/pub/pub_pdf/2009_Piatti_Geography_of_Fiction.pdf Ronen, Ruth (1986). “Space in Fiction.” Poetics Today 7, 421–438. Ruston, Scott (2010). "Storyworlds on the Move: Mobile Media and Their Implications for Narrative." Storyworlds 2.1, 101–119. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: U of Indiana P. – (2003a). “Cyberspace, Cybertexts, Cybermaps.” Dichtung Digital . – (2003b). “Cognitive Maps and the Construction of Narrative Space.” D. Herman (ed.). Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences. Stanford: CLSI, 214–242. – (2006). “From Parallel Universes to Possible Worlds: Ontological Pluralism in Physics, Narratology and Narrative.” Poetics Today 27, 633–674. Schneider, Ralph (2001). “Towards a Cognitive Theory of Literary Character: The Dynamics of Mental-Model Construction.” Style 35, 607–640.

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Steiner, Wendy ([1988] 2004). “Pictorial Narrativity.” M.-L. Ryan (ed.). Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 145– 177. Turner, Mark (1996). The Literary Mind. New York: Oxford UP. Uspenskij, Boris (Uspensky) ([1970] 1973). A Poetics of Composition. Berkeley: U of California P. Westphal, Bertrand (2011). Geocriticism. Real and Fictional Spaces. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Werth, Paul (1999). Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Longman. Zoran, Gabriel (1984). “Towards a Theory of Space in Fiction.” Poetics Today 5, 309– 335. Zubin, David A. & Lynne E. Hewitt (1995). “The Deictic Center: A Theory of Deixis in Narrative.” J. Duchan et al. (eds.). Deixis in Narrative: A Cognitive Science Perspective. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 129–155.

6.2 Further Reading Bridgeman, Teresa (2007). “Time and Space.” D. Herman (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 52–65. Dennerlein, Katrin (2009). Narratologie des Raumes. Berlin: de Gruyter. Esrock, Ellen (1994). The Reader’s Eye: Visual Imaging and Reader Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Grishakova, Marina (2006). The Models of Space, Time and Vision in V. Nabokov’s Fiction: Narrative Strategies and Cultural Frames. Tartu: Tartu UP. Hamon, Philippe (1993). Du descriptif. Paris: Hachette. Herman, David (2001). “Spatial Reference in Narrative Domains.” Text 21, 515–541. Mosher, Harold F. (1991). “Towards a Poetics of Descriptized Narration.” Poetics Today 12, 425–445. Nünning, Ansgar (2007). “Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction.” W. Wolf & W. Bernhart (eds.). Description in Literature and Other Media. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 91–128. Ronen, Ruth (1997). “Description, Narrative, and Representation.” Narrative 5, 274– 286. Zwaan, Rolf A. (1993). Aspects of Literary Comprehension. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Speech Representation Brian McHale

1 Definition Verbal narrative, it has long been assumed, is especially qualified to represent speech events because in this case, unlike any other, the object and the medium of representation are identical―language. The speech of characters can be represented directly, through quotation: “She said, ‘No, no, I can’t just now, but tomorrow I will.’” Or it can be paraphrased by a narrator and represented indirectly: “She said that she couldn’t just then, but that the next day she would.” There is also the option to narrate speech acts in an intermediate mode, called free indirect discourse: “No, no, she couldn’t just now, but tomorrow she would.” Consciousness, at least that part of it that resembles unspoken interior speech, can be represented using the same three forms: directly, as quoted interior monologue; indirectly, as thought report, also called psycho-narration (cf. Cohn 1978); or using free indirect discourse. It has been clear for some time, however, that the three discrete forms fall far short of exhausting the range of speech representation in narrative, much less the representation of consciousness, so that analysts have become increasingly willing to consider more diffuse and generalized effects of voice (e.g., Baxtin [1934/35] 1981) and fictional mind (e.g. Palmer 2004).

2 Explication Speech representation in verbal narrative can be conceived in terms of a relationship between two utterances, a framing utterance and an inset (framed) utterance (Sternberg 1982), or alternatively in terms of interference or interaction between two texts, the narrator’s text and the character’s text. (For further details on the Textinterferenz approach advocated by Schmid and others, see section 3.3 below.) In direct discourse (DD), whether it represents a speech event or an unspoken thought, the transition from frame to inset is clearly visible, typically

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signaled typographically and/or by an introductory verb of speech or thought: “She said,” “She thought.” DD is conventionally understood to replicate exactly what the quoted character is supposed to have said or thought, preserving (for instance) expressive elements of the original utterance: “No, no.” Of course, the “originality” of direct quotation in fiction is entirely illusory (Fludernik 1993: 409–414); moreover, so is the independence of the quoted inset, which is always controlled by the framing context. DD shorn of its introductory clause, which some call free direct discourse (FDD), is the basis of interior monologues, and a staple of modernist novels. In indirect discourse (ID), the narrator is much more evidently in control. Here the inset is grammatically subordinated to the framing utterance, with person, tense, and deixis adjusted to conform to those of the frame. According to some authorities (e.g. Banfield 1982), expressive and dialectal or idiolectal features are excluded from ID, but in fact such features are well-attested in actual narrative texts (Vološinov [1929] 1973: 131–132; McHale 1978, 1983). Types and degrees of paraphrase and summary vary widely in ID, from instances that appear quite faithful to the original utterance (though of course, no such “original” exists), through instances that preserve only its content or gist to those that minimally acknowledge that a speech event took place (Vološinov [1929] 1973: 129–133; Leech & Short 1981: 318–351). In representing consciousness, ID shades off into psycho-narration (Cohn 1978: 21–57) where the narrator analyzes the content of the character’s mind, potentially including its habitual and/or subliminal (unconscious) aspects. Free indirect discourse (FID) is the most problematic and, no doubt for that very reason, still the most widely discussed form for representing speech, thought, and perception. (For further details on the free indirect representation of perception, see section 3.4 below.) Here frame and inset become much harder to distinguish. FID handles person and tense as ID would (though in French it is identifiable by a distinctive past-tense form, the imparfait, in narrative contexts where the passé simple would be expected). On the other hand, it treats deixis as DD would, reflecting the character’s rather than the narrator’s position: “she couldn’t just now, but tomorrow she would.” FID also tolerates many of the expressive elements characteristic of direct quotation―how many, and which ones, remains controversial. In terms of the Textinterferenz model, person and tense evoke the narrator's text, while deictic, expressive and other features evoke the character’s text. To further complicate matters, many instances of FID entirely lack the form’s defining features so that, taken out of context, they appear indis-

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tinguishable from non-quoting narrative sentences. Manifestly, it is contextual cues more than formal features that determine, in many cases, whether or not a sentence will be interpreted as a free indirect representation of speech, thought or perception (McHale 1978; Ehrlich 1990). In view of the range and diversity of each of these forms, especially ID and FID, and the evidence of intermediate or ambiguous instances, some analysts have concluded that a scale of possibilities would be more adequate than the three-category model (McHale 1978; Leech & Short 1981). Such scalar approaches, however, are hardly an improvement on the three-category model when it comes to capturing those diffuse and transient effects of “voice” that are such a regular experience of reading novels. Especially pointed is the dissatisfaction of some analysts with the mapping of categories deriving from speech representation onto the phenomena of represented consciousness. Consciousness in fiction, it has been compellingly argued (e.g. Palmer 2004), is much more ubiquitous and variegated than speech and is not adequately captured by speech-based models of interior discourse. (For further discussion, see section 3.4 below.)

3 History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 Genealogy The foundation for the categorical approach to speech representation, and the source for many of the conceptual difficulties that continue to beset it, can be traced back to the ancient world. Plato in Republic III distinguishes between situations in which the poet speaks in his own voice (Plato calls this “pure narration,” haple diegesis) and those in which the poet mimics a character’s voice. Classical rhetoric recognized two categories of speech representation proper, oratio recta and oratio obliqua, direct and indirect discourse; however, FID, though already present in ancient Greek and Latin literature and in biblical narrative, would not be identified until the last decades of the 19th century. Pervasive in the 19th-century novel, from Austen to Flaubert, Zola, James and beyond (Pascal 1977), FID did not attain the threshold of visibility until, arguably, the 1857 trial of Madame Bovary, which hinged on whether certain free indirect expressions of indecent and anti-social sentiments were attributable to the author (LaCapra 1982; Toolan 2006). In any case, French and German Romance philologists identified this “new” form around the turn of the nineteenth century,

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calling it erlebte Rede, verschleierte Rede, or style indirect libre (Tobler 1887; Kalepky 1899, 1913; Bally 1912; Lorck 1914; Lerch 1914; Lips 1926). In English, FID has also been called “narrated monologue” (Cohn) and “represented speech and thought” (Banfield); Israeli scholars call it “combined discourse.” A prescient critique of grammar-based descriptions of FID was mounted as early as 1929 by Vološinov, Baxtin’s collaborator and/or alter ego. However, Vološinov’s contribution dropped out of sight until the “rediscovery” of the Baxtin circle in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and in the meantime the forms of speech representation continued to be treated less as narratological than as grammatical phenomena, whether according to traditional models of grammar (e.g. Ullmann 1957) or in terms of the transformational- generative paradigm (Banfield 1982). Over the course of the 20th century, scholars of FID gradually expanded the range of what had initially been perceived as a rather local and specialized phenomenon limited to third-person (heterodiegetic) literary narratives. It was identified in first-person, second-person, and present-tense contexts as well as in non-literary prose and oral narrative (Todemann 1930; Cohn 1969; Fludernik 1993: 82–104), and its historical roots were pushed back to the Middle Ages and earlier. Apart from the Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages, it has been attested in Hungarian, Finnish, Japanese, and Chinese, among others (Steinberg 1971; Coulmas ed. 1986; Hagenaar 1992; Tammi & Tommola eds. 2006). Above all, it has come to be recognized not only as a tool for regulating distance from a character―from empathetic identification at one extreme to ironic repudiation at the other―but also as one of the primary vehicles of what modernist poetics taught us to call the stream of consciousness. Stream of consciousness is best thought of not as a form but as a particular content of consciousness, characterized by free association, the illusion of spontaneity, and constant micro-shifts among perception, introspection, anticipation, speculation, and memory (Humphrey 1954; Friedman 1955; Bickerton 1967). It can be realized formally by firstperson “autonomous” interior monologue (as in Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Ulysses, or the first three sections of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury), or by FID (as in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse), or indeed by a combination of means. Modernist innovations in stream of consciousness technique seemed to monopolize the agenda of scholarly investigation of the representation of consciousness for much of the 20th century, at least until Cohn (1978) reasserted the importance and ubiquity of less “glamorous” techniques, such as psycho-narration.

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Since then, cognitive narratologists in particular have taken up the challenge of investigating the presence of consciousness in fiction outside the well-worn channels of the stream of consciousness (e.g. Fludernik 1993, 1996; Palmer 2004; Zunshine 2006). 3.2 Mimesis Progress in understanding speech and consciousness representation has been hampered by fundamental confusion about the concept of mimesis. Two senses of mimesis are regularly conflated: on the one hand, mimesis in the sense, derived ultimately from Plato, of the author’s speaking in a character’s voice rather than his own; on the other hand, mimesis in the sense of faithful reproduction of what we take to be reality. An unexamined assumption throughout much of the discussion of speech representation has been that mimesis in the sense of speaking for the character should correlate with mimesis in the sense of faithfulness of reproduction―that the more direct the representation was, the more realistic or life-like it would be (Sternberg 1982). Thus, DD should be the most faithful to reality, and ID the least, with FID somewhere in between. Nothing could be further from the truth; in fact, speech representation is a classic illustration of what Sternberg (1982) decries as the fallacy of “package deals” in poetics whereby forms and functions are bundled together in one-to-one relationships. Actually, the forms of speech representation stand in a many-to-many relationship to their reproductive functions: some instances of DD are highly imitative of “real” speech, while others are deliberately stylized and un-mimetic; some instances of ID or FID are more imitative of “real” speech than DD often is, while other instances are less so; etc. (Fludernik 1993: 312–315). Attempts to elaborate the three-category repertoire of speech representation into a continuous scale from maximally to minimally mimetic, in the faithfulness-of-reproduction sense (e.g. McHale 1978; cf. Genette [1972] 1980), stumble at just this point. They invariably place DD (or FDD) at the most-mimetic pole and ID at the opposite pole. But no matter how many gradations such scales admit in between, they obscure the fact that degree of faithfulness does not correspond to formal categories: one scale cuts across the other. Moreover, the very notion of “faithfulness to reality” here is highly suspect. Another of the unexamined assumptions of speech representation scholarship is that verbal narrative is better able to represent speech than anything else because narratives share one and the same medium, namely language (e.g. Genette [1972] 1980: 169–174). But this, too, is fallacious, as a glance at a transcription of spontaneous conversation

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would immediately confirm. At one level of analysis, conversation in novels may indeed reflect the “rules” of spontaneous real-world conversation (e.g. Toolan 1987; Thomas 2002; Herman 2002: 171–193). But at a finer-grained level, speech in the novel appears utterly unlike real-world speech. Novelistic speech is always highly schematized and stylized, depending for its effects of verisimilitude on very limited selections of speech-features, many of them derived not from actual speakers’ behavior but from literary conventions, linguistic stereotypes, and folk-linguistic attitudes. This is especially evident in representations of foreign accents, regional dialects, and specialized professional registers (Page 1973). Perhaps the most powerful factor in producing effects of “realistic” speech is textual context, which induces the reader to accept thin sprinklings of conventional or possibly arbitrary features as faithful representations of real-world speech behavior (McHale 1994). In short, the mimesis of speech in fiction is a “linguistic hallucination” (Fludernik 1993: 453); it depends on our willingness to play a “mimetic language-game” (Ron 1981). If speech in fiction is not a faithful imitation but an effect produced by a combination of convention, selection, and contextualization, then this must also be the case for consciousness in fiction, only more so, for consciousness is at best only partly linguistic. Nevertheless, the operating assumption of much recent cognitivist work on consciousness in narrative is that fictional minds are modeled on real-world mental processes (e.g. Palmer 2004: 11). But what if consciousness in fiction is just as conventional, schematic, selective, and context-dependent as speech in fiction―just as much an effect, just as much a hallucination or language-game? Surely this is a hypothesis that ought to be entertained (Mäkelä 2006). 3.3 Voices If speech representation always involves a quoting frame and quoted inset, this means that it involves two agents or instances of speech―two voices. The two voices are readily distinguished in DD and in content- paraphrase types of ID, but only with difficulty in FID. In FID, the effects of voice all seem to derive from the quoted character, with the narrator’s contribution reduced to the bare grammatical minimum of tense and person. Indeed, an early controversy in the scholarship on FID hinged on the question of the narrator’s putative self-effacement and empathetic identification with the character. However, FID is just as likely to serve as a vehicle of irony, and it is in these instances that the so-called dual-voice hypothesis (Vološinov [1929]

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1973; Baxtin [1929] 1984; Pascal 1977) seems most compelling. According to the dual-voice hypothesis, in sentences of FID (and some instances of ID) the voice of the narrator is combined with that of the character (hence “combined discourse”) or superimposed on it. “It partook, she felt, helping Mr. Bankes to a specially tender piece, of eternity”: in this famous sentence from To the Lighthouse, the parenthetical clause (“she felt, helping Mr. Bankes,” etc.) introduces a plane of narratorial comment that ironizes Mrs. Ramsay’s experience of eternity. (Or does it? This is actually an interpretative crux in the novel.) Irony of this kind seems best accounted for in terms of the dual-voice hypothesis (Uspenskij 1973: 102–105). With the rediscovery of the Baxtin circle, the dual-voice analysis of FID, already anticipated by Vološinov ([1929] 1973), came to be viewed in the light of wider phenomena of dialogue in the novel. According to Baxtin and his school, the text of the novel is shot through with more or less veiled dialogues between voices that “speak for” social roles, ideologies, attitudes, etc. The forms of dialogue range from outright parody and stylization to implicit rejoinders and veiled polemics (Baxtin [1929] 1984). FID is folded in among these categories, reflecting as it does (according to the dual-voice hypothesis) the internal dialogization of the sentence of speech representation itself. Related to the Baxtinian approach, but less ideologically driven, and capable of much finer-grained analyses, is Schmid’s model of Textinterferenz ([1973] 1986, 2010: 137–174; see also Doležel 1973; de Haard 2006). The Textinterferenz approach treats speech representation as a matter of interference or interaction between two texts, the narrator’s text and the character’s text. Textual segments display varying kinds and degrees of interaction between these two texts, depending upon how various features are distributed between the narrator’s and the character’s voices. These features include thematic and ideological (or evaluative) markers; grammatical person, tense and deixis; types of speech acts (Sprachfunktion); and features of lexical, syntactical and graphological style. In DD, all the markers point to the character’s voice. In ID, person, tense and syntax can be assigned to the narrator’s text, while thematic and ideological markers, deixis, and lexical style point to the character’s voice; the speech-act level points both directions. Finally, in FID, person and tense evoke the narrator’s text, while all the other features can be assigned to the character’s text. In the light of dialogism and Textinterferenz, speech representation comes to be reconceived as only more or less discrete instances of the pervasive heteroglossia (Tjupa → Heteroglossia) of the novel, its multiplicity of voices (Baxtin [1934/35] 1981). According to the Baxtinian

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account, samples of socially-inflected discourse―styles, registers, regional and social dialects, etc. with their associated attitudes and ideologies―are dispersed throughout the novel, appearing even where there is no frame/inset structure of quotation to “legitimize” or naturalize them. The language of a novel diversifies into various zones, including zones associated with specific characters, even in the absence of syntactical indications of quotation or paraphrase. This analysis of novelistic discourse was paralleled in the Anglophone world, albeit in a casual and pre-theoretical way, by Kenner’s (1978) jocular proposal of the “Uncle Charles Principle,” named after a typical sentence from Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist: “Uncle Charles repaired to the outhouse.” The sentence is attributable to the heterodiegetic narrator, but it is “colored” by Uncle Charles’ characteristic periphrasis, “repaired.” The Uncle Charles Principle, also called stylistic “contagion” or “infection” (Spitzer [1922] 1961; Vološinov ([1929] 1973: 133–136; Stanzel [1979] 1984; Fludernik 1993: 332–338), involves the dispersal of a character’s idiom into the narrative prose in the proximity of that character (Koževnikova 1971). At the opposite extreme from the dual-voice hypothesis and its extensions is the controversial no-narrator hypothesis advanced by Banfield (1982). According to Banfield, free indirect sentences of thought representation (though not of speech) in third-person hetereodiegetic contexts entirely lack a narrator, and so could hardly be dual-voiced. In effect, Banfield has revived the empathetic reading of FID endorsed by early commentators, but in a way calculated to scandalize anyone committed to a communications-model approach to narrative. Indeed, it might be argued that in certain FID representations of thought, those representing what Banfield calls non-reflective consciousness, there is no discernible voice at all: “It was raining, she saw” (Banfield 1982: 183–223; Fludernik 1993: 376–379). Whereas sentences of reflective consciousness express what the character is aware of as passing through her mind―what she “thought to herself”―sentences of nonreflective consciousness express what the character perceives or apprehends without being aware of perceiving or apprehending. At this point, issues of voice shade off into even more diffuse issues of fictional minds. 3.4 Minds Pervasive voice in the novel is mirrored by a parallel pervasiveness of consciousness. Investigating the presence of fictional consciousness, cognitive narratologists have become impatient with the so-called “speech-category approach,” which in effect limits consciousness in

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fiction to varieties of inner speech. Not all consciousness in fiction is inner speech, they argue―perhaps relatively little of it. As we have already seen, however, even approaches to the representation of consciousness using speech categories eventually run up against phenomena that exceed those categories in various ways. Speech categories “bleed” at their edges, trailing off into less category-bound forms of fictional mind. At one edge, for instance, ID bleeds into psychonarration, whereby the narrator takes charge of analyzing the character’s mind, including subconscious levels that might not be accessible to the character herself, or habitual dispositions that might not manifest themselves in inner speech. At the other edge, FID bleeds into nonreflective consciousness. Indeed, almost from the earliest days of scholarship on FID, it was recognized that the speech category of FID was intimately related to a form of so-called “substitutionary perception” (Fehr 1938; see also Bühler 1937), sometimes called “represented perception” (Brinton 1980) or even “free indirect perception” (Palmer 2004): “She opened the door and looked out. It was raining harder. The cat would be around to the right. Perhaps she could go along under the eaves.” The third and fourth of these sentences are unmistakably FID (as indicated by the past-tense modals would and could, and the adverbial of doubt, perhaps), but the second is substitutionary perception. Reorienting the study of represented consciousness away from speech categories opens up new areas of inquiry. For instance, characters can be shown to read each other’s minds―not in any sciencefiction sense, but in the sense that they develop working hypotheses about what others are thinking, inferring interior states from speech and external behavior, just as one does in everyday life; they do “Theory of Mind,” in other words (Zunshine 2006). Indeed, all actions of characters in a narrative fiction must be animated by mental states or acts; otherwise, we might not be disposed to call them “actions” at all. So thought ought not to be viewed as separable from action, but rather as forming together with action a “thought-action continuum” whereby actions are animated by consciousness throughout (Palmer 2004: 212– 214). The most radical statement of this reorientation of analysis away from the speech-category approach and toward “mind in action” must surely be Fludernik’s redefinition of narrativity itself as experientiality (Fludernik 1996: 20–43; compare Antin 1995). According to Fludernik’s account, narrativity is not adequately defined in terms of sequences of events or even in terms of causal connections among events, but only in terms of the experiencing of events by a human (or anthropo-

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morphic) subject. In other words, it is ultimately the presence of consciousness that determines narrative, and not anything else. This is a far cry from the carving up of blocks of prose into discrete units labeled DD, ID, FID. Nevertheless, it is not as unprecedented a development as some cognitive narratologists have claimed. For instance, the analysis of informational gaps and gap-filling, as practiced by exponents of the Tel Aviv school (Perry & Sternberg [1968] 1986; Perry 1979), is every bit as finely attuned to characters’ ventures in mind-reading and the thought-action continuum as anything to be found in the new cognitivist narratology (Palmer 2004: 182; Herman → Cognitive Narratology). But if cognitive narratology sometimes overestimates its own novelty and underrates its precursors, this does not prevent it from standing at the cutting edge of research into the representation of fictional mind at the present time.

4 Topics for Further Investigation (a) One is tempted to recommend (albeit facetiously) a moratorium on further research into FID proper until other, more diffuse and pervasive effects of mind and voice in fiction are better understood. Among other advantages, this might give us the opportunity to evaluate critically some of the bold claims of the cognitive narratologists with respect to fictional minds, and of the Baxtin school with respect to “dialogue” (Shepherd → Dialogism). Baxtin, in particular, has become a victim of his own (posthumous) success; serial (mis)appropriations of his approach by a diverse range of literary and cultural theories, coupled with uncritical endorsement of his ideological positions, has made critical evaluation of his account of dialogue virtually impossible. (b) Too little is still known about the role of models (schemata, stereotypes, folklinguistic knowledge, etc.) in the production and recognition of representations of language varieties (styles, dialects, registers, etc.) in fiction. (c) Similarly, there is still much that remains to be clarified about the operation of textual context and its interaction with models of speech and thought in producing the effect or illusion of mimesis (though with respect to context see Ehrlich 1990). (d) “Currently, there is a hole in literary theory between the analysis of consciousness, characterization, and focalization […] a good deal of fictional discourse is situated precisely within this analytical gap” (Palmer 2004: 186). Palmer perhaps underestimates the quantity and value of the work that has already gone into knitting together consciousness, characterization and focalization. Nevertheless, he is basically right: this is one of the holes

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that remain in narrative theory, and closing it should be a high priority of future research.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Antin, David (1995). “The Beggar and the King.” Pacific Coast Philology 30, 143– 154. Bally, Charles (1912). “Le style indirect libre en français moderne I et II.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 4, 549–556, 597–606. Banfield, Ann (1982). Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and representation in the language of fiction. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Baxtin, Mikhail (Bakhtin, Mikhail) ([1929] 1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. – ([1934/35] 1981). “Discourse in the Novel.” M. B. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: U of Texas P, 259–422. Bickerton, Derek (1967). “Modes of Interior Monologue: A Formal Definition.” Modern Language Quarterly 28, 229–239. Brinton, Laurel (1980). “‘Represented Perception’: A Study in Narrative Style.” Poetics 9, 363–381. Bühler, Willi (1937). Die “erlebte Rede” im englischen Roman, ihre Vorstufen und ihre Ausbildung im Werke Jane Austens. Zürich: Niehans. Cohn, Dorrit (1969). “Erlebte Rede im Ich-Roman.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 19, 305–313. – (1978). Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP. Coulmas, Florian ed. (1986). Direct and Indirect Speech. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Doležel, Lubomír (1973). Narrative Modes in Czech Literature. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Ehrlich, Susan (1990). Point of View: A Linguistic Analysis of Literary Style. London: Routledge. Fehr, Bernhard (1938). “Substitutionary Narration and Description: A Chapter in Stylistics.” English Studies 20.3, 97–107. Fludernik, Monika (1993). The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction: The Linguistic Representation of Speech and Consciousness. London: Routledge. – (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. Friedman, Melvin (1955). Stream of Consciousness: A Study in Literary Method. New Haven: Yale UP. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Haard, Eric A. de (2006). “On Narration in Voina i Mir.” Amsterdam International Electronic Journal for Cultural Narratology 3 .

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Hagenaar, Elly (1992). Stream of Consciousness and Free Indirect Discourse in Modern Chinese Literature. Leiden: Centre of Non-Western Studies. Herman, David (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Humphrey, Robert (1954). Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel. Berkeley: U of California P. Kalepky, Theodor (1899). “Zur französischen Syntax.” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 2, 491–513. – (1913). “Zum ‘style indirect libre’ (‘verschleierte Rede’).” Germanisch- Romanische Monatsschrift 5, 608–619. Kenner, Hugh (1978). Joyce’s Voices. Berkeley: U of California P. Koževnikova, Natal’ja A. (1971). “O tipax povestvovanija v sovetskoj proze.” Voprosy jazyka sovremennoj russkoj literatury. Moskva: Nauka, 97–163. LaCapra, Dominick (1982). Madame Bovary on Trial. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Leech, Geoffrey N. & Michael H. Short (1981). Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. London: Longman. Lerch, Eugen (1914). “Die stylistische Bedeutung des Imperfektums der Rede (‘style indirect libre’).” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 6, 470–489. Lips, Marguerite (1926). Le Style indirect libre. Paris: Payot. Lorck, Etienne (1914). “Passé defini, imparfait, passé indefini I, II et III.” GermanischRomanische Monatsschrift 6, 43–57, 100–113, 177–191. Mäkelä, Maria (2006). “Possible minds: Constructing―and reading―another consciousness as fiction.” P. Tammi & H. Tommola (eds.). FREE language INDIRECT translation DISCOURSE narratology. Tampere: Tampere UP, 231–260. McHale, Brian (1978). “Free Indirect Discourse: A Survey of Recent Accounts.” PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 3, 249–278. – (1983). “Unspeakable Sentences, Unnatural Acts: Linguistics and Poetics Revisited.” Poetics Today 4, 17–45. – (1994). “Child as Ready-Made: Baby-Talk and the Language of Dos Passos’s Children in U.S.A.” E. Goodenough et al. (eds.). Infant Tongues: The Voice of the Child in Literature. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 202–224. Page, Norman (1973). Speech in the English Novel. London: Longman. Palmer, Alan (2004). Fictional Minds. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Pascal, Roy (1977). The Dual Voice: Free Indirect Speech and Its Functioning in the Nineteenth- Century European Novel. Manchester: Manchester UP. Perry, Menakhem (1979). “Literary Dynamics: How the Order of a Text Creates its Meaning.” Poetics Today 1.1–2, 35–64, 311–361. – & Meir Sternberg ([1968] 1986). “The King Through Ironic Eyes: Biblical Narrative and the Literary Reading Process.” Poetics Today 7, 275–322. Ron, Moshe (1981). “Free Indirect Discourse, Mimetic Language Games and the Subject of Fiction.” Poetics Today 2.2, 17–39. Schmid, Wolf ([1973] 1986). Der Textaufbau in den Erzählungen Dostoevskijs. Amsterdam: Grüner. – (2010). Narratology. An Introduction. Berlin: de Gruyter. Spitzer, Leo ([1922] 1961). “Sprachmengung als Stilmittel und als Ausdruck der Klangphantasie.” L. Spitzer. Stilstudien II. München: Hueber, 84–124.

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Stanzel, Franz K. ([1979] 1984). A Theory of Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Steinberg, Günther (1971). Erlebte Rede: ihre Eigenart und ihre Formen in neuerer deutscher, französischer und englischer Erzählliteratur. Göppingen: Kümmerle. Sternberg, Meir (1982). “Proteus in Quotation-Land: Mimesis and the Forms of Reported Discourse.” Poetics Today 3, 107–156. Tammi, Pekka & Hannu Tommola, eds. (2006). FREE language INDIRECT translation DISCOURSE narratology: Linguistic, Translatological and Theoretical Encounters. Tampere: Tampere UP. Thomas, Bronwen (2002). “Multiparty Talk in the Novel: The Distribution of Tea and Talk in a Scene from Evelyn Waugh’s Black Mischief.” Poetics Today 23, 657– 684. Tobler, Adolf (1887). “Vermischte Beiträge zur französischen Grammatik.” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 11, 433–461. Todemann, Friedrich (1930). “Die erlebte Rede im Spanischen.” Romanische Forschungen 44, 103–184. Toolan, Michael (1987). “Analysing Conversation in Fiction: The Christmas Dinner Scene in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” Poetics Today 8, 393– 416. – (2006). “The ‘irresponsibility’ of FID.” P. Tammi & H. Mommola (eds.). FREE language INDIRECT translation DISCOURSE narratology. Tampere: Tampere UP, 261–278. Ullmann, Stephen (1957). “Reported Speech and Internal Monologue in Flaubert.” St. Ullmann. Style in the French Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 94–120. Uspenskij, Boris (Uspensky, Boris) (1973). A Poetics of Composition: The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of a Compositional Form. Berkeley: U of California P. Vološinov, Valentin (Voloshinov, Valentin) ([1929] 1973). Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. New York: Seminar P. Zunshine, Lisa (2006). Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP.

5.2 Further Reading Ginsburg, Michal Peled (1982). “Free Indirect Discourse: A Reconsideration.” Language and Style 15, 133–149. Hernadi, Paul (1972). “Appendix: Free Indirect Discourse and Related Techniques.” P. Hernadi. Beyond Genre: New Directions in Literary Classification. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 187–205. Lintvelt, Jaap ([1981] 1989). Essai de typologie narrative. Le ‘point de vue’. Theórie et analyse. Paris: Corti. Neumann, Anne Waldron (1986). “Characterization and Comment in Pride and Prejudice: Free Indirect Discourse and ‘Double-Voiced’ Verbs of Speaking, Thinking, and Feeling.” Style 20, 364–394. Patron, Sylvie (2009). Le narrateur. Introducion à la théorie narrative. Paris: Armand Colin. Rivara, René (2000). La langue du récit: Introduction à la narratologie énonciative. Paris: L’Harmattan.

Story Generator Algorithms Pablo Gervás

1 Definition The term story generator algorithms (SGAs) refers to computational procedures resulting in an artifact that can be considered a story. In the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the automated generation of stories has been a subject of research for over fifty years. An algorithm is understood as a set of instructions that, when applied to a given input, produces an output. In the present context, the desired output is a story. The underlying concept of “story” in SGAs is functional and does not imply any aesthetic notion. This is important because it sets the context for evaluation of generated stories, for which having a surface realization as a readable and appealing text is not necessarily a core issue.

2 Explication Research on storytelling systems (computational systems capable of telling a story) has experienced considerable growth over the years. More recently, the number of systems developed has increased significantly. These systems initially arose as part of the general trend in AI to build computational solutions that could achieve the kind of tasks that are easy for humans and difficult for machines. Other examples of this trend include computer vision, speech processing and natural language understanding. Of all these examples, the first two have achieved success and given rise to commercial applications. Natural language understanding and story generation still remain at the exploratory research stage. For story generation in particular, a large part of the problem is the fact that the task is not well defined in an AI / computational perspective. If an algorithm is to be devised for a given task, it should be very clear what the inputs must be and what characteristics are expected of the output. In the generation of stories, none of these are clearly defined. When humans produce stories, it is often not transparent what

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inputs they are bringing to bear on the process. Moreover, saying what makes a good story remains a question open for debate. As a consequence, existing story generation systems tend to be exploratory with regard not only to the algorithms they employ but also to the set of inputs they start from as well as the characteristics their output stories are expected to produce. From the point of view of narratology, this is important, since different views on these fundamental decisions give rise to altogether different concepts of story generation. One of the main benefits of SGA-research is to under-defined narratological concepts.

3 History of the Term / the Concept The term Story Generator Algorithms is of relatively recent coinage, first appearing in 2004 as the name of a project of the Hamburg Narratology Research Group ([]). The more abstract concept can be identified as an implicit assumption of the many storytelling systems developed since the 1950s. 3.1 Generating Systems There is currently a large number of storytelling systems in existence. For this review, systems that generate classic sequential stories have been selected. Examples of story output are given for some systems where small enough significant fragments were available (for further detail, see Gervás 2009). The first storytelling system on record is the Novel Writer system, developed by Sheldon Klein (Klein et al. 1973). Novel Writer created murder stories in a weekend party setting. This system is reputed to have generated “2100-word murder mystery stories, complete with deep structure, in less than 19 seconds.” A description of the world in which the story was to take place was provided as input, together with the characteristics of the participating characters (which included emotional links between them and their predisposition towards violence or sex). The particular murderer and victim depended on character traits specified as input (with an additional random ingredient). The motives arose as a function of the events in the course of the story. Possible motives for murder were restricted to greed, anger, jealousy or fear. The story was generated based on two different algorithms: 1) a set of rules that encodes possible changes from the current state of the world to the next; and 2) a sequence of scenes corresponding to the type of story to

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be told. The set of rules is highly constraining and allows for the construction of only one very specific type of story. Though more than one story could be built by the program, differences between them were restricted to who murders whom with what and why and who discovers them. TALESPIN (Meehan 1977) was a system which generated stories about the lives of simple woodland creatures. To create a story, a character was given a goal, and then the plan was developed to solve the goal. TALESPIN introduced character goals as triggers for action. It also introduced the possibility of having more than one problemsolving character in the story, introducing separate goal lists for each of them. Complex relations between characters were modeled (competition, dominance, familiarity, affection, trust, deceit and indebtedness). These relations acted as preconditions to some actions and as consequences of others, thus constituting a simple model of character motivation. The characters’ personalities were modeled according to degrees of kindness, vanity, honesty and intelligence. A sample TALESPIN story is given below: John Bear is given knowledge about the world and a goal to satisfy his hunger: John Bear is somewhat hungry. John Bear wants to get some berries. John Bear wants to get near the blueberries. John Bear walks from a cave entrance to the bush by going through a pass through a valley through a meadow. John Bear takes the blueberries. John Bear eats the blueberries. The blueberries are gone. John Bear is not very hungry. Dehn’s AUTHOR (1981) was a program intended to simulate the author’s mind as she makes up a story. Dehn’s assumption is that story worlds are developed by authors as a post hoc justification for events that the author has already decided will be part of the story. An author may have particular goals in mind when he sets out to write a story, but even if he does not, it is accepted that a number of metalevel goals drive or constrain the storytelling process. These are issues such as ensuring that the story is consistent, that it is plausible, that the characters are believable, that the reader’s attention is retained throughout the story, etc. These may translate at a lower level into subgoals concerning situations into which the author wants to lead particular characters, or the role that particular characters should play in the story. A story is understood as “the achievement of a complex web of author goals.” These goals contribute to structuring the story, and to guiding the construction process. In the final story, however, these goals are no longer visible.

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Lebowitz’s UNIVERSE (1983) modeled the generation of scripts for a succession of TV soap opera episodes in which a large cast of characters plays out multiple, simultaneous, overlapping stories that never end. UNIVERSE was the first storytelling system to devote special attention to the creation of characters. Complex data structures were used to represent characters, and a simple algorithm was proposed to fill these in, partly in an automatic way. But the bulk of characterization was left for the user to provide. UNIVERSE was aimed at exploring extended story generation, a continuing serial rather than a story with a beginning and an end. It was initially intended as a writer’s aid, with additional hopes to later develop it into an autonomous storyteller. UNIVERSE addressed a question of procedure by making up a story about a fictional world: whether the world should be built first with a plot added afterwards, or whether the plot should drive the construction of the world, with characters, locations and objects being created as needed. Lebowitz declared himself in favor of the first option, which is why UNIVERSE included facilities for creating characters independently of plot, in contrast to Dehn, who favored the second option. An interesting point about UNIVERSE is that, being a story with no recognizable ending, the system alternated between generating a new episode to continue the story and telling the most recent episode it had generated. MINSTREL (Turner 1993) was a computer program that told stories about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Each run of the program was based on a moral that was used as a seed to build the story, e.g.: “Deception is a weapon difficult to aim.” MINSTREL created stories about one-half to one page in length. According to its author, MINSTREL could tell about ten stories of this length and it could also create a number of shorter story scenes. MINSTREL used building units consisting of goals and plans to satisfy them. These operated at two different levels: author goals and character goals. Story construction in MINSTREL operated as a twostage process involving a planning stage and a problem-solving stage which reused knowledge from previous stories. Pérez y Pérez’s MEXICA (1999) was a computer model whose purpose was to study the creative process. It was designed to generate short stories about the early inhabitants of Mexico. During the engagement phase, new story material was progressively generated, with no constraints imposed. During the reflection phase, the generated material was revised to ensure that generic constraints are met.

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MEXICA was a pioneer in that it took into account emotional links and tensions between the characters as a means for driving and evaluating ongoing stories. Jaguar knight was an inhabitant of the Great Tenochtitlan. Princess was an inhabitant of the Great Tenochtitlan. Jaguar knight was walking when Ehecatl (god of the wind) blew and an old tree collapsed, injuring badly Jaguar knight. Princess went in search of some medical plants and cured Jaguar knight. As a result, Jaguar knight was very grateful to Princess. Jaguar knight rewarded Princess with some cacauatl (cacao beans) and quetzalli (quetzal) feathers. BRUTUS (Bringsjord & Ferrucci 1999) was a program that wrote short stories about betrayal. BRUTUS was interesting because it based its storytelling ability on a logical model of betrayal. The richness of this model and the inferences that can be drawn from it enabled it to produce very rich stories. The system was also designed to take into account a large body of knowledge about literature and grammar. BRUTUS was capable of creating a story of impressive quality, with most of the features (in terms of literary tropes, dialogue, identification with the characters, etc.) one would find in a human-authored story. However, the authors make it clear that BRUTUS is not creative at all but the result of reverse engineering a program out of a story in order to see whether it can build that particular story. FABULIST (Riedl & Young 2010) was an architecture for automated story generation and presentation. The Fabulist architecture split the narrative generation process into three tiers: fabula generation, discourse generation, and media representation. The fabula generation process used a planning approach to narrative generation. AI planners are applications that, given a description of an initial state of the world and a specific goal, identify the optimal sequence of actions to reach the goal. They rely on detailed descriptions of the preconditions and postconditions of all the possible actions. The planning approach to narrative generation is based on the assumption that a sequence of actions leading from an initial state to a goal is a good approximation of a story. In the case of FABULIST, inputs provided included a domain model describing the initial state of the story world, possible operations that can be enacted by characters and an outcome.

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3.2 Algorithm Types The systems reviewed above include various types of algorithm to generate the stories they produce. Individual systems sometimes combine more than one type of algorithm. This section reviews the types of algorithm and explains in each case how a given algorithm is applied in each storytelling system. A large number of existing storytelling systems rely on solutions based on planning. These solutions take as input an initial state of the world and a desired goal and then produce a sequence of actions that will lead from one to the other. Such solutions are applied to storytelling in different ways. Some systems use authorial goals to drive the story planning process while others simply consider character goals. The simplest versions just generate actions that may follow previous events, with no particular notion of goal. The Novel Writer system (Klein et al. 1973) relied on a micro-simulation model where the behavior of individual characters and events were governed by probabilistic rules that progressively changed the state of the simulated world (represented as a semantic network). The flow of the narrative arises from reports on the changing state of the world model. Because it had no explicit notion of goal, this procedure required additional information to guide it (see below). TALESPIN combined forward-chaining (from events to their consequences) and backward-chaining (from desired outcomes expressed as goals that resulted from an event previous to the particular events that will lead to the outcome). A large part of the work of making up a story in AUTHOR is the perpetual reformulation of author goals. Both the UNIVERSE (Lebowitz 1983) and MINSTREL (Turner 1993) storytelling systems involve a planning stage that keeps track of a set of pending goals which drive the expansion of a partial draft of the story until a complete plot is obtained. The “Intent-Driven Partial Order Causal Link” (IPOCL) planning algorithm used by Fabulist (Riedl & Young 2010) simultaneously reasoned about causality and character intentionality and motivation in order to produce narrative sequences that are causally coherent (in the sense that they drive towards a conclusion) (Toolan → Coherence) and have elements of character believability. Fabulist first generates a narrative plan that meets the outcome objective, ensuring that all character actions and goals are justified by events within the narrative itself. Another typical solution is to rely on a set of resources that abstract key elements of story structure, similar to story grammars. Although the major driving mechanism of the Novel Writer system (Klein et al. 1973) was planning, the sequence of scenes used to build up the story

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was already spelt out and hard-wired in the code to correspond to the expected development of a weekend party, with the simulation only accounting for the interplay between the characters that fleshes out the plot. This sequence of scenes could be considered an instance of a primitive story grammar. The operation of BRUTUS (Bringsjord & Ferrucci 1999) involved both a simulation process (where characters attempt to achieve a set of pre-defined goals) and the application of a hierarchy of grammars (story grammars, paragraph grammars, sentence grammars) that define how the story is constructed as a sequence of paragraphs which are themselves sequences of sentences. Other systems apply solutions that mine a set of previous stories to obtain material they can reuse in building new ones. The actual story generation process of UNIVERSE (Lebowitz 1983) uses snippets of plot that include information about goals and actions to generate plot outlines. The problem-solving stage of MINSTREL (Turner 1993) solved author-level goals by querying the system’s episodic memory (where instances of previous stories are stored) in order to instantiate a set of partially complete character schemas derived from the input. MEXICA (Pérez y Pérez 1999) searches a set of knowledge structures to find possible continuations to an ongoing plot, based on matching the set of emotions and tensions between one and the other (Emmott & Alexander → Schemata). 3.3 Interactive and other Storytelling Applications In addition to classic storytellers, there has been a very significant growth of interactive storytelling applications. These are interactive computer applications that allow the user to dictate the behavior of a given character involved in a simulated environment. The interactivity involved ranges from plain text interaction (as in Interactive Fiction, or IF, where the computer produces a rendition of the story as text, interspersed with the text commands that the user has written) to 3D simulated worlds similar to video games (where the story generation module is used to drive the behavior of virtual characters and the story is only rendered visually). These interactive storytelling applications are too numerous to be included in the present review, but they clearly deserve a separate study and deserve a specific reviewing effort. Another related family of applications is that of systems designed to construct story text from a conceptually represented story discourse, as in Charles Callaway and James Lester’s STORYBOOK (2002), or to construct story discourse from an underlying fabula, as in Nick Montfort’s Narrator module in the nn system (Montfort 2007), now known

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as Curveship (Montfort 2011), or the Suspenser (Cheong 2007) and Prevoyant (Bae & Young 2008) systems, which aim for discourses showing evidence of specific characteristics such as suspense or surprise. All of these types constitute examples of computational algorithms for tasks that are clearly important in the construction of stories. However, they have been considered separately from the other systems reviewed above for the reason that they are not aimed at actually generating a story, but rather at telling it in particular ways. A related family of applications aims to develop cinematic visual discourse from an underlying fabula (Jhala & Young 2010). These applications also rely heavily on narratological concepts and constitute a significant research field that brings together computation and narratology. Together with existing efforts at automating analysis of narrative in various ways (Mani 2010), this set of research lines is collectively becoming known as Computational Narratology (Mani → Computational Narratology), which has recently experienced a very significant growth.

4 Relevance for Narratology Story generator systems are clearly at an early stage of development. In their current state, they are obviously not producing the depth and richness of narrative that narratology is mostly concerned with. However, the engineering principles that must be applied when designing and constructing such systems force the consideration of issues that narratology has not focused on, but which may benefit enormously from taking them into consideration. From a narratological point of view, the main relevance of this research lies in the “testing” of narratological concepts for their unambiguity and applicability, which are absolute criteria for an algorithm-driven system to function (Lönneker et al. 2005; Meister 2005). Whereas analysis of literary texts invites a broad array of concepts to ensure applicability over a large variety of texts and contexts, the design of algorithm-driven systems requires precise definitions on which story construction decisions are based. Storytelling systems may be used to identify prototypes of narratological concepts in actual use to support story building decisions. This may be helpful both in allowing identification of existing concepts that may be under-defined or ambiguous in their present formulation, and in putting forward additional concepts concerned with the process of composition of stories that may be worthy of further attention.

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5 Topics for Further Investigation Research on story generator algorithms is very much an ongoing effort. To date, the interaction between narratology and artificial intelligence on this subject has been limited and inconclusive. This is slowly changing, however, as evidenced by the rise of Computational Narratology. This frontier still needs to be explored, as each field could contribute significantly to the other. The algorithmic implementation of story generation systems requires not only a clearly defined set of concepts on which to base the implementation, but also a clear division of the overall effort of story generation into particular tasks that are easier to model. This may require a distinction between the process of constructing a story and the process of telling it once it has been constructed. These two processes are obviously interrelated in the case of fiction, but they are also conceptually different from the point of view of what their inputs and outputs are. A clear contribution from narratology to clarifying the relations and interactions between these two processes would constitute a significant contribution to storytelling. As mentioned above, story generation research may provide a very interesting benchmark for practical testing of the extent to which narratological concepts are clear and precise enough to be transformed into working implementations of storytellers.

6 Bibliography 6.1 Works Cited Bae, Byung-Chull & R. Michael Young (2008). “A use of flashback and foreshadowing for surprise arousal in narrative using a plan-based approach.” U. Sperling & N. Szillas (eds.). Interactive Storytelling. First Joint International Conference on Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2008, Erfurt, Germany, 26–29. Proceedings Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 5334. Berlin: Springer, 156–167. Bringsjord, Selmer & David A. Ferrucci (1999). Artificial Intelligence and Literary Creativity Inside the Mind of BRUTUS, a Storytelling Machine. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. Callaway, Charles B. & James C. Lester (2002). “Narrative prose generation.” Artificial Intelligence 139.2, 213–252. Cheong, Yun-Gyung (2007). A Computational Model of Narrative Generation for Suspense. PhD Thesis, North Carolina State University.

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Dehn, Natalie (1981). “Story Generation after Tale-Spin.” A. Drinan (ed.). Proceedings of the Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, August 24–28, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Los Altos: Kaufmann, vol. 116–118. Gervás, Pablo (2009). “Computational approaches to storytelling and creativity.” AI Magazine 30.3, 49–62. Jhala, Arnav & R. Michael Young (2010). “Cinematic visual discourse: Representation, generation, and evaluation.” IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games 2.2: 69–81. Klein, Sheldon et al. (1973). Automatic novel writing: A status report. Technical Report 186, Computer Science Department, The University of Wisconsin, Madison. Lebowitz, Michael (1983). “Creating a Story-Telling Universe.” A. Nundy (ed.). Proceedings of the Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, August 8–12, Karlsruhe, Germany. Los Altos: Kaufmann, vol. 1, 63–65. Lönneker, Birte et al. (2005). “Story Generators: Models and Approaches for the Generation of Literary Artefacts.” ACH/ALLC 2005 Conference Abstracts. Proceedings of the 17th Joint International Conference of the Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing, Victoria, BC, Canada, June 15–18, 126–133. Mani, Inderjeet (2010). The Imagined Moment: Time, Narrative, and Computation. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Meehan, James R. (1977). “Tale-Spin, an interactive program that writes stories.” Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, MIT, Cambridge, MA, August 22–25. Los Altos: Kaufmann, 91–98. Meister, Jan Chistoph (2005). “Computational approaches to narrative.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narratology. London: Routledge, 78–80. Montfort, Nick (2007). Generating narrative variation in interactive fiction. PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. – (2011). “Curveship’s automatic narrative variation.” Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG ’11), Bordeaux, France, June 29–July 1. New York: ACM, 211–218. Pérez y Pérez, Rafael (1999). MEXICA: A Computer Model of Creativity in Writing. PhD Dissertation, The University of Sussex. Riedl, Mark O. & R. Michael Young (2010). “Narrative Planning: Balancing Plot and Character.” Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 39, 217–68. Turner, Scott R. (1993). Minstrel: a computer model of creativity and storytelling. PhD Dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles.

6.2 Further Reading Bailey, Paul (1999). “Searching for storiness: Story generation from a reader’s perspective.” Narrative Intelligence. Papers from the 1999 AAAI Fall Symposium. North Falmouth, MA, November 5–7. Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press, 157–163. Lebowitz, Michael (1985). “Story-telling as planning and learning.” Poetics 14, 483–502. Meehan, James R. (1981). “Tale-Spin.” R. Schank (ed.). Inside Computer Understanding. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 197–225.

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Pérez y Pérez, Rafael & Mike Sharples (2004). “Three computer-based models of storytelling: BRUTUS, MINSTREL and MEXICA.” Knowledge-Based Systems 17, 15–29. Riedl, Mark O. & Neha Sugandh (2008). “Story planning with vignettes: Toward overcoming the content production bottleneck.” U. Sperling & N. Szillas (eds.). Interactive Storytelling. First Joint International Conference on Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2008, Erfurt, Germany, 26–29. Proceedings Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 5334. Berlin: Springer, 168–179. Turner, Scott R. (1994). The Creative Process: A Computer Model of Storytelling and Creativity. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Tellability Raphaël Baroni

1 Definition Tellability is a notion that was first developed in conversational storytelling analysis but which then proved extensible to all kinds of narrative, referring to features that make a story worth telling, its “noteworthiness.” Tellability (sometimes designated “narratibility” or “reportability”) is dependent on the nature of specific incidents judged by storytellers to be significant or surprising and worthy of being reported in specific contexts, thus conferring a “point” on the story. The breaching of a canonical development tends to transform a mere incident into a tellable event, but the tellability of a story can also rely on purely contextual parameters (e.g. the newsworthiness of an event); in conversation it is often negotiated and progressively co-constructed through discursive interaction. Tellability may also be dependent on discourse features, i.e. on the way in which a sequence of incidents is rendered in a narrative.

2 Explication Publications devoted to tellability differ according to the importance given to: (a) the concept of narrativity; (b) the nature of the story told and its connection with narrative interest; (c) the discourse features of tellability; and (d) the contextual parameters determining the “point” of a narrative. 2.1 Relation to Narrativity Scholars generally distinguish tellability from narrativity (Abbott → Narrativity) because, firstly, tellability is perceived independently from its textualization (e.g. tellability is involved when a potential narrator wonders whether his or her story—lived or invented—is worth telling) and secondly, because stories that meet formal criteria of narrativity may remain pointless and simply fail to raise the interest of the audi-

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ence (cf. Ryan 2005: 589; Herman 2002: esp. 100–109). However, some scholars bring tellability and narrativity closer together by adding to the various formal criteria defining narrativity its “value” in specific contexts (e.g. Bruner 1991; Prince 2008: 23–25). 2.2 Interest of the Story In light of the story/discourse distinction, it is generally assumed that tellability pertains only to the story level and that it should thus be dissociated from the broader concept of narrative interest as comprising both story and discourse features. Since a good story poorly told can be ruined or, conversely, the most insignificant incident can become captivating when told by a skillful narrator, some critics find it difficult to consider any aspect of narrative (sequence, plot, tellability, point, interest, etc.) independently from its discursive or textual manifestation. Consequently, narrative interest might be proposed as a term for tellability when dealing with the interconnection between story and discourse. Semantic and cognitive studies have provided interesting insights into how salient events can transform a mere occurrence or a “something happens” (type I event) into a “tellable” or “reportable” one (type II event) (Hühn → Event and Eventfulness; cf. Hühn 2007). Bruner has insisted on the fact that “to be worth telling, a tale must be about how an implicit canonical script has been breached, violated, or deviated from” (1991: 11). Such a “precepting event” can be linked to dynamic conceptions of plot, and in particular to its complication phase (see Baroni 2007: 167–224). At this level, it is assumed that there is a general human interest for stories reporting events that have a certain degree of unpredictability or mystery. In Ryan’s (1991: 148–174) possible worlds semantics approach, the more complex virtual outcomes are, the more tellable the story is. 2.3 Discourse Structures of Tellability According to Sacks, “the sheer telling of a story is something in which one makes a claim for its tellability” (1992: 12). By combining formal and functional descriptions, sociolinguistic approaches to conversational storytelling have shown that the tellability and point of a narrative are reflected in specific features of discourse structure. Thus evaluation devices, for instance, form “part of the narrative which reveals the attitude of the narrator towards the narrative by emphasizing the relative importance of some narrative units” (Labov & Waletzky 1967: 37). In a

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functionalist interpretation of those formal attributes of tellability, evaluation devices are described as a way to avoid a “so what?” reaction from the audience. Nevertheless, a number of recent studies have argued that evaluation devices are quite difficult to pinpoint as actual narrative structures, especially in cases of non-conversational or literary stories, and that they are not sufficient to guarantee the tellability of a story. As Prince puts it: “after all, claiming that (sequences of) events are unusual, extraordinary, bizarre, unfortunately does not suffice to make them so” (Prince 2008: 24). 2.4 Contextual Parameters of Tellability General features of tellability remain on a level of description aimed at singling out the universals of narrative. However, contextual approaches tend to insist on the importance of genre, historical or culturespecific constraints and, for conversational storytelling, on the role of the interaction in which storytelling takes place. Sacks associates tellability with “local news” because stories generally begin with some reference to a new or unexpected event for the audience. Thus, the tellability of the same event might change according to the knowledge of the audience: we don’t tell the same stories to someone we see everyday as compared to someone we see once in a while. As summarized by Norrick, “the sort of news that makes a story salient today will no longer make it salient tomorrow” (2004: 80). For Polanyi, describing the violation of a norm necessarily involves giving a minimal account of the canonicity that has been breached. Bruner has pointed out that even breaches “are often highly conventional and are strongly influenced by narrative traditions” (1991: 12). Polanyi further maintains that tellable materials can stimulate interest culturally, socially, personally or with some combination thereof. In a different vein, Hühn stresses the fact that eventfulness, which confers a “point” on a story, is “contextsensitive and consequently culturally as well as generically specific and historically variable” (2008: 143). Moreover, genre, as Ryan points out, can also come into play: “whereas popular literature invests heavily in the tellability of plots, high literature often prefers to make art out of the not-tellable” (2005: 590). Other researchers (e.g. Norrick 2000, 2005; Ochs & Capps 2001) insist more on the negotiation and coconstruction of tellability in oral storytelling performance and have also extended the concept to include “low tellable” and “untellable” stories.

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3 History of the Concept and its Study A forerunner to functionalist approaches of tellability can be found in Aristotle’s discussion on what kind of events a drama should imitate. Aristotle recommends portraying events that produce emotions such as pity or fear (1449b); events with the greatest “cathartic” effect are those whose development, even though causally connected, are unexpected by the audience (1452a). However, such considerations are related only to a specific genre of dramatic representation and cannot be incorporated as such into a general theory of tellability. In their pioneering article published in 1967, Labov and Waletzky stated that the formal properties of narrative should always be related to the functions they fulfill in narrative communication. “Labov’s great credit,” notes Bruner, “is to have recognized that narrative structures have two components: ‘what happened and why it is worth telling’” (1991: 12). By stressing narrative performance (Berns → Performativity), they addressed questions left out of account by the structuralists, showing that narratives which serve only to recapitulate experience “may be considered empty or pointless,” but that they also serve “an additional function of personal interest determined by a stimulus in the social context in which the narrative occurs” (Labov & Waletzky 1967: 13). The authors showed that “most narratives are so designed as to emphasize the strange and unusual character of the situation” because a “simple sequence of complication and result” does not necessarily suffice to indicate the relative importance of the events told or the “point” of the story (34). This led them to single out phrases and words that contribute to fulfilling this contextual function, those parts of narrative being named “evaluation devices” (37; cf. Labov 1972: 366−375). They showed that evaluations can appear in various forms, such as direct statements bearing on the unusual nature or significance of certain incidents, lexical intensifiers, suspensions, repetitions, judgments, etc. Sacks is another pioneer in the study of tellability. He has emphasized the contextual parameters of tellability and the dynamics of its coconstruction in the discursive interaction. As summarized by Karatsu: “In contrast to researchers who relate tellability to the unexpectedness or extraordinariness of events, Sacks (1992) discussed how ordinary events that people experience in their daily life become worth telling as a story (“storyable”) in everyday conversation, and how their orientation to tell their experiences as something worth telling affects their way of telling. Sacks pointed out that a person learns what is tellable by virtue of its “total currency,” for example, gossip value, or by virtue of other people’s interests, and that a person learns to treat some items as

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tellable because relating a story that is tellable is requested by others” (Karatsu 2012: 32). Along the same line, Karatsu has deepened the analysis of conversational storytelling by singling out four parameters affecting tellability: “(a) the embeddedness of the story in the conversation, (b) the participants’ view of past events in the story, (c) the participants’ knowledge in relation to the content or elements of the story, and (d) the participants’ concern about the social circumstances” (Karatsu 2012: 36). Although the study of tellability has its roots in the analysis of conversational storytelling (Fludernik → Conversational Narration – Oral Narration), the concept was quickly broadened to include all kinds of narratives. Pratt (1977; see also van Dijk 1975) played a significant role in expanding the pragmatic approach developed by Labov and Waletzky to literary narratives. Stressing the context-dependency of narrative left out of account by the structuralists, she demonstrates the pertinence of point for “artificial” narratives. Furthermore, in applying Grice’s Cooperative Principle to literary discourse, she showed that the maxim of “relevance” can be associated with the notions of “evaluation” and “point” (the unusual, the amusing, the terrifying, etc.). Given the importance of situation of discourse, context, and cultural conventions in the degree of tellability a story might possess, Polanyi emphasized that “stories, whether fictional or non-fictional, formal and oft-told, or spontaneously generated, can have as their point only culturally salient material generally agreed upon by members of the producer’s culture to be self-evidently important and true” (1979: 207). For Polanyi, instead of “how” people structure their stories in order to make them interesting, tellability raises the more basic question of “What is worth telling, to whom and under what circumstances?” (1979: 207). She further contended that the point of a story “may change in the course of the narration” and that it is subject to negotiation. She developed a simple methodology for “identifying and investigating beliefs about the world held by members of a particular culture” (213) by analyzing the negotiation between participants “about what is to be taken as the point of the story” (214; cf. Prince 1983; Rigney 1992). Ryan (1991) postulates that in addition to the features focused on by traditional pragmatic studies on tellability (evaluation devices, unusualness of facts placed in the speech situation, newsworthiness), it is possible to articulate a purely semantic and formal conceptualization of tellability. For her, the fabula is a network of embedded narratives that can be both actual and virtual. A character’s goal might be actualized as successful, but its tellability depends on the fact that, virtually, it might

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have been unsuccessful. Ryan concludes that “some events make better stories than others because they project a wider variety of forking paths on the narrative map” (2005: 590; cf. Ryan 1986). Recently, the connection between narrativity and tellability has received more attention. Herman has linked the degree of narrativity to the degree to which expectations regarding the storyline are violated, the former aspect being closely related to tellability (2002: 90–92). More extreme is the position of Fludernik, who grounds her conception of narrativity in “experientiality”: “For the narrator the experientiality of the story resides not merely in the events themselves but in their emotional significance and exemplary nature. The events become tellable precisely because they have started to mean something to the narrator on an emotional level. It is this conjunction of experience reviewed, reorganized, and evaluated (‘point’) that constitutes narrativity” (Fludernik 2003: 245; cf. Fludernik 1996: 70). On the other hand, Sternberg has grounded his conception of narrativity in suspense, curiosity, and surprise, which contribute to “the three universal narrative effects/interests/dynamics,” asserting that they necessarily rely on the interplay between the temporalities of actional and discursive sequences (2001: 117). Following his position, narrative interest may well be an appropriate term for tellability when the concept embraces both story and discourse instead of focusing only the discourse-independent features of tellability. Ochs and Capps (2001) distinguished two different poles in conversational narratives. The first is identified with highly tellable accounts and generally involves a single active teller with a passive audience. This corresponds to the prototypical narrative studied by Labov and Waletzky that involves, for example, a near-death experience. In such cases, the story conveys a clear point and is more or less detachable from its context of realization. The second pole can be exemplified by a moderately tellable story which is embedded in surrounding discourse and activity, is co-constructed by several active co-tellers, and conveys an uncertain fluid moral stance (Ochs & Capps 2001: 18–24). This approach draws attention to conversational narratives with a low degree of tellability in which “partners are grilled about their day’s activity and reel out what happened reluctantly, without bothering to dress up the events as particularly important” (34). The authors insist on the fact that conversation “creates an opportunity to launch a personal narrative whose storyline is not resolved” (35). They argue that the point of a story and its relative tellability are not always characteristics found by the narrator in the potential story before it is performed, but rather vari-

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ables that must be factored in during the process of narrating, involving several co-narrators cooperating in construction of the storyline. Another interesting feature of the notion developed by Ochs and Capps is the reflection on “untold stories.” Here, tellability serves to explain negatively what cannot be narrated due to a selective memory that filters experience, childhood amnesia or trauma, i.e. events that “remain inaccessible for narration because they are too painful” (2001: 257). However, in this case, it might be more appropriate to distinguish strictly between what is worthy of being narrated and what is accessible to narration. Both phenomena are highly context-sensitive, the latter depending specifically on psychological and cultural conditions (such as psychic resistance or taboos). Bamberg and Georgakopoulou (2008) have highlighted another kind of “untold stories.” In the course of a conversation, some narrators may claim that they could tell a noteworthy story but that for some reason they won’t because, for example, they promised to someone they wouldn’t. In this case, “alluding to the potential of a story and rhetorically foreshadowing its potential content as relevant and highly reportable, without even mentioning any event— let alone event sequence—moves [the narrator] into the role of having the potential to contribute to the topic under discussion in a relevant way. Thus, while traditional narrative analysis relies heavily on the story’s content (e.g. reportability of events and the breaching of expectations) to reason for its tellability, [these] interactive moves show tellability as something that is interactively achieved” (2008 : 387–388). In a related development, Norrick has defined what he calls the “dark side of tellability,” exploring stories that are too personal, for instance, or too embarrassing or obscene to be told. He concludes that tellability is “a two-sided notion: Some events bear too little significance to reach the lower-bounding threshold of tellability, while others are so intimate (or frightening) that they lie on the dark side of tellability” (2007: 136). Being situated on the dark side of tellability does not mean that those stories are not told. Smith and Sparkes have studied how a narrator, who became disabled after an accident, moved from a narrative “both tellable and acceptable in terms of plot and structure” toward a “chaos narrative that currently frames his daily experience” but that is located on Norrick’s upper-bounding side of tellability. “Due to its transgressive, unwelcome, and frightening nature, this is a narrative that people prefer not to hear and find it very difficult to listen to on those occasions when it confronts them” (Smith & Sparkes 2008 : 230–231). Norrick has also drawn attention to situations where the rule “don’t tell what the others know” is lifted, as in humor, where “the enjoyment

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of group conarration and laughing together more than make up for a lack of news in the story itself.” He concludes that “We might go on to ask where else the general rule is lifted. Certainly, there are other occasions where we tell stories with little or no claim to reportability, and it would be of interest to identify such occasions and to investigate the kinds of stories told in them” (Norrick 2004: 104).

4 Topics for Further Investigation Based on studies such as Ochs and Capps (2001), Bamberg and Georgakopoulou (2008) and Norrick (2000, 2004, 2005, 2007), topics calling for additional research are descriptions of interactional dynamics related to specific kinds of narratives, ranging from “stories with little or no claim to reportability” to untold, untellable, or hardly tellable narratives, those situated on the dark side of tellability. As advocated by Karatsu, “in recent works, researchers paid close attention to various kind of stories, e.g. shared stories (Norrick 2000) and hypothetical stories (Ochs & Capps 2001) as well as stories that are negotiable/collaborative in nature. Going beyond the analysis of evaluation and evaluative devices, they pointed out that unlike a story in a monologue or in a written text, the tellability of a story in everyday conversation does not necessarily rest on the ‘sensational nature of events’ (Ochs & Capps 2001: 34) or on the teller’s skill in rhetorical composition. The tellability of a story also rests on how the story is introduced, on ‘interactional dynamics’ (Norrick 2000), and on the participants’ common interests and values in their daily lives (Georgakopoulou 2007; Ochs & Capps 2001; Sacks 1992)” (Karatsu 2012: 6). As Norrick has shown when dealing with “humor” (2004), tellability must be explored in close connection with generic conventions, especially when the concept is used beyond conversational analysis. It is clear that parameters defining tellability differ completely when a story is told to captivate the audience, explain a fact, justify a behavior, reflect on a life trajectory, or assert one’s identity. The breach of a canonical order is more relevant in popular fiction or in personal anecdotes told to amuse than in experimental literature or in testimony before a judge (cf. Baroni 2009: 66–71). On the other hand, despite Sternberg’s (2003) reservations, there is a need to further clarify the relation between tellability and narrative interest. Finally, due to its connection with experienciality (Fludernik 1996), tellability could become a key concept for exploring the interface between life experience and its nar-

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rativisation, because it addresses directly the question of how and why some incidents become the object of a narration and others do not.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Bamberg, Michael & Alexandra Georgakopoulou (2008). “Small stories as a new perspective in narrative and identity construction.” Text & Talk 28, 37–96. Baroni, Raphaël (2007). La Tension narrative. Suspense, curiosité et surprise. Paris: Seuil. – (2009). L’œuvre du temps. Poétique de la discordance narrative. Paris: Seuil. Bruner, Jerome (1991). “The Narrative Construction of Reality.” Critical Inquiry 18, 1–21. Dijk, Teun A. (1975). “Action, Action Description, and Narrative.” New Literary History 6, 273–294. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. – (2003). “Natural Narratology and Cognitive Parameters.” D. Herman (ed.) Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences. Stanford: CSLI, 243–267. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra (2007). Small Stories, Interaction and Identities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Herman, David (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Hühn, Peter (2007). “Event, Eventfulness and Tellability.” Amsterdam International Electronic Journal for Cultural Narratology No. 4, http://cf.hum.uva.nl/narratology/a07_huhn.htm – (2008). “Functions and Forms of Eventfulness in Narrative Fiction.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 141–163. Karatsu, Mariko (2012). Conversational Storytelling among Japanese Women: Conversational Circumstances and Tellability of Stories. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Labov, William (1972). Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. – & Joshua Waletzky (1967). “Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience.” J. Helm (ed.). Essays on Verbal and Visual Arts. Seattle: U of Washington P, 12–44. Norrick, Neal R. (2000). Conversational Narrative. Amsterdam: Benjamins. – (2004). “Humor, Tellability, and Co-Narration in Conversational Storytelling.” Text 24.1, 74–111. – (2005). “The Dark Side of Tellability.” Narrative Inquiry 15.2, 323–343. – (2007). “Conversational Storytelling.” D. Herman (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 127–141. Ochs, Elinor & Lisa Capps (2001). Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

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Polanyi, Livia (1979). “So What’s the Point?” Semiotica 25, 207–241. Pratt, Mary Louise (1977). Towards a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Prince, Gerald (1983). “Narrative Pragmatics, Message, and Point.” Poetics 12, 527– 536. – (2008). “Narrativehood, Narrativeness, Narrativity, Narratability.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 19–27. Rigney, Ann (1992). “The Point of Stories: On Narrative Communication and Cognitive Functions.” Poetics Today 13, 263–283. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1986). “Embedded Narratives and Tellability.” Style 20, 319–340. – (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP. – (2005). “Tellability.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 589–591. Sacks, Harvey (1992). Lectures on Conversation. Oxford: Blackwell. Smith, Brett, & Andrew C. Sparkes (2008). “Changing bodies, changing narratives and the consequences of tellability: A case study of becoming disabled through sport.” Sociology of Health and Illness 30.2, 217–236. Sternberg, Meir (2001). “How Narrativity Makes a Difference.” Narrative 9, 115–122. – (2003). “Universals of Narrative and Their Cognitivist Fortunes.” Poetics Today 24, 517–638.

5.2 Further Reading Schmid, Wolf (2007). “Eventfulness as a Narratological Category”. Amsterdam International Electronic Journal for Cultural Narratology N. 4, http://cf.hum.uva.nl/narratology/a07_schmid.htm Wilensky, Robert (1983). “Story Grammars versus Story Points.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 6, 579–623.

Telling vs. Showing Tobias Klauk & Tilmann Köppe

1 Definition The telling vs. showing distinction captures two different modes of presenting events in a narrative. In a first approximation, the distinction can be taken quite literally: in the showing mode, the narrative evokes in readers the impression that they are shown the events of the story or that they somehow witness them, while in the telling mode, the narrative evokes in readers the impression that they are told about the events. Using a spatial metaphor, the showing mode is also called a narrative with “small distance,” presumably because readers get the impression that they are somehow near the events of the story, while the telling mode correspondingly evokes the impression of a “large distance” between readers and the events.

2 Explication In current narratology, the labels ‘telling’ and ‘showing’ are widely used, but there appears to be little consensus as to the exact distinction they are supposed to cover. Thus narratologists do not always agree on the classification of examples, or even about the grounds for the classification. This can be seen when considering an example which has been proposed to illustrate the distinction. Compare the sentences “John was angry with his wife” and “John looked at his wife, his eyebrows pursed, his lips contracted, his fists clenched. Then he got up, banged the door and left the house” (Rimmon-Kenan [1983] 2002: 109). The first sentence is introduced by Rimmon-Kenan as an example of telling and the latter as an example of showing. However, whether one thinks that these two sentences differ with respect to the telling vs. showing distinction depends on what criteria are taken to be decisive (for references, see section 3 below): If the presence or absence of a narrator is taken to be the decisive criterion, then both sentences may be on a par. The same is true if the

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presence or absence of dialogue is considered crucial, or, arguably, if the ‘partiality’ or ‘objectivity’ of the narration are regarded as lying at the heart of the distinction. A difference between the modes of presentation emerges if it is taken for granted that both example sentences feature a narrator; hence, if one compares the relations of a narrator to the events told, including the narrator’s spatial, temporal or general epistemic position, then the first sentence (“John was angry with his wife”) may count as an instance of telling and the second as an instance of showing. Similarly, the first sentence is explicit about at least one of John’s traits (“John was angry with his wife”) and hence is in the telling mode, while the second leaves any facts about John’s traits to be inferred by the reader. What is more, the first sentence exhibits a higher degree of narrative speed, and it conveys a comparatively less detailed description of the event (or events) than the second; hence the first sentence may count as telling and the second as showing. Similarly, the first sentence may invoke the impression on the reader’s side that the events of the story are being reported (telling), while the second may invoke the impression of somehow witnessing the events, which constitutes showing. Finally, the first sentence might be taken to draw the implied reader’s attention to the storyteller, while the second sentence draws the implied reader’s attention to the story. It is not clear whether the different interpretations of the telling vs. showing distinction share a common denominator. Also, while some accounts can be easily combined, others cannot. Most notably, several of the accounts take the fictional narrator to be important in one way or the other. But this need not mean that the accounts basically establish the same distinction. For instance, a clearly perceptible narrator, whose presence constitutes ‘telling’ according to some interpretations, may, but need not be explicit about the traits of the characters, which constitutes ‘showing’ according to other interpretations of the distinction. Moreover, two different accounts of ‘showing’ can be mutually exclusive. For instance, if the absence of a narrator from the narration is taken to constitute showing, as is the case in passages of pure dialogue, then this is incompatible with the claim that showing is constituted by the narrator’s particularly close temporal or spatial position relative to the events of the story, as another account has it. Note also that the presence or absence of dialogue suggests that neither ‘telling’ nor ‘showing’ are gradable predicates, while accounts relying on e.g. the amount of narrative information, or the ‘speed’ of the narration, suggest that telling and showing allow of degrees.

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Finally, there are a number of different labels attached to the distinctions in question. Amongst them are ‘mimetic mode,’ ‘objectivity,’ ‘impersonal mode,’ ‘scenic mode,’ ‘dramatic mode,’ ‘rendering’ or ‘small distance’ as (more or less) synonymous for ‘showing,’ and ‘diegetic mode,’ ‘partiality’ or ‘large distance’ as (more or less) synonymous for ‘telling’ (cf. e.g. Booth [1961] 1983: 8; Rabinowitz 2005: 530; Wiesenfarth 1963; Genette [1972] 1980: 162–189; Stanzel [1979] 2008: 190–192).

3 Aspects and History of the Concept Some variants of the telling vs. showing distinctions have been traced back to the diegesis/mimesis-distinctions known from the writings of Plato (Halliwell → Diegesis – Mimesis; Willems 1989). An early modern treatment of distinguishing between commentary (“Reflection”), on the one hand, and a detailed description of characters, events, and actions, on the other, can be found in Spielhagen ([1883] 1967). Spielhagen maintains that only the latter is in accordance with the “laws of the epic” (“epische Gesetze”), and hence must be rated superior to the former (ibid.: 67–69). This verdict is criticized by Friedemann (1910), who argues that the “essence” of narrative fiction consists precisely in the foregrounding of the narrator (“das Wesen der epischen Form [besteht] gerade in dem Sichgeltendmachen eines Erzählenden”, ibid.: 3). Both Spielhagen and Friedemann thus deal with the question to what extent the author (resp. a narrator) may intrude in the narration, e.g. by commenting on the events, filling in narrative gaps or taking a subjective stance. Friedemann (1910: 26) holds that by commenting on the events a narrator need not disturb the “epic illusion”; rather, the narrator may become an “organic” part of the composition. Moreover, Friedemann in effect shifts the theoretical focus from the presence or absence of narratorial commentary to the effect such commentary may have on the reader; thus for her, the real question is whether, upon reading, our “illusion suffers damage” (“leidet unsere Illusion Schaden”, ibid.: 27). The modern popularity of distinguishing ‘telling’ and ‘showing’ is usually said to be due to Lubbock. Lubbock underscores some normative implications of the distinction. Thus he holds that “the art of fiction does not begin until the novelist thinks of his story as a matter to be shown, to be so exhibited that it will tell itself” (Lubbock [1922] 1954: 62). He also compares Flaubert’s novels with a “picture” or “drama” and states that a “writer like Flaubert—or any other novelist whose

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work supports criticism at all—is so far from telling a story as it might be told in an official report, that we cease to regard him as reporting in any sense. He is making an effect and an impression, by some more or less skilful method” (ibid.: 63). Lubbock was able to base his account of the distinction on the comments of several authors of fiction. Henry James and Ford Madox Ford likewise held that “showing” is clearly superior to “telling.” James claims that “Processes, periods, intervals, stages, degrees, connexions, may be easily enough and barely enough named, may be unconvincingly stated, in fiction, to the deep discredit of the writer, but it remains the very deuce to represent them […]” (James [1884] 1957: 94; see also Wiesenfarth 1963, esp. ch. 1, for elaboration). Ford claims that the novelist “has to render and not to tell.” And he explains: “If I say ‘The wicked Mr. Blank shot nice Blanche’s dear cat!’ that is telling. If I say: ‘Blank raised his rifle and aimed it at the quivering, black-burdened topmost bough of the cherry-tree. After the report a spattered bunch of scarlet and black quivering dropped from branch to branch to pancake itself on the orchard grass!’ that is rather bad rendering, but is still rendering” (Ford [1930] 1983: 122). Neither of these authors really contributes to the theoretical understanding of the phenomenon. Their treatment, however, underscores the importance the distinction had in the authors’ discourse about fiction, and this in turn explains why it has been taken up by an evolving narratology. Booth ([1961] 1983: 16, 154–155) criticizes clear-cut versions of the showing vs. telling distinction. What he seems to be primarily interested in is the question of how an author manages to combine authorial (or narratorial) comments and ‘showing’. Thus, Booth in effect tried to correct the view that the distinction hinges on the presence of explicit commentary, be it the author’s or a narrator’s. Genette introduces an influential new term into the debate, namely “distance.” He explains that “the narrative can furnish the reader with more or fewer details, and in a more or less direct way, and can thus seem (to adopt a common and convenient spatial metaphor, which is not to be taken literally) to keep at a greater or lesser distance from what it tells” (Genette [1972] 1980: 162). Genette further maintains that one needs to distinguish the ‘narrative of events’ from a ‘narrative of words,’ for only the latter is said to be ‘mimetic’ in the full sense of the word: “The truth is that mimesis in words can only be mimesis of words. Other than that, all we have and can have is degrees of diegesis” (ibid.: 164). In sum, and as indicated in section (2) above, current narratology shows a broad diversity of possible meanings of the telling vs. showing

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distinction. The label ‘telling vs. showing’ is taken to refer to the following distinctions: First, the very presence of a narrator (telling) vs. the absence of a narrator (showing) in the story is taken to be decisive (cf. Chatman 1978: 32, 146; Nünning & Sommer 2008: 341). Second, the relations of a narrator to the events told, including his or her spatial, temporal or general epistemic position, which can be remote (telling) or close (showing), are said to constitute the distinction. Thus Toolan explains that “[m]imesis [i.e. showing] presents ‘everything that happened’ in one sense, but really only everything as it would be revealed to a witness within the scene,” while “[d]iegesis [i.e. telling] presents ‘everything that happened’ in another sense, but only everything that a detached external reporter decides is worth telling” (Toolan [1988] 2001: 134, cf. also Linhares-Dias 2006: 7). Third, the presence (showing) or absence (telling) of dialogue in the narrative are said to be involved in the telling vs. showing distinction (cf. Fludernik [2006] 2009: 36 and 161; cf. already Chatman 1978: 32; Genette [1983] 1988: 45). The reason for this is that only dialogue is taken to constitute an ‘unmediated’ presentation, and hence ‘showing’, of what happens in the story world. Fourth, the explicitness (telling) or implicitness (showing) of e.g. a character’s traits or dispositions as well as the themes, meanings or morals of the story are taken to be decisive (cf. Friedman 1955: 1169– 1170, passim; Lubbock [1922] 1954: 67-68; Rimmon-Kenan [1983] 2002: 108). Again, one can argue that these features of a narrative indicate the presence of a narrating subject whose presence in turn accounts for a ‘mediated’ presentation of what happens in the story world. The same holds true for, fifth, the ‘partiality’ (telling) or ‘objectivity’ (showing) of the narration (cf. Rabinowitz 2005: 530), since a ‘partial’ rendering of the story that includes commentary and evaluation also indicates the presence of a narrator. As a consequence, the direction of the implied reader’s attention either to the story (showing) or to the storyteller (telling) may be affected (cf. ibid.). Sixth, the ‘speed’ of the narration, which can be comparatively fast (telling) or slow (showing), and which can convey more (showing) or less detailed (telling) information, is taken to be decisive (cf. Genette [1972] 1980: 166). Seventh, the impression on the reader’s side that he or she is being told about the events of the story (telling) or rather somehow witnesses them (showing) is taken to lie at the core of the telling vs. showing distinction (cf., amongst others, Martínez & Scheffel [1999] 2012: 50;

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Stanzel 1964: 13; Stanzel [1979] 2008: 192; Linhares-Dias 2006; Wiesenfarth 1963: 2). It remains an open question whether, or to what extent, these accounts allow for unification. A promising candidate for a unified account might be the idea that the telling vs. showing distinction captures different impressions a reader may have upon reading the text. This idea finds its predecessors, inter alia, in Socrates (Halliwell → Diegesis – Mimesis, 131), Friedemann (1910: 26–27, 89, 91), Lubbock ([1922] 1954: 63), or Stanzel (1964: 13), to name but a few. What is more, this way of setting up the distinction between telling and showing allows for taking some, if not all, of the other items on the list to constitute evidence for either ‘telling’ or ‘showing’ (rather than being identical with it). Hence, for instance, the speed of the narration or explicit commentary may be taken to be evidence for the presence of a fictional narrator, whose presence can be taken to evoke the impression on the reader’s side of being told about the events which, in turn, constitutes telling. Finally, in this account, the distinction between ‘telling’ and ‘showing’ is by no means superfluous (cf. Genette [1983] 1988: 44), for it does not reduce to any of the narrative phenomena (presence or properties of narrator, speed of narration, objectivity, dialogue, amount of detail, etc.) that help establish it.

4 Related Terms Which terms one takes to be related to the telling vs. showing distinction of course depends on what one takes the distinction to be in the first place. Accordingly, possible candidates for related terms include: Margolin → Narrator; Alber & Fludernik → Mediacy and Narrative Mediation; McHale → Speech Representation. Proponents of the view that ‘showing’ and ‘telling’ refer to the impression on the part of the reader of witnessing the events of the story (as opposed to having the impression of being told about the events) may want to explore connections to the concepts of ‘immersion,’ ‘transportation,’ or ‘aesthetic illusion’ (cf. Gerrig 1993; Green & Brock 2000; Giovanelli 2008; Wolf → Illusion (Aesthetic)).

5 Topics for Further Investigation To date, there is no systematic study that explores connections as well as distinctions between the major current accounts of the telling vs.

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showing distinction. The same holds true for a comprehensive study of the history of the concepts. It seems that such studies are needed, not least in order to evaluate the importance of the distinction(s). Some narratologists feel that the telling vs. showing distinction is superfluous, mainly because they take it to refer to other narrative phenomena, such as the speed of the narration or the presence or absence of a narrator, which can be dealt with directly (cf. Rimmon-Kenan [1983] 2002: 109; Bal 1983: 238–240; Genette [1983] 1988: 44). Others maintain that the distinction lies at the very heart of narrative, showing in particular being regarded as a mode of presentation that is most peculiar and in need of close scrutiny (cf. Linhares-Dias 2006).

6 Bibliography 6.1 Works Cited Bal, Mieke (1983). “The Narrating and the Focalizing: A Theory of the Agents in Narrative.” Style 17, 234–269. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: Chicago UP. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Fludernik, Monika ([2006] 2009). Introduction to Narratology. Abington: Routledge. Ford, Madox Ford ([1930] 1983). The English Novel. Manchester: Carcanet Press. Friedman, Norman (1955). “Point of View in Fiction. The Development of a Critical Concept.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 70, 1160–1184. Friedemann, Käte (1910). Die Rolle des Erzählers in der Epik. Leipzig: Haessel. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – ([1983] 1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Gerrig, Richard J. (1993). Experiencing Narrative Worlds. On the Psychological Activities of Reading. Yale: Yale UP. Giovanelli, Alessandro (2008). “In and Out: The Dynamics of Imagination in the Engagement with Narratives.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66, 11– 24. Green, Melanie C. & Timothy C. Brock (2000). “The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79, 701–721. James, Henry ([1884] 1957). The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces. R.P. Blackmur (ed.). New York: Scribner. Linhares-Dias, Rui (2006). How to Show Things with Words. A Study on Logic, Language and Literature. Berlin: de Gruyter. Lubbock, Percy ([1922] 1954). The Craft of Fiction. London: J. Cape.

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Martínez, Matías & Michael Scheffel ([1999] 2012). Einführung in die Erzähltheorie. München: Beck. Nünning, Ansgar & Roy Sommer (2008). “Diegetic and Mimetic Narrativity. Some Further Steps Towards a Narratology of Drama.” J. Pier & J. Á. García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 331–354. Rabinowitz, Peter J. (2005). “Showing vs. Telling.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 530–531. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith ([1983] 2002). Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Routledge. Spielhagen, Friedrich ([1883] 1967). Beiträge zur Theorie und Technik des Romans. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Stanzel, Franz K. (1964). Typische Formen des Romans. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. – ([1979] 2008). Theorie des Erzählens. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Toolan, Michael ([1988] 2001). Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction. London: Routledge. Wiesenfarth, Joseph (1963). Henry James and the Dramatic Analogy. A Study of the Major Novels of the Middle Period. New York: Fordham UP. Willems, Gottfried (1989). Anschaulichkeit. Zur Theorie und Geschichte der WortBild-Beziehungen und des literarischen Darstellungsstils. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

6.2 Further Reading Andringa, Els (1996). “Effects of ‘Narrative Distance’ on Reader’s Emotional Involvement and Response.” Poetics 23, 431–452. Johansson, Christer (2012). “Telling and Showing: A Semiotic Perspective.” Johannson, Christer & Göran Rossholm (eds.). Disputable Core Concepts of Narrative Theory. Bern: Lang, 147–182.

Text Types Matthias Aumüller

1 Definition The notion of text type is an abstract category designed to characterize the main structure of a particular text or one of its parts according to its dominant properties. It is intended to integrate common features of historically varying genres (novella, novel, short story, etc.) and thus to reduce the complexity of the many overlapping kinds of texts to distinct textual phenomena. In virtue of narratology’s traditional focus on time, these phenomena are semantic properties that constitute the temporal character of the text (passage). Thus, the text type ‘narrative’ is defined by the property ‘change of state’ of concrete objects and the text type ‘description,’ accordingly, by the property ‘is about states’ of concrete objects. The text type ‘argument’ is defined by logical-semantic relations between abstract objects instead of temporal-semantic properties. There are many other typologies of text types, often including more types. But for the sake of consistency, the following account will be restricted to these three. One requirement of the notion is that the various text types be mutually exclusive. The term ‘modes (or types) of discourse,’ sometimes used synonymously with ‘text type,’ could be restricted to the characterization of texts according to pragmatic properties (e.g. the speaker’s purpose). Thus any text may be used to persuade somebody. Its mode of discourse is then persuasive, even though the text type being used may vary (Virtanen 1992). The most appropriate text type in this case (or the text type most often used in connection with the purpose to persuade) may be the text type ‘argument.’ But it need not be. The persuasive mode of discourse can be instantiated by any text type, depending on pragmatic concerns. The notion ‘mode of discourse’ is thus contextsensitive; that of ‘text type’ is not. Another category that is closely related to the notion of text type is ‘genre.’ However, text type and genre should be kept strictly apart from each other as well. Unlike the numerous historically generated subclasses of genre (such as novel, sonnet, recipe, homepage) that have

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evolved by chance, typologies of text type include a limited number of different items and aim at a complete set of all possible types that can make up any text. Moreover, in contrast to genre, whose members are, by definition, entire texts, single text types mainly refer to parts of texts depending on whether the passage exhibits the semantic profile in question or not. As a rule, the definition of text types is based on textinternal data whereas definitions of (non-literary) genres follow various text-external and text-internal criteria alike (consider the letter and its many subclasses). One important consequence that follows from this definition is that narrative as a genre is distinguished from the text type ‘narrative.’ The text type ‘narrative’ derives from the prevailing quality of texts considered to be prototypical for the genre narrative or fiction, members of which are often not pure narratives in the sense of text type. While any text that is called, say, a novel belongs to the genre narrative, probably no novel is contains only the text type ‘narrative.’ Usually, novels exhibit all text types. However, any experimental literary text that is called a novel belongs to the genre narrative, even if it is mainly characterized by the text type ‘description.’ The problem of equivocation (one term denoting different notions) occurs in every case. This can be avoided when another term is available: thus the term ‘ekphrasis’ denotes a descriptive genre whereas ‘description’ denotes the text type usually dominating ekphrasis. Yet ‘description’ is by no means restricted to this latter use, and the term ‘ekphrasis’ mainly refers to literary descriptions depicting pieces of visual art (Henkel 1997; Klarer 2005).

2 Explication There are many varying classifications and typologies, each including different types (Georgakopoulou 2005). The text types ‘description’ and ‘narrative’, though, seem to be part of almost all typologies (except for Fludernik 2000; see below chap. 3.2). For example, in addition to those mentioned in the definition above, exposition and instruction are discussed as text types by Werlich (1976), van Dijk (1980) adds scientific inquiries to the list of text types, and de Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) include didactic texts. Sometimes, the notion of text type is meant to characterize entire texts, sometimes not; some authors focus on semantic features, others on pragmatic features. Heinemann’s (2000b) survey of the notion of text type in linguistics shows that the linguistic typologies of texts follow the application of different criteria: grammatical properties of texts, semantic properties of texts, situational

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context, function, etc. This practice has brought about a huge variety of heterogeneous concepts. There is no agreement on which notion should satisfy which criteria. And, what is more, even the use of particular terms is not regular. Thus linguists often use our term in the sense of what above was called a genre. For an extremely fine-grained classification with hundreds of genres, termed “text types,” see Görlach (2004: 23–88). Linguistic research often aims at a classificatory system of its categories. An exception is Virtanen’s (1992, 2010) two-fold model of discourse types and text types, conceiving of types as functional categories. The definition above indicates that text types in the sense suggested here are not classifying but functional or comparative concepts, too (for this distinction, see Carnap 1950: 8; Strube 1993: 59– 65). Classifying concepts are applied according to “either–or” decisions (a proposition is either true or not true); the application of a comparative concept, by contrast, depends on to what extent it is appropriate. Most typologies disregard the difference between classifying and comparative concepts. This leads to the construction of hierarchies of types and subtypes that correspond to each other in the manner of species and subspecies. The notion of genre is a classifying concept: either the text t belongs to the genre G or not. In this vein, the notion of text type classifies short stretches of text according to the temporal meaning of the predicate used in the passage. However, if applied to a text passage exceeding the scope of a simple clause, the notion of text type is a comparative concept because it is meant to characterize the temporal-semantic profile of a text passage according to its dominant temporal-semantic properties. The attribute ‘dominant’ means that in every text there are other temporal-semantic properties of lesser intensity than the dominant property. Thus a text (or passage) is not either descriptive or not but more or less descriptive, depending on the extent to which it exhibits descriptive markers (e.g. verbs that refer to states). A text is of a particular text type to the extent it displays those properties that determine this text type. The underlying reason for this conceptual ambiguity is that text types are defined with regard to simple clauses that prototypically exhibit the respective properties supposed to dominate the entire text. In the reality of texts, however, the various properties that determine the different text types can be instantiated even by a mere sentence. The difficulty arises because the notion of text type, meant to characterize aspects on the level of texts, is defined in terms that are derived from the level of sentences.

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As mentioned above, the comparative concept of text type must be distinguished from the classifying notion of genre. While genres single out entire texts according to heterogeneous features (e.g. formal features in the case of sonnets and paratextual information in the case of homepages), text types try to capture semantic relations between textual surface structures (of items of discours) and content structures (of items of histoire). In this sense, the division of text types follows a semantic criterion. Therefore, single text types are to be distinguished from each other by identifying not only what kind of linguistic device is used— event verbs or static verbs (for a more fine-grained verb classification, see Vendler 1957)—but also by what a text is about: time-bound events, states, or timeless universals (abstract objects, relations, etc.). The reason is that words are not always used according to their primary meaning. For example, a particular text passage may predominantly consist of static verbs that refer to states only prima facie but indirectly or figuratively express a change of state. As a consequence, the notion of text type has another component that has not been mentioned so far. It depends not only on the extent to which a text is characterized by a particular text type according to the number of words determining this text type, but also on the degree to which these words express their direct meaning. For example, a text is more descriptive the more its meaning corresponds to the direct meaning of its static verbs; conversely, the extent to which a text is descriptive curtails the function of static verbs to indicate a change of state. This holds for elliptic contexts, for example, where a description using static verbs refers to a change of state without directly naming it. Take the static verb ‘to stand’: this verb refers to a state, but if it is used in the context of, say, a murder (‘after stabbing her victim, the murderer raised her head. Her daughter stood in the door’), the state of standing in the door functions as (part of) an event. (Even the murder could be expressed by static verbs.) Another example is the iterative use of event verbs (discours component) that makes a passage descriptive from the point of histoire. Text types are thus determined quantitatively as well as qualitatively. First, all texts, not only narratives, usually do not deal with only one kind of object. Even a single sentence may contain lexical items with narrative as well as descriptive meanings. Second, these linguistic devices may not always directly correspond to the object they actually refer to in a given context, but may have an additional meaning that is sometimes even opposed to its direct meaning with regard to its temporal-semantic features. For this reason, text types supervene on texts, and this is why the ascription of text types to texts is seldom unambiguous. Text types are not only bottom-up abstractions of texts but also

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top-down structures that have an impact on the meaning of the text, mainly with regard to the temporal characteristics of its contents/meaning in relation to the lexical devices. Thus narrative is a type of text that predominantly represents events featuring event verbs; description is a type of text that predominantly represents states (of objects) featuring static verbs; and argument is a type of text that predominantly represents omnitemporal and logical relations (primarily between abstract objects such as concepts), i.e. universal propositions concerning objects outside time. These three text types do not cover all forms of texts, however since, for a starter, they may be ascribed to assertive sentences. Features of other text levels (e.g. grammatical mode or dialogue) are not encompassed by this typology. Among others, explanation is one more candidate for text type (Herman 2008) as it focuses on the causal characteristics of the represented events. No system of text types has been generally accepted so far. Text types makes it possible to link textual cues to interpretive ascriptions. Thus they may help to answer questions as to how events are represented in a particular passage: by naming the event directly or by naming it indirectly through the depiction of related states that only hint at the event. Interpretation sometimes benefits from the disadvantage of ambiguity. Thus the two components that determine a text type—the level of conventionalized meaning according to the dictionary and the level of meaning actualized in a given text—can correspond just as they may be inconsistent with each other. Other questions with a wider interpretive focus might bear on why certain passages of a text are composed narratively but others descriptively and what this means for different interpretive purposes such as the work’s aesthetic form or the reception of the text.

3 History of the Concept The present account primarily relies on research in literary studies and narratology. As a linguistic notion, text types are rooted in the development of text linguistics starting in the 1960s. The preferred objects of text linguistics are functional texts, to the effect that literary texts are often excluded from linguistic research. (For the wide range of competing concepts in linguistics, see Heinemann 2000a, 2000b, and Schlüter 2001: 67–144; for an overview focusing on literary studies, see Dammann 2000). While the term “text type” came in the wake of this linguistic tradition, the notion is much older. It existed under the disguise

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of terms found in various languages and was not terminologically differentiated. 3.1 Predecessors and Related Concepts The first differentiation of notions that share features with the modern concepts of genre and text type can be found in Plato and Aristotle. Plato divides what he calls diegesis into three kinds (Republic, III, 392c ff.). A text of the first kind is directly ascribed to the author, a text of the second kind to a character, and a text of the third kind is mixed (Halliwell → Diegesis – Mimesis). The underlying criterion of the typology is the answer to the question “Who speaks?” The notions are obviously classifiers and can be linked to genres such as drama. However, the third kind—“mixed”—is different from the other two in that it is a hybrid, containing the features of both. Were this conception pursued further, the first two kinds would function within the third kind as text types in our sense. Plato’s (and Aristotle’s) legacy is a long and complicated one (see Trappen 2001). An influential reformulation of the division of literary genres is suggested by Goethe ([1819] 1994: 206): “There are only three natural forms of poetry: The clearly telling, the enthusiastically excited, and the personally acting: Epic, Lyric, and Drama. These three modes can work together or separately.” His understanding of the “three natural forms of poetry” is similar to that of text types in several aspects. Referring to a number of literary genres (termed “Dichtarten”) such as drama, elegy, novel, parody, and satire, Goethe assumes that all genres can be reduced to those three forms which he conceives of as a kind of deep structures (“wesentliche Formen”) that may be observed in every literary work, independently of its genre. Every single work is characterized by a particular compound of the three forms. In the present context it is important to note that Goethe does not attach the three forms to groups of texts, thereby dismissing the idea of classifying texts. Instead, he suggests that the forms usually occur together (although he refers to Homer’s epics as examples of pure Epic). As in the case of text types, Goethe’s notions are not meant to classify texts but to characterize the special shape of individual texts. Like text types, Epic, Lyric, and Drama are considered to be historically stable notions that refer to gradual properties. Furthermore, these terms are apparently derived from the surface structures of texts, i.e. from historically varying genres that Goethe considered paradigmatic (such as Homer’s epics). At the same time, they are supposed to refer to deep

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structures that can be observed in texts of all genres. However, while Goethe considers only works of literary art, text types are neutral to the question of literariness. Goethe’s conception remained influential up to the middle of the 20th century. Staiger (1946) develops a threefold typology of literary modes on the basis of Goethe’s original conception. The genre triad is replaced by the comparative/functional categories in the sense of ‘natural forms’ even though Staiger implicitly retains the classifying genre notions. He refers to them using nouns and to the comparative categories using adjectives. On this basis, Staiger ([1943] 1957: 112) concludes that Kleist’s narratives, being novellas, are epics in the generic/classifying sense, and dramatic in the comparative/functional sense, thus blurring the conceptual shift between the two categories. While the classifying notions, according to Staiger (1946: 8), refer to patterns that underlie constant change and innovation, the comparative notions refer to the “tonality” or mode of texts and are supposedly invariant. Staiger ties the comparative categories to general anthropological attitudes such that lyric texts allegedly reveal the lyric dimension of human nature. Although the terms ‘natural forms’ and ‘text types’ as well as their scopes are different, and although the criteria by which the notions are determined diverge widely, Goethe’s idea of modifying the traditional generic notions in a comparative/functional sense continues to be felt in the modern concept of text type. A related concept in recent/modern literary studies is Hempfer’s (1973) ways of writing (“Schreibweisen”). His approach is worth mentioning because he distinguishes what Staiger and his followers amalgamate. Ways of writing are meant to be historically stable notions capturing deep structures while genres (“Gattungen”) are historically varying conventions. Hempfer’s examples of ways of writing are the narrative (“das Narrative”), the dramatic (“das Dramatische”), the satirical (“das Satirische”), etc. The transhistorical deep structures of the narrative and the dramatic are determined by the communicative situation. The deep structures of satire, by contrast, are determined by different properties. While Hempfer’s distinction of the narrative and the dramatic goes back to Plato, his notions are different from the point of view of concept structure. Again, text types and ways of writing have in common that they do not classify texts but characterize them. However, in contrast to text types, Hempfer’s ways of writing, like Goethe’s and Staiger’s, are obviously derived from generic notions and lack a unified criterion. Hempfer’s structural approach is refined and naturalized by Zymner (2003) who conceives of ways of writing as dispositions that can have certain effects.

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What all these conceptual variants, including text types, have in common is that they are categories aimed at characterizing aspects of style. They differ from one another in that they focus on different aspects. While text types, as defined here, refer to temporal structures, Goethe’s natural forms and Staiger’s styles evoke traits of human nature; as for Hempfer’s ways of writing, they are rooted in, among other things, communicative situations. 3.2 Narratological Conceptions The first conception of text type in the 20th century appears to have originated from Russian formalism. In an article on Pushkin’s “The Shot,” Petrovskij ([1925] 2009) analyzed the story’s narrative dynamics and characterized various sections of the text according to their narrative (temporal) and descriptive (static) structures. Similarly, Trubeckoj ([1926] 1980) used this distinction to characterize an Old Russian travelogue by Afanasij Nikitin. However, these early examples have not had any influence on recent developments. Starting with Genette, the narratological discussion of text types has long been devoted to the relation between the text types ‘narrative’ and ‘description’. Genette’s assertion that “description is naturally […] the handmaiden of the narration” ([1966] 1976: 6) caused much ado in narratology (e.g. Klaus 1982; Chatman 1990: 6–37; Ronen 1997). One of the main reasons was the lack of distinction between narrative as a generic or classifying concept covering kinds of texts and narrative as a typological, comparative concept designed to capture deep structures, functions, etc. Although he does not mention it explicitly and sometimes blurs the difference himself, Genette ([1966] 1976) seems to think of narrative as a generic concept, and his conclusion as to what description is in relation to narrative thus entails that description is not on the same level as narrative in the generic sense. Thus description for Genette is something like a text type while narrative is both a sort of literary genre (in fact, “the only mode that literature knows” [4]) and a text type (“the narration properly speaking”): “Every narrative includes two types of representation, although they are blended together and always in varying proportions: representations of actions and events, which constitute the narration properly speaking, and representations of objects or people, which make up the act of what we today call ‘description’.” (5) Here, “narration” and “description” evidently denote text types. However, Genette does not aim at a theory of these typological notions but looks at whether the notion of description is suitable to limiting the generic scope of narrative (in his opinion, not at all).

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In the wake of Genette’s article narratologists and other literary scholars began to investigate description and its manifestations and functions in literary discourse (e.g. Hamon [1972] 1982, 1993). For Hamon, description is a way to insert knowledge in narratives. He is less interested in a theory of text types than in literary devices that implement knowledge in narratives. Hamon’s model for descriptions is an encyclopedia entry which literary descriptions expand in many ways. Adam (1992) develops Hamon’s approach further and combines it with text linguistics. Much of what is published on the subject is devoted to differentiating description and its functions (e.g. Lodge 1977; Gelley 1979; Beaujour 1981; Kittay 1981; Mosher 1991). While Hamon investigated the role of description in 19th-century prose, Scherpe (1996) and Pflugmacher (2007) focus on the practice of description in modern writing. Ibsch (1982) contrasts examples of the two periods. A recent study that uses other text types to explain a peculiarity of a literary text is Abbott (2011). One of the major contributions to the theory of text types is made by Chatman (1990). He considers not only fiction but also film in terms of a theory of text types. His first step is to modify the meaning of the term ‘text’ according to the premise that narrative is a structure existing independently of the medium. Chatman’s notion of text is not restricted to pieces of spoken or written discourse but comprises “any communication that temporally controls its reception by the audience.” (1990: 7, original emphasis) For Chatman, films and literary works are both texts. His criterion, which has its roots in Lessing ([1766] 1984), is that works of literature and films, contrary to pictures, are deployed in time. Chatman defines three text types: narrative, description, and argument. However, he does not distinguish these types from each other by using one and the same criterion. The text type ‘description’ is said to “render the properties of things” with the subject as criterion while the text type ‘argument’ is defined on the basis of the communicative goal that a producer of a text pursues, namely, “to persuade an audience” (9). Furthermore, “Argument is the text-type that relies on ‘logic,’ at least in the informal sense.” (10) Finally, Chatman explicitly conceives of text types as macro genres to which the known literary genres are subordinated. “[…] Westerns are generic subclasses of the Narrative text-type. A Theophrastian character is a subclass of Description. A sermon is a subclass of Argument” (ibid.). He clearly considers text types to be generic categories. Implicitly, however, his conception of text types aims at a functional, not a generic account. The problems of definition aside, Chatman’s idea is that “text-types routinely operate at each other’s service.” (ibid., original emphasis)

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The principle underlying this idea is that many texts display another structure on the textual surface than they do on a deeper level. Thus a fable is a narrative on the surface level. However, it is not only a narrative but essentially something more because it includes a moral and as such displays the underlying text type ‘argument’ at the service of which the narrative structure at the surface operates. It is clear, then, that Chatman investigates the functional relations between generic ascriptions and ascriptions of underlying meaning structures conceived of as text types. His is a fruitful approach in that it helps to map interpretive ascriptions of meaning onto a system of interrelated notions that can be used to lay bare semantic properties of texts. More implicitly than explicitly, Chatman shows that the notion of text type in the narratological sense is a Janus-faced thing. On the one hand, text types capture semantic properties of texts according to lexical distribution (level of single words); on the other hand, they are meant to link the results of this procedure to the overall meaning of the text. This is what Chatman seems to have in mind when he models text types on two levels. Sometimes the two levels correspond to each other (a descriptive wording resulting in a description without any other function), and sometimes they do not (descriptive wording resulting in a narrative: in Chatman’s terms, the text type description “operating at the service of” narrative). Similarly, Genette ([1966] 1976: 7) considers RobbeGrillet’s nouveau roman “an effort to constitute a narrative (a story) by the almost exclusive means of description.” In an alternative approach, Fludernik (2000) suggests a threefold system intended to cover not only literary but also conversational/oral discourse. She distinguishes three levels: macro genre, genre, and discourse mode. Her macro genres prima facie correspond to the notion of text type in three ways. They are intended to systematically cover all texts; they are mutually exclusive; and they are derived from linguistic text typology. Fludernik adds three types and excludes description from her list: in addition to narrative and argumentative, she enumerates instructive, conversational, and reflective macro genres. She criticizes the assumption of the text type description “as a general text type, since description is very rarely a unitype text type, i.e., there are extremely few purely descriptive texts around” (2000: 280). Aside from the question as to whether there are any texts at all that display pure macro genres, Fludernik obviously conceives of macro genres as classifying concepts. Texts either belong to one of the macro genres or not. Hence she assigns particular genres of the second level to the macro genres: novel, drama, and film are subordinated to narrative, scientific text and historiography to argumentative text, and philosophy

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to the reflective macro genre, to name but three of them. She also refers to this second level as “text types,” a term not to be confused with the notion of text type as explicated above. Neither this nor the first level notion has anything to do with text types in our sense. On the third level, “discourse modes” are determined by “the surface structure of texts and the specific functional correlates within specific genres” (281). Thus, for instance, exhortations (a discourse mode) are subordinated to the genre of sermons which, in turn, are subordinated to the macro genre of instructive texts. It is the notion of discourse mode that corresponds to the notion of text type. This third level comes in response to the need for a non-generic category that is more flexible in order to capture the manifold typological heterogeneities within one and the same text, let alone within one and the same macro genre. Conversely, this notion explains the fact that different macro genres may display one and the same discourse mode; for instance, a narrative, understood as macro genre, may contain evaluative clauses typical for the argumentative macro genre, while argumentative texts may contain event phrases typical for the narrative macro genre as an illustration of an argument. The similarity between Fludernik’s discourse modes and text types is that both are comparative notions. Also, discourse modes refer to passages of texts instead of entire texts and exhibit a functional relation. However, they are derived from heterogeneous textual phenomena and are not mutually exclusive. Fludernik’s enumeration of discourse modes is an open list (of thirteen items) that lacks a unified criterion. Her main interest concerns not discourse modes but macro genres.

4 Topics for Further Investigation The main problems with the notion of text type are that there are so many competing approaches and terms with similar but not identical meanings and that text types, as presented here, are not expressed by a stable term. Basically, the theory of text types suffers from general disagreement as to what text types are. Arguments are drawn to advancing ever more suggestions for putative text types that have yet to be considered. As a result, no explication of text types has been achieved to cover all aspects of the notion. What is required instead is that text types should be explicated with regard to the purposes they are supposed to serve. Are text types meant to describe the particular dynamics of a text, its profile according to the represented temporal structure of the histoire, of the discours, or of both?

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Another problem is the discrepancy between the definition / explication of the concept and its application. Text types as explicated here are derived from the properties of sentences. In what kind of relation to textual properties do sentence properties stand? Even if text grammars have studied this question in quite some detail, agreement has not been achieved. Are concepts capturing those sentence properties appropriate means to capture properties of texts? In other words: what exactly does it mean when properties supervene on texts?

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Abbott, H. Porter (2011). “Time, Narrative, Life, Death, & Text-Type Distinctions: The Example of Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year.” Narrative 19.2, 187–200. Adam, Jean-Michel (1992). Les textes: types et prototypes. Récit, description, argumentation, explication et dialogue. Paris: Nathan. Beaujour, Michel (1981). “Some Paradoxes of Description.” Yale French Studies 61 (“Towards a Theory of Description”), 27–59. Carnap, Rudolf (1950). Logical Foundations of Probability. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Chatman, Seymour (1990). Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Dammann, Günter (2000). “Textsorten und literarische Gattungen.” K. Brinker et al. (eds.). Text- und Gesprächslinguistik. Berlin: de Gruyter, vol. 1, 546–561. de Beaugrande, Robert & Wolfgang U. Dressler (1981). Introduction to Text Linguistics. London: Longman. Dijk, Teun A. van (1980). Macrostructures: An Interdisciplinary Study of Global Structures in Discourse, Interaction and Cognition. Hillsdale: Erlbaum. Fludernik, Monika (2000). “Genres, Text Types, or Discourse Modes?” Style 34.2, 274–292. Gelley, Alexander (1979). “The Represented World: Toward a Phenomenological Theory of Description in the Novel.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 37.4, 415–422. Genette, Gérard ([1966] 1976). “Boundaries of Narrative.” New Literary History 8, 1–13. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra (2005). “Text-Type Approach to Narrative.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 594–596. Görlach, Manfred (2004). Text Types and the History of English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang ([1819] 1994). “Naturformen der Dichtung.” J. W. Goethe. Sämtliche Werke. Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche. Bd. 3.1: West-östlicher Divan. H. Birus (ed.). Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 206–208 [“Natural Forms of Poetry.” H. B. Nisbet & C. Rawson (eds.). The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Vol. 4: The Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1997, 125].

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Hamon, Philippe ([1972] 1982). “What is a Description?” T. Todorov (ed.). French Literary Theory Today. A Reader. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 147–178. – (1993). Du descriptif. Paris: Hachette. Heinemann, Wolfgang (2000a). “Textsorte – Textmuster – Textmuster.” K. Brinker et al. (eds.). Text- und Gesprächslinguistik. Berlin: de Gruyter, vol. 1, 507–523. – (2000b). “Aspekte der Textsortendifferenzierung.” K. Brinker et al. (eds.). Textund Gesprächslinguistik. Berlin: de Gruyter, vol. 1, 523–46. Hempfer, Klaus W. (1973). Gattungstheorie: Information und Synthese. München: Fink. Henkel, Nikolaus (1997). “Descriptio.” K. Weimar et al. (eds.). Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft. Berlin: de Gruyter, vol. 1, 337–339. Herman, David (2008). “Description, Narrative, and Explanation: Text-Type Categories and the Cognitive Foundations of Discourse Competence.” Poetics Today 29.3, 437–472. Ibsch, Elrud (1982). “Historical Changes of the Function of Spatial Descriptions in Literary Texts.” Poetics Today 3.4, 97–113. Kittay, Jeffrey (1981). “Descriptive Limits.” Yale French Studies 61, 225–243. Klarer, Mario (2005). “Ekphrasis.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 133–134. Klaus, Peter (1982). “Description and Event in Narrative.” Orbis Litterarum 37, 201– 216. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim ([1766] 1984). Laocoön. An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Lodge, David (1977). “Types of Description.” D. L. The Modes of Modern Writing. Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Typology of Modern Literature. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 93–103. Mosher, Harold F. (1991). “Toward a Poetics of ‘Descriptized’ Narration.” Poetics Today 12, 425–445. Petrovskij, Michail ([1925] 2009). “Die Morphologie von Puškins Der Schuss.” Wolf Schmid (ed.), Russische Proto-Narratologie. Texte in kommentierten Übersetzungen. Berlin, 67–89. Pflugmacher, Torsten (2007). Die literarische Beschreibung. Studien zum Werk von Uwe Johnson und Peter Weiss. München: Fink. Ronen, Ruth (1997). “Description, Narrative and Representation.” Narrative 5, 274– 286. Scherpe, Klaus (1996). “Beschreiben, nicht Erzählen! Beispiele zu einer ästhetischen Opposition.” Zeitschrift für Germanistik 2 [N. F.], 368–383. Schlüter, Sabine (2001). Textsorte vs. Gattung. Textsorten literarischer Kurzprosa in der Zeit der Romantik (1795–1835). Berlin: Weidler. Staiger, Emil ([1943] 1957). Meisterwerke deutscher Sprache aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert. Zürich: Atlantis. – (1946). Grundbegriffe der Poetik. Zürich: Atlantis Strube, Werner (1993). Analytische Philosophie der Literaturwissenschaft. Untersuchungen zur literaturwissenschaftlichen Definition, Klassifikation, Interpretation und Textbewertung. Paderborn: Schöningh.

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Trappen, Stefan (2001). Gattungspoetik. Studien zur Poetik des 16. bis 19. Jahrhunderts und zur Geschichte der triadischen Gattungslehre. Heidelberg: Winter. Trubeckoj, Nikolaj (Troubetzkoy, Nicolas) ([1926] 1980). “Une Œuvre littéraire: Le Voyage au-delà des trois mers d'Athanase Nikitine.” L’Ethnographie 76, 116– 134. Vendler, Zeno (1957). “Verbs and Times.” Philosophical Review 66.2, 143–160. Virtanen, Tuija (1992). “Issues of Text Typology: Narrative – a ‘Basic’ Type of Text?” Text 12.2, 293–310. – (2010). “Variation across Texts and Discourses: Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives on Text Type and Genre.” H. Dorgeloh & A. Wanner (eds.), Syntactic Variation and Genre. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 53–84. Werlich, Egon (1976). A Text Grammar of English. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer. Zymner, Rüdiger (2003). Gattungstheorie. Probleme und Positionen der Literaturwissenschaft. Paderborn: mentis.

5.2 Further Reading Adam, Jean-Michel (2011). Genres et récits. Narrativité et généricité des textes. Louvain-la-Neuve: L’Harmattan Academia. Bonheim, Helmut (1991). “Systematics and Cladistics: Classification of Text Types and Literary Genres.” C. Uhlig & R. Zimmermann (eds.). Anglistentag 1990 Marburg. Proceedings. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 154–165. Chaefer, Christina & Stefanie Rentsch (2004). “Ekphrasis. Anmerkungen zur Begriffsbestimmung in der neueren Forschung.” Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 114, 132–164. Fishelov, David (1995). “The Structure of Generic Categories: Some Cognitive Aspects.” Journal of Literary Semantics 24, 117–126. Gülich, Elisabeth & Wolfgang Raible, eds. ([1972] 1975). Textsorten. Differenzierungskriterien aus linguistischer Sicht. Wiesbaden: Athenaion. Sternberg, Meir (1981). “Ordering the Unordered: Time, Space, and Descriptive Coherence.” Yale French Studies 61, 60–88. Werlich, Egon (1975). Typologie der Texte. Entwurf eines textlinguistischen Modells zur Grundlegung einer Textgrammatik. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer. Yacobi, Tamar (1998). “The Ekphrasis Model: Forms and Functions.” V. Robillard & E. Jongeneel (eds.). Pictures into Words. Theoretical and Descriptive Approaches to Ekphrasis. Amsterdam: VU UP, 21–34.

Time Michael Scheffel, Antonius Weixler & Lukas Werner

1 Definition Broadly defined, time is a constitutive element of worlds and a fundamental category of human experience. Strictly speaking, time is not observable but it becomes manifest and thus perceivable in various changes (e.g. event). Together with the spatial parameters of height, width, and depth, time is the fourth dimension which makes it possible to locate and measure occurrences. Besides this general idea, time is culturally constructed, and thus concepts of time vary as a result of historical evolution. In a narrower sense, from the perspective of narrative theory, time is both a dimension of the narrated world (as conceived in the broader sense) and an analytical category (‘tense’) which describes the relation between different narrative tiers.

2 Explication Due to its elementary quality, time is widely discussed in philosophy, physics, and aesthetics. St Augustine claims that time is hard to grasp even though one has an intuitional notion of it (Augustine 1992: 154). This is not only one of the most prominent commonplaces referred to throughout discussions about time, but also makes the inherent tension in time apparent, i.e. its slippery, but basic nature. Against the background of ancient ideas of time as “a number of changes in respect of the before and after” (Aristotle [1983] 2006: 44 [Physics IV.11, 219b]), Kant’s philosophy of transcendental aesthetics sets a new benchmark by understanding time as both an “empirical reality” and “transcendental ideality” (Kant [1781/1787] 1998: 181 [A35–36/B52]). Kant argues that time is an a priori that is presupposed in all human experience. Newton, however, establishes a fixed idea of time by stating that “[a]bsolute time, without reference to anything external, flows uniformly” ([1726] 1999: 408). This idea dominates everyday concepts of time,

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even though relativity theory has since shown that an absolute understanding of time and space fails to explain the physical constitution of the world and has to be replaced by a relational model. In classical aesthetics, time serves as a category to differentiate between types of art. In contrast to the visual arts, which are associated with space, the art of speech (poetry and fiction) takes place within time (Lessing [1766] 1962). In particular, narratives—understood as representations of eventsequences—are defined and differentiated by their temporality. A correlation is drawn especially between time and the novel (Lukács [1916] 1971; Pouillon [1946] 1993; Mendilow [1952] 1972; Jauß [1955] 2009; Watt [1957] 1968; Baxtin [1975] 1988). Beyond this, different media have their own ways of forming and presenting time (film: Chatman 1978; Kuhn 2011). Debates on time are, in general, situated at the point of intersection between different disciplines, which in turn partly influence narrative theory (Bender & Wellbery 1991; Nünning & Sommer 2002). In text-based narratives, time structures the narrated world (‘diegesis’) and is the effect of verbal evocation which emerges from use of tense, deictic expressions, and literary techniques (e.g. leitmotifs). From an analytical point of view, one has to distinguish between three levels of reference which are characterised by their own temporality: ‘story,’ ‘discourse,’ and ‘narrating’ (Genette [1972] 1980). First, ‘story time’ (‘diegetic time,’ Souriau 1951) is a constitutive phenomenon of the fictional world (cf. 3.1.1). Like the narrated world, story time is the product of the act of narration and is linked conceptually to ‘event’ (Hühn → Event and Eventfulness), ‘space’ (Ryan → Space), and ‘character’ (Jannidis → Character). Thus story time turns out to be a relative category rather than a fixed one: it is formed by the interplay with other elements of the narrated world (van Fraassen 1991; Weixler & Werner 2014). Second, ‘discourse time’ is the time of telling which is fixed by the text (cf. 3.1.2). And thirdly, ‘narrating time’ is the time of the narrating act which describes the spatiotemporal position of the narrative voice (cf. 3.1.3). Beyond these systematic differentiations, time per se plays a crucial role for narrativity (Abbott → Narrativity). In discussions about sequentiality and eventfulness, time, along with causality, is considered by some theoreticians to be a necessary condition for narrativity (e.g. Tomaševskij [1925] 1965: 66; Todorov 1971: 38). The temporal dimension is thus used to differentiate between narrative and nonnarrative types of text (Herman 2009: 75–104). Moreover, time is not only understood in a purely textual dimension, but also as the reader’s mental construct. Temporal aspects play a crucial role in both reception

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orientated theories and cognitive theories of narrativity. For instance, Sternberg’s concept of narrativity is based on the interplay “between represented and communicative time” (Sternberg 1992: 529) which results in “three universal narrative effects/interests/dynamics of prospection, retrospection, and recognition,” in other words: “suspense, curiosity, and surprise” (2001: 117). By contrast, Herman’s cognitive theory stresses that “[n]arrative representations cue interpreters to draw inferences about a structured time-course of particularized events” (Herman 2009: 92).

3 Dimensions of the Concept and History of its Study 3.1 Time in the Context of Narrative Representation: Story, Discourse, and Narrating The following systematic overview of the phenomenology of time in the context of narrative representation concentrates on temporal aspects of verbal narration and follows Genette’s differentiation between ‘story,’ ‘discourse,’ and ‘narrating’. 3.1.1 ‘Story Time’: Temporal Order in the Narrated World ‘Story time’ is (a) a world-constitutive dimension which is (b) based on verbal evocation and interplay with other elements of the narrated world and which (c) serves as reference parameter when it comes to defining the relation between the chronological order of ‘story’ and ‘discourse’. (a) By understanding a “world” as a “constellation of spatiotemporally linked elements,” time becomes its constitutive part (Ronen 1994: 199). In this sense, time frames the setting for events, characters, and action and simultaneously, due to its relational quality, is itself shaped by these elements. Even though the “internal time” of a narrative is independent from extrafictional “external time” (de Toro [1986] 2011: 113)—thus allowing “radical deviations from the regularities of time in the actual world” (Ronen 1994: 202; cf. Šklovskij [1921] 1965: 36)—it is predominantly thought to be “marginally analogous to the system of relations interrelating components of the real world” (Ronen 1994: 200) and may be “pragmatically linked to empirical historical time” (de Toro [1986] 2011: 114). (b) Time is the product of several techniques of evocation. Tomaševskij differentiates between the following techniques: first, ‘ab-

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solute’ (‘12th Nov. 2012’) and ‘relative dating’ (‘five years later’); second, the mentioning of a time period (‘they talked an hour’); and third, the suggestion of ‘duration’ ([1925] 1965: 78). In contrast, de Toro distinguishes between two kinds of concretisation of time: on the one hand, ‘selective concretisation’ as an “exact, almost chronometric, temporal fixation of an event” ([1986] 2011: 138; e.g. ‘after two days,’ ‘he is twelve years old,’ ‘it’s seven o’clock’) and, on the other hand, ‘nonselective concretisation of time’ as “vague, metaphorical positioning” which may be ‘implicit’ or ‘explicit’ (138–139; e.g. ‘Once, X was very known, now he is a nobody’; or ‘a few weeks have passed’). According to Hamburger, however, ‘story time’ is absent when there are no explicit temporal markers: “If time is not indicated by a term or image, then it is not in the narration. For in poetry [Dichtung], only what is narrated is existent” ([1955] 2011: 90). Yet if the narratological category ‘tense’ is to work, ‘story time’ has to be reconstructed analytically, or at least assumed more implicitly. In addition to phrases such as those listed above, ‘story time’ emerges from the interplay of space, events, characters, and plot structure. As Baxtin stresses: “In the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible” ([1975] 1988: 84). He points out that in the ‘adventure-time’ of Greek romance, the passage of time “is not registered in the slightest way in the age of the heroes” (90), and that since there are no ‘traces’ of temporal change, time remains “empty” in this pre-modern narrative even though particular episodes are sometimes based on a last-minute rescue scheme (91). From a modern perspective, however, it seems obvious that time is linked to concepts of personhood and identity in general (Bieri [1986] 2011; Currie 2007: 51–73) and thus to biographical models in particular. (c) ‘Story time’ is the product of these explicit and implicit forms of evocation and is the measure which defines the artificiality of ‘discourse time.’ The standard case is that of a monotonous, linear, and chronological time (Fludernik 2003: 117–118; Werner 2012: 150–151). Narrative theory is only marginally interested in forms of ‘story time’ which differ from the mimetic Newtonian concept. Forms of narrated time such as “circular,” “contradictory,” “antinomic”, “differential”, “conflated,” or “dual/multiple” (Richardson 2002: 48–52), which question the established taxonomy of narratological terms, have been largely neglected (Herman 1998; cf. Richardson’s and Shen’s discussion on temporal anomalies that challenge the story-discourse distinction: Richardson 2002, 2003; Shen 2002, 2003).

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3.1.2 ‘Discourse Time’ and its Relation to ‘Story Time,’ ‘Order,’ ‘Duration,’ ‘Frequency’ ‘Discourse time’ is (a) the time “it takes to peruse the discourse” (Chatman 1978: 62), and in this sense is partly a spatial metaphor for the narrating or reading process. Nevertheless, (b) there are several terms for specific relations between ‘story time’ and ‘discourse time’. (a) Assuming that “[i]n order to narrate a story, the narrator needs a certain span of physical time,” Müller argues that even though this time would normally be measured by a clock, “there is no basic difference between counting the time of narration in minutes or in the number of printed pages” ([1947] 2011: 75–76; cf. Tomaševskij [1925] 1965: 78). Genette is aware of the metaphorical character of discourse time and that the temporality of a text comes, “metonymically” from the process of reading. He thus points out that “we must first take [this] displacement for granted, since it forms part of the narrative game, and therefore accept literally the quasi-fiction of Erzählzeit, this false time standing in for a true time and to be treated—with the combination of reservation and acquiescence that this involves—as a pseudo-time” ([1972] 1980: 34). (b) In elaborating on time, Genette systematizes ideas propounded by Metz ([1971] 1974), Müller ([1948] 1968), and Lämmert ([1955] 1967), employing the categories of ‘order,’ ‘duration,’ and ‘frequency.’ In relation to ‘order,’ Genette calls the deviations between story and discourse ‘anachronies’ and distinguishes between ‘prolepsis’ (flashforward) and ‘analepsis’ (flashback). Both can vary in terms of their ‘distance,’ ‘extent,’ and relationship to the ‘main narrative.’ Genette calls the deformation of ‘duration’ ‘anisochrony’ ([1972] 1980: 86). He discerns four types of story-discourse relations: ‘pause,’ ‘scene,’ ‘summary,’ and ‘ellipsis’ (95). ‘Frequency’ outlines the relationship between the number of occurrences in the story and the number of occurrences narrated. In this regard, Genette distinguishes between three modes: ‘singulative’ (telling once what happened once), ‘repetitive’ (telling many times what happened once), and ‘iterative’ (telling once what happened several times [(114–116]). De Toro (1986) extends Genette’s taxonomy by differentiating between ‘explicit’ and ‘implicit’ anachronies and by taking into consideration further phenomena “such as the explicit/implicit permutation of time, the explicit/implicit overlapping of time, the explicit/implicit interdependence of time, [and] the explicit/implicit synchrony, simultaneity and circularity” of time ([1986] 2011: 109).

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3.1.3 ‘Narrating Time’: The Narrative Voice’s Distance As it is “almost impossible […] not to locate the story in time with respect to [the] narrating act” (Genette [1972] 1980: 215), Genette distinguishes between four types of ‘narrating time’: ‘subsequent,’ ‘prior,’ ‘simultaneous,’ and ‘interpolated.’ The first type is “the classical position of the past-tense narrative”; the second is a “predictive narrative, generally in the future tense”; the third type is a “narrative in the present contemporaneous with the action”; and the last type is included “between the moments of the action” (217). In a broader sense, aspects of voice are examined implicitly within discussions of narrative point of view (Pouillon [1946] 1993; Uspenskij [1970] 1973: 65–80; Schmid 2010: 100–106). Traditionally, a narrative combines two different epistemic perspectives of time: the perspective of the characters as well as the analytical and retrospective perspective of the narrator (Martínez & Scheffel [1999] 2012: 125). While Schmid calls the former the ‘figural perspective’ and the latter the ‘narratorial perspective’ (2010: 105), Weber—referring to Bühler ([1934] 2011)— labels the epistemic perspective of the narrator and the character as two ‘centers of orientation’ (Orientierungszentrum I/II) or ‘me-here-nowsystems’ (Ich-Hier-Jetzt-Systeme; 1998: 43–48). Generally, the process of narration is understood as a retrospective act of sense-making. In matters of fictional narratives, however, this argument is called into question: e.g. Hamburger and her followers argue that there is no temporal difference per se between narration and the narrated (Hamburger [1957] 1973; cf. Banfield 1982; Avanessian & Hennig 2012, ed. 2013). With the standard case of narrative in mind, Currie points out that the process of narration “in its mode of fictional storytelling and as a more general mode of making sense of the world” is, paradoxically, based on an “anticipation of retrospection” (referring to Brooks, Currie 2007: 29). Responding critically to Ricœur, amongst others (cf. Meister 2009), Currie outlines three types of prolepsis: ‘prolepsis 1’ is the ‘narratological prolepsis,’ “which takes place within the time locus of the narrated,” thus corresponding to flash-forward in Genette’s sense (2007: 31); ‘prolepsis 2’ is a ‘structural prolepsis,’ “which takes place between the time locus of the narrated and the time locus of the narrator;” and ‘prolepsis 3’ is a ‘rhetorical prolepsis,’ “which takes place between the time locus of the narrator and the time locus of the reader” (31). It is ‘prolepsis 3’ that transcends the textual level—and thus also the Genettian system—by taking the empirical reader into consideration.

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3.2 The Study of Time in Narrative Theory: A Historical Perspective In literary and narrative theory, time has been approached following two different traditions of research which overlap with regards to questions of the evocation of time. The first of these traditions centres on the specificity of literary deixis and the use of tense with an interest in grammatical or philosophical questions (Pouillon [1946] 1993; Barthes [1953] 1968; Hamburger [1955] 2011, [1957] 1973; Weinrich 1964; Banfield 1982; Fleischman 1990). The second tradition seeks to describe narratives in terms of temporal deviation between story and discourse. Pursuing the rhetorical differentiation between ordo naturalis and ordo artificialis (Doležel 1990: 127–129; Ernst 2000), these discussions of time emerge primarily from the observation of the dichotomy of ‘narrating time’ (Erzählzeit) and ‘narrated time’ (erzählte Zeit, Müller [1947] 2011) or one of its terminological derivatives (e.g. ‘narrating/reading time’ [Erzählzeit] and ‘plot time’ [Handlungszeit], Hirt 1923: 27–31; ‘narrating time’ [vremja povestvovanija] and ‘fabula time’ [fabul’noe vremja], Tomaševskij [1931] 1985: 226; ‘narrative time’ [Erzählzeit] and ‘story time’ [erzählte Zeit], Genette [1972] 1980: 33; ‘represented time’ and ‘representational time,’ Sternberg 1978: 14; ‘discourse-time’ and ‘story-time,’ Chatman 1978: 62–84; ‘text time’ [Textzeit] and ‘act time’ [Aktzeit], de Toro [1986] 2011: 113–115). Insofar as narrative is understood to be “the product of a series of transformations,” this classification is based on models of narrative constitution (Scheffel → Narrative Constitution) and presupposes an autonomous, linear, and homogeneous narrated time which is artificially transformed by the act of telling. The following historical delineation concentrates on this second tradition: analyzing the temporal deviation between story and discourse. 3.2.1 Formalist and Morphological Approaches The study of time in narration was pioneered by Russian formalist and composition theorists as well as in German morphological approaches. In general, these approaches assume that there is a chronological order in a ‘story’ from which the arrangement of events in a narrated text deviates. One element of Russian formalist Šklovskij’s aesthetics of ‘defamiliarization,’ for instance, is the differentiation between daily, prosaic time and ‘literary time’ (literaturnoe vremja). The laws of the latter “do not coincide with the laws of ordinary time” (Šklovskij [1921] 1965: 36). Šklovskij acknowledges the artificial and elaborate alignment of

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events as ‘temporal re-setting’ (vremennye perestanovki) in the narration (29). Whereas Šklovskij only considers time occasionally, it is a pivotal aspect in the work of the so-called ‘composition theorists’ (cf. Aumüller 2009: 92). Petrovskij analyzes two categorically different aspects: on the one hand, he focuses on the interlacing of narration and time. On the other hand, he regards time according to the relationship between an abstract causal combination of the ‘material’ of a narrative and its concrete ‘presentation.’ For Petrovskij, each narrative has a temporal and causal dimension, whereas a description has neither. He distinguishes between ‘dispositional’ and ‘compositional’ modes of storytelling. In the first case, the events are arranged chronologically; in the second case, the main plot line is presented before introducing events (Petrovskij [1925] 2009: 71, 82). As these modes of presentation are not mutually exclusive, Petrovskij’s differentiation blurs the dichotomy of ‘fabula’ and ‘sjuzhet’ (Aumüller 2009: 106). Petrovskij’s interest in “Spannung” (suspense) transcends questions of textual composition by focusing on the effects of perception (Aumüller 2009: 108). Reformatskij refines Petrovskij’s analysis of the temporal arrangement of events by alluding to Aristotle’s theory of drama and in doing so systemizes narrations according to the quantitative classification of an either pronounced or an absent unity of time ([1922] 1973: 87–88). Tomaševskij examines time on two levels. On the one hand, he regards time as a basic element of the ‘fabula’ while on the other, he analyzes time under the heading of ‘sjuzhet building’ ([1931] 1985: 226). He acknowledges that ‘fabula’ demands both chronological sequence and causal connection ([1925] 1965: 66). Tomaševskij goes beyond Reformatskij and Petrovskij, as he is the first to differentiate between ‘fabula time’ and ‘narrating time’ [1931] 1985: 226). He defines ‘fabula time’ as the ‘hypothetical time’ (226) in which the presented events take place; ‘narrating time’ is defined as the time it takes to read the text, which thus corresponds to the “‘size’ of the work” ([1925] 1965: 78). Tomaševskij further explores the ways in which ‘fabula time’ is constructed (cf. 3.1.1 supra). In doing so, he systematizes different forms of time designations (i.e. ‘absolute,’ ‘relative,’ ‘explicit,’ and ‘implicit’ forms of dating), an idea which is mentioned but not developed by Petrovskij ([1925] 2009: 71). Although focusing primarily on the different character of epic and drama, Friedemann—the “founder of classical German narrative theory” (Schmid 2010: 1)—deals with time according to the arrangement of narrative material. In contrast to a chronological order of events, and contrary to the dramatic mode, it is the epic narrator’s specific ability to

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present events in a non-natural order. Friedemann claims that the constitutive epic mode of composition can be seen in the juxtaposition of events expressed through phrases like ‘meanwhile’ and ‘by now’ (Friedemann [1910] 1969: 99, 106). Hirt is the first in German scholarship to introduce the dichotomy of ‘narrating/reading time’ (Erzählzeit) and ‘plot time’ (Handlungszeit; Hirt 1923: 27–31). Petsch, in his 1934 examination of ‘essence and form of narrative,’ devotes a section to time and space, acknowledging the ‘high relevance of temporality within the narrated action’ ([1934] 1942: 167). He differentiates between three intertwined aspects of time, although he does not elaborate on them in great detail: a) ‘longitudinal extension’ (Längserstreckung); b) ‘duration’ (Dauer); and c) ‘density’ (Dichtigkeit/Dichte). ‘Longitudinal extension’ is defined as an ‘objective time’ in terms of a ‘chain’ in which all events of the plot are combined and which can be seen as a virtually objective and chronological order beyond the narrative (168). ‘Duration’ is specified by Petsch as the relation between the ‘objective time span of concrete action’ and the recited narration (172–173). Finally, ‘density’ is categorized as “the strongest movement of the sequence or the peaks of the plot,” but it can also describe the art of relation between a story and the particular historical era (cf. 177). This third category, however, is not to be considered as a purely text-based feature, but rather as an ideological aspect. Like Friedemann, Müller also explores the relation between events of the narrated world and their presentation. While Friedemann concentrates, in particular, on the order of events, Müller focuses predominantly on ‘time contraction’ (Zeitraffung; [1947] 2011: 75). Acknowledging the fundamental significance of time for narration, Müller distinguishes between ‘narrating time’ (Erzählzeit) and ‘narrated time’ (erzählte Zeit, 76). While ‘narrated time’ denotes the time span of a story, ‘narrating time’ determines the ‘physical time’ a “narrator needs to tell the story” according to the number of pages comprising a text (Müller [1948] 1968: 270). Müller pays particular attention to summaries and identifies “three main sorts of narrative time contractions” ([1947] 2011: 77): the explicit or implicit “skipping of time spans” (e.g. ‘a few years later’), “the contraction of time in large steps or main achievements in the way of ‘veni, vidi, vici’,” and the “iterative or durative traits” (e.g. ‘He rode out daily’). Müller’s study of duration was pursued by his student Lämmert. In Lämmert’s view, the structure of a narrative is outlined by ‘deforming, disrupting, reordering or even avoiding’ the monotonous succession of the ‘narrated time’ ([1955] 1967: 32). Broadening Müller’s focus, Lämmert centers on three aspects: the structuring and organizing func-

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tion of the narrator, different types of analepsis (Rückwendung) and prolepsis (Vorausdeutung) and the forms of speech within the narration. 3.2.2 Classical Structuralist Approaches While French “high structuralists” Bremond, Barthes, and Greimas concentrate above all on structures of the ‘histoire’ level of narratives, Genette’s “low structuralism” (Scholes 1974: 157) systematizes, in particular, the relation between story and discourse. Todorov takes an interest in both levels. Since high structuralists follow formalist and morphological theory (i.e. Propp’s morphology of the folk tale) and pursue Saussure’s linguistic theory as well as Levi-Strauss’ anthropology, they focus mainly on subsurface structures. For them, time is primarily an element of a surface structure and is therefore of secondary importance. Bremond, for instance, focuses on the “logical possibilities of narrative,” describing them with a both trinominal and binary model ([1966] 1980: 387). Aiming to create a model of principal ‘narrative roles,’ he implements a “complete formalization” and “complete dechronologization” of narrative (Ricœur [1984] 1985, vol. 2: 42). Greimas argues in the same vein. Time, however, does not play a role in his ‘fundamental semantics,’ which establishes a dichotomy of a surface structure (structure apparente) consisting of the linguistic material, and a subsurface level (structure immanente) of semantics and grammar ([1966] 1983). Barthes outlines time when differentiating between ‘cardinal functions’ and ‘catalyzers.’ While ‘cardinal functions’ are comprised of both chronological and logical dimensions, catalyzers have only a “purely chronological functionality” ([1966] 1978: 94). Referring to Lévi-Strauss’ assertion that “the order of chronological succession is absorbed in an atemporal matrix structure” (98), Barthes stresses that “[a]nalysis today tends to ‘dechronologize’ the narrative continuum and to ‘relogicize’ it.” Therefore, structural analysis of narratives must “succeed in giving a structural description of the chronological illusion—it is for narrative logic to account for narrative time” (99). Although time is marginalized by Barthes and Levi-Strauss (for both there is just a ‘temporal illusion’), their use of terms shows significant temporal implications. They always refer to chronology in terms of a linear time, thus making concepts of ‘chronology’ and ‘temporality’ interchangeable. In his application of the formalist dichotomy of ‘fabula’ and ‘sjuzhet,’ Todorov differentiates between a ‘narrative as a story’ (récit comme histoire) and a ‘narrative as a discourse’ (récit comme discours), examining time in relation to the latter ([1966] 1980). According to

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Todorov, story time and discourse time are qualitatively different: whereas the latter is, to a certain extent, a linear time, story time is “multi-dimensional,” as several events can take place simultaneously (20). Following the Russian formalists, Todorov identifies this multidimensionality in the ‘temporal deformation’ (déformation temporelle) as a general artistic means. Todorov’s study brings about a more analytical approach to time, thus departing from the ‘detemporalizing’ tendencies of Bremond, Greimas, and Barthes. In his examination of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, Genette presents a complex multilayered theory and new concepts which make it possible to analyze the variety of temporal relations in narrative discourse. In contrast to the purely theoretical studies of the high structuralists, Genette sets out to analyze a particular work of literature and develops his model from a close reading of Proust. In doing so, he synthesizes existing paradigms of Russian and German narrative theory and develops them into a more systematic model which employs specific terminology (cf. 3.1). Despite critical comments from proponents of postclassical approaches (e.g. Fludernik 1996; Gibson 1996; Dannenberg 2004, 2008), the Genettian system has been disseminated through pragmatic versions of this heuristic classification (cf. Schönert 2004: 138; e.g. Todorov [1968] 1981: 29–32; Rimmon-Kenan [1983] 2002: 43–58; Bal [1985] 1997: 37–43; Martínez & Scheffel [1999] 2012: 32– 49; Lahn & Meister [2008] 2013: 133–151; Fludernik [2006] 2009: 32-35). In addition to de Toro’s extensions of this taxonomy of time (cf. 3.1.2), Genette’s system has also been adapted to specific media such as film (Chatman 1978: 63–79; Kuhn 2011: 195–270). 3.2.3 Postclassical Approaches 3.2.3.1 Ricœur’s Narratological Hermeneutics In contrast to high structuralists like Bremond and Greimas, who argue in favor of the ‘logification’ and ‘dechronologization’ of narrative (Ricœur [1984] 1985, vol. 2: 31–32, using Barthes’ terms), the connection between time and narrative is fundamental to Ricœur’s phenomenology. In his view, it is narration that enables the temporal nature of human experience: “time becomes human to the extent that it is articulated through a narrative mode, and narrative attains its full meaning when it becomes a condition of temporal existence” ([1983] 1984, vol. 1: 52). Ricœur devotes his study Temps et récit ([1983/1985] 1984/88) to a detailed categorization of the relationship between time, experience, and narrative, thus following up on basic considerations by

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Aristotle and Augustine. One of the study’s core aspects is that narration—by envisioning the absent and arranging a sequence of events— creates both a dissonance in the consonance of time and a consonance in the dissonance of experience. Ricœur is describing a process in which the narrated story and the act of narration are both necessarily intertwined with time. Ricœur’s ‘narrative hermeneutics’ is predicated on the idea that the relationship between narrative and experience can be considered in terms of a temporal sequence. Analogous to Augustine’s thesis of the threefold present—separated into the three aspects of past, present, and future—and in referring to Aristotle’s principle of mimesis, Ricœur highlights three dimensions in narratives which imply a circle of understanding in a time sequence ([1983] 1984, vol. 1: 52– 87): ‘mimesis I’ (prefiguration) means, by and large, the world of action that precedes the narrative; in turn, ‘mimesis II’ (configuration) refers to this prefigured world of action. ‘Mimesis III’ (refiguration) denotes the recipient’s activation of the narrated actions and his or her realization of the ‘synthesis of the heterogeneous’ which is manifested in mimesis II. Subsequently, this activation may influence and change the reader’s actions (including the models that determine his image of himself and of the world in which people act) and may itself become the subject of another narration, i.e. another ‘synthesis of the heterogeneous.’ Ricœur’s philosophical and theoretical examination is completed by a broad analysis of “tales about time” in the second volume of Temps et récit. Here, Ricœur explores the fundamentally different ways in which temporal experience is configured and facilitated in literary narratives, basing his investigation on three “tales about time” (101): Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925), Mann’s Der Zauberberg (1924), and Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27). 3.2.3.2 Cognitivist Approaches While classical narratological studies focus almost exclusively on the text, postclassical approaches such as cognitive studies, possible worlds theory or computer-based models emphasize the reader’s constructive activity. Sternberg, for instance, deals with the distribution of a story’s material and its effect on the reader. Attention is therefore concentrated on the temporal re-arrangement of events between ‘represented time’ and ‘communicative time,’ resulting, as Sternberg puts it, in “suspense, curiosity, and surprise” (2001: 117). Sternberg also refers to suspense as an instance of ‘prospection,’ to curiosity as ‘retrospection,’ and to surprise as ‘recognition’ (117). These three effects all correlate with

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specific time structures: suspense “relates to the dynamics of the ongoing action, curiosity to the dynamics of temporal deformation” (1978: 65). Surprise, however, is produced by a “generic interplay between times, abruptly twisted,” and is thus affected by “the manner and point of disordering” (1992: 523). According to Herman’s cognitive model, there are four necessary aspects of narrativity: ‘situatedness,’ ‘event sequencing,’ ‘worldmaking/world disruption,’ and ‘what it’s like’ (Herman 2009: 9). Time is central to event sequencing as the “temporal structure” of the content of a story is crucial for the recipient to be able “to construct mental representations of narrated worlds, that is, storyworlds” (19). For Herman, “temporal structures” are not only a feature of the text, but a result of the interaction between textual structures and the reader activating them. 3.2.3.3 Possible Worlds Theory Following Leibniz and influenced by Kripke’s relational semantics, possible worlds theory is based on the notion that ‘fictional worlds’ are ‘possible worlds’ differing from the actual world by their “independent parallel ontology” (Ronen 1994: 198). Ronen understands a ‘world’ as a “constellation of spatiotemporally linked elements” and designates “temporal relations” as the “primary criterion for drawing the dividing line between worlds” (199). The basic condition for the entity of a ‘world,’ therefore, is defined by its temporal homogeneity. Although Ronen emphasizes that within a ‘fictional world,’ ‘fictional time’ is comparable to that of the ‘actual world’ and thus to ‘real time,’ she also argues that since “one terminological system of time-notions is applied to worlds of different ontological orders,” ‘fictional time’ actually deviates from ‘real time’ (201). Since ‘fictional time’ is “subjected to points of view and to discursive practices,” there is no objective time beyond a specific point of view and beyond tenses and “textual devices” (201– 202). 3.2.3.4 Computer-based Research Approaches Exploring how time in fictional and possible worlds is cognitively imagined, Meister develops a computer-based markup tool that tags and analyzes temporal expressions in literary texts. Meister’s aim is “to develop a new model of narrative time” in order to describe how readers “build the complex mental image of a temporally structured world” (2005: 109). Since the cognitive evocation of ‘represented time’ “feels

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perfectly real” (109), Meister terms his project—alluding to Barthes’ ‘reality effect’—“the temporality effect” (2005: 109; 2011: 171). He presents an application that visualizes the marked-up textual constructions of time. Combining cognitive, psychological, and possible-worlds research, Mani develops an Artificial Intelligence (AI) framework in order to examine “reasoning about time and events an intelligent agent can carry out” (2011: 235). Whether the AI method can succeed in altering “the foundations of narrative theory” (235) is yet to be seen.

4 Topics for Further Investigation Narratological research still privileges a Newtonian concept of time which cannot always be adequately applied to pre- and postmodern narratives. In order to address this shortcoming, the following areas of research require further exploration: (a) on a textual level, a story-based theory of diegetic time that analyzes the complex and manifold concepts of time beyond an autonomous, linear and homogeneous narrated time (e.g. in ancient, medieval, and postmodern literature, diegetic time is often non-linear and heterogeneous and hence blurs classical narratology’s time concepts); (b) an inclusive and systematic approach that combines discourse- and story-centred studies; (c) a transhistorical and comparative approach which systematizes non-chronological concepts of time and examines how they are represented and constituted in preand postmodern literature; (d) comparative studies exploring transgeneric, transmedial and transcultural differences and similarities in the concept and representation of time.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Aristotle ([1983] 2006). Physics. Books III and IV. Oxford: Clarendon P. Augustine (1992). Confessions. 3 Vol., Vol. 1: Introduction and Text. Oxford: Clarendon P. Aumüller, Matthias (2009). “Russische Kompositionstheorie.” W. Schmid (ed.). Slavische Erzähltheorie. Russische und tschechische Ansätze. Berlin: de Gruyter, 90–140. Avanessian, Armen & Anke Hennig (2012). Präsens. Poetik eines Tempus. Zürich: Diaphanes. – eds. (2013). Der Präsensroman. Berlin: de Gruyter.

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Bal, Mieke ([1985] 1997). Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Banfield, Ann (1982). Unspeakable Sentences. Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Barthes, Roland ([1953] 1968). Writing Degree Zero. New York: Hill and Wang. – ([1966] 1978). “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives.” R. Barthes. Image – Music – Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 79–124. Baxtin, Mixail M. (Bakhtin, Mikhail) ([1975] 1988). “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel. Notes Toward a Historical Poetics.” M. M. Bakhtin. The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays. Austin: U of Texas P, 84–258. Bender, John & David E. Wellbery, eds. (1991). Chronotypes. The Construction of Time. Stanford: Stanford UP. Bieri, Peter ([1986] 2011). “Time Experience and Personhood.” J. Ch. Meister & W. Schernus (eds.). Time. From Concept to Narrative Construct. A Reader. Berlin: de Gruyter, 13–28. Bremond, Claude ([1966] 1980). “The Logic of Narrative Possibilities.” New Literary History 11, 387–411. Bühler, Karl ([1934] 2011). Theory of Language. The Representational Function of Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Currie, Mark (2007). About Time. Narrative, Fiction and the Philosophy of Time. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Dannenberg, Hilary P. (2004). “Ontological Plotting. Narrative as a Multiplicity of Temporal Dimensions”. J. Pier (ed.). The Dynamics of Narrative Form. Studies in Anglo-American Narratology. Berlin: de Gruyter, 159–189. – (2008). Coincidence and Counterfactuality. Plotting Time and Space in Narrative Fiction. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Doležel, Lubomír (1990). Occidental Poetics. Tradition and Progress. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Ernst, Ulrich (2000). “Die natürliche und die künstliche Ordnung des Erzählens. Grundzüge einer historischen Narratologie.” R. Zymner (ed.). Erzählte Welt – Welt des Erzählens. Festschrift für Dietrich Weber. Köln: Ed. Chōra, 179–199. Fleischman, Suzanne (1990). Tense and Narrativity. From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction. Austin: U of Texas P. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. – (2003). “Chronology, Time, Tense and Experientiality in Narrative.” Language and Literature 12, 117–134. – ([2006] 2009). An Introduction to Narratology. London: Routledge. Fraassen, Bastiaan C. van (1991). “Time in Physical and Narrative Structure.” J. Bender & D. E. Wellbery (eds.). Chronotypes. The Construction of Time. Stanford: Standford UP, 19–37. Friedemann, Käte ([1910] 1969). Die Rolle des Erzählers in der Epik. Darmstadt: WBG. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse. An Essay on Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP.

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Gibson, Andrew (1996). Towards a Postmodern Theory of Narrative. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Greimas, Algirdas Julien ([1966] 1983). Structural Semantics. An Attempt at a Method. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Hamburger, Käte ([1955] 2011). “The Timelessness of Poetry.” J. Ch. Meister & W. Schernus (eds.). Time. From Concept to Narrative Construct: A Reader. Berlin: de Gruyter, 85–108. – ([1957] 1973). The Logic of Literature. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Herman, David (1998). “Limits of Order. Toward a Theory of Polychronic Narration.” Narrative 6, 72–95. Herman, David (2009). Basic Elements of Narrative. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Hirt, Ernst (1923). Das Formgesetz der epischen, dramatischen und lyrischen Dichtung. Leipzig: Teubner. Jauß, Hans Robert ([1955] 2009). Zeit und Erinnerung in Marcel Prousts “À la recherche du temps perdu.” Ein Beitrag zur Theorie des Romans. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Kant, Immanuel ([1781/1787] 1998). Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Kuhn, Markus (2011). Filmnarratologie. Ein erzähltheoretisches Analysemodell. Berlin: de Gruyter. Lahn, Silke & Jan Christoph Meister ([2008] 2013). Einführung in die Erzähltextanalyse. Stuttgart: Metzler. Lämmert, Eberhard ([1955] 1967). Bauformen des Erzählens. Stuttgart: Metzler. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim ([1766] 1962). Laocoön. An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Lukács, Georg ([1916] 1971). The Theory of the Novel. A historico-philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature. London: Merlin P. Mani, Inderjeet (2011). “The Flow of Time in Narrative. An Artificial Intelligence Perspective.” J. Ch. Meister & W. Schernus (eds.). Time. From Concept to Narrative Construct. A Reader. Berlin: de Gruyter, 217–235. Martínez, Matías & Michael Scheffel ([1999] 2012). Einführung in die Erzähltheorie. München: C. H. Beck. Meister, Jan Christoph (2005). “Tagging Time in Prolog. The Temporality Effect Project.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 20 (Suppl. Issue), 107–124. – (2009). “Erzählen als vorweggenommene Rückschau. Über Mark Curries ‘About Time’.” http://www.iaslonline.lmu.de/index.php?vorgang_id=2665 – (2011). “The Temporality Effect: Towards a Process Model of Narrative Time Construction.” J. Ch. Meister & W. Schernus (eds.). Time. From Concept to Narrative Construct: A Reader. Berlin: de Gruyter, 171–216. Mendilow, A. A. ([1952] 1972). Time and the Novel. New York: Humanities P. Metz, Christian ([1971] 1974). Film Language. A Semiotics of the Cinema. New York: Oxford UP. Müller, Günther ([1947] 2011). “The Significance of Time in Narrative Art.” J. Ch. Meister & W. Schernus (eds.). Time. From Concept to Narrative Construct. A Reader. Berlin: de Gruyter, 67–83.

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([1948] 1968). “Erzählzeit und erzählte Zeit.” G. Müller. Morphologische Poetik. Gesammelte Aufsätze. Darmstadt: WBG, 269–286. Newton, Isaac ([1726] 1999). The Principia. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Berkeley: U of California P. Nünning, Ansgar & Roy Sommer (2002). “Die Vertextung der Zeit: Zur narratologischen und phänomenologischen Rekonstruktion erzählerisch inszenierter Zeiterfahrungen und Zeitkonzeptionen.” M. Middeke (ed.). Zeit und Roman. Zeiterfahrung im historischen Wandel und ästhetischer Paradigmenwechsel vom sechzehnten Jahrhundert bis zur Postmoderne. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 33–56. Petrovskij, Michail ([1925] 2009). “Die Morphologie von Puškins Erzählung ‘Der Schuss’.” W. Schmid (ed.). Russische Proto-Narratologie. Texte in kommentierten Übersetzungen. Berlin: de Gruyter, 67–89. Petsch, Robert ([1934] 1942). Wesen und Formen der Erzählkunst. Halle a.S.: Niemeyer. Pouillon, Jean ([1946] 1993). Temps et roman. Paris: Gallimard. Reformatskij, Alesandr A. (Reformatsky, Alexander) ([1922] 1973). “An Essay on the Analysis of the Composition of the Novella.” St. Bann & J. E. Bowlt (eds.). Russian Formalism. A Collection of Articles and Texts in Translation. New York: Barnes & Noble, 85–101. Richardson, Brian (2002). “Beyond Story and Discourse: Narrative Time in Postmodern and Nonmimetic Fiction.” B. Richardson. (ed.). Narrative Dynamics. Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 47–63. – (2003). “Some Antinomies of Narrative Temporality. A Response to Dan Shen.” Narrative 11, 234–236. Ricœur, Paul ([1983/1985] 1984/88). Time and Narrative. 3 Vol. Chicago: U of Chicago P; vol. 1 ([1983] 1984); vol. 2 ([1984] 1985); vol. 3 ([1985] 1988). Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith ([1983] 2002). Narrative Fiction. Contemporary Poetics. London: Methuen. Ronen, Ruth (1994). Possible Worlds in Literary Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Schönert, Jörg (2004). “Zum Status und zur disziplinären Reichweite von Narratologie.” V. Borsò & Ch. Kann (eds.). Geschichtsdarstellung. Medien – Methoden – Strategien. Köln: Böhlau, 131–143. Schmid, Wolf (2010). Narratology. An Introduction. Berlin: de Gruyter. Scholes, Robert (1974). Structuralism in Literature. An Introduction. New Haven: Yale UP. Shen, Dan (2002). “Defense and Challenge. Reflections on the Relation Between Story and Discourse.” Narrative 10, 222–243. – (2003). “What Do Temporal Antinomies Do to the Story-Discourse Distinction? A Reply to Brian Richardson’s Response.” Narrative 11, 237–241. Šklovskij, Viktor (Shklovsky, Victor) ([1921] 1965). “Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. Stylistic Commentary.” P. A. Olson (ed.). Russian Formalist Criticism. Four Essays. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 25–57. Souriau, Etienne (1951). “La structure de l’univers filmique et le vocabulaire de la filmologie.” Revue internationale de filmologie 7–8, 231–240.

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Sternberg, Meir (1978). Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – (1992). “Telling in Time (II). Chronology, Teleology, Narrativity.” Poetics Today 13, 463–541. – (2001). “How Narrativity Makes a Difference.” Narrative 9, 115–122. Todorov, Tzvetan ([1966] 1980). “The Categories of Literary Narrative.” Papers on Language and Literature 16.1, 3–36. – (1971). “The Two Principles of Narrative.” Diacritics 1, 37–44. – ([1968] 1981). Introduction to Poetics. Brighton: The Harvester P. Tomaševskij, Boris (Tomashevsky) ([1925] 1965). “Thematics.” P. A. Olson (ed.). Russian Formalist Criticism. Four Essays. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 59–95. – ([1931] 1985). Theorie der Literatur. Poetik. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Toro, Alfonso de (1986). Die Zeitstruktur im Gegenwartsroman. Am Beispiel von G. García Márquez’ “Cien años de soledad”, M. Vargas Llosas “La casa verde” u. A. Robbe-Grillets “La maison de rendez-vous.” Tübingen: Gunter Narr. – ([1986] 2011). “Time Structure in the Contemporary Novel.” J. Ch. Meister & W. Schernus (eds.). Time. From Concept to Narrative Construct. A Reader. Berlin: de Gruyter, 109–142. Uspenskij, Boris (Uspensky) ([1970] 1973). A Poetics of Composition. The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of a Compositional Form. Berkeley: U of California P. Watt, Ian ([1957] 1968). The Rise of the Novel. Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Weber, Dietrich (1998). Erzählliteratur. Schriftwerk – Kunstwerk – Erzählwerk. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Weinrich, Harald (1964). Tempus. Besprochene und erzählte Welt. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Weixler, Antonius & Lukas Werner (2014). “Zeit und Narration.” A. Weixler & L. Werner (eds.). Zeiten erzählen. Ansätze – Aspekte – Analysen. Forthcoming 2014. Werner, Lukas (2012). “Zeit.” M. Martínez (ed.). Handbuch Erzählliteratur. Theorie, Analyse, Geschichte. Stuttgart: Metzler, 150–158.

5.2 Further Reading 5.2.1 Medial Perspectives Kukkonen, Karin (2013). “Space, Time, and Causality in Graphic Narratives. An Embodied Approach.” D. Stein & J.-N. Thon (eds.). From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels. Contributions to the Theory and History of Graphic Narrative. Berlin: de Gruyter, 49–66. Pochat, Götz (1996). Bild – Zeit. Zeitgestalt und Erzählstruktur in der bildenden Kunst von den Anfängen bis zur frühen Neuzeit. Wien: Böhlau. Powell, Helen (2012). Stop the Clocks! Time and Narrative in Cinema. London: Tauris.

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Richardson, Brian (1987). “‘Time is Out of Joint’. Narrative Models and the Temporality of the Drama”. Poetics Today 8, 299–309.

5.2.2 Historical Perspectives Heise, Ursula K. (1997). Chronoschisms: Time, Narrative and Postmodernism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Jong, Irene J. F. de & René Nünlist, eds. (2007). Time in Ancient Greek Literature. Leiden: Brill. Störmer-Caysa, Uta (2007). Grundstrukturen mittelalterlicher Erzählungen. Raum und Zeit im höfischen Roman. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Unnatural Narrative Jan Alber

1 Definition An unnatural narrative violates physical laws, logical principles, or standard anthropomorphic limitations of knowledge by representing storytelling scenarios, narrators, characters, temporalities, or spaces that could not exist in the actual world. However, narratives are never wholly unnatural; they typically contain ‘natural’ elements (based on realworld parameters) and unnatural components at the same time. Furthermore, the representation of impossibilities may not only concern the level of the story but also the level of the narrative discourse: in younarratives, for example, a neutral and telepathic voice addresses the central protagonist, somehow knows his innermost thoughts and feelings, and tells him his own story. The unnatural may exist in two different forms. On the one hand, there are the physical, logical, or epistemic impossibilities found in postmodernist narratives that have not yet been conventionalized, i.e. turned into basic cognitive frames, and thus still strike us as odd, strange, or defamiliarizing in the sense of Šklovskij ([1917] 1965). On the other hand, there are also physical, logical, or epistemic impossibilities that have over time become familiar forms of narrative representation (such as speaking animals in beast fables, magic in romances or fantasy narratives, the omnimentality of the traditional omniscient narrator, or time travel in science fiction).

2 Explication Unnatural narratives are a subset of fictional narratives. The unnatural (or impossible) is measured against the foil of ‘natural’ (i.e. real-world) cognitive frames and scripts which are derived from our bodily existence in the world (see Fludernik 1996: 22) and involve natural laws and logical principles as well as standard human limitations of knowledge. The criterion for identifying unnaturalness is actualizability, which

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bears on the question of whether the represented scenario or event could exist in the real world or not (see also Ronen 1994: 51). The island in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), for example, is fictional, but such an island could exist in the actual world: it is based on ‘natural’ parameters. The flying island of Laputa in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726/1735), on the other hand, could clearly not exist in the real world; it therefore constitutes an unnatural phenomenon. An unnaturalness that concerns the level of the story can be found in Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow (1991). In this novel, intradiegetic time, i.e. time within the storyworld, moves backwards. Hence, the firstperson narrator does not swallow his food; rather, he gulps it up: You select a soiled dish, collect some scraps from the garbage, and settle down for a short wait. Various items get gulped up into my mouth, and after skilful massage with tongue and teeth I transfer them to the plate for additional sculpture with knife and fork and spoon (Amis [1991] 1992: 11).

The novel’s retrogressive temporality contradicts our experience of time in the real world; here, the scripts of daily life are reversed. An impossibility that concerns the level of narrative discourse occurs in Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City (1984). This novel confronts us with a narrative voice which addresses the unnamed protagonist, knows his inner life, and tells him his own story in the following manner: You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge (McInerney 1984: 1).

In the real world, we cannot tell our addressees detailed and comprehensive versions of stories that actually happened to them (rather than us). Monika Fludernik thus describes the unnaturalness of younarratives in the following words: “Second-person fiction, which appears to be a prima facie fictional, nonnatural form of story-telling, enhances the options already available to conversational narrative and extends the boundaries of the nonrealistically possible in emphatic ways” (1994: 460).

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The represented impossibilities in unnatural narratives often lead to modifications or extensions of existing narratological conceptions of storytelling situations, narrators, characters, time, or space. Firstly, in unnatural narratives, the narrator can be an impossibly eloquent child, a baby without a brain, a female breast, an animal, or a tree. In other cases, the narrator has already died or is still unborn. Further impossibilities concern the telepathic first-person narrator (see Nielsen 2004, 2013; Heinze 2008); you-narratives; and we-narratives in which the ‘we’ comprises the minds of people who have lived over a period of one thousand years (see also Richardson 2006; Alber et al. 2012). Secondly, in unnatural narratives, characters can be half-human, halfanimal or speaking corpses. Also, they may transform into other entities, or they can exist in numerous co-existing but incompatible variants (see also Iversen 2013). Thirdly, unnatural temporalities challenge our real-world ideas about time and temporal progression. Examples are retrogressive temporalities (in which time moves backwards); eternal temporal loops; conflated time lines or “chronomontages” (which yoke different temporal zones together); reversed causalities (in which, say, the present is caused by the future); contradictory temporalities (which consist of mutually exclusive events or event sequences); and differential time lines (in which inhabitants of the same storyworld age at a different rate than others) (see also Richardson 2002; Ryan 2006, 2009; Alber 2012; Heinze 2013). Fourthly, impossible spaces undo our assumptions about space and spatial organization in the real world through containers that are bigger on the inside than they are on the outside; shape-shifting settings; non-actualizable geographies; visions of the infinite and unimaginable universe; or metaleptic jumps between zones that we know to be separate (see also Alber 2013c; Alber & Bell 2012; Ryan 2012).

3 The History of the Concept and its Study 3.1 Postmodernist Unnaturalness and its Precursors In comparison to earlier narratives, postmodernist texts acquire their specificity through the concentration and radicalization of unnaturalness. However, the unnatural scenarios and events of postmodernism are not brand-new phenomena. Rather, they have been anticipated in a wide variety of ways (see also Alber 2011). Many older narratives represent scenarios or events that are impossible in the real world as well. There is no proper point at which the unnatural first enters literary his-

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tory; rather, fiction always already involves the representation of impossibilities. Unnatural scenarios and events can, for example, be found in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient Indian Vedas, the ancient Sanskrit epic Ramayana, and the Old Testament. During the course of literary history, numerous impossibilities have been conventionalized and turned into familiar aspects of generic conventions. In a surprising number of cases, the transformation of impossibilities into cognitive frames goes hand in hand with the creation of new generic configurations. The development of the genre of the beast fable written in the manner of Aesop, for instance, closely correlates with the conventionalization of the speaking animal. Similarly, the development of the epic involves the conventionalization of supernatural forces such as mythic monsters and superhuman heroes. Once an unnatural element has been conventionalized, it can be used for a different purpose, which typically leads to the creation of further genre configurations. For instance, while beast fables use speaking animals as standins for humans to mock human follies, 18th-century circulation novels and children’s stories focus on the suffering of animals and use talking animals to critique cruelty against animals. Analogously, impossibilities that have to do with supernatural forces do not only occur in epics; rather, they continue to play a crucial role in medieval romances, Gothic novels, nonsense fiction, and fantasy novels. They may concern different aspects of human experience (such as courtly manners or chivalric codes in the romance or the evocation of fear and awe in the Gothic novel), but they typically involve the idea that the struggle between good and evil forces in our world is somehow regulated or determined by supernatural entities. Despite the deliberate movement away from the supernaturalism of the romance, the omniscient narrator in realist novels and the narrative medium in the reflectormode narratives of literary modernism also involve a certain degree of magic. Like wizards (such as Merlin), these narrators or narrative media are capable of telepathy: in contrast to real-world agents, they can literally read the minds of the other characters (see also Alber 2013a). The unnatural elements in science-fiction novels (aliens, rebelling robots, time travel, many-world cosmologies, and spatial impossibilities) also ultimately have their roots in the supernatural (see Todorov [1973] 1975: 173). It is only that in these cases, unnatural elements are no longer explained as supernatural occurrences; rather, they have to do with extrapolations based on technological innovations, or simply with the fact that the narratives are set in the distant future. In this sense, there is a short distance between genres in which impossibilities can be explained through magic or the supernatural, and science-fiction narra-

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tives in which similar phenomena are explained through technological development (see also Miéville 2004: 338). Numerous manifestations of satire also involve the unnatural because satirical exaggerations, distortions, or caricatures are frequently so extreme that they merge with the impossible. Stableford, for example, argues that “the artifice of satire,” which proceeds by means of “incongruous exaggeration,” was “crucial to the development of selfconscious fabulation [i.e. postmodernism, J. A.], beginning with the earliest fables” ([2005] 2009: 358). In the case of satire, represented impossibilities (such as the speaking objects in the circulation novels of the 18th century or the flying island of Laputa) typically serve a didactic purpose: they mock and critique certain psychological predispositions or states of affairs. The proliferation of the unnatural in earlier narratives suggests that postmodernism is not the completely innovative and wholly unprecedented explosion of anti-mimeticism that certain critics consider it to be. Rather, postmodernist narratives hark back to conventionalized impossibilities in well-known genres; they draw on features of earlier narratives via a shared concern with the unnatural. More specifically, postmodernism can now be construed as being an intertextual endeavor which blends our actual-world encyclopedia with the encyclopedias (see Doležel 1998: 177) of established literary genres by using the impossible storytelling scenarios, narrators, characters, temporalities, or spaces of earlier narratives in the context of otherwise realist frameworks where we would not expect them. 3.2 Theoretical Conceptualizations of Unnaturalness The systematic study of the unnatural begins with the work of Richardson, who discusses unnatural temporalities (2000, 2002) as well as unnatural narrators and storytelling scenarios (2006), anticipated by McHale’s analysis of metafictional strategies in postmodernist narratives (1987, 1992) and Wolf’s more general work on anti-illusionism from a diachronic perspective (1993). Recently, a number of younger scholars such as Alber (2009, 2011, 2012, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c), Heinze (2008, 2013), Iversen (2011, 2013), Mäkelä (2013), and Nielsen (2004, 2010, 2013) have also begun to look at the ways in which unnatural narratives move beyond real-world understandings of time, space, and human beings (see also Alber et al. 2010; Richardson et al. 2012). This interest in the unnatural is a reaction to Fludernik’s ‘natural’ narratology (1996), which is critiqued from various different perspectives.

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Important in this context is the question of how to approach or make sense of unnatural narratives. Alber argues that readers are ultimately bound by their cognitive architecture, even when trying to make sense of the unnatural. Hence, the only way to respond to narratives of all sorts (including unnatural ones) is through cognitive frames and scripts. On the basis of cognitive studies, frame theory, and possible-worlds theory, he has outlined a number of reading strategies enabling readers to come to terms with and make sense of the unnatural (Alber 2013b: 451–454). Other researchers take exception to such reading strategies: they argue that the possibility should be left open that unnatural narratives might contain or produce effects that are not easily (if at all) explainable or resolvable with reference to everyday phenomena or to the rules of the represented storyworld. Richardson, for example, seeks to “respect the polysemy of literary creations, and a crucial aspect of this polysemy can be the unnatural construction of recalcitrant texts.” From this perspective, “we need to recognize the anti-mimetic as such, and resist impulses to deny its protean essence and unexpected effects” (2011: 33). Similarly, for Iversen, “one major limitation inherent in a full-blown cognitive approach to narrative [...] is that it runs the risk of reducing the affective power and resonance of such narratives” (2013: 96). Mäkelä also points out that she “would not construe ‘the reader’ as a mere sense-making machine but as someone who might just as well opt for the improbable and the indeterminate” (2013: 145). Along the same lines, Nielsen develops what he calls “un-naturalizing reading strategies,” arguing that when confronted with the unnatural the reader “can trust as authoritative and reliable what would in real life be impossible.” Furthermore, the unnatural “cue[s] the reader to interpret in ways that differ from the interpretation of real-world acts of narration and of conversational storytelling” (2013: 91–92). From this perspective, a cognitive approach cannot do justice to the representation of impossibilities because it potentially leads to normalizing or domesticating the unnatural. On the other hand, the alternative approach involves the danger of monumentalizing the unnatural by leaving it outside the bounds of the comprehensible: one might argue that since represented impossibilities are created by human authors, it makes sense to address the question of what they have to say about us and the world we live in. This argument closely correlates with what Stein Haugom Olsen calls the “‘human interest’ question” (1987: 67), i.e. the idea that fiction focuses on “mortal life: how to understand it and how to live it” (Nagel 1979: ix). The unnatural

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is a human phenomenon, rather than a transcendental or godly phenomenon that human beings cannot even begin to make sense of.

4 Topics for Further Investigation Open questions concern (1) the role of impossibilities in poetry, film, painting, religious texts, computer games, and so forth, as well as (2) the functions of the unnatural in literatures written in other languages than English. (3) The fusion of the study of the unnatural with feminist, queer, and/or postcolonial approaches appears to be a promising endeavor and, more generally, the ideological underpinnings and/or political implications of represented impossibilities. (4) The unnatural should be investigated from the perspective of the rhetorical approach to narrative, and the place of implied authors behind representations of impossibilities and the question of what is to be understood by the authorial audience should be determined.

5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Alber, Jan (2009). “Impossible Storyworlds – and What To Do with Them.” Storyworlds 1, 79–96. – (2011). “The Diachronic Development of Unnaturalness: A New View on Genre.” J. Alber & R. Heinze (eds.). Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narratology. Berlin: de Gruyter, 41–67. – (2012). “Unnatural Temporalities: Interfaces between Postmodernism, Science Fiction, and the Fantastic.” M. Lehtimäki et al. (eds.). Narrative Interrupted: The Plotless, the Disturbing and the Trivial in Literature, Festschrift for Pekka Tammi. New York: de Gruyter, 174–191. – (2013a). “Pre-Postmodernist Manifestations of the Unnatural: Instances of Expanded Consciousness in Omniscient Narration and Reflector-Mode Narratives.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 61.2, 137–153. – (2013b). “Unnatural Narratology: The Systematic Study of Anti-Mimeticism.” Literature Compass 10.5, 449–460. – (2013c). “Unnatural Spaces and Narrative Worlds.” J. Alber et al. (eds.). A Poetics of Unnatural Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 45–66. – & Alice Bell (2012). “Ontological Metalepsis and Unnatural Narratology.” Journal of Narrative Theory 42.2, 166–192. – Stefan Iversen, Henrik Skov Nielsen & Brian Richardson (2010). “Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narratology: Beyond Mimetic Models.” Narrative 18.2, 113–136.

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Henrik Skov Nielsen & Brian Richardson (2012). “Unnatural Voices, Minds, and Narration.” J. Bray et al. (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature. London: Routledge, 351–367. Amis, Martin ([1991] 1992). Time’s Arrow or the Nature of the Offence. New York: Vintage. Doležel, Lubomír (1998). Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP. Fludernik, Monika (1994). “Second-Person Narrative as a Test Case for Narratology: The Limits of Realism.” Style 28.3, 445–79. – (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. Heinze, Rüdiger (2008). “Violations of Mimetic Epistemology in First-Person Narrative Fiction.” Narrative 16.3, 279–297. – (2013). “The Whirlgig of Time: Toward a Poetics of Unnatural Temporality.” J. Alber et al. (eds.). A Poetics of Unnatural Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 31–44. Iversen, Stefan (2011). “‘In flaming flames’: Crises of Experientiality in Non-Fictional Narratives.” J. Alber & R. Heinze (eds.). Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narratology. Berlin: de Gruyter, 89–103. – (2013). “Unnatural Minds.” J. Alber et al. (eds.). A Poetics of Unnatural Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 94–112. McHale, Brian (1987). Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Methuen. – (1992). Constructing Postmodernism. London: Routledge. McInerney, Jay (1984). Bright Lights, Big City. New York: Vintage. Mäkelä, Maria (2013). “Realism and the Unnatural.” J. Alber et al. (eds.). A Poetics of Unnatural Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 142–166. Miéville, China (2004). “Marxism and Fantasy: An Introduction.” Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader. D. Sandner (ed.). Westport, CN: Praeger, 334–343. Nagel, Thomas (1979). Moral Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Nielsen, Henrik Skov (2004). “The Impersonal Voice in First-Person Narrative Fiction.” Narrative 12.2, 133–150. – (2010). “Natural Authors, Unnatural Narration.” J. Alber & M. Fludernik (eds.). Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 275–301 – (2013). “Naturalizing and Un-naturalizing Reading Strategies: Focalization Revisited.” J. Alber et al. (eds.). A Poetics of Unnatural Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 67–93. Olsen, Stein Haugom (1987). The End of Literary Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Richardson, Brian (2000). “Narrative Poetics and Postmodern Transgression: Theorizing the Collapse of Time, Voice, and Frame.” Narrative, 8.1, 23–42. – (2002). “Beyond Story and Discourse: Narrative Time in Postmodern and Nonmimetic Fiction.” B. Richardson (ed.). Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 47–63. – (2006). Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State UP. – (2011). “What is Unnatural Narrative Theory?” J. Alber & R. Heinze (eds.). Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narratology. Berlin: de Gruyter, 23–40.

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David Herman, James Phelan, Peter Rabinowitz, & Robyn Warhol (2012). Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Ronen, Ruth (1994). Possible Worlds in Literary Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2006). “From Parallel Universes to Possible Worlds: Ontological Pluralism in Physics, Narratology, and Narrative.” Poetics Today 27.4, 633–674. – (2009). “Temporal Paradoxes in Narrative.” Style 43.2, 142–164. – (2012). “Impossible Worlds.” A. Bray et al. (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature. London: Routledge, 368–379. Šklovskij, Viktor (Shklovsky, Victor) ([1917] 1965). “Art as Technique.” L. T. Lemon & M. J. Reis (eds.). Russian Formalist Criticism. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 3– 24. Stableford, Brian ([2005] 2009). The A to Z of Fantasy Literature. Lanham, MA: Scarecrow P. Todorov, Tzvetan ([1973] 1975). The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Cleveland: The Press of Case Western Reserve U. Wolf, Werner (1993). Ästhetische Illusion und Illusionsdurchbrechung in der Erzählkunst: Theorie und Geschichte mit Schwerpunkt auf englischem illusionsstörenden Erzählen. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

5.2 Further Reading Alber, Jan, Stefan Iversen, Henrik Skov Nielsen & Brian Richardson (2012). “How Unnatural is Unnatural Narratology? A Response to Monika Fludernik.” Narrative 20.3, 371–382. – (2013). “What Really is Unnatural Narratology?” Storyworlds 5, 101–118. Fludernik, Monika (2012). “How Natural is ‘Unnatural Narratology’; or, What is Unnatural about Unnatural Narratology?” Narrative 20.3, 357–370. Petterson, Bo (2012). “Beyond Anti-Mimetic Models: A Critique of Unnatural Narratology.” S. Isomaa et al. (eds.). Rethinking Mimesis: Concepts and Practices of Literary Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 73–92. Klauk, Tobias & Tilmann Köppe (2013). “Reassessing Unnatural Narratology: Problems and Prospects.” Storyworlds 5, 77–100.

Unreliability Dan Shen

1 Definition In its narratological sense, unreliability is a feature of narratorial discourse. If a narrator misreports, -interprets or -evaluates, or if she/he underreports, -interprets or -evaluates, this narrator is unreliable or untrustworthy.

2 Explication In literary narratives, narratorial unreliability is usually encoded by the author as a rhetorical device. Only occasionally is this due to the author’s own slips or failings in contrast to non-literary narratives, where narratorial unreliability is more often a result of the author’s own limitations. The concept of unreliability was proposed by Booth ([1961] 1983), who was concerned with intentionally encoded unreliability in fiction. Booth discusses unreliability in relation to the concept of the implied author (Schmid → Implied Author; Shen (2011, 2013)) and to that of narrative distance. In Booth’s view, a narrator is “reliable when he speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work (which is to say the implied author’s norms), unreliable when he does not” ([1961] 1983: 158–159). If the reader discovers unreliability as encoded by the implied author for the purpose of generating irony, she/he experiences a narrative distance between the narrator and the implied author, and a secret communion occurs between the latter and the reader behind the narrator’s back (300–309). While Booth focuses on the narrator’s misreporting and ethical misevaluation, Phelan refines and extends Booth’s distinction of kinds of unreliability (Phelan & Martin 1999; Phelan 2005). Phelan points out that narrators “perform three main roles—reporting, interpreting, and evaluating; sometimes they perform the roles simultaneously and sometimes sequentially” (2005: 50). In light of these three roles, Phelan classifies unreliability by focusing on three axes: the axis of facts; the axis

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of values or ethics; and the axis of knowledge and perception, the last having received less attention from Booth than the other two axes. Phelan identifies six types of unreliability which fall into two larger categories: (1) misreporting, misinterpreting (misreading) and misevaluating (misregarding); (2) underreporting, underinterpreting (underreading), and underevaluating (underregarding). The contrast between the “mis-”category and the “under-”category is basically a contrast between being wrong and being insufficient (2005: 34–37; 49–53). Significantly, one type of unreliability, Phelan points out, often interacts with other types. For instance, misreporting may be a result of the narrator’s insufficient knowledge or mistaken values, and therefore it may concur with misinterpreting or misevaluating. But of course, the narrator may be reliable in one way and unreliable in another: e.g. it is very common for the narrator to report the events accurately but misinterpret and/or misevaluate them (see also Lanser 1981: 170–172; Phelan & Martin 1999: 96).

3 History of the Concept and its Study As a significant feature of homodiegetic narration, unreliability has gradually become a key concept in narratological investigations. Critics discussing unreliability in literature fall essentially into two groups, with a certain degree of overlap between them. The first group, which far exceeds the second in number, treats unreliability as a textual property encoded by the implied author for the implied reader to decode; this group adopts a rhetorical approach. By contrast, the second group, which favors a constructivist/cognitivist approach, focuses on the interpretive process and regards unreliability as being dependent on actual readers’ divergent readings for its very existence. The following discussion will deal with the two approaches in a less historical than systematic way. 3.1 The Rhetorical Approach to Unreliability 3.1.1 Basic Understanding of the Concept Most narrative theorists follow Booth’s “canonized” rhetorical definition of fictional unreliability (Nünning 1997a: 85). Chatman (1978) rightly points out that the domain of unreliability is the narrator’s view on the level of discourse, not the personality of the narrator (234), since the narrator’s problematic personality only forms a possible cause of

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unreliable narration. But Chatman’s preoccupation with the storydiscourse distinction has led him to narrow down the concern to the narrator’s erroneous reporting of story facts. When unreliability occurs, the story undermines the narrator’s erroneous discourse through the implied reader’s inference of the true facts (233). In terms of the narrator’s unreliable reporting of story elements, it is truly a clash that occurs between story and discourse; but as regards the narrator’s mis- or underinterpretation and evaluation of events and characters, it is rather between the narrator’s explicit discourse and the author’s implicit discourse that the clash can be found. Thus, in Bierce’s “Oil of Dog” (1911), the first-person narrator in his boyhood helped his “honest” mother to throw babies into a river which, he explicitly assumes, nature “had thoughtfully provided for the purpose” ([1911] 1946: 800–801). Here the narrator’s evaluation of the facts (“honest”) and his interpretation of the facts (attributing this purpose to nature) is apparently at odds with the implied author’s implicit discourse (see Rimmon-Kenan [1983] 2002: 103). In terms of intentionally encoded fictional unreliability, even along the axis of facts, there is still an implicit clash between the narrator’s discourse and the implied author’s discourse. This calls into question Cohn’s distinction between “unreliable narration” and “discordant narration” (2000: 307), the former only concerning the axis of facts and the latter, by contrast, having to do with the axis of values, a kind that involves a discordance between narrator and author. But as regards the factual unreliability that sets in behind the clash between story facts and discourse presentation, we still have “discordant narration,” since there is also a gap between the “mis-” or “disinformed narrator” and the accurately or adequately informed (implied) author whose norms constitute a standard by which narratorial unreliability can be judged along any axis by the rhetorical critic. Since the gap between implied author and extradiegetic or heterodiegetic narrator is usually limited, with some exceptions (see e.g. Cohn 1999, 2000; Yacobi 2001; Pettersson 2005), narratologists have mainly dealt with unreliability in homodiegetic narration. In this kind of narration, however, the text only contains the first-person narrator’s account, and insofar as the decoding process is concerned, the “implied author’s norms” can only be a matter of the reader’s inference and judgment (see Booth [1961] 1983: 239–240). As Phelan (2005: 48) points out, fleshand-blood readers can only try “to enter the authorial audience” with or without success. Hansen (2007: 241–244) offers a taxonomy of four types of unreliability. The first is intranarrational, occurring within a single narrator’s

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discourse. The second is internarrational, where one narrator’s unreliability is “unveiled by its contrasts” with other narrators’ versions. The third is intertextual unreliability, “based on manifest character types” such as naïfs and madmen. But we find a narrator naïve or mad primarily through the deviant features of the narrator’s own discourse in light of world knowledge and genre expectations instead of through a comparison of this narrator with similar narrators in other texts. The last type is extratextual unreliability, which depends on “the knowledge the reader brings to the text” for its very existence. Because the criteria here involve a shift from text to reader (raising the question of incompatible criteria—see below), Hansen’s (2007) classification of the fourth type does not fit with his classification of the previous types, since readers with different reading strategies, conceptual frames or in different contexts may interpret the same intranarrational or internarrational phenomena quite differently. 3.1.2 Features and Causes of Unreliability Given the difficulties in arriving at the implied author’s norms, Rimmon-Kenan ([1983] 2002: 7–8) draws attention to various textual features that may indicate the narrator’s unreliability: (a) contradiction between the narrator’s views and the real facts; (b) a gap between the true outcome of the action and the narrator’s erroneous earlier report; (c) consistent clash between other characters’ views and the narrator’s; and (d) internal contradictions, double-edged images and the like in the narrator’s own language. Wall (1994) highlights the first-person narrator’s peculiar verbal tics or “mind-style” (Fowler 1977; see also Shen 2005a) which “form discursive indicators of preoccupations” that “might be one of the most readily available signals that the narrator is unreliable” (Wall 1994: 20). However, as different types of texts tend to foreground different features of narratorial unreliability, Wall’s emphasis is applicable to certain texts but not necessarily to others. As for the cause of the narrator’s unreliability, Chatman (1978: 233) mentions that it may stem from various factors such as cupidity (Jason Compson), cretinism (Benjy), gullibility (Dowling, the narrator of The Good Soldier), perplexity and lack of information (Marlow in Lord Jim), and innocence (Huck Finn). Riggan (1981) devotes a book-length study to unreliable narrators as picaros, madmen, naïfs or clowns, pointing to the relation between a deviant or deranged mind and unreliability in recounting one’s own experiences. Rimmon-Kenan ([1983] 2002: 101–102) identifies three main sources of unreliability: the narrator’s limited knowledge; his personal involvement; and his problematic

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value-scheme. Fludernik (1999: 76–77) draws attention to the different causes underlying the same type of unreliability; e.g. the factual type may arise either from “deliberate lying” or from “the narrator’s insufficient access to the complete data,” or it may form “symptoms of a pathological scenario.” Olson (2003) differentiates between “fallible” and “untrustworthy” narration, the former attributable to external circumstances and the latter caused by the narrator’s disposition. The two types of unreliability may elicit quite different responses from readers, who are inclined to justify the former according to the circumstances involved while being more skeptical and critical towards the latter. Olson’s differentiation is valuable, but the distinction would be more memorable if she used different terms such as “circumstantially unreliable” for the former type and “dispositionally unreliable” for the latter. In fact, Booth, upon whose theory Olson bases her distinction, uses “untrustworthy,” “fallible” and “unreliable” interchangeably ([1961] 1983: 158). While Booth makes a point of including the “circumstantial” kind, asserting that unreliability is “more often a matter of what James calls inconscience” (159), Schwarz excludes the “circumstantial,” arguing that “Stevens is more an imperceptive than unreliable narrator; he is historically deaf to his implications rather than untruthful” (1997: 197). We need to bear in mind, however, that (un)reliability essentially concerns whether the narratorial discourse is able to report, interpret or evaluate events and characters correctly or sufficiently. No matter how honest a narrator is, so long as her/his discourse fails to meet these standards, the narration will remain unreliable. Just as a person’s view may change in the course of real life, the degree of a narrator’s (un)reliability may vary at different stages of the narration (see Phelan 2005, 2007; McCormick 2009). 3.1.3 Estranging vs. Bonding Unreliability While most narrative theorists concentrate on the ironic effects caused by unreliability, Phelan (2007) draws a distinction between “estranging unreliability” and “bonding unreliability” in order to account, in a more comprehensive and balanced way, for the effects of the technique on the audience’s intellectual, affective, and ethical relationship to the narrator. The estranging type increases the distance between the narrator and the authorial audience, while the bonding type, conversely, reduces that distance. Since most previous work on unreliability focuses on the estranging type, Phelan concentrates on bonding unreliability, of which he identifies six subtypes: (1) “literally unreliable but metaphorically

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reliable”; (2) “playful comparison between implied author and narrator”; (3) “naïve defamiliarization”; (4) “sincere but misguided selfdeprecation”; (5) “partial progress towards the norm”; (6) “bonding through optimistic comparison”. 3.2 The Constructivist/Cognitivist Approach and its Relation to the Rhetorical 3.2.1 Yacobi’s Integrating Mechanisms The constructivist approach has been pioneered by Yacobi (1981, 2001, 2005), who directs attention to how readers resolve textual incongruities with five integrating mechanisms: (1) the genetic; (2) the generic; (3) the existential; (4) the functional; (5) the perspectival. The “genetic” mechanism attributes fictive oddities and inconsistencies to the author’s production of the text, regarding them as the author’s mistakes, among other things. The “generic” principle appeals to generic conventions of plot organization such as the progressive complication and the happy ending of comedy. The “existential” principle refers incongruities to the fictive world, typically to canons of probability that deviate from those of reality, as in fairy tales or in Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.” The “functional” mechanism attributes textual incongruities to the work’s creative ends that require such oddities. And the “perspectival” principle ascribes textual incongruities to the narrator’s unreliable observation and evaluation as symptoms of narrator/author discord (see McCormick 2009 for a good application of these mechanisms). Significantly, Yacobi’s mechanisms involve substantially different strategies—alternative rather than complementary ways of integrating discrepancies. Thus, mechanisms (1) and (5) are diametrically opposed to each other while mechanisms (1) and (2) and (1) and (4) are incompatible with each other (only the perspectival or the generic goes with the functional, the former being a specific case of the latter). These competing or contradictory mechanisms, however, may function differently for readers with different world/literary knowledge or social identity or in different cultural/historical contexts. 3.2.2 Incompatible Yardsticks To understand the relation between the two approaches concerned (i.e. rhetorical vs. constructivist/cognitivist), it is important to distinguish when and how they conflict and when and how they do not. In terms of critical coverage, there is no conflict, but rather complementarity. The

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rhetorical approach tries to reveal how the implied reader (a critic who tries to enter into that reading position) deals with one type of textual incongruity—the gap between narrator and implied author—while Yacobi’s constructivist approach tries to show how different actual readers deal with textual incongruities in general. However, in terms of yardstick, there is a conflict between the two approaches. For Yacobi, who uses the reader’s own “organizing activity” as the guiding principle (1981: 119), all five mechanisms are equally valid (e.g. regarding the narrator’s problematic claim as the author’s own mistake is as valid as treating it as a signal of the narrator’s unreliability against authorial norms). It should be noted that many cognitivist narratologists do not share this position. Rather, they are concerned with generic readers who are equipped with the same “narrative competence” (Prince [1987] 2003: 61–62) and who share stereotypic assumptions, frames, scripts, schemata, or mental models in comprehending narrative in a “generic context” of reception (see Shen 2005b: 155–164). From Yacobi’s constructivist angle, narratorial unreliability— concerning the perspectival mechanism—is just “a reading-hypothesis” that, “like any conjecture, is open to adjustment, inversion, or even replacement by another hypothesis altogether […] What is deemed ‘reliable’ in one context, including reading-context, as well as authorial and generic framework, may turn out to be unreliable in another” (2005: 110). This forms a notable contrast with the rhetorical approach, which treats the gap between narrator and implied author as being encoded in the text prior to interpretation. If an actual reader can decode the gap in the way intended—and signaled—by the implied author, she/he has successfully entered the position of the implied reader, and the reading is then an “authorial” reading versus a misreading. Interestingly, when constructivist and cognitivist critics, including Yacobi, proceed with analysis of narratorial unreliability, they themselves often take recourse to the methods of the rhetorical approach. In Yacobi’s ground-breaking essay for the reader-oriented approach (1981), for instance, we see an implicit shift to the rhetorical stance. She starts by criticizing the rhetorical approach for placing unreliability in the narrator and/or the author rather than in the reader’s organizing activity (119–120). Then she draws on a scheme proposed by MacKay (1972) for differentiating information and communication: the former is defined from the viewpoint of the receiver and the latter “cannot be defined without reference to the viewpoint of the transmitter” (122). As for the literary work, Yacobi asserts that usually there is no doubt “about the very existence of communicative intent on the author’s part” and that the relations “between implied author and reader are by defini-

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tion functional and hence located within the framework of an act of communication” (122–123). Here Yacobi also considers the variability of context. However, the context is only textual, for it concerns “the modalities of the unreliable source(s) of narration vis-à-vis authorial communication” (123). Yacobi distinguishes between two kinds of unreliable narrators: the unselfconscious versus the self-conscious, the latter’s unreliability being “harder to detect than the unsuspecting monologist’s” (124). This position is unequivocally rhetorical: the implied reader “detects” unreliability through the textual features encoded by the implied author prior to interpretation. In such contexts, Yacobi is not placing unreliability “within the reader’s organizing activity” but in the narrator and the author, and consequently the yardstick of unreliability is the implied author’s norms or “overall design” (125). Yacobi’s more recent essay (2005) is entitled “Authorial Rhetoric, Narratorial (Un)Reliability, Divergent Readings.” As shown by her own analysis (e.g. 1981: 124–125), in order to grasp the “authorial rhetoric,” a critic must try to enter the implied reader’s position so as to arrive at the authorial reading. By contrast, in interpretive practice we find “divergent readings” attributable to the differences among actual readers and various contexts. It is very important to investigate divergent actual readings—unreliability in different actual readers’ eyes— either synchronically or diachronically (see Zerweck 2001; V. Nünning 2004; Yacobi 2005). But if we acknowledge, in Yacobi’s own words, that a literary narrative is a “communicative act” that “cannot be defined without reference to the viewpoint of the transmitter,” we must avoid taking actual readers rather than the implied author as the basis for narratorial unreliability. 3.2.3 Nünning’s Shifting Position In the work of Ansgar Nünning, another representative of the constructivist/cognitivist approach, we also see shifts to the rhetorical position. In Nünning (1997b), a constructivist stance is adopted: “a structure is not by its nature inherent in a literary text; rather the structurality is construed by the perceiving human consciousness” (115), but it stands out particularly in the following assertion: “The information on which the projection of an unreliable narrator is based derives at least as much from within the mind of the beholder as from textual data. To put it quite bluntly: A pederast would not find anything wrong with Nabokov’s Lolita; a male chauvinist fetishist who gets his kicks out of making love to dummies is unlikely to detect any distance between his

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norms and those of the mad monologist in Ian McEwan’s ‘Dead As They Come’.” (Nünning 1999: 61) Here the measure of unreliability rests with the ethically problematic reader’s “norms” in conflict with the implied author’s norms, a matter of the former subverting the latter. By contrast, Nünning (1997a) focuses on “the textual and contextual signals that suggest to the reader that a narrator’s reliability may be suspect” (83). In such places, Nünning’s reader is in accord with “the value and norm system of the whole text” (87) and is therefore identical with the implied reader that the rhetorical approach focuses on. Later, Nünning (2005) attempts to synthesize the constructivist/cognitivist and rhetorical approaches. He explicitly criticizes the former approach for neglecting authorial or textual function (105), but the rhetorical approach is also criticized for failing to give sufficient attention to readers’ interpretive strategies or conceptual frameworks (91–99). Nünning’s synthetic “cognitive-rhetorical” approach asks questions such as: “What textual and contextual signals suggest to the reader that the narrator’s reliability may be suspect? How does an implied author (as redefined by Phelan) manage to furnish the narrator’s discourse and the text with clues that allow the critic to recognize an unreliable narrator when he or she sees one?” (101, emphasis added). These questions, however, come only from the rhetorical side of Nünning’s “synthesis.” The constructivist/cognitivist approach will ask very different questions such as: When faced with the same textual features, what different interpretations might readers come up with? What different conceptual frameworks or cultural contexts underlie the divergent readings? 3.2.4 Cognitive Investigation with the Rhetorical Yardstick Significantly, one can take a cognitive approach to unreliability without dropping the rhetorical yardstick. A good case in point is Vera Nünning (2004), who draws attention to different readers’ changing interpretive frames across historical contexts. The essay begins with a quote from Booth ([1961] 1983: 239): “The history of unreliable narrators from Gargantua to Lolita is in fact full of traps for the unsuspecting reader.” Adopting Booth’s rhetorical standard, Vera Nünning tries to reveal various traps of interpretation—how different historical contexts affect readers’ conceptual schema and distort the original meaning, resulting in “misreadings” (A. Nünning 2005: 99). We can extend the point that only the rhetorical yardstick is valid by considering conceptual frames. In investigating Nabokov’s Lolita, Zerweck (2001: 165) points out that, “depending on whether real-world

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frames or literary frames are applied by the individual reader,” the novel can be read in two opposing ways: either as “a highly unreliable narrative” or “as a subtle metafictional game” being played with the literary convention of unreliability. In this situation, the rhetorical critic will choose the more powerful interpretive hypothesis as the one intended by the implied author. By contrast, the cognitivist critic can merely describe opposing readings. But it is the interpretive frames that the implied Nabokov had in mind—frames that he expected the implied reader to recognize and share with him—that really count in terms of the intended meaning of the novel. 3.3 Unreliability in Film and Autobiography Unreliable narration “can be found in a wide range of narratives across the genres, the media, and different disciplines” (A. Nünning 2005: 90). Although both the rhetorical and the cognitivist/constructivist approaches to unreliability have focused on prose fiction, some narratologists have turned their attention to unreliable narration in film and autobiography, among other media or other genres. Chatman (1978: 235– 237, 1990: 124–138) extends the discussion of unreliability to film, where more dramatic effect may emerge, since a voice-over depicting story events may be belied by what the audience sees on the screen. Interestingly, the cinematic camera can also be used to mislead the audience temporally for certain effects (Chatman 1978: 236–237, 1990: 131–132; see also Currie 1995; Bordwell 1985; Kozloff 1988). As regards the non-fictional genre of autobiography in the verbal medium, there are, on the one hand, the same manifestations of unreliable narration as in fiction: misreporting, -interpreting, -evaluating or underreporting, -interpreting, -evaluating. On the other hand, misreporting and underreporting figure much more prominently here, since in this “non-fictional” genre, whether the report is accurate or adequate often forms the focus of attention. In terms of this “factual” kind of unreliability, while in fiction—whether verbal or visual—the indicators are usually intratextual problems (textual inconsistencies or incongruities), in autobiography, the case is more complicated, since unreliability can occur not only at the intratextual level but also at the extratextual and intertextual levels. If the events depicted in an autobiography, however consistent the text itself is, do not tally with extratextual reality, we will be faced with “extratextual unreliability”; and if two or more autobiographies representing the same life experiences do not accord with each other, this will result in “intertextual unreliability” (see Shen & Xu 2007 for a detailed discussion).

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In terms of the relation between author and narrator, there exists an essential difference between autobiography and fiction. In autobiography, the (implied) author and narrator often collapse into one, since it is usually “an art of direct telling from author to audience” (Phelan 2005: 67) where the author is the narrator. As distinct from fiction, unreliability, in the autobiographical norm of “direct telling,” is usually a matter of the “cognizant” reader’s judgment at the expense of the “I” as the second self of the narrator-author (Shen & Xu 2007: 47–49). Moreover, in autobiography, markers of “factual” unreliability exist that are not found in fiction, e.g. features indicating that the autobiographer (author-narrator) is fictionalizing her/his experiences (see Cohn 1999). As a non-fictional genre, autobiography shares essential characteristics with other non-fictional narratives, such as those in news reporting or daily conversation. What has been said about autobiographical unreliability therefore applies in varying degrees to narratorial unreliability in other types of non-fictional narratives as well (see Currie 1995: 19; cf. Fludernik 2001: 97–98; Bamberg → Identity and Narration).

4 Topics for Further Investigation (a) Unreliable narration in non-verbal media and in verbal genres other than prose fiction. (b) In prose fiction, unreliability in postmodern fiction, second-person narration, simultaneous narration, etc. (c) Unreliability in poetry, e.g. in the “dramatic monologue.” (d) The relation between unreliable narration and gender, class or racial issues. (e) In dealing with textual incongruities, whether there are other integration mechanisms or conceptual frames apart from those already identified. (f) How different critical theories lead to different conceptions of the same textual incongruities. (g) When a text is translated into another language, how the different cultural context with different social norms bear on the interpretation of unreliability. (h) Whether there are other causes underlying unreliable narration. (i) Whether there are other indicators of unreliable narration. (j) How to carry out a rhetorical investigation of unreliability more effectively, especially in terms of a text produced in a different historical or cultural context.

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5 Bibliography 5.1 Works Cited Bierce, Ambrose (1911] 1946). “Oil of Dog” (1911). The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce. New York: Citadel Press, 800–803. Booth, Wayne C. ([1961] 1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Bordwell, David (1985). Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: U of Wisconsin P. Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – (1990). Coming to Terms. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Cohn, Dorrit (1999). The Distinction of Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. – (2000). “Discordant Narration.” Style 34, 307–316. Currie, Gregory (1995). “Unreliability Refigured: Narrative in Literature and Film.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53.1, 19–29. Fludernik, Monika (1999). “Defining (In)Sanity: The Narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper and the Question of Unreliability.” W. Grunzweig & A. Solbach (eds.). Grenzüberschreitungen: Narratologie im Kontext / Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Context. Tübingen: Narr, 75–95. – (2001). “Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: Narratological Differentiation.” J. Helbig (ed.). Erzählen und Erzähltheorie im 20. Jahrhundert: Festschrift für Wilhelm Füger. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C., 85–103. Fowler, Roger (1977). Linguistics and the Novel. London: Methuen. Hansen, Per Krogh (2007). “Reconsidering the Unreliable Narrator.” Semiotica 165, 227–246. Kozloff, Sarah (1988). Invisible Storytellers. Berkeley: U of California P. Lanser, Susan S. (1981). The Narrative Act. Princeton: Princeton UP. MacKay, D. M. (1972). “Formal Analysis of Communicative Processes.” College English 11, 265–269. McCormick, Paul (2009). “Claims of Stable Identity and (Un)reliability in Dissonant Narration.” Poetics Today 30.1, 31–72. Nünning, Ansgar (1997a). “‘But why will you say that I am mad?’ On the Theory, History, and Signals of Unreliable Narration in British Fiction.” Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 22, 83–105. – (1997b). “Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Implied Author: The Resurrection of an Anthropomorphized Passepartout or the Obituary of a Critical Phenomenon?” Anglistik. Organ des Verbandes Deutscher Anglisten 8, 95–116. – (1999). “Unreliable, Compared to What? Towards a Cognitive Theory of Unreliable Narration: Prolegomena and Hypotheses.” W. Grünzweig & A. Solbach (eds.). Grenzüberschreitungen: Narratologie im Kontext / Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Context. Tübingen: Narr, 53–73. – (2005). “Reconceptualizing Unreliable Narration: Synthesizing Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches.” J. Phelan & P. J. Rabinowitz (eds.). A Companion to Narrative Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 89–107.

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Nünning, Vera (2004). “Unreliable Narration and the Historical Variability of Values and Norms: The Vicar of Wakefield as a Test Case of a Cultural-Historical Narratology.” Style 38, 236–252. Olson, Greta (2003). “Reconsidering Unreliability: Fallible and Untrustworthy Narrators.” Narrative 11, 93–109. Pettersson, Bo (2005). “The Many Faces of Unreliable Narration: A Cognitive Narratological Reorientation.” H. Veivo et al. (eds.). Cognition and Literary Interpretation in Practice. Helsinki: Helsinki UP, 59–88. Phelan, James (2005). Living to Tell about It. Ithaca: Cornell UP. – (2007). “Estranging Unreliability, Bonding Unreliability, and the Ethics of Lolita.” Narrative 15, 222–238. – & Mary Patricia Martin (1999). “The Lessons of ‘Weymouth’: Homodiegesis, Unreliability, Ethics, and The Remains of the Day.” D. Herman (ed.). Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 88–109. Prince, Gerald ([1987] 2003). A Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Riggan, William (1981). Picaros, Madmen, Naifs, and Clowns: The Unreliable FirstPerson Narrator. Norman: U of Oklahoma P. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith ([1983] 2002). Narrative Fiction. Contemporary Poetics. London: Routledge. Schwarz, Daniel R. (1997). “Performative Saying and the Ethics of Reading: Adam Zachary Newton’s Narrative Ethics.” Narrative 5, 188–206. Shen, Dan (2005a). “Mind-style.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 566–567. – (2005b). “Why Contextual and Formal Narratologies Need Each Other.” Journal of Narrative Theory 35, 141–71. – (2011). “What is the Implied Author?” Style 45.1, 80–98. – “Implied Author, Authorial Audience, and Context: Form and History in NeoAristotelian Rhetorical Fiction.” Narrative 21.2, 140–158. – & Dejin Xu (2007). “Intratextuality, Intertextuality, and Extratexuality: Unreliability in Autobiography versus Fiction.” Poetics Today 28.1, 43–88. Wall, Kathleen (1994). “The Remains of the Day and its Challenges to Theories of Unreliable Narration.” Journal of Narrative Technique 24, 18–42. Yacobi, Tamar (1981). “Fictional Reliability as a Communicative Problem.” Poetics Today 2.2, 113–126. – (2001). “Package Deals in Fictional Narrative: The Case of the Narrator’s (Un)Reliability.” Narrative 9, 223–229. – (2005). “Authorial Rhetoric, Narratorial (Un)Reliability, Divergent Readings: Tolstoy’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata’.” J. Phelan & P. J. Rabinowitz (eds.). A Companion to Narrative Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 108–123. Zerweck, Bruno (2001). “Historicizing Unreliable Narration: Unreliability and Cultural Discourse in Narrative Fiction.” Style 35, 151–178.

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5.2 Further Reading Allrath, Gaby (2005). (En)Gendering Unreliable Narration. Trier: WVT. D’hoker, Elke & Gunther Martens eds. (2008). Narrative Unreliability in the Twentieth-Century First-Person Novel. Berlin: de Gruyter. Hansen, Per Krogh (2008). “First Person, Present Tense. Authorial Presence and Unreliable Narration in Simultaneous Narration.” E. D’hoker & G. Martens (eds.). Narrative Unreliability in the Twentieth- Century First-Person Novel. Berlin: de Gruyter, 317–338. Herman, Luc & Bart Vervaeck (2008). “Didn’t Know Any Better: Race and Unreliable Narration in ‘Low-Lands’ by Thomas Pynchon.” E. D’hoker & G. Martens (eds.). Narrative Unreliability in the Twentieth-Century First-Person Novel. Berlin: de Gruyter, 231–246. Phelan, James (1989). “Narrative Discourse, Literary Character, and Ideology.” J. Phelan (ed.). Reading Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 132–146. Richardson, Brian (1988). “Point of View in Drama: Diegetic Monologue, Unreliable Narrators, and the Author’s Voice on Stage.” Comparative Drama 22, 193–214. Richardson, Brian (2006). “Postmodern Unreliability.” B. Richardson. Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 103–105.

Index Aaker, David A. 111 Aarne, Antti 628 Aarseth, Espen 603, 608–612, 614f. Abbate, Carolyn 471. 482 Abbott, Edwin 806 Abbott, H. Porter 51, 53ff., 70, 75, 100, 149, 159, 279, 317, 415, 427, 447, 477, 514, 570, 584, 603, 608, 635, 637, 686, 707, 711, 715, 758, 836, 862, 869 Abelson, Robert P. 49, 86, 756ff., 769 Abouzeid, Mary 497 Abraham, Ulf 502 Aczel, Richard 700 Adam, Jean-Michel 637, 862 Adorno, Theodor W. 259 Aeschylus 119 Alber, Jan 1, 48, 50, 75, 152f., 166, 211, 318, 320, 322, 455, 514, 678, 851, 889–892 Alexander, Marc 52, 86, 173, 234, 241, 254, 278, 317, 412, 425, 516, 594, 648, 751, 760, 802, 831 Allbritton, David W. 38 Allen, Woody 332 Allport, Gordon W. 247 Almén, Byron 588 Almodóvar, Pedro 400 Alphen, Ernst van 623, 633 Alter, Robert 282f., 347 Althusser, Louis 258, 261 Altieri, Charles 541, 543 Alvesson, Mats 109 Amenábar, Alejandro 399f. Amis, Martin 153. 888 Amodio, Mark C. 119 Amsterdam, Anthony G. 374 Anderson, Joseph D. 283

Anderson, R. Lanier 354 Andersson, Greger 437 Andresen, Helga 494, 496 Andrews, Molly 584 Andrianova, Marija D. 570 Andringa, Els 524 Ankersmit, Franklin R. 231 Antaki, Charles 249 Antin, David 820 Antonioni, Michelangelo 389 Apollonius of Rhodos 119f. Aristophanes119, 132 Aristotle 5, 30, 35, 41, 67, 132–136, 161, 184f., 242, 277, 281f., 312, 320, 448ff., 454, 469, 534f., 537, 540f., 564, 571, 578f., 590, 594, 609, 626f., 683, 707–711, 715, 743, 839, 859, 868, 875, 879 Arnauld, Andreas von 474, 377 Arnold, Matthew 535 Astruc, Alexandre 395 Atkinson, John Maxwell 94, 98 Attridge, Derek 539 Audet, René 587, 595f., 598, 637 Auerbach, Erich 116 Augst, Gerhard 493, 495, 500 Augustine 17ff., 454, 571, 868, 879 Aumüller, Matthias 674, 875 Auslander, Philip 681f. Aust, Hugo 162 Austen, Jane 533, 709, 814 Austin, John L. 53 Austin, Michael 53 Avanessian, Armen 873 Ayelet, Ben-Yishai 603 Azaryahu, Maoz 800, 807 Babel, Isaak 723, 789 Baacke, Dieter 458

912 Bachelard, Gaston 801 Bacharach, Sandra 3 Backe, H.-J. 616f. Bae, Byung-Chull 832 Bal, Mieke 199, 203, 208f., 265, 292, 304, 315, 317, 332, 397, 437, 471, 514f., 554ff., 570, 594, 624, 626, 633, 635, 637, 647, 699, 765, 852, 878 Balcerzan, Edward 291 Bally, Charles 815 Balter, Leon 271 Balzac, Honoré 328, 748, 805 Bamberg, Michael 16, 33, 51, 97, 100, 243, 248, 376, 413, 455, 492, 542, 575, 584, 681, 842f., 907 Banfield, Ann 187ff., 193f., 661, 684, 790, 813, 815, 819, 873f. Barnes, Djuna 57 Baroni, Raphaël 74, 97, 160, 241, 276, 317, 425, 491, 568, 596, 707, 710, 713, 734, 770, 837, 843 Barrows, Howard S. 412 Barry, Jackson G. 623 Barth, John 559 Barthes, Roland 8, 32, 47f., 56, 66, 207, 220, 224, 262, 271, 364, 368, 412, 471, 511f., 537, 558f., 608, 616, 631f., 711, 748f., 770f., 874, 877f., 881 Bartlett, Frederick C. 49, 758 Bateson, Gregory 618 Battersby, James I. 543, 602 Baudelaire, Charles 685, 721 Baudrillard, Jean 471 Bauer, Dale 210 Bauman, Richard 681 Baumann, Mario 330 Baumgartner, Hans Michael 229 Baxtin, Mixail 123ff., 210, 219–225, 260, 290, 303, 354, 358, 367ff., 410, 541, 565ff., 571, 647, 660, 662, 745, 792f., 796, 812, 815, 818, 821, 869, 871 Bazin, André 390 Beardsley, Monroe C. 7, 291, 536

Index Beaujour, Michel 21, 862 Beck, Ulrik 206 Becker, Tabea 98f., 493–496, 499f. Beckett, Samuel 317, 428, 650, 778 Beethoven, Ludwig van 481f. Bell, Alice 739, 889 Bell, Derrick 376 Belov, V. 789 Belyj, Andrej 669, 722f., 767 Bender, John 379, 869 Benedetti, Carla 2 Bénichou, Paul 6 Benjamin, Walter 258f. Benveniste, Émile 292, 512, 647, 661 Berensmeyer, Ingo 9 Berger, Karol 136 Bergman, Ingmar 401 Bergson, Henri 125 Berkum, Jos J. A. van 761 Berlant, Lauren 214 Bernaerts, Lars 154 Bernhart, Walter 275, 283, 285 Bernhart, Wolfgang 421 Berns, Ute 243, 321, 635, 839 Bertaux, Daniel 246 Bessière, Jean 328 Bhaya Nair, Rukmini 74 Bickerton, Derek 815 Bierce, Ambrose 898 Bieri, Peter 871 Biriotti, Nicola 8 Birk, Hanne 265 Birus, Hendrik 36 Bishara, Nina 350 Bitzer, Lloyd F. 577 Black, David A. 395 Black, John B. 758 Blackmur, Richard 312 Blanckenburg, Christian Friedrich von 627 Bleich, David 746 Bleumer, Hartmut 281 Blin, George 197 Blomkamp, Neill 57 Blommaert, Jan 98 Boccaccio, Giovanni 161f., 547

Index Bode, Christoph 358f. Bohnenkamp, Anne 2 Boje, David M. 109 Bolter, Jay David 472, 610f., 800f. Bongiorno, Andrew 135 Bonheim, Helmut 702 Booker, Christopher 710 Booker, M. Keith 126 Booth, Wayne C. 2, 7, 116, 207f., 263, 288, 291ff., 295, 301f., 306, 318f. 321, 346, 394, 423, 537, 539– 543, 566, 570, 626, 631, 651, 657, 684, 693, 696, 743ff., 747, 749ff., 848f., 896ff. 900, 904 Boothe, Brigitte 453 Bordwell, David 319, 384, 391, 394f., 401, 471, 481, 594, 609, 635, 708, 712, 714, 761, 905 Borges, Jorge Luis 739 Bortolussi, Marisa 52, 71, 74, 283, 648, 751 Bosse, Heinrich 6 Boueke, Dietrich 493, 495 Bourdieu, Pierre 254 Bourg, Tammy 524 Bower, Gordon 758 Boyd, Brian 53, 710 Boyle, T. C. 357 Brahier, Gabriela 436 Brandist, Craig 125 Branigan, David 761 Branigan, Edward R. 394, 396, 398, 609, 635 Braun, N. 86 Braun, Peter 21 Brauner, Daniel J. 410 Brautigan, Richard 767 Brecht, Bertolt 282, 428, 521, 686 Bremond, Claude 86, 93, 99, 167, 207, 424, 471, 512, 549, 592, 625f., 632, 635, 711, 734, 770, 877f. Breton, André 141 Breuer, Joseph 415 Brewer, Mária Minich 208 Bringsjord, Selmer 86, 628, 829, 831 Brinker, Klaus 99

913 Brinker, Menachem 281 Brinton, Laurel 820 Brock, Timothy C. 153, 851 Brockmeier, Jens 53, 455, 497 Brody, Howard 415 Broekman, Jan 374 Broich, Ulrich 699 Bronwen, Thomas 585 Bronzwaer, Wilhelmus J. M. 293f., 296 Brooks, Cleanth 511, 536, 707, 710, 714 Brooks, Peter 142, 372f., 459, 543, 603, 633, 713, 873 Brown, Cary A. 407 Brown, Gillian 68f., 94 Browning, Robert 174, 357, 790 Broyard, Analtole 413 Brütsch, Matthias 386 Bruner, Jerome 20, 51, 160, 169f., 245f., 376, 408, 451f., 459, 490, 492, 542, 578, 594, 596, 602, 759, 837ff. Bruyn, Günter de 15 Bublitz, Wolfram 69 Buchholz, Sabine 797 Bühler, Karl 125, 288, 364, 790, 873 Bühler, Willi 820 Bunin, Ivan 220 Bunyan, John 18, 532 Burke, Kenneth 248, 576f., 583, 745 Burke, Michael 53 Burke, Peter 18 Burke, Seán 4, 8 Burkhardt, Armin 329 Burns, Allan 702 Buschmann, Matthias 359 Butler, Judith 379, 687 Butler, Octavia 525 Butor, Michel 768, 778, 782 Butte, George 53 Buytendijk, Frederik J. J. 609 Caesar (Gaius Iulius Caesar) 660 Callimachus 119 Caillois, Roger 616 Callaway, Charles 831

914 Cammack, Jocelyn 283 Campbell, Joseph 36, 86, 769 Camus, Albert 315, 369 Capps, Lisa 79, 97, 550, 682, 838, 841ff. Carbough, Donal 455 Card, Orson Scott 525 Carnap, Rudolf 856 Caracciolo, Marco 151–154 Carr, David 451, 454 Carrard, Philippe 229, 236 Carroll, Joseph 710 Carruthers, Mary J. 282 Carter, B. A. R. 692 Carter, Ronald 98 Case, Alison A. 211 Cassirer, Ernst 125, 722 Castelvetro, Lodovico 135 Cavazza, M. 84, 86 Cavell, Stanley 541 Cellini, Benvenuto 20 Černov, Igor’ 510 Cervantes, Miguel de 282 Červenka, Miroslav 290, 306 Čexov, Anton 303, 567, 674, 723 Chafe, Wallace 97, 99 Chalmers, David J. 154 Chambers, Ross 263 Charles, F. 86 Charolles, Marc 78 Charon, Rita 414, 543 Chartier, Roger 231 Chatman, Seymour 8, 37, 52, 56, 66, 73, 135, 144, 169, 202f., 208, 292ff., 296, 310f., 314–317, 319, 321, 385, 388, 394f., 412, 428ff., 471, 513, 601, 609, 625f., 630, 633f., 651, 654, 680, 684f., 693, 696, 712, 750, 766, 799, 850, 861ff., 869, 872, 874, 878, 897ff., 905 Chateaubriand, Françoise-René 14, 186 Chaucer, Geoffrey140, 355, 767 Cheney, George 110 Cheong, Yun-Gyung 87, 832 Chinca, Mark 95

Index Chomsky, Noam 631 Christensen, Lars Th. 109f. Christie, Agatha 654 Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) 769 Clair, R. P. 107 Coetzee, J. M. 738 Cohen, Annabel J. 271, 274 Cohen, Keith 385, 592, 596, 598 Cohn, Dorrit 19, 22, 53f., 117, 151, 181, 190f., 314, 317, 319, 331, 333, 339, 357, 598, 600, 630, 697ff., 714, 736, 812f., 815, 898, 906 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 232, 271, 281, 357 Collins, Wilkie 356 Colombani, Laetitia 400 Condit, Celeste Michelle 578, 581f., 584 Conermann, Stephan 436 Conrad, Joseph 260, 541, 552 Cook, Guy 757ff. Coombe, Rosemary 373 Cordesse, Gérard 698 Corneille, Pierre 67, 280, 709 Cornelissen, Joep 105, 108 Cornils, Anja 330, 458, 630, 637 Cortázar, Julio 153, 331, 768 Coste, Didier 555f., 647, 657f. Coulmas, Florian 815 Coupland, Nikolas 94 Courtés, Joseph 550, 565, 590 Couturier, Maurice 8 Cover, Robert M. 378f. Crane, R. S. 537, 707, 709, 713f. Crawford, Chris 617 Crenshaw, Kimberlé 212 Critchley, Simon 539 Crittenden, Charles 33, 191 Čudakov, Aleksandr 290 Culler, Jonathan 45, 56, 67, 75, 79, 138, 169, 262, 410, 508, 599, 625, 633, 746, 749, 770 Culpeper, Jonathan 32, 73 Culpepper, R. Alan 439 Cummings, E. E. 77

Index Currie, Gregory 193, 661, 905f. Currie, Mark 449, 871, 873 Curtius, Ernst Robert 116, 135 Cutter, Martha J. 348 Cutting, Douglass 637 Dadlez, E. M. 523 Dällenbach, Lucien 339, 552 Dalí, Salvador 141 Damasio, Antonio R. 53 Dammann, Günter 858 Dancygier, Barabara 52 Danielewski, Mark Z. 807 Dannenberg, Hilary 53, 211, 707f., 710ff., 715, 726, 735, 770, 802, 878 Dante Alighieri 135 Danto, Arthur C. 229, 450, 454, 460 Dassin, Jules 389 Dautenhahn, Kirsten 475 David, Jacques-Louis 478f. Davis, Mark H. 523f. Davis, Lennard J. 259 Deal, Terrence 110 de Beaugrande, Robert 65, 68, 758, 855 Deetz, Stan 107 Defoe, Daniel 767, 888 DeGracia, Donald J. 146 Dehn, Mechthild 492f., 495ff., 502 Dehn, Natalie 827f. Dehn, Wilhelm 492 De Lauretis, Teresa 208 Deleuze, Gilles 471 Deleyto, Celestino 384 Delgado, Richard 376 DeLillo, Don 68 Delius, Nicolaus 428 de Man, Paul 21f., 257, 538f. De Marinis, Marco 682 Demosthenes 120 Dena, Christy 484 Dennett, Daniel 139, 146 Denning, Stephen 107, 109 Depew, Mary 119 Deppermann, Arnulf 97, 100 Derrida, Jacques 537ff. Destutt de Tracy, Antoine 255

915 Detering, Heinrich 3, 8 Dewey, John 523 D’hoker, Elke 655 Dickens, Charles14, 96, 203, 541 Diderot, Denis 281f. Diehl, Joshua 79 Diengott, Nilli 151, 209, 293 Dijk, Teun A. van 67, 78, 98, 254, 257, 564, 628, 637, 769, 771, 840, 855 Dilthey, Wilhelm 19, 454, 500 Diogenes Laertius 134 Diomedes 135 DiSalle, Robert 796 D’Israeli, Isaac 17 Dissanayake, Ellen 53 Dixon, Peter 52, 71, 74, 283, 648, 751 Döblin, Alfred 357, 781 Dokic, Jérôme 192 Doležel, Lubomír 52ff., 185f., 220, 232, 263, 569f., 589, 600, 633, 652, 726, 730f., 737f., 740, 769, 818, 874, 891 Dos Passos, John 357, 768, 781 Dostoevskij, Fjodor M. 123f., 220, 222, 224, 296, 302, 304, 366f., 369, 567, 660, 669f., 673f., 793 Drach, Inna 572 Dressler, Wolfgang U. 65, 68, 855 Droysen, Johann Gustav 230, 237 Dryden, John 709 Dubos, Jean-Baptiste 281 Dubrow, Heather 427 Duchan, Judith F. 51, 54, 560 Dünne, Jörg 21 Dumarsais, César Chesneau 329f. DuPlessis, Rachel Blau 208, 711 Duyfhuizen, Bernard 551 Dyer, Richard 42 Eagleton, Terry 254, 257f., 260f. Eakin, Paul John 20, 25, 53, 543 Easterlin, Nancy 53 Easthope, Antony 292, 295 Eaton, Marcia M. 33 Ebner, Martin 439 Eckermann, Johann Peter 162

916 Eco, Umberto 7, 292, 307, 631, 726, 732f., 748, 758, 761, 768, 771 Edelman, Lee 213 Eder, Jens 32, 39f., 48, 52f., 56, 357, 635, 637 Edmiston, William F. 199, 201, 693, 699 Ehlich, Konrad 94, 99 Ehrlich, Marie-France 78 Ehrlich, Susan 814, 821 Eibl, Karl 9 Eisen, Ute E. 328, 439 Eisenberg, Nancy 522 Eisenlauer, Volker 442 Ėjxenbaum, Boris 95f., 392, 509, 570, 791f. Ėjzenštejn, Sergej 390 Elam, Keir 682 Elias, Emy J. 264 Elias, Norbert 244 Eliot, T. S. 276, 331, 356f. Elsaesser, Thomas 388, 391 Elsbree, Langdon 161, 166 Elson, Daniel K. 86 Emerson, Caryl 219, 225 Emmison, Miachael 180 Emmott, Catherine 37, 50, 52, 54, 70, 73, 75, 86, 173, 234, 241, 254, 278, 317, 412, 425, 516, 560, 594, 648, 751, 760f., 769, 772, 802, 831 Eng, Jan van der 303, 674 Engels, Friedrich 255 Erikson, Erik H. 245 Erlinger, Hans Dieter 497 Erll, Astrid 21 Ermida, Isabel 760 Ernst, Ulrich 874 Escher, M. C. 336, 338, 550, 807 Eskelinen, Marlin 608, 611 Eskin, Michael 254, 264 Esterhammer, Angela 686 Euripides 119 Fahrenwald, Claudia 492, 494 Farwell, Marilyn 214 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner 387, 398

Index Faulkner, William 73, 356, 556, 649, 767, 782, 815 Fauconnier, Gilles 359, 797 Fehn, Ann 625 Fehr, Bernhard 820 Feltovich, Paul J. 412 Ferguson, Heather J. 761 Ferguson, Niall 185 Ferrucci, David A. 86, 628, 829, 831 Fetterley, Judith 746 Feyersinger, Erwin 335, 338 Fforde, Jasper 739 Fieguth, Rolf 2, 291, 305 Fielding, Henry 202, 537, 683, 709, 713, 767 Fiese, Barbara 79 Finnern, Sönke 439, 441 Finney, Brian 199 Fischer-Lichte, Erika 681 Fischer-Rosenthal, Wolfram 246 Fish, Stanley 746f. Fishelov, David 42 Fisher, Walther 107, 578–583 Fitzgerald, Faith T. 408 Fix, Martin 497 Flaubert, Gustave 87, 291, 778, 814, 848 Fleischman, Suzanne 874 Fleming, Ian 711 Fludernik, Monika 1, 25, 47f., 50, 52f., 75, 79, 88, 93, 97, 100, 115f., 119, 149–155, 166, 211, 235, 264f., 311, 317, 319ff., 331, 333, 344ff., 348ff., 371, 374ff., 386, 420, 427, 429f., 443, 455, 489, 490, 514, 524, 527, 548, 551f., 587, 594, 596, 598f., 601, 623, 625, 634f., 637, 648, 659, 678f., 682, 685f., 693, 698f., 751, 758, 796, 813, 815ff., 819f., 840f., 843, 850f., 855, 863f., 871, 878, 887f., 891, 900, 906 Flynn, Elizabeth A. 751 Foley, Miles 94 Fombrun, Charles 108 Fontanier, Pierre 329f.

Index Foote, Kenneth E. 800, 807 Ford, Madox Ford 849 Forster, Edward M. 31, 41f., 88, 507, 510f., 594, 628, 695, 709ff., 739, 796 Foster, Susan Leigh 471 Fothergill, Robert A. 21 Foucault, Michel 3, 8, 22, 449, 565 Foulkes, David 139 Fowler, Roger 700, 760, 899 Fox, Carol 496 Fraassen, Bastiann C. van 869 Frank, Armin Paul 355 Frank, Arthur 413f. Frank, Joseph 668, 767. 779, 801, 806 Franzmann, Bodo 743, 747 Frawley, William 160, 168 Freeman, Elizabeth 214 Freeman, Mark P. 246 Frege, Gottlob 185, 730 Freud, Sigmund 20, 32, 36, 40, 139, 142, 247, 256, 413, 415, 453, 713 Frevert, Ute 34 Freytag, Gustav 86, 710 Fricke, Harald 338f. Friedemann, Käte 7, 166, 313, 627, 647, 651, 848, 851, 875f. Friedman, Andrew L. 105 Friedman, Lawrence M. 378 Friedman, Melvin 815 Friedman, Norman 312, 629, 695, 698, 850 Friedman, Susan Stanford 211ff., 524, 797 Frye, Northrop 207, 230, 236, 373, 516, 571, 707, 710 Füger, Wilhelm 199f. Füredy, Viveca 550 Fulda, Daniel 233ff. Fulton, Helen 391, 396, 398 Furtwängler, Frank 615 Fusillo, Massimo 119 Gaakeer, Jeanne 378 Gallagher, Shaun 154 Gallie, Walter B. 227

917 García Landa, José Ángel 75, 509, 511, 514, 555f., 637 Gardner, Carl 378 Gardner, Jared 52 Garrod, Simon C. 756 Gass, William H. 346 Gaut, Berys 319, 387 Gearey, A. 459 Geißler, Rolf 500 Gelley, Alexander 862 Gennep, Arnold van 161, 165f. Genette, Gérard 22, 48, 54, 66, 85f., 99, 117, 131, 133, 135, 179, 181, 191, 197–203, 207f., 225, 236, 247, 262, 293f., 304, 310ff. 314ff., 326f., 329–332, 334, 336f., 339, 345, 348, 365, 368, 385f., 396, 410, 422, 428ff., 437, 439, 471, 508, 512–515, 547f., 552ff., 556–559, 566, 570f., 600, 609, 619, 625ff., 630–633, 635, 646, 683f., 693, 696–699, 702, 712, 743, 749, 758, 761, 766, 770, 783, 796, 816, 848–852, 861ff., 869f., 872ff., 877f. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra 69f., 243, 248, 584, 681, 842f., 855 George, Stefan 721 Gergen, Kenneth J. 244, 451f Gernsbacher, Morton Ann 72 Gerrig, Richard J. 38, 52, 56, 73, 87, 155, 271f., 283, 522f., 751, 761, 851 Gervás, Pablo 86ff., 826 Gerwitz, Paul D. 459 Gholamain, Mitra 40 Gibson, Andrew 449, 834, 878 Gibson, Walker 306, 743f., 749 Gilbert, Allan H. 135 Giora, Rachel 65 Giovanelli, Alessandro 851 Givón, Talmy 72 Gladfelder, Hal 379 Głowinski, Michał 305, 368f. Gobé, Marc 111 Godall, H. L. 584

918 Godard, Jean-Luc 389 Godelier, Maurice 256 Gölz, Christine 290 Görlach, Manfred 856 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 14, 18ff., 161f., 450, 731, 738, 859ff. Goetsch, Paul 95 Goffman, Erving 49, 248, 526, 560 Gogol, Nikolaj 566, 723, 789, 791 Goguen, Joseph 84 Goldberg, Michael 458 Goldman, Laurence 180 Goldman, Susan R. 73, 78 Goldmann, Lucien 258 Goldstein, Philip 751 Gombrich, Ernst H. 272f., 281, 283 Goodrich, Peter 375 Goodson, Ivor F. 246 Gosse, Edmund 16 Gottschall, Jonathan 710 Goutsos, Dionysis 69f. Goyal, Amit 87 Gozzoli, Benezzo 479 Grabes, Herbert 668, 767, 771 Grabócz, Márta 471, 482, 588, 635 Grall, Catherine 648, 656 Gramsci, Antonio 255, 257f. Grausam, Daniel 350 Graves, Robert 767 Green, Melanie C. 153, 851 Greenhalgh, Trisha 413, 459 Gregory, Marshall 263 Greimas, Algirdas Julien 35, 48, 66, 93, 207, 262, 368, 439, 481, 512, 550, 554, 565, 590ff., 626, 631f., 769, 877f. Grethlein, Jonas 99, 236 Grice, H. Paul 69, 74, 840 Griem, Julika 358, 395 Griffin, Terri M. 496 Griffith, David Wark 388 Grimm, Gunter 301, 307 Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoffel von 767 Grishakova, Marina 52 Grodal, Torben 357, 387, 390, 396, 710

Index Groeben, Norbert 743, 746 Grossmann, Honathan 379 Grunewald, Ralph 373 Grusin, Richard 472, 611, 800 Gubrium, Jaber F. 248, 584 Gülich, Elisabeth 99 Günther, Hans 793 Gunning, Tom 141, 388, 609 Gusdorf, Georges 20 Gutenberg, Andrea 711 Gymnich, Marion 265 Haard, Eric de 818 Habermas, Jürgen 257 Häsner, Bernd 332 Hagener, Malte 391 Hahn, Alois 16 Hahn, Barabara 8 Hale, Dorothy L. 539, 543 Halle, Morris 142 Hallett, Wolfgang 484 Halliday, Michael A. K. 67ff. Halliwell, Stephen 132, 134, 161, 448, 450, 848, 851, 859 Halpern, Jodi 408 Hamburger, Käte 151, 187ff., 193f., 598, 600, 630f., 661, 871, 873f. Hamon, Philippe 262, 348, 862 Hansen, Per Krogh 674, 721, 898f. Hansen-Löve, Aage 674, 721f., 790f. Hardy, Thomas 276 Harpham, Geoffrey Galt 539 Harrell, D. A. 84 Harrison, Mary-Catherine 526 Hartling, Florian 4 Harth, Dietrich 227 Hartmann, Bernd 612 Hartmann, Ernest 139, 141 Hartner, Marcus 359 Harweg, Roland 779 Hasan, Ruqaiya 67ff. Haslam, Michael 134 Hatch, Mary Jo 108, 111f. Haubold, Johannes 119 Hauerwas, Stanley 458 Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard 34 Hauschild, Christiane 170

Index Hauschild, Eberhard 442 Hausendorf, Heiko 493, 498 Hauser, Gerald A. 575, 577 Hawkins, Anne 79, 413 Hawthorn, Jeremy 543 Haynes, Christine 3, 6, 8f. Head, Sir Henry 758 Heath, Stephen 392 Heelas, Paul 244 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 453 Heidegger, Martin 454 Heininger, Brnhard 439 Heinze, Richard 5, 889, 891 Helbig, Jörg 396, 400 Heliodorus 118 Hemingway, Ernest 315, 651, 684 Hempfer, Klaus W. 292, 860f. Hengel, Loouis van den 24 Henkel, Nikolaus 855 Hennig, Anke 873 Herder, Johann Gottfried 17 Herodotus 118, 120 Heritage, John 94, 98 Herman, David 8, 32, 47–55, 57ff., 73, 86, 93, 99ff., 126, 151f., 160, 166, 168, 191, 204, 210, 234, 243, 245f., 264, 359, 412, 448f., 497, 560, 571, 588f., 594, 596, 599f., 602, 623, 625, 632, 634, 648, 682, 714, 740, 751, 758f., 761, 766, 769, 796, 801, 803, 817, 821, 837, 841, 858, 869ff., 880 Herman, Luc 202 Hertz, Randy 374 Hesiod 119 Hesse, Carla 6 Hettling, Manfred 160, 164f. Heyse, Paul 162 Hidalgo-Downing, Laura 760 Hintikka, Jaakko 726 Hirsch, Eric D. 7 Hirsch, Marianne 471 Hirschkop, Ken 125 Hirt, Ernst 874, 876 Hitchcock, Alfred 394, 396

919 Hjort, Mette 523 Hobson, J. Allen 139, 143 Hochman, Baruch 33, 42 Hodge, Bob 98 Hoek, Leo H. 292, 294 Hoesterey, Ingeborg 636 Hoey, Michael 69 Hof, Renate 21, 23 Hoffman, Martin 525f. Hoffmann, Thomas 497 Hofheinz, Marco 441 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von 721 Hofstadter, Douglas 331, 336f., 807 Hogan, Patrick Holm 52f., 452, 525f., 707, 710, 713 Hogarth, William 479 Holdenried, Michaela 21 Holk, André van 674 Holland, Norman 746 Holloway, John 772 Holmes, Jeremy 79 Holstein, James A. 248, 584 Holthusen, Johannes 723 Holub, Robert C. 747 Home, Henry (Lord Kames) 281 Homans, Margaret 208 Homer 94, 118ff., 130, 134, 136, 140, 221, 347, 469f., 566, 683, 781, 859 Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) 535, 709f., 743, 769 Horkheimer, Max 259 Horstkotte, Silke 485 Hovland, Carl J. 771 Howard, Ron 400 Howatson, Margaret C. 140 Hühn, Peter 70, 85, 118, 173, 275, 284, 295, 284, 295, 319f., 423–427, 436, 452, 471, 475, 478, 491, 567, 588f., 594, 597, 601, 608, 630, 635, 637, 682, 710, 759, 769, 796, 837f., 869 Huet, Pierre-Daniel 627 Huizinga, Jan 608 Hume, David 15, 182, 189 Humphrey, Robert 815

920 Hunter, Kathryn Montgomery 411f., 415 Hurwitz, Brian 413, 459 Husserl, Edmund 453f. Hutchby, Ian 94, 98 Hutcheon, Linda 345–348, 471, 679 Hutcheon, Michael 471 Hutchinson, Peter 355 Hutto, Daniel 53 Hydén, Lars-Christer 53, 459 Hymes, Dell 492 Ibsch, Elrud 862 Ihwe, Jens 626 Ingarden, Roman 49, 71, 368, 390, 744f., 747, 757f., 771 Ingold, Felix Philipp 8 Invernizzi, Marcia A. 497 Ireland, Ken 770 Iser, Wolfgang 48, 75, 152, 190, 292, 304, 306f., 354, 439, 597, 686f., 743, 746ff., 757, 771 Irvine, Leslie 54 Iversen, Stefan 889, 891f. Jackson, Bernard S. 372f. Jackson, Tony E. 51 Jäger, Georg 3 Jaeger, Stephan 230, 235, 451 Jäggi, Andreas 551, 558 Jahn, Manfred 48, 50, 52, 118, 201, 319ff., 428ff., 633, 635, 686, 693, 702, 751, 797 Jakobson, Roman 142, 590, 647, 652, 667f., 671, 674, 720, 722 Jakubinskij, Lev P. 125 James, Henry 282, 291, 304, 316, 541, 629, 651, 683, 693ff., 700, 703, 709, 814, 849, 900 James, William 244 Jameson, Frederic 258, 260ff., 524 Janik, Christina 637 Janko, Richard 135 Jannidis, Fotis 2f., 6, 8f., 32, 34, 37, 53, 56f., 66, 86, 93, 188, 215, 220, 241, 272, 313, 354, 588, 637, 659, 735, 869 Jasińska, Maria 368

Index Jaszi, Peter 6, 8 Jauß, Karl Robert 40, 48, 67, 746, 869 Jean Paul 17 Jedličková, Alice 365 Jefferson, Gail 97 Jeffries, Lesley 760 Jelinek, Estelle E. 23 Jenkins, Henry 484, 614, 617, 738, 809 Jensen, Peter Alberg 724 Jeunet, Jean-Pierre 400 Jhala, Arnav 832 Johnson, B. S. 768 Johnson, Dan 527 Johnson, Mark 154, 769, 802 Johnson, Nancy 66, 758 Johnson, Samuel 17 Johnson-Laird, Philip 758 Johnstone, Barbara 94, 99 Jones, Gregory 458 Jong, Irene J. F. de 99, 116, 119f., 134, 330 Jonson, Ben 709 Jonze, Spike 399 Josipovici, Gabriel 778, 782 Josselson, Ruthellen 246 Jost, François 397f. Jost, Roland 497 Jouve, Vincent 262 Joyce, James 36, 174, 316, 356, 693, 780, 797, 815, 819 Joyce, Michael 768 Jung, Carl G. 36, 142f. Juraga, Dubrovka 126 Juul, Jesper 608, 613 Kablitz, Andreas 198 Kächele, Horst 453 Kähler, Martin 438 Kafalenos, Emma 426, 707, 751, 766, 770f. Kafka, Franz 77, 805, 901 Kalepky, Theodor 815 Kansteiner, Wulf 230 Kamp, Werner 4 Kant, Immanuel 455, 758, 868 Kanzog, Klaus 551, 558 Karatsu, Mariko 839f., 843

Index Karlgren, Jussi 637 Kayman, Martin A. 374 Kayser, Wolfgang 368 Kearns, Michael 686 Keating, Patrick 52 Keaton, Buster 400 Keen, Suzanne 32, 52, 115, 211, 349, 521, 524–527, 542, 593, 600, 683, 736 Keller, Gottfried 14 Keller, Rudi 38 Kellogg, Robert 116 Kemper, Dirk 572 Kennedy, Alan 110 Kennedy, Edward 576 Kennedy, John F. 577 Kenner, Hugh 819 Kerbrat-Orcchione, Catherine 595, 713, 771 Kermode, Frank 595, 713, 771 Kern, Friedrike 493, 498, 500 Keupp, Heiner 457 Kerby, Anthony Paul 455 Keßler, Eckhard 228 Kibal’nik, Sergej A. 570 Kiefer, Jens 118, 173, 275, 424ff., 635, 759 Kilroe, Patricia 138f., 141 Kindt, Tom 7, 9, 75, 291, 293, 448, 623, 630f., 636 King, Geoff 609 Kingsbury, Jack Dean 439 Kinney, Clare R. 421 Kintsch, Walter 78 Kirkwood, William B. 581 Kitchen, Philip J. 110 Kittay, Jeffrey 862 Kjeldsen, Jens E. 577 Klarer, Mario 855 Klauk, Tobias 130 Klaus, Peter 861 Klein, Sheldon 826, 830 Kleinschmidt, Erich 5 Klemperer, George 407 Klepper, Heinz 20 Klepper, Martin 355

921 Klimek, Sonja 330ff., 334–338 Kloepfer, Rolf 747 Knights, Lionel C. 33 Koch, Peter 499 Koch, Thomas 32 Kock, Christian 163 Kocka, Jürgen 450 Köhler, Wolfgang 758 Köppe, Tilmann 130, 661 Koffka, Kurt 758 Kohli, Martin 17 Korman, Boris 223, 290, 309 Kormann, Eva 23 Korthals Altes, Liesbeth 262f., 456 Koselleck, Reinhard 190, 233 Kovalev, Oleg A. 570 Koževnikova, Natal’ja A. 222, 721, 724, 790, 819 Kozloff, Sarah 399, 471, 483, 905 Kraan, Menno 422f. Kracht, Christian 790 Kracke, Wand H. 140 Krah, Hans 172ff. Kramer, Lawrence 588, 635 Kraume, Lars 400 Kraus, Werner 457 Kreiswirth, Martin 448, 634 Kress, Günther 98, 472f. Kripke, Saul 185, 726, 737, 740, 880 Kristeva, Julia 8, 224 Kroll, Wilhelm 134 Kronsbein, Joachim 21 Krüger, Klaus 283 Krummheuer, Götz 458 Krzywinska, Tanya 609 Kuhn, Markus 319, 358f., 384, 386f., 391, 393, 395, 398f., 401f., 476, 502, 608, 685, 760, 803, 869, 878 Künzel, Christine 373 Kuiken, Don 155 Kukkonen, Karin 334f., 338, 715 Kumagi, Arno 413 Kunz, Josef 162 Kurosawa, Akira 358, 389f. Laas, Eva 396 LaBerge, Stephen 146

922 Labov, William 51, 93f., 97, 99f., 150, 160, 162f., 442, 471, 490f., 493, 596, 599, 681, 803, 837, 839ff. Lacan, Jacques 40, 142, 258 LaCapra, Dominick 814 Lachmann, Rolf 462 Laclau, Ernesto 257 Laclos, Pierre-Françoise Choderlos de 356 Lämmert, Eberhard 67, 449, 626, 630, 770, 872, 876 Lahn, Silke 878 Lakoff, George 154, 802 Lamarque, Peter 33 Lamping, Dieter 36 Landow, George P. 4, 610 Lang, Fritz 397 Lang, Sabine 333, 337 Langer, Susanne 453 Langellier, Kristin M. 248 Lanser, Susan S. 8, 208–214, 264f., 294, 548, 633, 656, 687, 694, 696, 701f., 716, 897 Lardner, Ring 790 Larrain, Jorge 255 Lattmann, Claas 136 Lauer, Gerhard 41 Laurel, Brenda 609f. Lausberg, Heinrich 329 Laver, Sue 523 Lawrence, D. H. 721 Le Bossu, René 709 Lebowitz, Michael 828, 830f. Leech, Geoffrey N. 95, 813f. Leeuwen, Theo van 472f. Lehmann, Hans-Thies 428 Lehmann, Volkmar 637 Lehnert, W. G. 86 Leibfried, Erwin 697 Leitch, Thomas M. 597f. Lejeune, Philippe 22, 25, 247 Le Poidevin, Robin 777 Lerch, Eugen 815 Lermontov, Michail 221, 223 Lesemann, Paul M. 496 Leskov, Nikolaj 789, 791f.

Index Lesser, Ruth 70 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 449, 470, 476, 769, 800, 869 Lester, James C. 831 Levin, V. 724 Levinas, Emmanuel 263, 539, 541 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 256, 628, 631, 877 Levinson, Stephen C. 96 Lewis, David 38, 185f., 663, 826–730, 737, 740 Lialina, Olia 768 Lieblich, Amia 246 Liebeneiner, Wolfgang 401 Limoges, Jean-Marc 335 Linde, Charlotte 51, 79, 803 Lindemann, Uwe 354, 359 Linell, Per 126 Linhares-Dias, Rui 850ff. Link, Hannelore 292 Lintvelt, Jaap 292, 294, 302f., 700 Lionett, Françoise 23 Lippert, Julia 235 Lips, Marguerite 815 Liptay, Fabienne 396 Lobsien, Eckhard 283 Lock, Andrew 244 Lock, Charles 126 Lodge, David 683, 863 Lönneker, Birte 635, 832 Löschnigg, Martin 21, 25 Longacre, Robert E. 98 Lonoff, Sue 356 Lorck, Etienne 815 Lord, Albert 94 Lorenzer, Alfred 453 Losey, Joseph W. 389 Lothe, Jakob 319, 390, 392, 395, 543 Lotman, Jurij M. 32, 34f., 160, 169– 174, 424f., 490, 567f., 571, 595, 667, 671, 712, 760, 802, 805 Loxley, James 678 Lubbock, Percy 197f., 224, 312, 629f., 651, 683, 694ff., 848–851 Lucaites, Joun Louis 578, 581f., 584 Luchins, Abraham S. 771f.

Index Lucius-Hoene, Gabriele 97, 100 Ludwig, Otto 651 Lüderssen, Klaus 459 Lüth, Oliver 497 Luhmann, Niklas 232, 457 Lukács, Georg 125, 258, 627, 869 Lynch, David 77 Lyotard, Jean-François 348, 450, 553, 711 Lysias 120 Macherey, Pierre 261 Machor, James 751 MacIntyre, Alasdair 107, 451, 454, 456, 542, 578f. MacLean, Marie 685 Mäkelä, Maria 817, 891f. Mailloux, Steven J. 747 Mairs, Nancy 413 Maître, Doreen 738 Maiwald, Klaus 502 Malina, Debra 327, 333, 338 Mamet, Daid 68 Mandler, Jean Matter 49, 66, 758 Manguel, Alberto 743 Mani, Inderjeet 86, 88, 832, 881 Mankiewicz, Joseph 399 Mann, Thomas 663, 673, 730 Mannheim, Karl 253 Manovich, Lev 611 Mar, Raymond A. 526 Marckschies, Christoph 440 Marcus, Amit 655 Margolin, Uri 2, 32f., 36ff., 56, 73, 151f., 193, 202, 220, 242, 313, 345, 354, 384, 420, 449, 532, 623, 637, 649f., 657, 668, 726, 735f., 749, 771, 777, 783, 851 Marinelli, Lydia 141 Markowitsch, Hans 21 Marmontel, Jean-François 281f. Martens, Gunther 655 Martin, Joanne 107, 111 Martin, Mary Patricia 654, 896f. Martínez, Matías 181, 449, 508, 513, 850, 873, 878 Martínez-Bonati, Félix 661

923 Marozza, Maria Ilena 139, 143 Marx, Karl 255 Mateas, Michael 86, 88, 635, 769 Mattingly, Cheryl 415 Mauz, Andreas 436, 441 Mazzocco, Philip 526 Mazzoni, Jacopo 135 McAdams, Dan P. 67, 79, 246 McAuley, Gay 681 McCabe, Alyssa 497f., 501, 760 McCarley, Robert 139, 143 McClary, Susan 588 McCloud, Scott 471, 800 McClure, Kevin 583 McCormick, Paul 900 McInerney, Jay 888 McIntosh-Varjabédian, Fiona 231f. McLean, Hugh 788 McHale, Brian 40, 125, 222, 312, 327, 331, 336f., 421, 426, 555, 558, 597, 601, 678, 726, 739, 768, 813f., 816f., 851 McLuhan, Marshall 470 McTiernan, John 400 Medved, Maria I. 53 Medvedev, Pavel 125 Meehan, James R. 825 Megill, Alan 233 Meijer, Jan 671, 674 Meinhard, Isolde 552 Meister, Jan Christoph 84f., 89, 151, 160, 167f., 180, 448, 537, 575, 635, 637, 832, 873, 878, 880f. Mellmann, Katja 41, 53, 283 Mendes, Sam 396 Mendilow, A. A. 869 Menhard, Felicitas 357ff. Merker, Erna 551 Merklinker, Daniela 499 Metz, Christian 136, 385, 392, 471, 602, 631, 635, 872 Meuter, Norbert 448, 455ff., 460, 462, 508, 517, 634 Meyer, Michael 98 Meyer-Blanck, Michael 443

924 Meyer-Minnemann, Klaus 329, 332, 337 Meyrowitz, Joshua 468 Mezei, Kathy 210f. Miall, David S. 53, 155, 283, 522, 524, 526, 760 Michie, Donald 439 Micznik, Vera 588 Miéville, China 891 Mikkonen, Kai 802 Mill, John Stuart 14 Miller, D. A. 213, 379 Miller, J. Hillis 254, 538, 771 Miller, Nancy K. 208, 707, 710 Miller, Nicola 8 Mills, Sara 760 Milroy, Lesley 70 Mink, Louis O. 233, 450 Minnis, Alastair J. 5 Minsky, Marvin 50, 756, 758 Misch, Georg 19, 125 Mishler, Elliot G. 246, 248, 409 Mitchell, William J. Thomas 448 Mittell, Jason 484, 635 Mixajlovskij, Nikolaj 125 Möllendorff, Peter von 328 Mommsen, Theodor 228f. Mondada, Lorenza 99 Monneret, Philipp 740 Montfort, Nick 86, 831f. Montgomery, Robert 395 Moran, Leslie J. 371 Moretti, Franco 86, 808 Morier, Henri 329 Moritz, Karl Philipp 14 Morris, S. Daniel 407 Morrison, Kristin 694 Morrison, Linda 457 Morsing, Mette 112 Morson, Gary Saul 219, 225, 589, 596 Moser, Christian 21 Mosher, Harold F. 862 Müller, Günther 630, 770, 872, 874, 876 Müller, Hans-Harald 7, 9, 75, 291, 293, 448, 623, 630f., 636

Index Müller, Klaus-Detlef 25 Müller-Funk, Wolfgang 448 Müller-Zettelmann, Eva 275, 320, 422, 424, 427 Muir, Edwin 511 Mukařovský, Jan 290f., 306f. Mullan, John 356 Mumby, Dennis 106f. Murnau, Friedrich Wilhelm 400 Murray, Henry A. 247 Murray, Janet H. 608, 610f., 613 Nabokov, Vladimir 19, 534, 566, 768, 903ff. Nagel, Thomas 892 Nardocchio, Elaine F. 751 Nash, Christopher 448 Nattiez, Jean-Jacques 482 Nauta, Ruurd 330 Neitzel, Britta 608f., 612f., 615, 618f., 637, 715, 770 Nell, Victor 283, 524 Nelles, William 54, 199, 203, 328f., 333, 555, 559, 598, 658, 702 Nelson, Katherine492, 494 Neubert, Hansjörg 458 Neuhaus, Volker 359 Neumann, Bernd 20, 25 Neumann, Birgit 16, 265, 272, 553, 653, 679 Neuweg, Georg Hans 501 Newcomb, Anthony 588 Newman, James 615 Newton, Adam Zachary 263, 540ff. Newton, Issac 868 Nichols, Mike 389 Nicol, Martin 442 Niederhoff, Burkhard 40, 100, 125, 188, 197, 203, 278f., 313, 353, 359f., 385, 409, 514, 565, 629, 637, 653, 684, 693, 802 Nielsen, Henrik Skov 889, 891f. Nietzsche, Friedrich 18, 354, 723 Nieuwland, Mante 761 Niggl, Günter 20 Nitz, Julia 235 Noë, Alva 48

Index Nöth, Winfried 350 Nolan, Christopher 400 Norlyk, Birgitta 575 Norman, Donald A. 757 Norrick, Neal R. 838, 842f Norris, Luke 379 Nünlist, René 116, 135f. Nünning, Ansgar 126, 199, 210, 232, 272, 284, 293, 319f., 345, 348ff., 354f., 359, 420, 427, 429f., 449, 524, 551, 553, 557, 624f., 634f., 637, 648, 653, 658, 679, 685, 700f., 850, 869, 897, 903ff. Nünning, Vera 319, 354f., 359, 624f., 634, 637 Nussbaum, Felicity 17, 23 Nussbaum, Martha C. 254, 456, 524ff., 539–543 Oatley, Keith 40, 53, 153, 522 Obama, Barack 576 Obbink, Dirk 119 Ochs, Elinor 51, 79, 97, 550, 682, 838, 841ff. Ødegaard, Elin Eriksen 498 O’Donnell, Patrick 346 Oelmüller, Willi 281 Oesterreicher, Wulf 499 Ohlhus, Sören 493, 500f. Okopień-Sławińska, Alexandra 2, 291, 305, 368 Olbrechts-Tyteca, Lucie 567, 571, 576 Olins, Wally 111 Olney, James 21f. Olsen, Stein Haugom 892 Olson, Greta 374, 900 O’Neill, Patrick 199 Ong, Walter J. 94, 243, 468, 619 Ono, Tsuyoshi 98 Ortega y Gasset, José 354 Orwell, George 532 Oulanoff, Hongor 724 Pabst, Walter 161 Padučeva, Elena 304 Paech, Joachim 388 Page, Norman 817

925 Page, Ruth E. 211, 264, 585, 687, 711, 801 Palmer, Alan 32, 49, 53, 151f., 215, 726, 736, 760, 812, 814, 816f., 820f. Pamuk, Orhan 356, 649 Pandian, M. S. S. 23 Panofsky, Erwin 390 Parr, Rolf 3 Parry, Adam 94 Pascal, Roy 20, 814, 818 Pasternak, Boris 624 Patron, Sylvie 661 Patte, Aline 439 Patte, Daniel 439 Pavel, Thomas G. 54, 115, 185f., 589, 628, 632f., 637, 726, 729, 769, 805 Pearce, Celia 614 Pecher, Diane 154 Pedri, Nancy 485 Peer, Willie van 52, 630 Peinando, Federico 86 Peirce, Charles Sanders 38 Perelman, Chaïm 567f., 571, 576 Perels, Christoph 162 Pérez y Pérez, Rafael 828, 831 Perks, Robert 100 Perreten, Peter 24 Perry, Menakhem 48, 52, 770ff., 821 Peseschkian, Nassrat 442 Peters, Julie Stone 374 Peters, Thomas 110, 374 Petersen, Jürgen H. 650, 760 Peterson, Carole 498, 760 Peterson, Eric E. 248 Petrarch, Francesco (Petrarca) 20 Petrey, Sandy 686 Petrovskij, Michail 674, 861, 875 Petrulionis, Sandra Harbert 235 Petrovskij, Michail 674, 861, 875 Petsch, Robert 630, 876 Pettersson, Bo 716, 898 Pfister, Manfred 320, 354, 357, 359, 680, 683, 685f., 700f. Pflugmacher, Torsten 862

926 Phelan, James 25, 39, 123, 203, 263, 444, 448, 542, 575, 585, 599f., 602, 654, 707f., 713f., 751, 772, 896ff., 900, 906 Philips, Mark Salber 237 Pias, Claus 613, 616f. Piatti, Barbara 808 Picard, John 551 Pier, John 75f., 136, 271, 305, 326, 328, 331–334, 336, 338, 357, 400, 412, 427, 511, 550, 552, 558, 594, 619, 636f., 658, 711f., 739, 770, 772, 785, 807 Pietzcker, Carl 2 Pil’njak, Boris A. 720 Pindar 118ff. Piwowarczyk, Mary Ann 750 Pizzi, D. 84, 87 Plachta, Bodo 3 Plantinga, Alvin 726 Plato 4, 15, 117f., 129, 131–136, 184, 188, 281f., 312, 355, 453, 469, 534f., 556, 589, 609, 626, 628, 647, 682f., 694, 743, 814, 816, 848, 859f. Platonov, Andrej 789 Plenzdorf, Ulrich 738 Plotnitsky, Arkady 453, 461 Plummer, Kenneth 246 Plutarch 118, 134, 767 Pochat, Götz 449 Poe, Edgar Allan 67 Poirier, Suzanne 410 Polanski, Roman 389, 401 Polanyi, Livia 838, 840 Polkinghorne, Donald E. 245f., 448, 451 Polletta, Francesca 584 Porter, Roger J. 247 Posner, Roland 380 Potocki, Jan 356 Pouillon, Jean 197f., 629, 869, 873f. Pramling, Niklas 498 Pratt, Mary Louise 74, 163, 368, 680, 686, 840 Price, Richard 230

Index Prince, Gerald 2, 39, 67, 75, 87, 123, 126, 160, 167f., 202f., 206f., 265, 274, 301f., 304, 307, 310, 332, 345, 348, 354, 364, 366, 368, 448, 513, 532, 549, 570, 588f., 593, 596, 600, 602, 623ff., 628, 632, 634, 653, 687, 743, 749f., 769, 790, 837f., 840, 902 Proclus (Proclos) 134 Propp, Vladimir 35, 66f., 86, 93, 99, 207, 424, 426, 439, 481, 491, 496, 508, 510, 512, 628, 707, 710f., 769, 877 Protagoras 132 Proust, Joëlle 192 Proust, Marcel 14, 19, 208, 632, 654, 805, 878f. Psathas, George 94 Pudovkin, Vsevolod 390 Punday, Daniel 245, 551 Puškin, Aleksandr 365, 673f., 723 Putnam, Hilary 183 Putzmann, Linda 106 Quasthoff, Uta 97ff., 493, 498, 500 Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quitilianus) 330, 578f., 581 Rabau, Sophie 329 Rabatel, Alain 699f. Rabelais, François 540 Rabinowitz, Peter J. 263, 448, 482, 594, 714, 750f., 848, 850 Radway, Janice 746 Raglan, Lord 769 Rajewsky, Irina O. 350, 429f. Ranke, Leopold von 233, 236f., 767 Ranta, Michael 52 Ratcliffe, Matthew 156 Rathmann, Thomas 161, 164f. Ravenscroft, Ian 193 Reber, Arthur S. 501 Reformatskij, Aleksandr R. 875 Regard, Frédéric 24 Reich, Wilhelm 256 Reichl, Karl 95 Reinhart, Tanya 78 Remizov, Aleksej 789, 792

Index Rengakos, Antonios 99 Renner, Karl Nikolaus 172 Rescher, Nicholas 726f. Resnais, Alain 389f. Revaz, Françoise 601 Rhoads, David 439 Richart de Fournival 281f. Richards, Ivor Armstrong 744 Richardson, Alan 51 Richardson, Brian 210, 264, 294, 320, 427, 429, 524, 594, 635, 649f., 708, 711, 714, 751, 770, 871, 889, 891f. Richardson, Samuel 356, 683 Richardson, Scott 119 Richter, David H. 543 Ricœur, Paul 16, 154, 164, 227, 242, 245, 448, 450f.,454f., 482, 509, 517f., 568f., 571, 578, 590ff., 707f., 714f., 873, 877ff. Riedl, Mark 829f. Riessman, Catherine Kohler 248 Riffaterre, Michael 743, 746 Riggan, William 899 Rigney, Ann 230, 840 Rilke, Rainer Maria 721 Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith 41, 135, 199, 292f., 296, 315, 327, 513f., 554, 654, 700, 846, 850, 852, 878, 898f. Roberts, Glenn 79 Robinson, Jenefer 156 Robinson, Sally 264 Roddenberry, Gene 525 Roermund, G. C. van 459 Rösler, Hannes 378 Roesler, Wolfgang 17 Rohr, Susanne 21, 23 Rohwer-Happe, Gislind 423, 790 Rohy, Valerie 214 Romberg, Bertil 116 Ron, Moshe 817 Ronen, Ruth 54, 185f., 726, 740, 797, 861, 870, 880, 888 Roof, Judith 213 Rosch, Eleanor 48, 71

927 Rose, Christian 439, 441 Rosenblatt, Louise M. 744 Rosenthal, Gabriele 246 Ross, Gary 400 Roth, Paul A. 460 Rouse, Richard 613 Roussin, Philippe 329, 570 Rowland, Robert 577f., 581, 583 Rudrum, David 686 Rüsen, Jörn 450 Rüth, Axel 164 Rumelhart, David E. 86, 628, 757f., 769 Rushdie, Salman 347 Russell, Bertrand 185 Ruston, Scott 808 Ruthrof, Horst 771 Ryan, Marie-Laure 4, 30, 38, 52, 54, 73, 120, 140, 152, 163, 166ff., 185f., 188, 193, 243, 271, 275– 278, 283, 294, 319, 331, 334, 359, 430, 449, 475, 484, 502, 527, 536, 550, 555, 557f., 570, 588f., 593f., 596, 600f., 603, 608, 610, 612ff., 617ff., 623, 626, 633, 635, 637, 657, 661, 679, 710f., 716, 726, 729, 733ff., 737ff., 837f., 840f., 869, 889 Rymar’, Nikolaj 290, 306 Sacks, Harvey 96f., 837f., 843 Sacks, Oliver 602 Sager, Sven F. 99 Saint-Gelais, Richard 332, 737 Salinger, J. D. 96, 790 Salmon, Christian 457, 584 Salway, Andrew 52, 86 Sanford, Anthony J. 52, 756, 761 Saporta, Mark768f. Sappho 120 Saramago, José 356 Sarat, Austin 374 Sarbin, Theordore R. 246, 451f. Sartre, Jean Paul 19, 744f. Sartwell, Crispin 247 Saussure, Ferdinand de 58, 471, 512, 565, 877

928 Scanlan, Timothy M. 709 Schafer, Roy 453 Schäfer, L. 86 Schaeffer, Jean-Marie 112, 188, 232, 241, 271, 275, 312, 334, 338, 495, 508, 584, 591, 728, 740, 798 Schaff, Barbara 4 Schaffer, Kay 376 Schank, Roger C. 35f., 49, 86, 756ff., 769 Schapp, Wilhelm 453, 458 Schegloff, Emanuel A. 94, 97f. Scheffel, Michael 86, 181, 348, 449, 508, 513f., 712, 850, 873f., 878 Schein, Edgar H. 110 Schenk-Haupt, Stefan 429f. Scherer, Jacques 809 Scherer, Wilhelm 37 Schernus, Wilhelm XII, 630, 637 Scherpe, Klaus 862 Scheuerl, Hans 609 Schiffrin, Deborah 97f. Schlaffer, Hannelore 161 Schlickers, Sabine 329, 332f., 337, 395, 397f., 635 Schlüter, Sabine 858 Schmid, Wolf 1f., 71, 96, 166, 169, 173f., 188, 220, 222f., 225, 236f., 263, 292, 294, 301–304, 307, 316–319, 339, 354, 360, 364– 367, 420, 507–510, 515, 517, 531f., 552f., 565, 567, 571, 589, 593, 595, 602, 608, 629, 631, 636f., 661, 664, 669, 673f., 679, 685, 699f., 702, 712, 720f., 723f., 747, 751, 787, 790, 794, 812, 818, 873, 875, 896 Schmidt, Johann N. 319, 357f., 476, 502, 608, 685, 760, 803 Schmidt, Siegfried J. 8, 626 Schmitz, Barabara 437 Schnabel, Julian 395 Schneider, Jost 743 Schneider, Manfred 23 Schneider, Ralf 32, 34, 38, 56f., 73, 524

Index Schneider, Ralph 804 Schneider-Flume, Gunda 441 Schnitzler, Arthur 648 Schön, Erich 40 Schönert, Jörg 22, 173, 220, 242, 320, 420, 423f., 426f., 449, 635, 637, 646, 743, 878 Scholes, Robert 41, 116, 346, 389, 597f., 700, 877 Scholz, Bernhard F. 6 Scholz, Stefan 442 Schonfield, Ernest 356 Schroeder, Ralph 739 Schröter, Jens 440 Schüler, Lis 502 Schütze, Fritz 246 Schultz, Maiken 108 Schultze, Quentin J. 443 Schulz, Don E. 110ff. Schulze, Theodor 458 Schwarz, Daniel R. 900 Schweickart, Patricinio P. 751 Schweinitz, Jörg 388, 392 Schwemmer, Oswald 451, 454, 460 Scorsese, Martin 389 Scott, Walter 96, 709 Scudéry, Geroges de 709 Searle, John 183, 186, 189ff., 662, 680, 686 Seaton, Douglas 471, 482, 635 Seemann, Klaus Dieter 422f. Selbmann, Rolf 6 Sellors, Paul C. 387 Semino, Elena 424, 758ff. Sempé, Jean-Jacques 480f. Sengers, Phoebe 635 Seybold, David Christoph 17 Shaffer, Peter 428 Shakespeare, William 67, 280, 282, 357 Shelley, Mary 357 Shen, Dan 145, 198, 247, 288, 294, 304, 359, 396, 423, 789, 871, 896, 902, 905f. Shepherd, David 125, 210, 249, 260, 355, 556, 821 Short, Michael H. 95

Index Showalter, Elaine208 Shryock, Richard 558 Shumaker, Wayne 20 Shyamalan, M. Night 399 Sidney, Sir Philip 535 Sikes, Pat 246 Silverman, David 409 Simanowski, Roberto 4 Simmel, Georg 227 Simonides of Ceos 470 Simon-Shoshan, Moshe 587, 603 Simpson, Paul 760 Sinclair, John M. 69 Singer, Bryan 358, 399 Siodmak, Robert 389 Šklovskij, Viktor B. 85, 339, 346, 509f., 512, 516, 536, 559, 629, 631, 671, 674, 712, 720, 724, 788, 870, 874f., 887 Skobelev, Vladislav 290, 306 Sławiński, Janusz 291 Sloterdijk, Peter 17, 23 Smith, Brett 842 Smith, Sidonie 16f., 24, 376 Smolett, Tobias 356 Smuda, Manfred 283 Sokurov, Alexander 394f. Solženicyn, Aleksandr 222 Sommer, Roy 118, 210ff., 265, 319f. 420, 427, 429f., 471, 588, 608, 635, 682, 686, 850, 860 Sophocles 118f. Souriau, Etienne 312, 869 Souvage, Jacques 570 Sowa, Hubert 502 Sparkes, Andrew C. 842 Spearing, Anthony C. 140 Sperber, Dan 38, 74f. Spicer, André 109 Spielhagen, Friedrich 312, 627, 651, 858 Spinner, Kaspar 497 Spitzer, Leo 819 Spoerhase, Carlos 3 Spolsky, Ellen 51 Squire, K. 617

929 Stableford, Brian 891 Staiger, Emil 860f. Stang, Richard 694 Stanzel, Franz K. 50, 67, 71, 99, 166, 181, 310–318, 421, 428ff., 449, 589, 629f., 647, 694, 696ff., 702, 819, 848 Starobinski, Jean 20 Starritt, Alexander 9, 503 States, Bert O. 139, 144ff. Steedman, Carolyn 16 Steen, Francis F. 51 Stein, Gertrude 15, 19, 497 Stein, Nancy 66, 412 Steinberg, Günther 815 Steinke, Anthrin 395 Steiner, Wendy 471, 479, 800 Stempel, Wolf-Dieter 167f. Stern, Andrew 86, 88, 769 Sternberg, Meir 48f., 51f., 54, 152, 166, 169, 180, 265, 375, 498, 436f., 458f., 482, 511, 522, 524, 587, 590, 593f., 597, 601ff., 637, 684, 707, 712f., 812, 816, 821, 841, 843, 870, 874, 879 Sterne, Laurence 346, 509, 685, 767 Stiegler, Bernd 21 Stierle, Karlheinz 508, 514f., 673, 747 Stillinger, Jack 424, 426 Stockwell, Peter 50, 760 Stoppard, Tom 320, 686 Strasburger, Herman 117 Straub, Jürgen 448, 450 Strawson, Galen 242, 248, 455, 542f., 602 Streib, Heinz 443 Stroud, Scott R. 581, 583 Strube, Werner 7, 283, 856 Struve, Gleb 724 Stubbs, Michael 69 Stude, Juliane 501 Stühring, Jan 661 Sturgess, Philip J. M. 587, 592, 596, 598, 637 Suleiman, Susan R. 747 Surkamp, Carola 359, 700

930 Šukšin, V. 789 Susman, Margarete 7 Suter, Andreas 160, 164f. Sutton-Smith, Brian 611 Swales, Martin 162 Swedenberg, H. T. 709 Swift, Jonathan 888 Tait, Allison 379 Tamarčenko, Natan D. 223, 225, 568 Tammi, Pekka 75, 815 Tan, Ed S. 525 Tannen, Deborah 97ff. Tarantino, Quentin 399 Tarasti, Eero 471, 481 Taylor, Charles 17, 241, 456 Taylor, Marjorie 521, 523 Tedlock, Dennis 95 Terkel, Studs 94, 246 Theocritus 117, 119 Thomä, Helmut 453 Thomas, Bronwen 817 Thomas, Brook 379 Thompson, Evan 48 Thompson, Kristin 471 Thompson, Sandra A. 98 Thompson, Stith 628 Thomsen, Christian W. 611 Thomson, Alistair 100 Thomson-Jones, Katherine 649 Thon, Jan-Noël 52, 485, 613, 615, 619 Thoreau, Henry David 24 Thorndyke, Perry W. 66 Thucydides 118, 356 Tieck, Ludwig 162, 356 Tihanov, Galin 125 Titunik, Irwin 788 Titzmann, Michael 170, 172f., 624 Tjupa, Valerij 124, 219, 225, 354, 781, 793, 818 Tobler, Adolf 815 Todemann, Friedrich 815 Todorov, Tzvetan 48, 67, 167f., 197f., 207, 394, 426, 507, 511–515, 517, 549, 559, 613, 615, 618, 624f., 631f., 635, 680, 686, 707, 710f., 734, 749, 769, 869, 877f.

Index Tollefsen, Deborah 3 Tolstoj, Lev 220f., 296, 303f., 567, 669f., 674, 805 Tomaševskij, Boris 85, 507, 509–513, 515, 594, 629, 712, 869 Tomassini, Giovanni Battista 556, 558 Tomasulo, Frank P. 395 Tommola, Hannu 815 Tompkins, Jane 48 Toolan, Michael J. 70, 247, 293, 304, 588, 637, 757, 771f., 814, 817, 830, 850 Toro, Alfonso de 779, 870, 874, 878 Torode, Brian 409 Townsend, Alex 358 Trabasso, Thomas R. 412 Triandis, Harry Ch. 244 Tröhler, Margrit 36 Trollope, Anthony 96 Trubeckoj, Nikolaj 861 Truffaut, François 399 Turner, Marc 359 Turner, Mark 507f., 475, 797, 802 Turner, Scott R. 828, 830f. Turner, Victor W. 681 Twain, Mark 534, 540, 542, 790 Tynjanov, Jurij 289, 509, 590, 723, 792 Ullmann, Stephen 815 Uspenskij, Boris A. 207, 221f., 260, 314, 360, 570f., 629, 700, 702, 803, 818, 873 Vaina, Lucia 732 Varela, Francisco J. 48, 154 Varga, A. Kibédi 477 Vatz, Richard E. 577 Vendler, Zeno 168, 857 Vette, Joachim 438 Veyne, Paul 180, 450, 569, 571 Vincent, J. Keith 214 Vinogradov, Viktor 96, 289ff., 674, 792 Vismann, Cornelia374 Vitoux, Pierre 699f., 703 Vitz, Evelyn Birge Voigts-Virchow, Eckhart 395 Volek, Emil 509, 511, 514

Index Volkening, Heide 16, 21 Vološinov, Valentin N. 125, 220, 223, 256, 260, 813, 815, 817ff. Vossler, Karl 125 Voznesenskij, Andrej 671 Vultur, Ioana 275, 312 Vygotskij, Lev 509 Wages, Richard 614 Wagner, Frank 327, 332, 337 Wagner, Klaus L. 490, 501 Walker, Cheryl 8 Wall, Kathleen 899 Walsh, Richard 74, 144, 318f., 322, 522, 556, 584, 592, 600, 602, 661 Walter, Klaus 612, 615 Walton, Kendall 38, 184, 189f., 270f., 273, 283, 654, 658, 660, 729 Wardetzky, Kristin 493, 496, 498f. Warhol, Robyn R. 209ff., 213ff., 264, 524, 713f. Warner, Michael 214 Warren, Austin 33 Warren, Robert Penn 511, 536, 707, 710f., 714 Waterman, Robert 110 Watson, Julia 16f., 24 Watt, Ian 869 Wattanasuwan, Kritsadarat 112 Watts, Richard J. 74 Waugh, Patricia 346f. Weber, Dietrich 873 Weick, Karl 111 Weidle, Roland 348f., 420, 430 Weimann, Robert 696 Weinhold, Swantje 493f., 496, 499 Weinrich, Harald 440, 874 Weinsheimer, Joel 30 Weintraub, Karl J. 18 Weisberg, Richard H. 375 Weixler, Antonius 86, 869 Wellbery, David E. 869 Wellek, René 33, 536, 711 Wellmann, Henry M. 492 Welles, Orson 389f. Welzer, Harald 21 Wenzel, Knut 458

931 Werner, Lukas 86, 869, 871 Werth, Paul 51, 54, 73, 761, 796 Wertheimer, Max 758 West, Martin L. 119 West, Robin 373 Westphal, Bertrand 808 Weststeijn, Willem G. 424 Wexler, Alice 415 White, Hayden 228, 230f., 236, 450f., 508f., 515ff., 569, 571, 578, 591f., 594f., 598, 600, 634, 707, 714f. White, James B. 375 Whitehead, Alfred North 462 Widdicombe, Sue 249 Wieler, Petra 489, 493f., 499 Wiesenfarth, Joseph 848f., 851 Wilde, Oscar 709 Wilder, Billy 427 Wilder, Thornton 320 Wilensky, Robert 88, 758 Willems, Gottfried 848 Williams, Jeffrey 551, 557ff. Williams , Patricia 376 Williams, Patrick 123 Williams, Raymond 256f Williams, Tennessee 428 Wilson, Deridre 38, 74f. Wimsatt, William K. 7, 291, 536 Winko, Simone 3, 8f., 41 Winterson, Jeanette 214 Wispé, Lauren 525 Wittig, Monique 779, 782 Wittig, Susan 99 Wodak, Ruth 98 Wolf, Christa 15 Wolf, Dagmar 452 Wolf, Mark J. P. 612 Wolf, Norbert Christian 9 Wolf, Werner 52, 152, 182, 275–278, 281ff., 285, 319f., 327, 334, 336ff., 345, 347–350, 357, 380, 422, 472, 477ff., 482, 548, 551f., 556, 560, 588, 635f., 678, 682, 685f., 851, 891 Wolf, Yvonne 396

932 Wolff, Erwin 307 Wolff Lundholt, Marianne 575 Wolfson, Nessa 100 Woloch, Alex 215 Woodmansee, Martha 6, 8 Woods, Robert H. 443 Wooffitt, Robin 94, 98 Woolf, Virginia 19, 356, 600, 695, 721, 815, 879 Wordsworth, William 15, 24 Worth, Sol 475 Wunderlich, Werner 8 Yacobi, Tamar 288, 655, 898, 901ff. Yanal, Robert J. 522f. Yaron, Iris 69 Yellowlees, Douglas J. 771 Young, Christopher 95, 99 Young, Katherine Galloway 99, 550 Young, Michael 829f., 832 Xenophon131 Xu, Jejin 905f.

Index Yule, George 68f., 94 Zahavi, Dan 154 Zamjatin, Evgenij 723f. Zbinden, Karine 125 Ždanova, Anna V. 566 Zerweck, Bruno 903f Zielinski, Thaddeus 779 Zillman, Dolf 522, 524 Zima, Peter 257 Zipfel, Frank 186, 191, 292 Žirmunskij, Viktor 723 Žižek, Slavoj 256 Zola, Émile 781, 814 Zoran, Gabriel 797, 799 Zoščenko, Michail 789, 792f. Zubin, David A. 803 Zunshine, Lisa 34, 53, 816, 820 Zwaan, Rolf A. 154, 278, 283 Žyličeva, Galina A.571 Zymner, Rüdiger 860