Narrative Structure and Narrative Knowing in Medicine and Science 9783111319971, 9783111314310

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Narrative Structure and Narrative Knowing in Medicine and Science

Narratologia

Contributions to Narrative Theory Edited by Fotis Jannidis, Matías Martínez, John Pier, Wolf Schmid (executive editor) Editorial Board Catherine Emmott, Monika Fludernik, José Ángel García Landa, Inke Gunia, Peter Hühn, Manfred Jahn, Markus Kuhn, Uri Margolin, Jan Christoph Meister, Ansgar Nünning, Marie-Laure Ryan, Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Michael Scheffel, Sabine Schlickers

Volume 90

Narrative Structure and Narrative Knowing in Medicine and Science Edited by Martina King and Tom Kindt

ISBN 978-3-11-131431-0 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-131997-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-132017-5 ISSN 1612-8427 Library of Congress Control Number: 2023941762 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. © 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Acknowledgements This volume could not have been completed without the immense editorial support of Mona Baie and Kilian King. We want to thank Mona for her endlessly patient, meticulous corrections and Kilian for his excellent translations. Finally, we have to thank the Department of Medicine at Fribourg University for the generous funding of this volume.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111319971-202

Contents Acknowledgements Martina King Introduction

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Section 1: Science Anders Sydskjør Oedipal Camels? Narrative and Science in Aristotle’s Historia Animalium 27 Sebastian Meixner Narrating Bones: Goethe’s Early Osteological Writings from Physiognomy to Type (1776–1794) 45 Angela Gencarelli The ‘Mystery’ of Quantum Physics: Narrating the Wave-Particle Duality in a Richard Feynman Lecture 75 Felix E. Rietmann Of Still Faces and Micro-Plots: Audiovisual Narration in Infant Mental Health 95

Section 2: Medicine Lucia Aschauer Narrating Birth: The Emergence of Male Expertise in Obstetrical Case Reports around 1800 119 Yvonne Wübben Console, Classify and Advertise: Narrative Structures of Case Reporting and Their Epistemic Function in Early Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry (Pargeter, Arnold, Pinel) 139

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Martina King/Tom Kindt The Discharge Letter in Clinical Medicine: History and Epistemology of an Unknown Narrative Genre 157 Jarmila Mildorf “I Had a Patient Who . . .”: Narratives of Vicarious Experience in GPs’ Discourse on Domestic Violence 187 Contributors Index

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Introduction 1 ‘Wirklichkeitserzählungen’ Transdisciplinary narratology is booming. It expands widely beyond the philologies, into fields and disciplines such as theology, philosophy, law, economics, politics, and pedagogics; and of course also in everyday communication and everyday culture, in journalism, and marketing.1 There is rising interest in storytelling and narrative structures, in grand narratives and small narratives, master narratives and meta narratives, model stories and cases, narrative cognition and narrative frames, all emerging from non-literary fields and non-literary communication. This all means that there is a deepened interest in factual narration in general; or better put as “Wirklichkeitserzählungen” [reality narratives], a term coined by Christian Klein and Matías Martínez (2009a). We prefer this term here since we want to exclude those narratives that are non-fictional but part of literary communication, such as autobiography, biography, letters, published diaries, travelogues etc. If we deal with ‘Wirklichkeitserzählungen’, as Martínez uses it, we have to ask, on the one hand, if they share the same structural principles with fictional narration. Is it justified to apply categories of classical, structuralist, and post-classical narratology here? Hence, we have to focus on mood, voice, and tense, on internal focalization, anachrony, eventfulness, and reduced distance/showing. Does the distinction between story and discourse make sense, for example in clinical case reports or in accounts of natural history? Are those elements that some scholars reserve for fictional storytelling (see Fludernik 2020, 54–58) restricted to certain historical epochs or genres? On the other hand, there are intriguing questions about factual, non-literary storytelling that essentially concern what has been called the ‘factual pact’. The assumption is that factual narratives, at least in the context of expert communication, make true statements about the real world; therefore, they are defined by functionality (Klein and Martínez 2009a, 3; Fludernik 2020, 62).2 The functions attributed to storytelling within such contexts range from witnessing, persuasion, ordering, sense-making, and causal explanation to illustration, convincing, communication, and education. More precise distinctions would certainly be helpful; and one  For a most recent overview see Monika Fludernik (2020).  See in this context also Aura Heydenreich’s impressive chapter on Einstein’s Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper where she pleads “for a functional approach to narrativity” within the context of science (Heydenreich 2021, 49–103, 60). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111319971-001

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should, with regards to storytelling, distinguish between everyday communication in colloquial language and expert communication within expert fields. This volume consciously narrows the field of investigation down to storytelling in science and medicine – thus providing a lens on the connection between expert semantics, codes, discursive rules on the one hand and narrativity on the other hand.

2 Epistemic storytelling: Science and medicine Over the recent years, several pioneering volumes and handbooks on factual narration have been published by leading scholars, such as Monika Fludernik’s and MarieLaure Ryan’s Narrative Factuality (2020), Klein’s and Martínez’ Wirklichkeitserzählungen (2009b), Martínez’ ‘interdisciplinary handbook’ Erzählen (2017), and finally the section “Erzählen jenseits der Literatur” in Huber’s and Schmid’s Grundthemen der Literaturwissenschaft: Erzählen (2017, 433–569). They all aim to frame the field and give overviews over the broad spectrum of transdisciplinary storytelling; they also reveal promising areas of scholarship. If one skims through these volumes, it becomes clear that two expert fields are especially intriguing for the exploration of epistemic functions of storytelling – the natural sciences and medicine. Both serve functions such as witnessing, ordering, causal explanation, education, and communication. And both present, systematically and historically, a wide range of genres, media, codes, and discourses which are either narrative as a whole or contain small narrative chunks or larger passages of narrative. Many of them embed proper narratives in a dominant mode of argumentation and description (see Fludernik 2015, 118–119); for example Emil Du Bois Reymond’s groundbreaking treatise Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur allgemeinen Muskel- und Nervenphysik (1875). Here, highly perspectival first-person accounts about the author’s experiments are embedded in lengthy descriptions of general physiological laws. Against this background, we follow Aura Heydenreich who claims that narrative in science (one can add ‘narrative in medicine’) should certainly not be seen as something that is expectable, necessarily there, and unavoidable. Heydenreich conceives it rather as something incidental and gradual that comes in varying degrees (Heydenreich 2021, 60). Hence, criteria for describing higher and lower degrees of narrativeness are crucial, especially if one looks at diachronic changes; eventfulness, homodiegesis, verbs of action, focalization, and tellability could be such criteria. However, this incidental, varying and yet very basic narrativity of science and medicine has not yet become consensus among scholars. It has been questioned in the sense that people wonder if there is any narrativity at all or if there are just other, non-narrative forms of representation such as description, list,

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mathematical formula, graphic depiction, and such like (Walsh 2020, 419; see also Plotnitsky 2005). In fact, knowledge in both natural sciences and in clinical medicine is – at least in modern contexts – propositional and deals with universals. It remains questionable to what end narrative, which is about particulars and bound to time, may serve. Can it be more than illustrative or educative, can it reach from the particular to the universal and provide explanation and hence argument? To put it in the words of Heydenreich, we have to ask if and how “scientific texts functionalize narrativity epistemically, and still argue theoretically” (Heydenreich 2021, 60). Keeping the longstanding debate about the possible “incompatibility between narrative and scientific knowledge” in mind (Walsh 2020, 419), we think that both fields are especially promising. They require not only meticulous narratological analysis but also historicizing and contextualizing. One can see diachronic developments, historical changes and shifts, processes of cultural differentiation (e.g. between science and popular science), and varying and changing functions of storytelling. The spectrum is broad and ranges from the medical case report, its characteristic narrativity and the fundamental changes it undergoes with the advent of scientific medicine in the nineteenth century (see King 2016) to highly abstract subjects such as quantum physics or molecular biology (see below). It ranges from textual genres such as scientific articles, medical textbooks, and popular essays to audiovisual media such as film or video tape. This broad and yet concrete spectrum allows to combine two aspects of postclassical narratology that have been both declared as desiderata, however sparsely combined: transdisciplinary narratology and historical, contextualist narratology. The latter seems all the more important since the widely discussed process of deagentivization and objectivation of scientific language in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been identified by historians of science as a major feature of technical modernization. This claim of deagentivization, based on linguistic elements such as verbs of action and their mode of conjugation, is also crucial for the degree and elaborateness of narrativity in science and medicine.3 Therefore, it should be used and reworked in close correlation with narratological investigation. Combining the analysis of syntax with oppositional narratological categories such as eventfulness/protocol-style, anachrony/fundamental linearity, internal focalization/external focalization could provide a more precise toolbox for factual expert texts (see Brandt 2017, 215–216).

 See Rom Harré (1990); Alan G. Gross (1990, 2006); Alan G. Gross et al. (2002); Jeanne Fahnestock (1999); Jürg Niederhauser (1998).

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But as promising as medicine and science might be for transdisciplinary narratology, there are blind spots and profound gaps on both sides: one-sidedness, a lack of historicity, a lack of exemplary studies. So far, there is no systematic investigation into which genres and historical epochs are relevant, and to what ends narrative may serve. This is another aspect that becomes clear if one has a closer look at the volumes and handbooks mentioned above, all edited by leading narratologists and scholars of literature. It is apparently not easy to fill the gap of science and medicine, as opposed to law, economics, theology, social sciences, and historiography. ‘Science’ is in two handbooks covered by the same author, Christina Brandt (2009, 2017); ‘medicine’ meanwhile tends to be metonymically represented by psychiatry and psychotherapy, also covered twice by the same pair of authors, clinician Carl Eduard Scheidt and linguist Anja Stukenbrock (2017, 2020). However, the difficulties of dealing with medicine and science from a narratological point of view seem different in both fields. Against this background, we will try to give a short overview of the different scholarly traditions and explain the difficulties on each side.

3 Narrative in medicine ‘Narrative in medicine’ is a rich research field that comes under the umbrella of narratology but has, however, developed rather independently; more on that later. After all, medicine tends to be selectively represented in transdisciplinary narratology in two ways; the handbooks mentioned above show this. Firstly, we find only the ‘soft’ discursive side, in other words psychiatry, psychotherapy, psychosomatics, trauma therapy. Secondly, all contributions are patient-centered, they explore so called ‘narratives of illness’ – mostly in oral encounters between doctor and patient but also in the form of written accounts by patients.4 This focus on patients’ narratives can – besides historical developments within psychiatry – be attributed to the influential movement of Narrative Medicine and its apparent authority over any kind of storytelling in medicine. Narrative Medicine was coined around 2000 by clinicians and medical humanists such as Rita Charon, Brian Hurwitz and Trisha Greenhalgh as a patient-centered field of research and teaching (Greenhalgh and Hurwitz 1998; Charon 2006). It is characterized by a strong normative emphasis on public policy and medical education; and it emerged, following Karin Birkner, from the paradigm shift from paternalistic to participatory medicine and shared decision making in the

 See Brigitte Boothe (2009); David Lätsch (2017); Elisabeth Gülich (2017); Scheidt and Stukenbrock (2020, 2017); Karin Birkner (2017).

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late 1990s (see Birkner 2017, 548). In the aftermath of this paradigm shift, patients’ narratives, both oral and written, became a field of investigation for its own sake. That means that they are – at least in European countries – mostly explored by two disciplinary groups: on the one hand clinicians, mainly from psychiatry, psychotherapy/trauma therapy or psychosomatics, on the other hand linguists, doing interactional or ethnographic work.5 Fruitful transdisciplinary collaborations have emerged between these two groups.6 There are also some collaborations between physicians and scholars of literature, but they are still quite rare.7 This situation is reflected by the quoted handbooks. The respective contributions in Martínez’ Handbuch, Martínez’ Wirklichkeitserzählungen, Fludernik’s handbook, and in Grundthemen Erzählen are, as noted above, all about illness narratives and patients’ storytelling within the doctor-patient-encounter. A special emphasis is put on psychotherapy, psychosomatics, and psychiatry.8 A closer look at the rich bibliographies of these articles reveals that a fruitful branch of research has developed here; but it seems independent from narratology and literary scholarship and hardly in mutual interchange. The respective projects are often carried out by clinicians and linguists. Consequently, their methodological background is conversational analysis or analysis of recorded interviews, rather than classical or postclassical narratology in the stricter sense. And these projects focus exclusively on patients’ storytelling, as has already been pointed out. As important as this is, it should still not be taken as pars pro toto for the whole of medicine; this is because the doctors’ side is left out. In other words, it is suggested that patients tell stories and doctors do not, since they have other forms of representation such as protocol, list, graphs, and images. This implicit assumption certainly plays an important and stimulating role within the movement of Narrative Medicine. There is, however, also a substantial degree of narrativity on the doctors’ side, it is just expressed very differently to the patients’

 E.g. linguists Elisabeth Gülich, Karin Birkner, Thomas Spranz-Fogasy, Anja Stukenbrock; psychologist David Lätsch, clinicians Gabriele Lucius-Höhne, Brigitte Boothe, Carl Eduard Scheidt; ethnographer Vera Kalitzkus (see footnote 6).  E.g. the DFG funded, interdisciplinary research group “Zur narrativen Bewältigung von Bedrohung, Verlust und Trauma” at Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), University of Freiburg/Br. (Carl Eduard Scheidt, Gabriele Lucius-Hoene, Anja Stuckenbrock, 2011–2012); research cooperation between ethnographer Vera Kalitzkus and clinician Stefan Wilm at Düsseldorf university (Kalitzkus et al. 2009; Kalitzkus and Wilm 2017).  E.g. Wohlmann et al. (2022). See also the forthcoming series Narrative and Mental Health, edited by psychologist Elisabeth Punzi and by literary scholars Christoph Singer, Cornelia Wächter and finally Jarmila Mildorf, who is also one of our contributors. https://brill.com/page/ nmh/forthcoming-series-narratives-and-mental-health.  See the listed articles in footnote 4.

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stories of personal suffering; hence the broad and heterogenous spectrum of ‘narration in medicine’ has not yet been covered. The latter’s dimensions are far broader, since physicians have their own, multifaceted narrative genres – such as case history, medical report, expert correspondences, anamnesis, surgical report, autopsy report, and finally the standardized discharge letter. These have all emerged over time, changed substantially over time and developed fundamental epistemic functions over time. Although much research has been done on the case report and its history since Gianna Pomata coined the phrase ‘epistemic genre’ (Pomata 2014),9 the other genres have been somewhat neglected.10 With regards to epistemic functions, they underwent profound shifts between pre-modern and modern scientific medicine: their functions changed from witnessing and authentication to linear ordering and causal explanation.11 Apart from these purely narrative genres that turned diachronically from rich and eventful plots into linear, reductive sequences of occurrences (which are still obviously narrative, see King 2021a, 77–85), there are genres that contain sections of varying narrativity, such as: medical textbooks, psychiatric treatises, and clinical articles. There has certainly been some scholarly attention directed towards such narrative genres and the fact that doctors obviously have their own rules and forms of storytelling.12 However, this has never brought about a coherent field of research where expert medical storytelling is systematically explored. One possible reason for this, in addition to the cultural dominance of Narrative Medicine, might be that humanist scholars do not easily get access to medical sources. Furthermore, the content of these sources is difficult to decipher for the medical layperson. Rishi Goyal’s article ‘Narration in medicine’ in the Handbook of Narratology by Peter Hühn, Jan Christoph Meister, John Pier, and Wolf Schmid (online as Living Handbook of Narratology) is one of the rare comprehensive summaries of the subject. Goyal, an emergency doctor and a scholar of comparative literature, states that there is also storytelling on the part of the doctor in everyday clinical  See also Gianna Pomata (2013). Examples for the rich research on case stories are Sibylle Brändli et al. (2009); Jason Tougaw (2006); Meegan Kennedy (2010); Brian Hurwitz (2017, 2016); Martina King (2016).  On the modern genre ‘discharge report/discharge letter’ see Martina King (2021a, 2020).  See as example Roland Borgards (2008). On diachronic changes of the case report see King (2016, 2019a).  See Kathryn Montgomery Hunter (1991); Rishi Goyal (2014). Anthropologist Cheryl Mattingly has explored the narrative structure of clinical interactions from a narratological point of view, she analyses oral narratives of medical staff and patients. However, her target group are occupational therapists and not physicians (Mattingly 1998a, 1998b); see also King (2021a, 2020).

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contexts. Hence, he focusses on both patients’ illness narratives and doctors’ medical case histories [the latter is the doctor’s version of the patient history, taken in the first encounter and written down on a pre-formatted folder, MK]; he presents these two types of illness narratives as complementary subjects for the designated scholarly field ‘narration in medicine’. In this context, the medical history is considered as “an epistemological basis for medical cognition and clinical care” (Goyal 2014, 406). Goyal’s stimulating reflections have not been systematically taken up by other scholars so far; and he confines himself, following Kathryn Montgomery Hunter, to the contemporary medical case history. In Goyal’s own words, this is just “one document among many in a medical chart” (Goyal 2014, 410). Hence, a lot remains to be done, and Goyal’s article and Montgomery Hunter’s monograph can serve as promising starting points. Goyal, while focussing on the medical case history, reveals that doctors actually engage in event-sequencing; but he tackles just the events that led to hospital admission, not the ones that occur during the hospital stay. This is where our volume takes the research on doctors’ stories a step further. We extend the idea of clinical event-sequencing to the unexplored genre of the ‘discharge report/discharge letter’ and its history, precisely to its central paragraph ‘clinical course’. This paragraph – also called epicrisis – usually follows the initial lists of diagnoses, medications, and laboratory data. It summarizes events and actions during the hospital stay, such as diagnostic procedures, treatments, and symptoms of the patient; therefore, it puts together the current illness and its causal logic. How this works, what specific forms of narrativity are at play here – this will be briefly mentioned below and analyzed in detail in our volume. To sum up: Narrative in medicine cannot be identified with or restricted to Narrative Medicine. It is actually a much larger field than the current scholarly mainstream suggests; and the doctors’ side, manifesting itself in various expert genres, has not been systematically investigated from a narratological point of view.

4 Narrative in science Let us now turn to science, or better ‘narrative in science’, which seems like an appropriate name for a huge international research field. It is expanding very quickly and fruitfully and has – like Narrative Medicine – brought about terminological projects and endeavors such as Mary Morgan’s seminal ERC-project Narra-

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tive Science (2016–2021).13 The latter has produced interesting insights, new knowledge, and remarkable observations about the cognitive function of narrativity within the sciences. Above all, it has pushed the general question ‘what is narrative in science, what is narrativity in science?’ into the spotlight, allowing further scholarship to connect, to carry on or to complement Morgan’s philosophical approach. Is there any consensus at all about what we are dealing with? Projects such as Morgan’s Narrative Science reveal this research field being profoundly heterogenous. Various groups of scholars, philosophers of science, historians of science, sociologists, experts of communication and education (see Dahlstrom 2014, 13614–13620), literary scholars, and scientists themselves deal with the subject; and each group defines narrativity and narrative differently. Philosopher Mary Morgan for example observes what sociologists do when they work with case studies on small social communities. She analyzes how these case studies have the power to order and explain empirical findings while being regrouped (Morgan 2017, 2019). Hence, Morgan understands narrative as a form of cognitive activity and therefore conceives it as not essentially representational, not bound to text or even time. This approach might be fruitful for understanding the production of knowledge in research communities, and also processes of reasoning and sense-making in various scientific disciplines.14 However, this broad understanding of narrative risks to obscure the specific functions and characteristics of narration that can be revealed by literary scholarship – building on the two pillars of narrative theory, sequentiality and temporality (see Heydenreich 2021, 58–59). Therefore, and in contrast to the aforementioned approach, our volume explores narrative in the stricter sense of literary theory: as representation of particulars. Consequently, we imply the current minimal definitions of classical and postclassical narratology – such as ‘a series of events or occurrences, temporally ordered and causally linked’ or, even shorter, “a representation of events+x” (Klein and Martínez 2009a, 6).15 This is where our volume is firmly rooted and from where we hope to turn a new spotlight on ‘narrative in science’.

 https://www.narrative-science.org/; https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/694732.  See the seminal publications of this group, an anthology and the final volume Mat Paskins and Mary S. Morgan (2019); Mary S. Morgan, Kim M. Hajek, Dominic J. Berry (2022). There is one contributor in both the anthology and the volume, Kim Hajek, who works with textual analysis and narratological criteria; she is the only literary scholar in the group.  The original quote is: “Erzählen ist Geschehensdarstellung +x”. The distance from this minimal definition is most obvious in Mary Morgan’s sociological field work where she argues that narrative must be sequential but not necessarily time-bound (Morgan 2017, 2019). Aura Heydenreich, in contrast, employs Martínez’ definition and his categories with great scrutiny (Heydenreich 2021, 63–64).

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Other scholars clearly ground ‘narrative in science’ in representation and textuality but conceive it openly in another sense; their concept of narrative is an umbrella term that includes all forms of aesthetic language. Storytelling is of course part of it, but so are rhetorical figures and tropes, mythical and symbolic representations, and emotions/emotional language.16 The reasons for this open and heterogenous concept of narrative are different from those in medicine but also historically grounded. Since the seminal works of Gillian Beer (2009 [1983]), Karin Knorr-Cetina (1984), Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer (1989), Bruno Latour and Steve Wolgar (1979), and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (2001, 2006), both historians of science and literary scholars have developed a growing interest in the linguistic and aesthetic fabrication of scientific knowledge. This new research field has expanded richly in the past decades and is often, in reference to Beer, just called ‘narrative in science’. However, a survey of contributions using this umbrella term reveals that they contain hardly any narratology at their methodological center, or more precisely, any narratological analysis of textual structures. We rather find a mix of metaphor, rhetoric, figurative language, cognitive linguistics, theories of storyworlds, and cognitive metaphor theory; one can see how heterogenous the underlying concept of narrativity indeed is.17 It is important to note that this heterogeneity and openness started with the founder, with Gillian Beer and her famous account of Darwin’s writings. On the one hand, Beer explored all kinds of poetical structures and not only storytelling in Darwin. On the other hand, she investigated, quite logically, historical parallels between Darwin and the kind of fictional Victorian prose that had an obvious affinity to science – e.g. the novels of George Eliot. And this has become a pattern. In scholarly works that in some way deal with ‘narrative in science’, factual and fictional texts are often treated together: they are searched for intersections, parallels, mutual reciprocity, shared discursive structures, shared knowledge, and such like. We see this both in volumes and in monographs: ‘narration in science’ and ‘narration in literary prose’ are treated in different chapters and sub-chapters and often re See for example Elisabeth Pernkopf (2013); Arne Höcker et al. (2006). The latter is a very interesting collection of articles on all sorts of non-literary texts with epistemic functions – from Husserl’s treatise of non-Euklidean geometry to Uexküll’s complex environmental biology, anthropology of enlightenment and brain surgery. However, the introduction “Poetologien/Rhetoriken des Wissens” (Moser 2006) and the contributions reveal that ‘narrative’ in the title of the volume is meant rather broadly, as an umbrella term for aesthetic or poetic structures, for metaphors, symbols, anthropomorphisms and figures of speech.  See Brandt (2017, 211). Examples are given in footnote 16. A further one is the article of Hans U. Fuchs (2015): Fuchs draws, being close to Mary Morgan’s theoretical approach, on the epistemic value of certain cognitive activities such as metaphorical framing and narrative embedding and therefore parallels the concepts ‘concept metaphor’ and ‘storytelling’.

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lated to each other. Examples are the volume Engineering Life. Wissen und Narration im Zeitalter der Biotechnologie (Breger et al. 2008) or the remarkable monograph Pathologia litteralis. Erzählte Wissenschaft und wissenschaftliches Erzählen im französischen 19. Jahrhundert (Föcking 2002).18 The central research question or research scope seems a wider one in such books, in the sense of a ‘poetics of culture’ and its assumptions. Implicitly or explicitly, the two-culture-distinction is challenged and replaced by a wider concept of ‘cultures of knowledge’ where science and literature participate in the same, all-encompassing endeavor. Hence, narration and figurative language rather serve as an argument for the unity of culture than as a subject of investigation on its own merits. In consequence, ‘narrative in science’ has not really become a part of transdisciplinary narratology. Especially literary scholars obviously hesitate to investigate the specific narrativity of scientific texts as an end in itself, independently of fictional literature. There are, of course, articles that explore cases of narrativity in science through the lens of narratological theory. Mary Terrall’s contribution on Réaumur’s natural history of insects (1734)19 for example shows a characteristic pattern of storytelling within natural history: first-person narratives of quest and discovery are interwoven with third-person, zero-focalized narratives of animal behavior (Terrall 2017). The functions of this typological mix are obviously personal witnessing, sense-making, and reader immersion – what has been observed can be anticipated by the reader and is therefore believed to be true. However, even if we occasionally find some scholarship on the life sciences (e.g. King 2017), there seems to be an emphasis on abstract modern physics and the role of narrative as explanatory or exemplary tool.20 Biology is seriously underrepresented which is not immediately self-evident. The life sciences, both historical and contemporary, contain many objects that are genuinely sequential and eventful – such as life cycles, species evolution, earth history, and behavior of individual living beings. They are more concrete and presumably easier to conceive as agents than the immaterial epistemic things of non-linear physics. And, as we can see with Terrall’s article and the contribution on Aristotelian natural history in this volume, they show us how narrative leads from the individual and particular to the universal – to general statements about the natural world.

 More recent examples that conceive narration as a pervasive cultural practice which appears in science, popular science and fictional literature are Martina King (2021b, Part III: Kollektiverzählung ‘Mikrobenjagd’); Emilie Taylor-Pirie (2021).  René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur: Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des insectes. Six volumes (1734–1742). Paris: Académie Royale des Sciences.  See Marie-Laure Ryan (2011); Hans U. Fuchs (2015); Angela Gencarelli (2017); Aura Heydenreich (2021); Arianna Borrelli (2015a, 2015b).

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However, there is still no systematic research field on storytelling in the life sciences from a strictly narratological point of view. Historians of biology and STS-scholars, working in the constructivist tradition of Knorr-Cetina, Shapin, Schaffer, Latour, Wolgar, and Rheinberger, tend to search for ‘grand narratives’ or ‘master narratives’ that framed new scientific fields, set boundaries, or initiated scientific competitions.21 That means their level of analysis is usually above the micro-structures of storytelling, in other words above those phenomena that could be identified with classical, structuralist, and post-classical categories. To sum up: the phenomena described above, i.e. narrative research ‘without narratology’ or narrative research without a defined, shared concept of narrative, seem to be the general flipside of the transdisciplinary boom. The lack of consensus of what narrative actually means in science becomes clearly visible in our thesaurus volumes. Christina Brandt, in her articles in Wirklichkeitserzählungen and in the handbook of transdisciplinary storytelling, gives substantial overviews over the field; she touches recent developments but also emphasizes open questions, gaps to be filled, and research desiderata (Brandt 2009, 2017). As a trained biologist and historian of science, Brandt mainly refers to the life sciences as traditionally empirical, observational disciplines; she assumes that narrative is part and parcel of their production of knowledge and authority. Hence, Brandt focusses on textuality, genre, and narrative structures such as plot and temporal order, stressing both the question of authorship and the historical dimension of the subject (Brandt 2017, 214–216). The equivalent in Monika Fludernik’s handbook, the article “The Narration of Scientific Facts” by literary scholar Richard Walsh, focusses – like so many contributions that appear under the umbrella of narrative in science – on the entirely different field of abstract physics, quantum mechanics, and continuum mechanics/nonlinear dynamics (Walsh 2020). And one can see that, depending on the different areas of science implicitly taken as a pars pro toto for ‘narrative in science’, entirely different questions and perspectives come into focus. Walsh discusses his examples, Einstein’s twin paradox and the notorious story of Schroedinger’s cat, through the systematic lens of theory, mainly ontology and theories of cognition. And he focusses – leaving aside genre, textuality, and micro-structures of texts – on general questions such as objectivity and subjectivity, concepts of truth and facticity, scientific observation and its referential frame, narrative cognition and causal inference.22

 See Arianna Borrelli (2020, 435). A significant example Borrelli refers to is Böschen and Viehöver (2015).  There is another article in Fludernik’s handbook on the topic, written by historian of science Arianna Borrelli (Borrelli 2020). Borrelli gives a sketched, twofold historical overview, briefly

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Against this background, it becomes clear that current scholarly overviews over ‘narrative in science’ cannot build on any research consensus and conceive their subject in a fundamentally disparate way. The heterogeneity of approaches ranges from abstract, systematic, theory-laden contributions to concrete, historical articles, the latter with an emphasis on text, representation, and narratological criteria. One wonders if there is any common ground or if people deal with entirely different subjects, even if they all use the term ‘narrative’ (Borrelli 2020, 431). This should be taken as a clear sign that more research is needed and that we must think about methodological and conceptual unity.

5 Our volume That is exactly what our volume offers. It gives an analysis of narration in science and in medicine, consistently based on textual analysis (in a wide sense) and on classical and post-classical narratology. We present case studies from a variety of fields and historical epochs, ranging from Aristotelian natural history to contemporary family medicine, which all follow the same basic principles: Firstly, they investigate only factual texts from either science or medicine. The only exception, Felix Rietmann’s account of video tapes in child psychology, refers to a different medium, but treats it with exactly the same methodological tools. All articles are strictly devoted to what one might call epistemic narratives and do not involve literary fiction. Secondly, they all operate with an approach which is narratological in the narrower sense. Narrative is conceived as representational, as a quality of texts (or films) that is decisive for their structure on the micro- and macrolevel. That means that it is different from other forms of scientific representation such as description, list, graph, formula, equation, or classification scheme; furthermore, it is observable in varying degrees. For its analysis, both structuralist and postclassical categories will be applied and tested. To our knowledge, there is – so far – no such volume within the field of factual narration that strictly sticks to these two principles and therefore maintains a certain methodological

summing up both the history of narrative in science and the history of scholarly engagement with narrative in science; thereby she complains that “no systematic line of research has emerged so far”. Borrelli presents a useful but partly overlapping classification of the various roles that scholars attribute to the former: “(1) narratives as (primarily textual) strategies for the presentation and validation of knowledge within the scientific community; (2) small and ‘grand’ narratives as means to validate scientific knowledge elements, scientific disciplines and the scientific enterprise within and beyond the scientific community; and (3) textual and non-textual narratives as constitutive elements of scientific understanding” (Borrelli 2020, 429).

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and terminological unity. We hope that this will provide starting points for further research. With regards to theoretical issues such as functions, truth, the factual pact etc., we think that there cannot be a standard approach. Instead, one should ‘pick up’ the texts from their historical location, treat them individually, do them justice in terms of context, varying states of science or clinical medicine, audience, publication conditions, etc. Hence, the epistemic functions of narratives in science and medicine discussed above – testimony, order, causal inferencing, explanation, argument, illustration, education, and communication – will become evident in our volume; but their combinations and degrees vary, dependent on changing contexts. Against this background, we will now give a quick overview over the contributions and show where and at what time in history these functions move into focus. Our volume is split into two sections – science and medicine; this follows our introductory remarks on the methodological problems concerning ‘narrative in science’ and ‘narrative in medicine’, that they are different, grounded in different scholarly traditions. Each section contains four articles, and both sections are ordered chronologically. The science section starts with an article on narrative in Aristotelian ‘biology’ – which is the culmination of Aristotle’s natural philosophy – by philosopher Anders Sydskjør. He presents paragraphs from Aristotle’s Historia Animalium book IX which contain two embedded narratives about particular animals or group of animals. The narratological analysis reveals that both narratives – one being about a mythical stallion and camels and the other about dolphins – provide universal claims about species behavior and character. The stallion story functions as an analogy to a general statement about camels (refusal of incest) and the dolphin story explains the character of the species – caring for conspecifics. Hence, both embedded narratives are much more than just illustrative: Sydskjør points out that within the context of ancient empirical science, they work as both persuasive and explanatory devices and thus serve the general taxonomic purpose of the Historia Animalium. Methodologically, Sydskjør usefully combines structuralist categories and Mary Morgan’s categories of narrative cognition. The following article, Sebastian Meixner’s account on Goethe’s early osteological writings, is a big jump in history; but it still remains within the epistemological framework of natural philosophy and the life sciences. And the life sciences – either pre-modern or modern – are, as we have seen, generally underrepresented within transdisciplinary narratology. Meixner shows that Goethe’s representation of bones can be conceived as a timely and causally ordered sequence that bridges apparent gaps by jumping between epistemological categories, such as human skulls and animal skulls; this narrative strategy is described with rhetorical concepts, e.g. ‘syllepsis’. Thereby, it becomes evident that pre-Darwinian life

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sciences gain – in the absence of a generally accepted theory of evolution – from a narrative setup: the latter brings about causal coherence, manages gaps, and thus allows for inferencing and argumentation. Furthermore, we see again how fruitful it is for the study of ‘narrative in science’ to bring classical narratology in dialogue with postclassical approaches; in this case, it is Albrecht Koschorke’s general and historical theory of storytelling. The next two articles, Angela Gencarelli’s account of physicist Richard Feynman and Felix Rietmann’s article on audiovisual narratives in child psychology, are both devoted to modern sciences of the twentieth and twenty-first century. They deal with a world of institutionalized academic disciplines whose production of knowledge is empirical or experimental and follows universally accepted standards. However, narrativity, understood as representational quality of texts, does not at all become superfluous. It keeps its place as epistemic tool within particular disciplines; and it does so even in the ‘hard’, abstract sciences such as non-linear physics, as Gencarelli points out and as we have already touched upon. Angela Gencarelli – choosing the example of Richard Feynman’s famous lecture on the wave-particle-duality in the early 1960s – shows that narrative in quantum physics can serve two purposes, which are usually kept apart: communication to a wider audience and scientific explanation, both here at the same time. Feynman transformed the formula apparatus of the quantum paradox into a vivid first-person story (in we-mode) about both electron behavior and the behavior of physicists observing experiments about electron behavior. Thus, he explained the wave-particle duality by attributing eventfulness and an experiential, perceptive quality to it. Gencarelli’s article is in a twofold sense central to our volume: Firstly, she re-investigates traditional linguistic findings concerning the evolution of scientific language23 – such as deagentivization and “I-taboo” – under the lens of structuralist narratology; this is something we consider as research desideratum within ‘narrative in science’. Secondly, Gencarelli’s contribution shows that sensemaking and communication to a wider audience cannot be completely separated. Hence, longstanding scholarly claims about the hybrid epistemological status of popular science are confirmed from a distinctive narratological point of view. The last article of the science section, written by historian of medicine Felix Rietmann, discusses audiovisual recordings as research tools in the study infant mental health; it is the only contribution that deals with a medium other than text. However, Rietmann very consistently applies Genettian categories such as

 See Rom Harré (1990); Alan G. Gross et al. (2002, 117–229); Jeanne Fahnestock (1999); Jürg Niederhauser (1998).

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tense, mood, and voice to his material. He shows how researchers employ film and video to situate infant experiences in a definite temporal and semantic field; by manipulating split second recordings of subconscious mother-infant interactions, these researchers look for unnoticed behavioral events (such as tiny head and arm movements), arrange these events in temporal sequences, and thereby construct causalities. Rietmann argues that the manipulation and interpretation of the recordings does not simply uncover sequences of events but generates them – ‘small stories’ of mother and infant. In other words, the evidence needed for scientific claims is provided by narrative means. Narrativity is therefore at the very centre of Rietmann’s article: video recordings turn out to be emplotted series of events with tensions and turning points that help to consolidate the field of infant mental health. If one looks at these contributions, it becomes evident that ‘narrative in science’ remains a rather heterogenous field, even if scholars share the same basis of representationality and a methodological background of classical and postclassical criteria. This is different in medicine; the heterogeneity is much less pronounced here, as our second section shows. It focusses, as mentioned above, not on patients’ but on doctors’ narratives; epistemic genres and their functions are explored, such as sense-making, ordering, inferencing, and explaining disease. Medicine is thereby conceived as a clinical practice (not research, that would be another volume) in a broad sense with the central aim to observe, describe, identify, classify, and treat disease. These basic aims, defining medicine as the art of diagnosing and healing, can be traced back to antiquity and remain in the foreground to the present day. Given this general continuity of purpose and subject, it is hardly surprising that there is – as opposed to science – one central narrative epistemic genre, i.e. the case report or case story.24 It represents this general aim on the level of individual stories of illness and runs as a red thread through the history of medicine: this goes from early modern case collections such as Thomas Sydenham’s Observationes medicae (1676) to the independently published, personal case report in early medical journals around 1800.25 It culminates in the scientific, objective case report that had its rise in the nineteenth century and was marked by a substantial decrease in narrativeness.26

 See Gianna Pomata (2014, 5); locus classicus John Forrester (1996).  On German clinical case reports, published around 1800 in Hufeland’s Journal and mirroring narrative genres of enlightenment and sensitivity, see Martina King (2019b).  King points out that this means a change in plot architecture – from novella-like plot structures to linear protocol-like chronologies (King 2016, 263–268).

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This is also the red thread that runs through our chronologically ordered ‘section medicine’. All articles deal with texts and genres that represent illness as a temporally and causally ordered sequence of events. They tackle either the classical case report itself – Lucia Aschauer starts the section with her account of the obstetrical case report in enlightened France – or medical genres and media that work with or are derived from the case report. Yvonne Wübben’s article presents smaller, embedded case stories in early psychiatric treatises, and the contribution of Kindt and King deals with the discharge letter in contemporary medicine which shares fundamental structural similarities with the case report. The last contribution, by Jarmila Mildorf, explores a rather exceptional body of sources from contemporary social medicine: narrative accounts of British family doctors on cases of domestic violence. In the light of this diachronic approach, several things become obvious which previous research on narrative in medicine (which is either focused on historical case reports or on contemporary patients’ narratives) failed to highlight. The most important of these seems to be the changing degree of narrativity or – more precise – narrativeness (a conceptual distinction Tom Kindt will comment on in our article): narrativeness is very pronounced in the context of pre-scientific bedside medicine in the eighteenth century, which was presumably influenced by enlightened anthropology and its affinity to emotions and sensitivity. Lucia Aschauer investigates early published obstetrical case reports which are first-person accounts with a complex plot architecture; to do so, she employs categories such as closedness, anachrony, eventfulness, and focalization, proving how remarkably appropriate they are for these medical texts. Even the classic distinction between narrating self and experiencing self, constitutive for homodiegetic storytelling, makes sense here since these early case reports share features with autobiographical writing.27 It should be noted in this context that storytelling within ‘Wirklichkeitserzählungen’ is often considered by experts as externally focalized and distant (see Fludernik 2015, 117–118); we see how historically relative this is and that structural analysis should be combined with contextualist approaches. This becomes equally evident in Yvonne Wübben’s article which tackles another historical form of case reporting. This is the embedded case report, or more specifically, the multitude of embedded case reports within a larger, medico-philosophical treatise. Wübben’s examples are foundational texts of early psychiatry around 1800, Pinel’s Traité medico-philosophique sur l’alienation mentale and the works of the eminent British doctors William Pargeter and Thomas Arnold. These books consist in large parts of

 See King, who has pointed out that the German clinical case report around 1800 is modeled after ‘fashionable’ autobiographical genres such as private letter or diary (King 2019b, 53–64).

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exemplary case stories which show a high degree of narrativeness (e.g. perspectivation, unexpected events, turning points). Wübben demonstrates that these embedded case narratives not only play a basic, constitutional role in seminal psychiatric treatises; seen, for example, through the lens of histoire related analysis it also becomes evident that these case stories are multifaceted, variable in terms of length, eventfulness, and plot structure; and they additionally differ in terms of focalization. These different modes of case reporting can be associated with different epistemic functions such as classifying a disease, praising a successful treatment, making political allusions or simply entertaining. The general high degree of narrativeness which is so characteristic of prescientific medicine substantially decreases in the nineteenth century. Homodiegetic narration turns into heterodiegetic narration, internal into external focalization while eventfulness and anachrony are reduced. This development is closely linked to the institutionalization and professionalization of clinical medicine, the ‘birth of the clinic’, the advent of laboratory methods, and the differentiation of expert fields. However, traces of the characteristic eventfulness and focalization can still be found – unexpectedly enough – in early clinical discharge letters of the 1960s; this is shown by Martina King in her co-authored article with Tom Kindt. These texts, archival sources from the university hospital Berne, still appear as subtle first-person accounts that on the one hand order clinical events retrospectively; but on the other hand, they bear personal testimony to tellable events. Such traces of the former eventful storytelling disappear entirely with the further development of high-tech clinical medicine in the present day. We see this in the second part of the article in which Tom Kindt explores a contemporary surgical discharge report. Diagnostic and therapeutic processes have become fully standardized; but equally, they have become so complex, speedy, chaotic, and simultaneous that event sequencing with a very low degree of narrativeness seems crucial. It happens in the main, final paragraph of the discharge report, ‘clinical course’, which has already been touched upon. Here, the variety of actions and events during the hospital stay is chronologically ordered and summed up. But to call this just a very low degree of narrativeness would be inadequate: the paragraph ‘clinical course’ turns out to be a very specific and highly functional form of narrative, marked by profound linearity, sequences of unmarked occurrences (instead of events), and the lack of agency, perspectivation, and modal elements. The latter three are consistently replaced by passive and transitive verb forms. This simplified, clear, seemingly objective chain of occurrences, presented by a backgrounded homodiegetic we-narrrator, is the functional clue of the genre. It allows the retrospective understanding of the timeline of the clinical course, the drawing of causal inferences, and the classification of the illness. Hence it provides explanation for both the medical authors themselves and the intended medical readers.

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What all this shows is that narrativity within the context of diagnosing and treating diseases does not entirely disappear with the advent of scientific medicine, as is often assumed; it is just reduced, structurally changed, and transforms its function over time. This is the second important point which our volume reveals: how much and in what sense the epistemic functions of expert medical narratives vary over time. Before the advent of scientific clinical medicine, case narratives with a pronounced homodiegetic voice clearly serve what Lucia Aschauer calls ‘the epistemic pact’ between author and reader. These texts are marked by a strong form of authorship; their function is apparently both witnessing, authentication, persuasion and establishing personal authority within a competing, pre-institutional field of clinical practice. This can go as far as founding new disciplines, as we see with embedded case narratives in seminal psychiatric treatises (Wübben). Once institutionalization and professionalization are on their way, the pressure to establish authority seems to be replaced by other, historically new narrative functions. They mirror the growing epistemic complexity of clinical medicine: ordering, sense-making, producing causal links, and explaining complex clinical courses. These are classified as ‘a case of x’ and communicated among experts. Meanwhile, the other use of narrative, i.e. as a means of medical communication, is by no means restricted to explaining clinical courses to others. Storytelling can be of great importance in the everyday professional life of doctors who engage in conversations with colleagues about personal experiences; this is what Jarmila Mildorf discusses in her article about British general practitioners. Her body of sources is primarily oral, transcriptions of interviews with GPs who tell stories about patients experiencing domestic violence. Mildorf’s sources are in a certain sense exceptional: they are factual narratives characterized by a quality that normally disappears from medical storytelling after the eighteenth century28 – metadiegetic narration. Firstly, the doctors in Mildorf’s transcriptions tell their own discovery of a patient having been abused or mistreated; secondly, they re-narrate the patient’s story. By using the concept of ‘vicarious experience’ and the narratological category of experienciality, Mildorf argues that retelling the patients’ stories and sharing them with others may broaden the doctor’s professional horizon. Such a retelling also helps when dealing with psychosocial challenges and can even trigger revisions of the doctor’s self-image.

 King has shown that metadiegetic narration, mainly in the form of quoted letters with embedded stories or indirect quotations of patients, is a constitutive element of the autodiegetic German case report around 1800. Once the epistolary and autobiographical fashion of late enlightenment wanes, these metadiegetic elements disappear from the case report – in the first part of the nineteenth century (King 2019b, 48).

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However, the historical change in functions – from establishing authority to ordering, reasoning, classifying, and communicating – becomes most obvious in the article of Kindt and King. It explores, as mentioned above, the widely unknown genre of the ‘discharge report’ or ‘discharge letter’. This genre is at the heart of all written communication among clinicians and is still widely ignored as a subject for transdisciplinary narratology. The reason for this seems to be both the hurdle of technical medical language and the genre’s inaccessibility due to data protection. This blind spot in transdisciplinary narratology should be overcome, since narrative turns out to be crucial, even decisive for sense-making and inferencing within clinical practice. Rishi Goyal very clearly sums up these elementary epistemic functions in the comprehensive Handbook of Narratology: 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. (Goyal 2014, 406)

This is certainly more than justified. The only things still lacking from this analysis are the historical questions of ‘when’, ‘how’, and ‘under what circumstances’; and they count of course for both ‘narrative in medicine’ and ‘narrative in science’.

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Processing and Cultural Practice, edited by Hermann Blume, Christoph Leitgeb, and Michael Rössner, 69–83. Leiden: Brill. Borrelli, Arianna. 2020. “Narrative in Early Modern and Modern Science.” In Narrative Factuality: A Handbook, edited by Monika Fludernik and Marie-Laure Ryan, 429–443. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Brändli, Sibylle, Barbara Lüthi, and Gregor Spuhler, eds. 2009. Zum Fall machen, zum Fall werden. Wissensproduktion und Patientenerfahrung in Medizin und Psychiatrie des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus. Brandt, Christina. 2009. “Wissenschaftserzählungen. Narrative Strukturen im naturwissenschaftlichen Diskurs.” In Wirklichkeitserzählungen: Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens, edited by Christian Klein and Matías Martínez, 81–109. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Brandt, Christina. 2017. “Wissenschaft.” In Erzählen. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, edited by Matías Martínez, 210–218. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Breger, Claudia, Irmela Krüger-Fürhoff, and Tanja Nusser, eds. 2008. Engineering Life: Narrationen vom Menschen in Biomedizin, Literatur und Kultur. Berlin: Kadmos Kulturverlag. Charon, Rita. 2006. Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dahlstrom, Michael F. 2014. “Using Narratives and Storytelling to Communicate Science With Nonexpert Audiences.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111 (Supplement 4): 13614–13620. Fahnestock, Jeanne. 1999. Rhetorical Figures in Science. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fludernik, Monika. 2015. “Naratologische Probleme des faktualen Erzählens.” In Faktuales und fiktionales Erzählen. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven, edited by Monika Fludernik, Nicole Falkenhayner, and Julian Steiner, 115–139. Würzburg: Ergon. Fludernik, Monika. 2020. “Factual Narration in Narratology.” In Narrative Factuality: A Handbook, edited by Monika Fludernik and Marie-Laure Ryan, 51–75. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Fludernik, Monika, and Marie-Laure Ryan, eds. 2020. Narrative Factuality: A Handbook. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Föcking, Marc. 2002. Pathologia litteralis. Erzählte Wissenschaft und wissenschaftliches Erzählen im französischen 19. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Narr. Forrester, John. 1996. “If p, Then What? Thinking in Cases.” History of the Human Sciences 9 (3): 1–25. Fuchs, Hans U. 2015. “From Stories to Scientific Models and Back: Narrative Framing in Modern Macroscopic Physics.” International Journal of Science Education 37 (5–6): 934–957. Gencarelli, Angela. 2017. “‘Entdeckungsgeschichten’ der Quantenphysik: Zur narratologischen Erforschung einer naturwissenschaftlichen Erzählform.” Diegesis 6 (1): 1–19. Goyal, Rishi. 2014. “Narration in Medicine.” In Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn, Jan Christoph Meister, John Pier, and Wolf Schmid, 406–419. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Greenhalgh, Trisha, and Brian Hurwitz, eds. 1998. Narrative Based Medicine. Dialogue and Discourse in Clinical Practice. London: BMJ Books. Gross, Alan G. 1990. The Rhetoric of Science. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Gross, Alan G. 2006. Starring the Text. The Place of Rhetoric in Science Studies. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Gross, Alan G., Joseph E. Harmon, and Michael S. Reidy. 2002. Communicating Science. The Scientific Article from the 17th Century to the Present. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gülich, Elisabeth. 2017. “Medizin.” In Erzählen. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, edited by Matías Martínez, 140–149. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler.

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Harré, Rom. 1990. “Some Narrative Conventions of Scientific Discourse.” In Narrative in Culture. The Use of Storytelling in the Sciences, Philosophy and Literature, edited by Christopher Nash, 81–101. London: Routledge. Heydenreich, Aura. 2021. “Epistemic Narrativity in Albert Einstein’s Treatise on Special Relativity: A Narratological Approach to ‘The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies’. The Process of Interformation (Part I).” In Physics and Literature. Concepts – Transfer – Aestheticization, edited by Aura Heydenreich and Klaus Mecke, 49–103. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Höcker, Arne, Jeannie Moser, and Philippe Weber, eds. 2006. Wissen. Erzählen. Narrative der Humanwissenschaften. Bielefeld: Transcript. Huber, Martin, and Wolf Schmid, eds. 2017. Grundthemen der Literaturwissenschaft: Erzählen. Berlin/ Boston: De Gruyter. Hunter, Kathryn Montgomery. 1991. Doctors’ Stories: The Narrative Structure of Medical Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hurwitz, Brian. 2016. “The Clinical Narratives of James Parkinson’s Essay on the Shaking Palsy (1817).” In The Routledge History of Disease, edited by Mark Jackson, 491–511. London: Routledge. Hurwitz, Brian. 2017. “Narrative Constructs in Modern Clinical Case Reporting.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 62: 65–73. Kalitzkus, Vera, Stefan Wilm, and Peter F. Matthiessen. 2009. “Narrative Medizin – Was ist es, was bringt es, wie setzt man es um?” Zeitschrift für Allgemeinmedizin 85 (2): 16–22. Kalitzkus, Vera, and Stefan Wilm. 2017. “Narrative Medizin: Vermittlerin zwischen Sprach- und Erfahrungswelten im medizinischen Kontext.” In Sprache und Medizin. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zur medizinischen Sprache und Kommunikation, edited by Sascha Bechmann, 73–98. Berlin: Frank & Timme. Kennedy, Meegan. 2010. Revising the Clinic. Vision and Representation in Victorian Medicine and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. King, Martina. 2016. “Wie Novellen zu lesen? Die Fallgeschichte des kranken Körpers zwischen Literatur und Medizin (1800–1900).” In Fallgeschichte(n) als Narrativ zwischen Literatur und Wissen, edited by Thomas Wegmann and Martina King, 243–273. Innsbruck: Innsbruck University Press. King, Martina. 2017. “‘Ich habe im Sommer des Jahres 1838 eine Reihe von Beobachtungen angestellt’: Naturwissenschaftliches Erzählen im frühen 19. Jahrhundert.” Diegesis 6 (1): 20–44. King, Martina. 2019a. “Historische Narratologie. Ein Weg zur Kontextualisierung von Textstrukturen.” KulturPoetik 19 (2): 319–340. King, Martina. 2019b. “‘Herzensergießungen kunstliebender Ärzte’. Praktische Heilkunde und Literatur um 1800.” In Non-Fiktion: Arsenal der anderen Gattungen, Themenheft ‘Medizin’, edited by Alexander Honold and Grit Schwarzkopf, 27–65. Hanover: Wehrhahn. King, Martina. 2020. “‘Nach Aufnahme arterielle Hypotonie’: Personenkonzept und Kommunikationsformen in der Experten-Medizin.” Gesnerus 77 (2): 411–437. King, Martina. 2021a. “‘Es liegt eine aktive Blutung vor’: Erzählen in der Textsorte ‘Arztbrief’.” KulturPoetik 21 (1): 70–93. King, Martina. 2021b. Das Mikrobielle in der Literatur und Kultur der Moderne. Zur Wissensgeschichte eines ephemeren Gegenstandes (1880–1930). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Klein, Christian, and Matías Martínez. 2009a. “Wirklichkeitserzählungen: Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens [Einführung].” In Wirklichkeitserzählungen: Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens, edited by Christian Klein and Matías Martínez, 1–14. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Klein, Christian, and Matías Martínez, eds. 2009b. Wirklichkeitserzählungen: Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler.

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Knorr-Cetina, Karin. 1984. Die Fabrikation von Erkenntnis. Zur Anthropologie der Naturwissenschaft. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Lätsch, David. 2017. “Psychotherapie.” In Erzählen. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, edited by Matías Martínez, 166–172. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Latour, Bruno, and Steve Wolgar. 1979. Laboratory Life. The Construction of Scientific Facts. Beverly Hills: Princeton University Press. Martínez, Matías, ed. 2017. Erzählen. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Mattingly, Cheryl. 1998a. “In Search of the Good: Narrative Reasoning in Clinical Practice.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 12 (3): 273–297. Mattingly, Cheryl. 1998b. Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morgan, Mary S. 2017. “Narrative Ordering and Explanation.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 62: 86–97. Morgan, Mary S. 2019. “Exemplification and the Use-Values of Cases and Case Studies.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 78: 5–13. Morgan, Mary S., Kim Hajek, and Dominic J. Berry, eds. 2022. Narrative Science: Reasoning, Representing and Knowing Since 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moser, Jeannie. 2006. “Poetologien/Rhetoriken des Wissens. Einleitung.” In Wissen. Erzählen. Narrative der Humanwissenschaften, edited by Arne Höcker, Jeannie Moser, and Philippe Weber, 11–16. Bielefeld: Transcript. Niederhauser, Jürg. 1998. “Darstellungsformen der Wissenschaften und populärwissenschaftliche Darstellungsformen.” In Darstellungsformen der Wissenschaften im Kontrast. Aspekte der Methodik, Theorie und Empirie, edited by Lutz Danneberg and Jürg Niederhauser, 157–189. Tübingen: Narr. Paskins, Mat, and Mary S. Morgan, eds. 2019. An Anthology of Narrative Science (online publication). https://www.narrative-science.org/uploads/3/1/7/6/31762379/narrative_science_anthology_com plete_final_draft_9_11_2019_ed01.pdf. Pernkopf, Elisabeth. 2013. “‘Die Natur ist eine Fabel’: Narrative und Naturwissenschaften.” In Kultur – Wissen – Narration: Perspektiven transdisziplinärer Erzählforschung, edited by Alexandra Strohmeier, 323–343. Bielefeld: Transcript. Plotnitsky, Arkady. 2005. “Science and Narrative.” In Routledge Encyclopaedia of Narrative Theory, edited by David Hermann, Manfred Jahn, and Marie-Laurie Ryan, 514–518. London: Routledge. Pomata, Gianna. 2013. “The Recipe and the Case. Epistemic Genres and the Dynamics of Cognitive Practices.” In Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Geschichte des Wissens im Dialog/Connecting Science and Knowledge, edited by Kaspar von Greyerz, Silvia Flubacher, and Philipp Senn, 131–154. Göttingen: V & R Unipress. Pomata, Gianna. 2014. “The Medical Case Narrative. Distant Reading of an Epistemic Genre.” Literature and Medicine 32 (1): 1–23. Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. 2001. Experimentalsysteme und epistemische Dinge. Eine Geschichte der Proteinsynthese im Reagenzglas. Göttingen: Wallstein. Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. 2006. Epistemologie des Konkreten. Studien zur Geschichte der modernen Biologie. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Ryan, Marie-Laure. 2011. “Narrative/Science Entanglements: On the Thousand and One Literary Lives of Schrödinger’s Cat.” Narrative 19 (2): 171–186. Scheidt, Carl Eduard, and Anja Stukenbrock. 2017. “Erzählungen und narrative Praktiken in der Psychotherapie.” In Grundthemen der Literaturwissenschaft: Erzählen, edited by Martin Huber and Wolf Schmid, 528–546. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.

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Scheidt, Carl Eduard, and Anja Stukenbrock. 2020. “Factual Narratives and the Real in Therapy and Psychoananalysis.” In Narrative Factuality: A Handbook, edited by Monika Fludernik and MarieLaure Ryan, 291–313. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. 1989. Leviathan and the Air Pump. Hobbes, Bolye and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sydenham, Thomas. 1676. Observationes medicae circa morborum acutorum historiam et curationem. London: G. Kettilby. Taylor-Pirie, Emilie. 2021. Empire Under the Microscope: Parasitology and the British Literary Imagination, 1885–1935. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Terrall, Mary. 2017. “Narrative and Natural History in the Eighteenth Century.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 62: 51–64. Tougaw, Jason. 2006. Strange Cases. The Medical Case History and the British Novel. London: Routledge. Walsh, Richard. 2020. “The Narration of Scientific Facts.” In Narrative Factuality: A Handbook, edited by Monika Fludernik and Marie-Laure Ryan, 417–428. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Wohlmann, Anita, Daniel Teufel, and Pascal O. Berberat, eds. 2022. Narrative Medizin: Praxisbeispiele aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum. Vienna/Cologne: Böhlau.

Section 1: Science

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Oedipal Camels? Narrative and Science in Aristotle’s Historia Animalium 1 Introduction In an article discussing the references to and use of sources in Aristotle’s biology, above all in Historia Animalium (HA), Mariska Leunissen ends by singling out two passages from HA IX as puzzling: she describes one as a story about a Scythian stallion and the other as a collection of stories about dolphins. She says that it is unclear whether Aristotle thought them true, and exactly what their significance is (Leunissen 2021, 74–75). While Leunissen uses the words ‘story’ and ‘narrative’ several times in her article, this is the only place where these words are not used loosely; the two passages she describes as ‘puzzling’ contain narratives, several of them, in fact. In this paper, my aim is to show how focusing on and analysing the distinctly narrative features of these texts helps us understand how they make a contribution to HA’s scientific endeavour. Doing so requires that we first get a clear sense of what that endeavour is like, but it will also enrich our understanding of that endeavour. By ‘distinctly narrative features’, I mean the sorts of features that one tends to find in narratological analyses of texts, e.g., how are time, space, perspective, and plot shaped in these texts? This determines the structure of this paper; the first part very briefly discusses several passages that lay out the frameworks within which the rest of HA operates and the second part provides narratological analyses of the puzzling texts. Stating in advance the conclusions of these two parts requires some set-up. In response to Leunissens implicit question ‘what are these texts doing here?’, the answers are fairly straightforward: the story of the horse clarifies a story about a camel, which persuades us of a general thesis about camels: that they abhor incest. The stories about dolphins both persuade us of the general thesis that dolphins care for the young and help us understand the depth of that care. Getting a clear view of the significance of this is rather more involved. The way I will approach these texts in this paper is to use two narrative-focused questions as a lens through which to look at HA’s statements of its broader project and to use these statements as a framework for understanding how the narratives we will look at in the second part contribute to that project. The first narrative-focused question is this: narratives represent individual courses of events that took place at some particular time and place, whereas science, certainly Aristotelian science, aims higher – to describe what is generally or https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111319971-002

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universally the case. Just how do these narratives contribute? At a purely textual level, we have already given a rough outline of what the answer will look like: HA deals in generic statements, our narratives are appended to generic statements and persuade us of these by recounting particular cases that fall under those generic statements. This is, as we shall see, supported by an account of soul (psuchê) where the psychic capacities and Characters1 (êthos) of animals are ‘fitted’ to their bodies and ways of life in predictable ways, and stories recounting behaviour can be used to support claims about what belongs to the Characters of animals. This tells us why, when we have generic claims about camels and dolphins, we also have stories about camels and dolphins; it does not tell us why we have a story about a horse appended to a story about a camel. The picture that emerges when we analyse these stories side by side is that the story of the horse, while uninformative about horses in general, clarifies through the greater detail of that narrative what we only glimpse in the story of the camel. The second narrative-focused question is this: these animals are the characters, indeed the protagonists, of the stories, and received opinion has it that narratives require human or anthropomorphic characters. Is there not a tension between the mere existence of these stories and the claim that is sometimes made that Aristotle does not anthropomorphise animals (e.g., Schieders 2019, 197)? Clearly the answer is ‘yes’, and the resolution comes by refining what we mean by ‘anthropomorphise’ when speaking of Aristotle’s writings. As we will see in section 1, HA is a text that aims to describe and organise, and a central feature of the latter endeavour is to put in place several different frameworks that order claims relative to each other. Throughout, one of the organising strategies is to use humans, both human bodies and human souls, as a point of reference for describing animal bodies and animal souls. Especially in the latter case, which is where our stories fit in, humans are more complete than animals, possess more psychic features in a more balanced way than other animals, but there are shared psychic capacities, and it is this commonality that enables us to understand those of other animals. What is true is that there is no moralising involved in the texts we will look at, despite how morally charged the situations recounted in the narratives would have been if the protagonists had been humans; in HA, camels do not teach us to abhor incest any more than dolphins teach us to care for the young, but because we do so, we have an easy time recognising it in them.

 The convention I am using to distinguish characters that populate narratives and dispositions to think, feel, and act in specific ways is that the latter, as here, is written with an upper-case first letter.

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2 The project and devices of HA HA is a study of differences (diaphora) amongst animals. We will shortly go into what that means, but let us first orient ourselves: HA, as we have it, is divided into ten books, the last of which is of disputed authenticity and at any rate is clearly unrelated to the project of the rest of HA, so it will not be a part of my discussion here. The narratives we will discuss appear in HA IX, at the very end of the work. But getting clear about what these narratives contribute to HA’s project requires a brief discussion of parts of I, VIII, and IX. HA I begins (486a1–491a6) with a tour de force of differences amongst animals, the purpose of which is to put in place some pieces of terminology as well as several distinctions that give structure to the work as a whole. Differences are divided into four main groups – relating to parts (merê), ways of life (bioi), activities (praxeis), and Characters (êthê) – as well as two kinds – more and less, and analogy. Illustrations are provided for each of these, but as emerges in the introduction to Book VIII, the distinction between differences of more and less, and analogy sits more easily with parts than with the rest, and so refinements will be needed. We are however provided with illustrations of these various differences; if two kinds of animal have the same part, e.g., wings, the wings of the one kind can be larger. But if the one animal is a bat and the other is a bird, their wings do not differ merely by the one having larger wings than the other, they are not the same kind of wing; they are analogues of each other. Differences in ways of life, activities, and Characters are grouped more closely together, separate from parts. This is because, Book VIII tells us, the two former to some extent determine the specific shape of the latter (588a17–588a19). Nonetheless, living in water or on land is an important difference in ways of life, but of course not all animals fall clearly on the one side or the other. Being solitary or gregarious is another broad source of difference in ways of life. The examples provided of Characters are gentleness, ferocity, and intelligence. The initial tour de force ends with an attempt to describe which features are shared amongst all or most animals, above all certain functions, and so parts that perform them, as well as attendant activities. Most important among these are nutrition and reproduction, the former being central to distinguishing the living from the non-living (cf. King 2021). With these frameworks in place we are told that this elaborate show has been a foretaste of the things that need to be considered in the course of HA, that is, to grasp (lambanein) all the differences and attributes (diaphoras kai sumbebêkota) that obtain (huparchein) amongst animals (491a7–491a11). This is presented as the best way of realising another project, namely, to discover (heurein) the causes (aitias) of these differences (491a11–491a12). As recounted by Allan Gotthelf (2010), the history of interpretation of HA before the twentieth century had seen

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the work as something of a botched attempt at constructing a taxonomy of animal kinds. ‘Botched’ because any attempt at finding order amongst the kinds of animal that occur in HA will lead to disappointment. One of the major turning-points in twentieth century scholarship was taking this statement of purpose seriously; the text is concerned with, in Gotthelf’s phrase, features of animals, as well as ordering these with a view to defining kinds of animals (Pellegrin 1986). Taking the statement of purpose seriously, furthermore, led scholars to seeing a much closer link between the two kinds of investigation sketched here and investigation into ‘the facts’ (to hoti) and explanations (to dioti) described in the Posterior Analytics (Balme 1987; Lennox 1987). Perhaps there was a greater degree of unity in Aristotle’s works than had previously been supposed? Suddenly, the material shared between HA, Parts of Animals (PA) and Generation of Animals (GA) had an easy explanation: HA is the first part of a course on animals, the task of which is to establish the common ground, whereas the latter two works address the explanatory task. However, it has also been noticed that the HA we have ‘knows’ more about animals and their differences than either PA or GA, so the hypothesis is that the text we have is something of a hybrid; part lecture notes and part notebook, that additional facts kept on getting added in various degrees of systematisation, but that the central statements of purpose as well as many key passages embody a didactic purpose (Balme 1987, 13–16). Because the scholars who were responsible for this reorientation of the reception of HA were more interested in drawing the long lines between HA, PA, and GA, as well as the Posterior Analytics, the parts of the text that attracted the greater amount of attention were texts like 490a8–490a10, where we are told that “[a]nimals with feathered wings, then, are blooded, as are those with skin-wings, whereas those who have membranous wings are all bloodless, for example insects.” These texts do not just ascribe features to kinds of animals, but also coordinate features (cf. Gotthelf 2010, 273). That is, the parts of the text that have attracted the greater amount of attention are the ones that have very clear places within this broader network of texts. For our purposes, however, it suffices that this greater structure consists of two investigative steps within which the texts we will discuss find their place; they aim to establish what the case is but not to provide the full explanation of it. What follows is three-and-a-half Books (I–V) that discuss parts, and two Books (VI–VII) that discuss reproduction and growth into adulthood which will not concern us here, beyond noting the strategy adopted for the order of exposition of parts. Aristotle declares that there are two reasons for using humans as a baseline for discussing the parts of animals:

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The external parts of human bodies are the most familiar to us (491a20–491a23). The positions of the parts of the human body are most in accordance with nature, and so are most suited to guide a discussion of parts more generally (494a19–494b4).

This is a strategy we will shortly see variations of again in the text’s dealings with ways of life and Characters. My purpose in noting the strategy also in relation to parts is to show that it is consistent throughout HA, and that it is here that its purpose is most clearly spelled out; humans are both well known to us, and so a useful tool for ordering, but humans also have certain features that make them especially apt to order discussions of differences in the world of animals. In the case of parts, it is our alignment with the rest of nature that makes us useful. When the discussion turns to ways of life and Characters, the soul becomes a key ingredient, and the soul of adult human males are especially complete and wellrounded, making it the most efficient point of reference. At the beginning of Book VIII, Aristotle announces that he will turn to discuss ways of life and activities of animals and says that these are shaped in accordance with their Characters and means of nutrition (588a16–588a19). So, where we earlier had a nice partition of differences – parts, ways of life, activities, and Characters – we now have the latter three much more closely intertwined. This is not really a revision of the earlier account; as becomes clear shortly after, this part of HA presupposes an account of the soul like the one developed in De Anima, where the bodily capacities and ways of life of an animal are central to developing the account of the soul (cf., especially, De Anima 402a6–402a7 and 412a15–412b6). Which is to say that parts, reproduction, growth, ways of life, Characters – all the subdivisions of HA – are intertwined, and a part of the achievement of HA is prying them apart so they can be seen clearly individually. Where the account we find in De Anima is highly formal and general, HA gives us fine-grained cases. Following the announcement of the change in topic, we are given an overview of how the movements or states of the souls of animals relate to those of humans; in some cases, humans and other animals have the same states, but they differ by more or less, whereas in other cases there are merely analogous states (588a25–588a31). The cases where we are dealing with the same kinds of states are tameness, wildness, gentleness, roughness, courage, cowardice, fearfulness, and boldness. Analogy comes into play in the more cognitively demanding states like wisdom and art, where Aristotle is only willing to ascribe unnamed analogous natural capacities. What brings us close to De Anima is an extensive scala naturae where complexity of environment, complexity of body, and complexity of soul are connected to each other; all living things need nutrition, and so need psychic capacities that keep this process going, and in the case of more complex animals, sensation and the cogni-

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tive capacities that go along with it also serve this purpose (588b5–589a10). For the purposes of our narratives, this is important because it provides us licence to interpret the behaviour of animals as expressions of the functions of their souls. No natural order of exposition follows from these frameworks, but they allow for the articulation of facts relating to ways of life, activities, and Characters, and make this group of facts as a whole more orderly by relating them to each other. Book VIII does not enter into a discussion of Characters, beyond what we have already mentioned. When the topic is reintroduced at the beginning of Book IX, the statement about how capacities of soul are divided amongst animals is reiterated, but qualified by a statement about difference within kinds, specifically within humankind: adult human males have souls that are rounded and complete, making them a good point of reference when discussing the Characters of animals, in contrast to women who are more compassionate, disposed to tears, jealousy, complaint, and more given to fighting (608b8–608b11).2 These frameworks, on the one hand, are statements of central theses of HA, and so are broad statements of the contents of the course of teaching. But, because what we above called the ‘notebook’ function of HA is so central to the work, they also serve to connect the more disparate pieces to each other; both this ‘entry’ and that ‘entry’ reveal something about, in our cases, how animals differ with regard to Character. But we might want to ask why such background frameworks are needed in the first place. How does the ‘notebook’ function work? What I am calling the ‘notebook’ function of HA is what is often called Aristotle’s ‘collection of data’, but it is important to note what is in the text and what is inferred. It is beyond the shadow of a doubt that the research project of which HA is an expression had a fundamentally empirical orientation; the aim is obviously not a priori reasoning, and it is something of a commonplace in the literature that Aristotle personally undertook a great deal of research – going out into the field, observing and perhaps participating in dissection, possibly observing vivisections, and when dealing with the views of others who have made claims about animals, Aristotle sometimes diagnoses these views as being the results of a lack of personal experience (empeiria) (cf. Lennox 2018; Leunissen 2021). But texts or language that places Aristotle at the scene are much harder to come by. The closest we find are passages that describe determinate procedures one would undertake to test the claims made (e.g., 590a19–590a27). There are, however, people who are regularly placed at the scene, not as narrators, but as sources, namely hunters, breeders, and people who otherwise come into close contact with partic-

 For a helpful discussion of Aristotle’s sexism, especially in the context of his biological works, see: Connell (2016).

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ular kinds of animals. They are often called in as authorities, but not as absolute authorities; as a famous passage has it, fishermen are imperfect observers of the breeding procedures of fish, because they are not looking with an eye to knowing about it (Generation of Animals 756a32–756b13). I think we should group the narratives in HA together with appeals to authorities, as well as encouragements to experiment; they are persuasive devices. That a family of more flexible persuasive devices is needed speaks to another kind of aim embodied in HA: to gather as many facts and prospective facts within view as possible. Statements that coordinate differences with each other serve the next step in investigation, the discovery of causes, but a wide variety of provenanced, but uncoordinated statements of features of individual kinds of animals, loosely organised by the frameworks we have discussed, some well-established, others less so, puts the greatest possible variety of facts on the table. This, in turn, does justice to the variety of animal life, a variety PA in particular attempts to explain. In this section, we have very briefly discussed several passages that give shape to HA’s scientific project. On the one hand, there is the overall statement of purpose: the purpose of the present work is to establish such differences as there are, in service of a greater course of investigation, and teaching, that seeks to discover the causes of these differences, that is, to explain them. These differences are furthermore organised at two different levels: the background organisation of dividing differences into four kinds, as well as the sentence-level coordination of differences within one kind. For the purposes of discussing differences relating to ways of life, activities, and Characters, a foundational framework is furthermore introduced that allows describing the activities of animals as expressions of features of their souls. It is important to note that none of these frameworks explicitly imposes any requirements on the language to be used. However, the psychological framework articulates the specific way in which animals are anthropomorphic so that they can be the characters of narratives: they are living things and insofar as they are, their psychology will be more or less like that of other living things, like us. We now turn to two texts that are made to work within this framework.

3 Oedipal horses and kind dolphins In the preceding, we have dealt with the fairly coarse categories ‘framework’ and ‘narrative’ to describe the texts we have discussed and contrasted, and we have hinted at where these coarse categories fit together, and we have begun to see that there are theoretical answers forthcoming to our second narrative-focused ques-

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tion, about anthropomorphism. We now turn to asking our narrative-focused questions of the narratives themselves. For the question we have already gone some way in answering, we will now see exactly how animals are anthropomorphised in these narratives. Our main question, however, concerns how we mean to relate narratives to the universalist ambitions of Aristotelian science, as well as what about them we mean to so relate. For this purpose, I take narratological analyses of the sort offered in King (2017) and Terrall (2017) as models. The assumption underlying their work is the one given voice to by Dorrit Cohn (1999) when she said that in non-fictional narratives, the organisation of time, the representation of perspective, as well as the choice of which events to represent do not serve, in her words, ‘play’; instead, these choices are functional, serving various epistemic ends. That is, for interpreting the ‘insides’ of narratives, the analytical models of classical narratology can help us identify elements of narrative that in turn can be mapped onto epistemic categories. This mapping is aided by our account of the frameworks in place within HA, but it will be noticed that HA itself has nothing to say about kinds of texts and their use. We need some distinctions in hand to deal with the different paths this mapping can take. Mary Morgan, in a paper (2014) discussing case-based research and case narratives, uses several spatial metaphors to characterise how cases can be made to contribute to knowledge that reaches beyond the particular case. In characterising the strategies employed in fields as diverse as economics, biology, and ethnography, the metaphor employed is ‘resituating’: the knowledge produced in case-studies most immediately concerns the case itself, which has a spatial and temporal location, so there is a question of whether the knowledge produced at that site can somehow be moved to another site and which strategies are employed to do so. She lists three broad kinds: (1) bridges and stepping-stones: local-local resituating. (2) ladders: local-many. First desituate the locally produced knowledge to a generic level and then resituate it at other comparable sites. (3) constructed or exemplary representatives: local-many resituating achieved by making the claim that the local case is typical or exemplary. The way in which I want to use these distinctions is to characterise the conceptual movements made in the texts. I propose that we think of our narratives as analogous to cases; they depict what happened at some time and place, and we can then ask whether we are moving from one single site to one other or to many others. And in either case we want to know how this transfer is achieved. Given that we have said that the targets in HA are generic statements, that such statements are used to capture the kind of knowledge the text is interested in, we would expect path (3) to be the dominant strategy in the text. To a significant ex-

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tent, this is what we find; there is certainly no concern expressed in the text that what has been learned about camels generally from a narrative about a single camel should present difficulties. So, the kinds of strategies Morgan collects under (2) are not going to concern us here. Nonetheless, Aristotle’s strategies in using narratives are more complex than our initial expectation would lead us to think. Let us begin to see how by turning to our first text, where Aristotle begins by offering a statement about camels to which no less than two narratives are attached, one about a camel and one about a horse. T1 As for camels, they do not mount their dams, and even if someone forces them, they refuse. For indeed, once, because there were no breeding stallions, the trainer having covered over the dam led the foal to it. [The covering] fell off while it was mounting her; the intercourse was then finished, and a little later [the foal] bit its driver to death. It is also said that the Scythian king came into the possession of a well-bred mare, from which were borne only the finest horses. [The king is said] to have wished to breed from the finest of these and to lead it towards its dam, in order that it mount her. But the foal is said to have refused. Once she had been covered over, however, it mounted her, not noticing it was her. When the face of the mare was uncovered after the mounting was done, the foal is said to have bolted at the sight, and to have thrown itself off a cliff. [Οἱ δὲ κάμηλοι οὐκ ἀναβαίνουσιν ἐπὶ τὰς μητέρας, ἀλλὰ κἂν βιάζηταί τις, οὐ θέλουσιν. Ἤδη γάρ ποτε ἐπεὶ οὐκ ἦν ὀχεῖον, ὁ ἐπιμελητὴς περικαλύψας τὴν μητέρα ἐφῆκε τὸν πῶλον· ὡς δ’ ὀχεύοντος ἀπέπεσε, τότε μὲν ἀπετέλεσε τὴν συνουσίαν, μικρὸν δ’ ὕστερον δακὼν τὸν καμηλίτην ἀπέκτεινεν. Λέγεται δὲ καὶ τῷ Σκυθῶν βασιλεῖ γενέσθαι ἵππον γενναίαν, ἐξ ἧς ἅπαντας ἀγαθοὺς γίνεσθαι τοὺς ἵππους· τούτων ἐκ τοῦ ἀρίστου βουλόμενον γεννῆσαι καὶ τῆς μητρὸς προσαγαγεῖν, ἵν’ ὀχεύσῃ· τὸν δ’ οὐ θέλειν· περικαλυφθείσης δὲ λαθόντα ἀναβῆναι· ὡς δ’ ὀχεύσαντος ἀπεκαλύφθη τὸ πρόσωπον τῆς ἵππου, ἰδόντα τὸν ἵππον φεύγειν καὶ ῥῖψαι ἑαυτὸν κατὰ τῶν κρημνῶν.] (630b31–631a7. My trans.)

An initial question to ask is: how do these two narratives relate to the general claim? There are several reasons to ask a question which, at least in part, should have a simple answer: if the general statement is true, the narrative about the camel recounts an event where the general disposition to avoid incest by camels was instantiated in an individual. But what is the status of the general claim, then? Is it assumed? If it is, the role of the narrative is illustration – showing us what the disposition to avoid incest is. If it is not assumed, the more plausible role might be persuasion – this course of events occurred, and it must be explained by the disposition to avoid incest. Either way, it should be clear that a narrative about a horse says little about camels. Is this, then, a text we should assume, out of charity, to be the result of the vagaries of textual accretion? Neither Balme nor Schnieders suggests this in their commentaries and indeed there are tasks for both narratives to perform. I think we should take a little bit from

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the persuasion-reading and a little bit from the illustration-reading. The illustration-reading on its own is hardly persuasive; the general claim is not obscure, and it is certainly no harder than other general claims about kinds of animals in HA that make do without narratives. At any rate, that the camel story is introduced by ‘for indeed’ (êdê gar) suggests that the story is the basis for making the general claim, not the other way around. But the camel’s aversion is not only such as to avoid incest; it triggers retaliation, so we see the depth of the aversion, and this is something the story vividly illustrates. However, it is by doing this that we come to be persuaded that, in fact, camels are averse to incest. That is, there is an illustrative dimension to the manner in which we are persuaded.3 By attending to the narratological features of both narratives, we notice tasks performed by the horse narrative which make it appear functional in its context. Some animals practice incest and others do not. Among those that do not practice it, it is not given that they avoid it or have a disposition to avoid it. So, ascribing a disposition to avoid requires more than their not doing it. This is a dialectical context where the narratives can contribute something. Ordinary horses, for example, do not avoid incest (cf. HA 576a18), but the horses here are no mean horses; they are gennaios, not just well-bred but true to their breeding. As Balme (1991) says ad loc., the mare in this story has class. It is helpful to begin with the narrative about the horse, because it so clearly reveals what is missing from the narrative about the camel. The story about the horse is told by an unidentified narrator who is not a part of the story. That is, we can ascertain nothing, on the basis of the text, about how the narrator knows about this sequence of events, and it follows that the narrator does nothing to detract from or add to the believability of the story. It is not that we are dealing with an expert witness or someone notorious for passing along tall tales; the narrator of the horse-story is merely someone reported to have said these things about a horse. The other side of that coin is that whatever is important in the horse-story must be something in the narrative; not the status of the narrator, not the mere existence of the narrative, but some detail or details of the narrative as told. There is extensive embedded focalisation by several characters in the narrative. Much of the Scythian king’s thought process is recounted by the narrator; the mare was well-bred, she produced fine offspring, and the king wished. But the narrator also knows a great deal about the foal’s perspective; it refused, it failed to notice, saw the head of the dam, and threw itself off a cliff.  In analysing a narrative about Thales in Politics I.11 that is claimed to serve two purposes, to illustrate Thales’ wisdom and to exemplify something general – how one establishes a monopoly – Föllinger (2016, 134–135) emphasises the ‘inductive character’ of that narrative. Clearly, this is the overall thrust of my reading as well.

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What the two stories share is a fabula structured on the model of a tragedy with what Aristotle calls a ‘complex muthos’ (cf. Poetics 1452a). A central feature of these is the recognition by the protagonists of the circumstances they find themselves in. The focalisation makes this recognition available to us, because we are able to track what the horse does and does not know, as well as determine that the tragic outcome was suicide, not accident. One final remarkable feature is this narrative’s management of time. The sequence of events, as represented by a sequence of verbs in the text, and the events of the fabula, the course of events we reconstruct on the basis of the text, line up exactly. Not only that, but there are no elisions, i.e., indications that these events did not happen one after another. This is important, because it, in conjunction with the focalisation by the horse, leads us to infer that these events are not only sequentially related but also causally related. However, these features also weaken the plausibility of the story; despite ascribing broad cognitive capacities and broad character-traits to animals in the preambles we have discussed, the business of ascribing fine-grained ones evidently requires more care. Both this text and the next are cases in point, but others are not far to seek (e.g., it is unclear why the cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of others, 618a8–618a30). The worry that narratives, diêgêseis, ‘fit too well’ with the point one is trying to make and so detract from one’s case rather than bolstering it has been documented in legal oratory (cf. Asper 2020), and there is no reason to think that Aristotle was unaware of this. In addition, there is once again the issue that a horse is not a camel; if Aristotle has this winning story about a horse in hand, why use it in the service of a general claim about camels? I propose that the story about the horse with class is meant to serve as a model for reading the story about the camel. That is, that we are meant to desituate the persuasive details of the horse-narrative and resituate them in the camel-story. The camel-narrative is recounted by the primary voice of HA, the same narrator who makes the general claim about camels. The narrator is once again not part of the story. The only internal focalisation is by the trainer whose reasons for causing the events are told to us. Otherwise, what is known by whom is kept from us; the camel does not resist, for the dam’s head was already covered when the camelbreeder led it to her. Not only that, the timings of events are awkward for purposes of showing that the disposition to avoid incest is an important causal factor in the outcome. The covering fell off the head when the deed was done, and the fatal biting happened ‘some time later’. And, as Schnieders (2019, 1052–1053) remarks in his commentary ad loc., camels are indeed known to bite (if not to kill by biting). In other words: The features which lead us immediately to infer causal connections between each event in the horse-narrative are missing here. Paradoxically, these

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weaknesses serve to strengthen the case, for it is only with a strong case that one is willing to admit details potentially harmful to it. On my analysis, the question of what gets resituated, in Morgan’s terminology, where and how, is rather complex in this text. Now, the overall picture is simple enough: something about the particular camel is meant to be resituated to all camels by virtue of it being typical of its kind. The problem is that what is known about a particular camel is less than clear; so, the case of the exceptional horse is brought in. The two cases are constructed with plots that are very nearly parallel, but in the horse-case, all the details of the narrative fit together far more closely than those in the camel-case. The horse is exceptional, so there is no general claim about horses forthcoming, but the case of the horse allows us to see clearly what we only see dimly in the camel-case, and so see it clearly in that case as well, thus securing our credence in the general claim. We now turn to another narrative or run of narratives with similar aims as our first case, namely to show that a kind of animal in fact sets itself apart by having a specific disposition, but employing a different strategy. Instead of a single story supported by another that clarifies it, we instead have, explicitly, an effort to persuade us by numbers. This time dolphins set themselves apart from other marine animals by caring for the young. For ease of discussion, I divide the text into four parts. T2 (1) Most signs of gentleness and kindness are related of dolphins among marine beings, and moreover their loves and desires relating to the young, both around Tarentum and Caria as well as other places. (2) [It is said that] a dolphin having been seized and wounded around Caria, a large pod of dolphins came into the harbour, [and that] only when the fisherman let it go, did they leave. (3) And after smaller dolphins one of the bigger always follows for the sake of guarding them. (4) And indeed a pod was seen of greater and smaller dolphins, and, following a little behind these two, appeared swimming beneath and carrying on their backs a deceased younger dolphin (which was sinking to the depths), as if from pity; lest it be devoured by some other beasts. [(1) Τῶν δὲ θαλαττίων πλεῖστα λέγεται σημεῖα περὶ τοὺς δελφῖνας πραότητος καὶ ἡμερότητος, καὶ δὴ καὶ πρὸς παῖδας ἔρωτες καὶ ἐπιθυμίαι, καὶ περὶ Τάραντα καὶ Καρίαν καὶ ἄλλους τόπους. (2) Καὶ περὶ Καρίαν δὲ ληφθέντος δελφῖνος καὶ τραύματα λαβόντος ἀθρόον ἐλθεῖν λέγεται πλῆθος δελφίνων εἰς τὸν λιμένα, μέχριπερ ὁ ἁλιεὺς ἀφῆκεν· τότε δὲ πάλιν ἅμα πάντες ἀπῆλθον. (3) Καὶ τοῖς μικροῖς δελφῖσιν ἀκολουθεῖ τις ἀεὶ τῶν μεγάλων φυλακῆς χάριν. (4) Ἤδη δ’ὦπται δελφίνων μεγάλων ἀγέλη ἅμα καὶ μικρῶν· τούτων δ’ ἀπολειπόμενοί τινες δύο οὐ πολὺ ἐφάνησαν δελφινίσκον μικρὸν τεθνηκότα, ὅτ’ εἰς βυθὸν φέροιτο, ὑπονέοντες καὶ μετεωρίζοντες τῷ νώτῳ οἷον κατελεοῦντες, ὥστε μὴ καταβρωθῆναι ὑπό τινος τῶν ἄλλων θηρίων.] (631a8–631a20. My trans.)

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(1) contains the general claim that dolphins are the kindest and gentlest amongst marine animals, and that they have loves and desires relating to children in general. This claim is embedded within a hedge that may well offer a useful perspective on the previous text as well: the things we have in favour of the claim that dolphins are kind and gentle are ‘signs’ (sêmeion). In Aristotle’s Rhetoric, this is the strongest form of evidence one can offer in a speech, but the knowledge is still indirect. What is important about this is that we are not only offered several narratives, both overt and cited, but an explicit statement of how to treat them as offering us knowledge, namely by offering evidence. On balance, it is perhaps best to take (1) as citing two famous stories, that of Arrion being saved off the coast of Caria and Taras being saved by dolphins when being forced to flee from danger by jumping into the sea. I say ‘on balance’, because while Caria as a site of evidence is resumed in (2), independently of Arrion, it is exceedingly difficult to imagine that the two locations placed at such close proximity in the text would not at least serve to invoke these famous stories. The invocation of these stories has led translators to translate paides, the objects of the loves and desires of dolphins, as ‘young boys’. But as (2), (3), and (4) show, the character-trait ascribed to dolphins is broader; they care for the young, their own and perhaps those of humans. Only in (2) and (4) do we have narratives proper, or perhaps we should say that in (1) and (3), we are dealing with iterative narration, whereas in (2) and (4) we are dealing with singulative narration. The co-presence of these forms of expression in T2 very clearly sets it apart from T1 and gives the sense, strengthened by the word ‘sign’, of building a case through a variety of sources. It is striking to see the difference in narratological devices used in (2) and (4), but also how they are used. (2) presents us with a highly compressed account of what happened on some occasion; a small dolphin was caught, a pod of dolphins followed the boat into the harbour, and when the fisherman released the small dolphin, the pod left. There is no obvious internal focalisation but there is a detail that is given emphasis: the pod ‘only left when [. . .]’, [mechriper . . . tote]. This gives the narrative a very definite point of closure, one that is very telling about what the adult dolphins were interested in: saving the young dolphin. But, importantly, this interest emerges from the plot and the movements of the dolphins rather than from us being made to assume their perspective. In (4), the story is introduced by the verb phrase ‘were seen’, i.e., it is internally focalised by someone who was present at the scene. Unlike the earlier narratives, where the important feature is the sequence of actions performed by the camel, the horse, and the pod of dolphins, what is important in this text is the spatial organisation of the pod of dolphins. The manner in which this is presented to us is through the sequence of things seen: a pod consisting of young and adult

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dolphins was seen, then there appeared (phainesthai) two adult dolphins carrying the corpse of a younger dolphin on their backs behind the rest of the pod, and through this focalisation we too are placed at the scene. We are tracking what an anonymous observer saw and the realistic representation of the sequence of things seen persuades us that this really was observed. There are two possible readings of the reflections on the motivations of the older dolphins at the end: (i) The phrase hoion kateleountes can be read as ‘as if pitying it’. (ii) It can be read as ‘because they pitied it’. The former reading is the one preferred by both Balme and Schnieders. Schnieders gives what one must assume is the general reason for the preference: that to unduly anthropomorphise animals would make Aristotle less of a scientist (2019, 1054). We are not here interested in securing Aristotle’s standing in the eyes of posterity, but in understanding what goes on in these writings, and something we have already seen to be an important ingredient in HA is precisely a qualified form of anthropomorphising. The Greek text does not force our hand between these two readings, and the preferred route in this case is rather to spell out, first in argumentative terms and then in narratological terms, what the text looks like on these two readings. Argumentatively, there are two claims that need to be brought into relationship with each other: ‘dolphins care for the young’ is the thesis for which (4) presents evidence, and the pity and desire to protect the corpse are not incidental to that aim. On reading (i), the text presents evidence of a very indirect sort; the pity and motivation to protect are presented as a guess, and if the guess is correct, the behaviour supports the claim about the Characters of dolphins. On reading (ii), the path is far straighter; the dolphins were motivated by pity and wanted to protect the corpse, and this particular motivational structure, especially when seen in light of the rest of 1–4, provides evidence of a deeper trait of Character. On reading (i), the statement about pity becomes an uncharacteristically tentative hypothesis by the narrator about what this story shows; for all the narrator knows, they could just as well be carrying the corpse for sport, and the pity and wish to protect the corpse are not part of the story. On reading (ii), they are part of the story, and there is a move from having the story focalised by an anonymous observer to then having it focalised by the dolphins. On this reading, the first part of the narrative presents us with a realistic recreation of seeing a procession of dolphins and the second part shows us, from the inside, why what was seen matters. But to reiterate: the Greek text does not force our hand and what reading (i) consists in is, in effect, an invitation to do, on our own authority, what reading (ii)

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does for us: to be convinced that this sequence of events was seen by a human, and then to see the same sequence of events from the dolphins’ perspective, and thus be persuaded that their actions were motivated by this trait of Character. In terms of Morgan’s schema, the ambition remains to say that what goes on in the narratives is typical and indeed exemplary for dolphins. In T2, we observe a version of this strategy closer to what we expect: we are shown two narratives, told that there are others, as well as told about general kinds of behaviour (3), that together create a sense that these four parts of the text all describe what dolphins are like, in general. The narratological profiles of (2) and (4) are quite different; the former relies almost entirely on its representation of time – the dolphins arrived in the harbour, remained there for an unspecified duration, and left when the small dolphin was released – with no use of internal focalisation of any kind; whereas (4), as we have just seen, relies, first, on an anonymous human focaliser and then, on focalisation, literal or hypothetical, by the dolphins. These are, again, quite different from the camel- and horse-stories, where likeness of plot and contrasts in rhythm, along with the absence of focalisation in the one story and the presence of it in the other are used to clarify what the camel-story really shows.

4 Concluding remarks In all these cases it is entirely clear that this extensive bag of tricks is used to persuade us of and clarify the general statements about Character they are attached to. We may however still ask: given that narrative is not the dominant kind of text we find in HA, why are they here? In the absence of any explicit statement on the matter within HA, anything we say will necessarily be speculative, nevertheless there are things to say. A first thing to note is that there is a conflict between the ambitions of HA – to describe the relatively stable features of animals, i.e., what is generally the case – and tellability, i.e., that a course of events be sufficiently out of the ordinary to be material for a tale worth telling. At the same time, Aristotle’s frequent references to testimony from people in the know suggest that collecting people’s stories about animals made up an important part of the work leading up to HA, but, as a norm, when these find their way into HA, they come in a form more resembling our chunk (3) in T2, i.e., they are shorn of many of the marks of narrative. It typically makes no sense to ask ‘when was this?’, ‘who saw it?’, or ‘what happened next?’, because as both the adverb ‘always’ and the generic language inform us: this is what happens. Indeed, iterative narration, as in (3), seems more fit to purpose – what a kind of animal generally does is a

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more solid indicator of what its stable dispositions are. A ‘cost’ of this approach is of course, as Genette emphasises, that the narrativity of such narration tends to be low (1980, 117). Singulative narration, of highly tellable and so unusual events, does appear to be something of a subpar device; persuasion through a lively story is less powerful than the workmanlike recounting of what always happens. I have proposed that they fill an important niche in HA’s project: that they aid in filling out a more fine-grained picture of the Characters of animals. But of course, neither the camel-story, nor our two dolphin-stories describe what always or even generally happens: camels generally do not commit incest, dolphins generally are not captured, and they do not generally organise quasi-funerals for deceased young dolphins. What the episodes here recounted do is put a fine point to what generally happens; the camel-story shows not only that camels generally abstain from incest but that they abhor it; the dolphin–stories show the lengths to which adult dolphins will go in order to protect the young. The distinctly narrative features of these texts, the organisation of time and focalisation in particular, both persuade us that these things happened, that the stories are true, and clarify the workings of the dispositions in question. The significance of their thus persuading us is that these general statements describe aspects of the Characters of camels and dolphins that require explanation in subsequent work. They do not, as happens in the passages identified by researchers as the core activity of the text, coordinate these aspects with other differences, apart from T2 telling us that what we are about to be told is yet another way in which dolphins are the odd one out amongst marine animals. But they do give explanatory tasks, and put tools in the hands of an explanatory scientist of the sort we find in PA, and so have a natural place within HA and Aristotle’s biological writings more broadly.

References Asper, Markus. 2020. “Storytelling in Greek Law Courts.” In Thinking in Cases: Ancient Greek and Imperial Chinese Case Narratives, edited by Markus Asper, 49–66. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Balme, David M. 1987. “Aristotle’s Use of Division and Differentiae.” In Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, edited by Allan Gotthelf and James G. Lennox, 69–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Balme, David M. 1991. Aristotle: History of Animals Books VII–X. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Cohn, Dorrit. 1999. The Distinction of Fiction. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Connell, Sophia M. 2016. Aristotle on Female Animals: A Study of the Generation of Animals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Föllinger, Sabine. 2016. “Literarische Strategien bei Aristoteles.” In Philosophus Orator: Rhetorische Strategien und Strukturen in Philosophischer Literatur. Michael Erler zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Irmgard Männlein-Robert, Wolfgang Rother, Stefan Schorn, and Christian Tornau, 127–144. Basel: Schwabe. Genette, Gérard. 1980. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Gotthelf, Allan. 2010. Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. King, Martina. 2017. “‘Ich habe im Sommer des Jahres 1838 eine Reihe von Beobachtungen angestellt’: Naturwissenschaftliches Erzählen im frühen 19. Jahrhundert.” Diegesis 6 (1): 20–45. King, Richard A. 2021. “Life-Cycles and the Actions of Nutritive Soul in Aristotle.” In The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Biology, edited by Sophia M. Connell, 127–141. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lennox, James G. 1987. “Divide and Explain: The Posterior Analytics in Practice.” In Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, edited by Allan Gotthelf and James G. Lennox, 90–119. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lennox, James G. 2018. “Aristotle, Dissection, and Generation: Experience, Expertise, and the Practices of Knowing.” In Aristotle’s Generation of Animals: A Critical Guide, edited by Andrea Falcon and David Lefebvre, 249–272. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leunissen, Mariska. 2021. “Empiricism and Hearsay in Aristotle’s Zoological Collection of Facts.” In The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Biology, edited by Sophia M. Connell, 64–82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morgan, Mary S. 2014. “Resituating Knowledge: Generic Strategies and Case Studies.” Philosophy of Science 81 (5): 1012–1024. Pellegrin, Pierre. 1986. Aristotle’s Classification of Animals: Biology and the Conceptual Unity of the Aristotelian Corpus. Translated by Anthony Preus. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schnieders, Stefan. 2019. Aristoteles: Historia Animalium Buch VIII und IX. Berlin: De Gruyter. Terrall, Mary. 2017. “Narrative and Natural History in the Eighteenth Century.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 62: 51–64.

Sebastian Meixner

Narrating Bones: Goethe’s Early Osteological Writings from Physiognomy to Type (1776–1794) 1 Introduction Bones tell stories. They provide information about long-extinct species; they enable inferences about the form (Gestalt) of bodies; and through the skeletal structure, they can also explain the development both of an individual living being in the sense of ontogeny and of different genera and species in comparison with one another in the sense of phylogeny.1 Even before the development of biology as a scientific discipline and before the Darwinian theory of evolution, bones were a privileged object in eighteenth-century natural history and were used to illustrate the scala naturae. The idea of a ladder of nature operates by establishing series that assign every form a place in a hierarchical system, which makes it possible to group similar forms and to detect increases or decreases in complexity. As the scholarship has discussed in recent years under the keyword of temporalization, late eighteenth-century knowledge (Erkennen) cannot be conceptualized without a temporal dimension (Wyder 2004, 34; Matussek 1998; Pörksen 1999; Heusser 2000).2 Goethe’s biological writings demonstrate, however, that temporal succession is just the first step in exploring this development: in particular, their mode of representation shifts attention from a final motivation to causal relations of individual biological stages. But as has been noted many times, this shift does not mean that Goethe’s biological writings anticipate the theory of evolution (Wenzel 1982, 1983). Although individual species evolve separately and come into being after one another in Goethe’s conception, they do not evolve from each other.

 Biology did not yet exist as a scientific discipline at the time when Goethe composed his early scientific writings; nevertheless, as Dorothea Kuhn notes, the concept of biology allows us to group together such diverse disciplines as medicine, botany, zoonomy, anatomy, osteology, and physiology (1997, 324–325). On the paradigm shift from natural history to biology with Goethe as an example, see: Schäfer (2009).  On the problem of processuality in scientific narration in the nineteenth century, see: King (2017, esp. 23–25). Note: Translated by Anthony Mahler. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111319971-003

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Nevertheless, the texts do pose the question of the origin of species, but they answer it differently than Darwin’s theory of evolution would some seventy years later. Goethe’s scientific writings have received increased attention in recent years, both in the history of science and in literary studies. The scholarship has particularly focused on the concept of morphology, which was a guiding concept for Goethe’s engagements with science after 1796 and whose history of reception extends into structuralist narratology (especially Geulen 2019; Axer et al. 2019; Geulen 2016, 2017).3 In comparison, the early writings prior to morphology, many of which only exist as drafts and were only published well after their date of composition or posthumously, have not been studied to the same extent as the later texts, perhaps in part due to the lasting influence of the cliché that Goethe had an unproductive first decade in Weimar (1775–1786) (MA 2.2, 773–793).4 Goethe’s early osteological writings are a special case in the context of his early scientific writings since his (re)discovery of the intermaxillary bone in 1784 has been well researched in terms of both its contemporary reception history and the texts’ linguistic structure (especially Lorenz 1996; Bräuning-Oktavio 1956). The scholarship has concentrated on his “Versuch aus der vergleichenden Knochenlehre daß der Zwischenknochen der obern Kinnlade dem Menschen mit den übrigen Thieren gemein sei” (1784) [Essay in the comparative study of bones on how humans share the intermaxillary bone of the upper jaw with animals] and has also often referred to the version published in 1820 with the modified title “Dem Menschen wie den Tieren ist ein Zwischenknochen der obern Kinnlade zuzuschreiben” [An Intermaxillary Bone is Present in the Upper Jaw of Man as well as in Animals].5 By contrast, the other osteological texts from the years 1776 to 1794 have been largely disregarded, even though they decisively illuminate how the osteological sequence serves as the basis of the argumentation in the context of the intermaxillary bone. In particular, I want to analyze the narrative basis of this argumentation using exemplary texts. My thesis is that Goethe’s early osteological texts function narratively since they not only describe their objects in series but present them in narra-

 Manfred Wenzel’s work is fundamental for studying Goethe’s early scientific writings; he edited and contributed significantly to the supplemental volume of the Goethe-Handbuch on Goethe’s scientific writings (2012, 6–21).  I refer to Goethe’s texts by volume and page number from the Münchner Ausgabe (MA) because it is largely based on the Leopoldina-Ausgabe (LA) but is more widely accessible. All the translations of quotations are by Anthony Mahler.  For an overview, see: Wenzel (2012, 11–15). For a published translation of the later version, see: Goethe (1988, 111–116).

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tive sequences. My investigation of these narrative sequences is based on a narrative theory of culture as proposed by Albrecht Koschorke (2012, esp. 19–25), an approach that I tailor to Goethe in the sense of a middle-range approach in historical narratology. I have devised this approach by placing structuralist narratology in a dialogue with rhetorical and grammatical tools and protostructuralist theories from the late eighteenth century; they address similar problems with a different terminology.6 Goethe’s descriptions of individual bones only make sense in the sequences of their representation, which thereby become readable as narrative sequences with conflicting motivations.7 In order to analyze these conflicting motivations, I recur to the concept of metalepsis. Narratologically, metalepsis presupposes the notion of distinct narrative levels which are hierarchically structured and “[c]haracterized by a relation of inclusion” (Pier 2014, para. 1). Metalepsis consequently refers to the transgression of these narrative levels. My use of metalepsis derives from Genette’s concept as he described it in his Discours du récit, where he defines the term as “intrusion by the extradiegetic narrator or narratee into the diegetic universe” (1980, 234). His definition prominently replaces the notion of narrative levels with the notion of narrative universes. This suggests that there is more at stake with metalepsis than a technical relation of narrative levels and their instances of narration. Thus, my concept of metalepsis takes into account the rhetoric basis of the term where contradictions on the syntagmatic surface can be described as transferences without intermediary steps.8 These transferences can be applied to the narrative arrangement of elements in a syntagmatically produced series. This focus on the rhetorical legacy of Genette’s narratology allows metalepsis to be placed in relation to related concepts (such as prolepsis, analepsis, syllepsis, and paralepsis), with sylleptic procedures playing a particularly important role in the context of this essay, since they make it possible to analyze the osteological series and their conflations.9 This is because while the bones do not evolve from one another, narrating them reveals their secrets. The sylleptic conflations necessary to do this erase the temporal relation on the level of narrated time (erzählte Zeit), yet bring the narrated elements into a temporal succession through the time of narration (Erzählzeit). The syllepses establish links where the narrated elements do not suggest them, and these links are fundamental to Goethe’s argument in the early osteological writings.

 The basis for this essay is a middle-range approach in historical narratology, as I have elaborated in my dissertation by historicizing Genette’s discourse narratology (Meixner 2019b, esp. 34–37).  The connection between narrativity and causality has been prominently pointed out by Morgan (2017a, esp. 86–88; 2017b, esp. 3). I thank Martina King for this reference.  See: Groddeck (2008, 150).  On the connection between metalepsis and syllepsis, see: Meixner (2019b, 93–105).

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They cannot do without syllepses. Instead of making an argument with theses and illustrating these theses with examples, Goethe’s texts function using osteological sequences, and the sylleptic conflations point to their argumentative basis. Goethe’s engagement with osteological sequences begins with physiognomy in his “Naturgeschichtlicher Beitrag zu Lavaters Physiognomischen Fragmenten” (1776) [Natural-historical contribution to Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy]. This text moves from human skulls to animal skulls in transferences that do not have intermediary steps and depend on metaleptic procedures. The human–animal boundary is also at the center of the “Versuch aus der vergleichenden Knochenlehre” (1784), which I already mentioned above: in it, a metaleptically organized series makes it possible to compare different skull bones and to present a typology of various expressions of the animal intermaxillary bone with the goal of proving its presence in humans. In the “Versuch über die Gestalt der Tiere” (1790/91) [Essay on the form of animals], this series of expressions acquires a regulative principle in the osteological type. In the “1. Abschnitt. Versuch einer allgemeinen Knochenlehre” (1794) [First section: Essay on the general study of bones], Goethe finally changes the object of his investigations: he no longer compares different animal skulls but the skull type of ‘higher animals.’

2 Preliminary narratological note: Comparing and narrating The claim that Goethe’s osteological writings are organized narratively is not selfevident. Even if bones tell stories, this does not mean that osteological texts proceed narratively when they present their analyses. I would like to demonstrate that Goethe narrates bones – that he productively employs narrative procedures in his argumentation in the osteological texts – by turning to a theoretical text by Goethe himself. The “2. Abschnitt. Versuch einer allgemeinen Vergleichungslehre” [Second section: Essay on a general theory of comparison] from 1794 refers to the “1. Abschnitt. Versuch einer allgemeinen Knochenlehre” and emphasizes how the tension between the question of the cause of a series and the question of its goal is a problem in the formation of series. He thus links questions of the temporal configuration of successively arranged elements with questions of motivation, which I have discussed in more detail elsewhere with the concept of the sequence (Folge) in the context of contemporary narrative theory (Meixner 2019a, 38–41).10

 For more detail, see also: Meixner (2019b, esp. 31–37, 55–60, 211–225). The publication of Contzen and Tilg (2019) is exemplary of the continued scholarly interest in historical narratology.

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Particularly with regard to gaps in knowledge, sequences are susceptible to transfers without intermediary steps in the sense of metaleptic procedures and especially to sylleptic conflations. Only these narrative procedures, which will be analyzed and elaborated in what follows, make it possible for Goethe to make his argument. The argumentative basis of Goethe’s “Versuch einer allgemeinen Vergleichungslehre” is a bone suite that does not merely juxtapose bones in a descriptive series but also conceives of a certain narrative perspectivization and, moreover, functions as a series of events with a double temporal progression. The text is accordingly characterized by the osteological gaze’s time of narration and the narrated time of bone formation (on this in general, see Günzler 1964, esp. 55–65). The narrated time is, however, at least partially suspended in the bone suite, because at this level the bones are initially placed side by side rather than developed successively or from one another. This opens the text to sylleptic procedures that establish links without ordering the successive elements in time. The osteological theses and their arguments play out precisely in this narrative free space. This is because the double temporal progression, which is sylleptically conspicuous in the narrative, results in a potentially infinite number of anisochronies, which influence the motivation of the arranged elements and the osteological argument. The text also positions itself decidedly against teleological notions in osteological sequences and argues against an anthropocentric creation narrative. Instead of presupposing that the purpose of nature is humanity, the conditions of nature should be investigated in its forms. Thus, contrary to what its title announces, the text does not so much provide guidelines for a general theory of comparison but rather explains conditions for the possibilities of such a theory. In this context, comparison always means arranging in a series that allows one to make inferences: from the causes and conditions manifested in osteological structures about their consequences as transmitted in forms. The argumentative starting point is the diagnosis of a scientific crisis that is no longer productive in the progress of knowledge yet “seems not to budge” [nicht von Flecke zu rücken scheint] (MA 4.2, 179). The text thus programmatically begins in a double-narrative manner: with the history of science on the one hand and natural history on the other. The text finds the causes for the stagnation in the history of science in the “mindset from which the objects are traditionally considered” [Vorstellungsart nach welcher die Gegenstände herkömmlich betrachtet werden] (MA 4.2, 179) and in a terminology that unquestioningly reproduces errors. The mindset that paralyzes the knowledge of natural history – the main theme of the text – believes in the purposiveness of nature. But before Goethe names this main problem, he justifies his approach in an intricate turn of phrase: “From this general observation, I will proceed immediately to the object we are treating here in order to be immediately as clear as possible and not to

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move away from my purpose” [Von dieser allgemeinen Betrachtung, gehe ich gleich zu dem Gegenstande über welchen wir hier behandeln um sogleich so deutlich als möglich zu sein und mich von meinem Zwecke nicht zu entfernen] (MA 4.2, 179). Before criticizing the widespread opinion that nature was created for humanity’s purposes, the text locates its own purpose in this very criticism. There is thus, in the sequence of science, a purpose that consists in the progress of knowledge, and the scientific subject is placed in this sequence. But this purposiveness does not apply to nature. With this explicit rhetorical doubling and differentiation of purposes, the text clearly shows that purposes are posited and also rejects the idea that the natural forms are determined “by an intentional elemental force” [durch eine absichtliche Urkraft] (MA 4.2, 180). But in doing so, the text shies away from a sweeping blow: This mindset can be pious in itself, pleasant for certain dispositions, indispensable for certain mindsets, and I find it neither advisable nor possible to dispute it in its entirety. It is, if one may express oneself in this way, a trivial mindset, which is trivial, like all trivial things, precisely because it is convenient and sufficient for human nature as a whole. [Es kann diese Vorstellungsart für sich fromm, für gewisse Gemüter angenehm für gewisse Vorstellungsarten unentbehrlich sein, und ich finde es weder rätlich noch möglich sie im ganzen zu bestreiten. Es ist wenn man sich so ausdrücken darf eine triviale Vorstellungsart, die eben deswegen wie alle triviale Dinge trivial ist, weil sie der menschlichen Natur im ganzen bequem und zureichend ist.] (MA 4.2, 180)

Hence, instead of rejecting this mindset completely, the text traces it back to human nature and thereby makes it explainable and attackable. The text is thus able to unmask humanity’s belief that it is the “ultimate purpose” [Endzweck] and “the end of creation” [das Letzte der Schöpfung] as a “fallacy” [Trugschluß] (MA 4.2, 180). Rhetorical questions concede that this mindset is quite suitable for reducing complexity, and they lead to the claim that “it is totally impossible for humans to let go of this mindset” [es überhaupt den Menschen unmöglich ist diese Vorstellungsart fahren zu lassen] (MA 4.2, 181). But even if the natural scientist “cannot escape that mindset as a human being” [als Mensch jene Vorstellungsart nicht los werden könnte], he must say goodbye to common anthropocentrism “at least insofar as he is a natural scientist” [insofern er ein Naturforscher ist] (MA 4.2, 181). This explanation leads – besides to the example of a botanist – to another “observation [. . .] that follows, however, directly from the previous one” [Betrachtung [. . .], die jedoch unmittelbar aus der vorigen fließt] (MA 4.2, 181): to the question of the form of complex organisms. The text thus reverses the direction of determination and dismisses final motivation in favor of a causal relation. In this context, Goethe does not abolish the explanatory figure of an “elemental

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force of nature” [Urkraft der Natur] (MA 4.2, 182), of the “wisdom of a thinking being as we tend to think of it [the elemental force, S. M.]” [Weisheit eines denkenden Wesens welches wir derselben unterzulegen pflegen] (MA 4.2, 182), but he does assume that such a force can only have an indirect effect. Thus, instead of explaining the form of animals solely through their blueprints in creation and by the creator’s intention, Goethe concedes a decisive effect to environmental influences and stipulates reservations about any goal of creation, as he explains with the example of the fish: “The fish is there for the water” seems to me to say much less than “the fish is there in the water and through the water”; for the latter expresses much more clearly what is only vaguely hidden in the former, namely: the existence of a creature we call fish is only possible under the condition of an element we call water, not only in order to be in it but also so as to become in it. This applies to all other creatures. This would be the first and most general observation from inside to outside and from outside to inside; the decisive form is, as it were, the inner core that develops differently through the determination of the outer element. [Der Fisch ist für das Wasser da, scheint mir viel weniger zu sagen als: der Fisch ist in dem Wasser und durch das Wasser da; denn dieses letzte drückt viel deutlicher aus, was in dem erstern nur dunkel verborgen liegt, nämlich: die Existenz eines Geschöpfes das wir Fisch nennen, sei nur unter der Bedingung eines Elementes das wir Wasser nennen möglich, nicht allein um darin zu sein, sondern auch um darin zu werden. Eben dieses gilt von allen übrigen Geschöpfen. Dieses wäre also die erste und allgemeinste Betrachtung von innen nach außen und von außen nach innen, die entschiedene Gestalt ist gleichsam der innere Kern, welcher durch die Determination des äußeren Elementes sich verschieden bildet.] (MA 4.2, 182)

Outward purposiveness – that is, the final form – is grounded neither in humanity nor in a divine plan but in the influences of the environment.11 Thus, Goethe does not fundamentally reject the framework of a creative power but rather rejects that it has an immediate effect. Animals are not created such that they are adapted to their environments, but rather the environment adapts animals to the environment, as is evident in their forms. The text then also sees the determinant factors in the elements and accordingly poses the question in a new way: Now [we] ask and investigate, what effect does a general element under its various conditions have on this same general form? What effect does the determinate and determinant form have in opposition to these elements? What kind of forms – of the solid parts, of the

 As natura naturans, the environment can of course be conflated with this goal, as is often stated with regard to Goethe with reference to Spinoza. See, for example: Bies (2012, 142–143), Jannidis (1996, 130–132).

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softer parts, of the innermost parts, and of the outermost parts – are produced through this effect. [[N]unmehr fragen und untersuchen [wir] was wirkt ein allgemeines Element unter seinen verschiedenen Bestimmungen auf eben diese allgemeine Gestalt? Was wirkt die determinierte und determinierende Gestalt diesen Elementen entgegen? Was entsteht durch diese Wirkung für eine Gestalt, der festen, der weicheren, der innersten und der äußersten Teile.] (MA 4.2, 183)

As the question suggests in its conflation of determinate and determinant forms, the text is not satisfied with the conclusion that the elements determine the forms. Instead, the forms themselves become determinant factors; the series of forms is thus continued as a series of determinant elements. The trigger of this extension and continuation of the argument is a comparison that sylleptically establishes what the argumentation cannot otherwise explain: And how dignified it is of nature that she must always use the same means to produce and nourish a creature; one will thus progress on these same paths and since one first only sees unorganized, indeterminate elements as vehicles for unorganized beings, so one will now rise in contemplation and view the organized world again as a network of many elements. The whole plant kingdom, for example, will likewise appear to us as an enormous sea that is just as necessary for the conditional existence of insects as the ocean and rivers are for the conditional existence of fish, and we will see that an immense number of living creatures are born and nourished in this plant ocean; indeed, in the end, we will again see the whole animal world but now as one large element, in which one species does not arise based on another one and through another one but does persist based on it and through it. We will become accustomed to not viewing relations and connections as determinations and purposes and thereby make progress all by ourselves in the knowledge of how generative nature expresses itself from all sides and in all directions. [Und wie würdig ist es der Natur daß sie sich immer derselben Mittel bedienen muß um ein Geschöpf hervorzubringen und zu ernähren; so wird man auf eben diesen Wegen fortschreiten und wie man nur erst die unorganisierten, undeterminierten Elemente als Vehikel der unorganisierten Wesen angesehen, so wird man sich nunmehr in der Betrachtung erheben und wird die organisierte Welt wieder als einen Zusammenhang von vielen Elementen ansehen. Das ganze Pflanzenreich z.E. wird uns wieder als ein ungeheures Meer erscheinen, welches eben so gut zur bedingten Existenz der Insekten nötig ist, als das Weltmeer und die Flüsse zur bedingten Existenz der Fische, und wir werden sehen daß eine ungeheure Anzahl lebender Geschöpfe in diesem Pflanzen-Ozean geboren und ernährt werde, ja wir werden zuletzt die ganze tierische Welt wieder nur als ein großes Element ansehen, wo ein Geschlecht auf dem andern und durch das andere, wo nicht entsteht doch [sich] erhält. Wir werden uns gewöhnen Verhältnisse und Beziehungen, nicht als Bestimmungen und Zwecke anzusehen, und dadurch ganz allein in der Kenntnis wie sich die bildende Natur von allen Seiten und nach allen Seiten äußert weiterkommen.] (MA 4.2, 183–184)

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The plant kingdom is a sea that likewise influences the forms, and the animal kingdom is an element that in turn becomes a determinant force: this is the sylleptic conflation the text dares to make. The catalyst of this conflation is the question of narrative motivation, which replaces finality with causality. This substitution is illustrated by a narratively conceived (since it proceeds through different stages) progression in the history of science, which is made possible by the sylleptic, analogizing comparison, as is particularly evident in the adverb “wieder.” For by casting the plant kingdom “likewise” as a sea, the text not only reverses natural history but also postulates an analogy that observes the power of generative nature in naturalhistorical determinations of the environment. The text conspicuously omits the ultimate question of human determination, however, displacing it instead onto the progress-oriented history of science, which promises “a useful result for humanity” [ein nützliches Resultat für die Menschheit] (MA 4.2, 184), in other words, a purpose based on knowledge of the natural-historical causal chain that is nevertheless a final purpose. The final turn of the text thus again makes use of the double history that it installs at its beginning: from the history of nature in its manifold forms to the history of science in its series of hypotheses and theories. To what extent then are Goethe’s early osteological texts organized narratively? First and very basally, they participate in a history of science, which they reflect on often if not persistently. With bones, they narrate a history of the scientific knowledge of bones. Second, they also narrate with bones a history of determinacy, a history that can only be understood narratively as a sequence of different expressions. The narratively organized series makes it possible to perceive causal chains that cannot be otherwise explained. The sequence of their inferences from bones about form and from forms about a series of forms thus functions with motivations, but motivations cannot operate with unambiguous and gapless causality; they rather reveal gaps of knowledge and at the same time tentatively skip over them.

3 The physiognomy of animals: Skulls and character As the theoretical “Versuch einer allgemeinen Vergleichungslehre” exemplarily suggests, in his early scientific writings and particularly in his osteological writings, Goethe is concerned with developing a basis of comparison that makes it possible to infer a schema from singular phenomena. Goethe calls this schema a type (Typus), because it is not an abstract idea but a concretely intuitive blueprint that is manifested in variants in different phenomena. In this way, for example,

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the intermaxillary bone is found in the blueprint of vertebrates and is realized in different forms in different vertebrates.12 In the following, I trace the stations of the early osteological writings that lead up to the concept of type. At these stations, the question of the sequence progressively intensifies, and with it the narrative procedures intensify as well. The first text in which Goethe deals with osteological sequences is the “Naturgeschichtlicher Beitrag zu Lavaters Physiognomischen Fragmenten” from 1776.13 Its first section, entitled “Entry” [Eingang] (MA 2.2, 525), begins by praising the anatomy of the human skull. In a chain of exclamations, the position of the skull is first put in relation to the body, and then the individual parts of the skull are commended. By no means does Goethe limit himself to anatomical facts; he rather sees the possibility for other organs as given in the anatomical framework: the brain, lips, and eyes are, according to Goethe, what make a human being a human being. The second paragraph contrasts the anatomical possibilities of the human skull with animal skulls. The human skull thus becomes the norm, and animal skulls deficient subtypes that make “memory and reasoned decisions” [Erinnerung und überlegte Entscheidung] (MA 2.2, 525) not completely impossible yet still severely limited. When the text then turns to twenty-one different animal skulls after a short translated paragraph from Aristotle, it transfers the physiognomic method to animals. In the context of physiognomic psychology, anatomical construction should allow inferences about an animal’s character (see, generally, Mattenklott 1984). But unlike humans, animals are always representatives of their species and never individuals, which is why one animal always stands – pars pro toto – for all animals. This also limits the transferability of physiognomy from humans to animals. While animal skulls always point to prototypical character traits, it is necessary to investigate “the diversity of human skulls” [die Verschiedenheit der Menschenschädel] (MA 2.2, 526), since by principle all characters can be found in humans. The human–animal boundary is thus also characterized by an increase in complexity that cannot be derived from anatomical structures. Instead, the text postulates this complexity and reproduces it through narrative inferences.

 On the implications of Goethe’s 1790 vertebral theory of the skull based on observing vertebral metamorphosis, which this essay does not consider, see, exemplarily: Müller-Sievers (1998, esp. 242–245).  As is well known, Goethe’s participation in the Physiognomische Fragmenten was not limited to this natural-historical contribution. His other contributions (see, for example: Wellbery (1996, 331–335), Gray (2003, 93–104)) do not, however, deal with aspects of sequences and go beyond even the broadest definition of natural-historical or scientific writings (Saltzwedel 1993, 214–227). I therefore limit myself to this text in analyzing osteological sequences.

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Fig. 1: Bone skulls of various animals. Chart modelled on Johann Kaspar Lavater’s Physiognomische Fragmente, vol. 2, Leipzig and Winterthur 1776, p. 138 (excerpt from LA I.10, 409).

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In the description of animal skulls, Goethe draws on skull drawings from George Louis Leclerc de Buffon’s Histoire naturelle (see Fig. 1). What is striking is not so much the anatomical details, which become signs of animals’ characters, but their classification and arrangement, which turn the table into a series. This is what the narrativity of the text is based on. Bone structure is not by any means the starting point of the argumentation; instead, it indexes the instrumentalization of animals by humans or their hunting behavior. The text distinguishes “pack and grazing animals” [Last- und weidenden Tiere] (MA 2.2, 526) from “greedy animals without cruelty” [gierigen Tiere[n] ohne Grausamkeit] (MA 2.2, 527) or “predators” [Raubtiere[ ]] (MA 2.2, 528). The comparative arrangement of illustrations is broken up in favor of this grouping; the arrangement roughly follows the quality of descending proximity to humans in the sense of tameness, and “lines” [Linien] (MA 2.2, 526) “denote” [bezeichne[n]] (MA 2.2, 526) certain character traits. The series thus tells a story from man to animals. When Goethe comes to the dog in the category of predators, he reflects on what the semanticization of bones is based on by questioning their significance: 13. The dog already has more solidity; it may be something common, insignificant – (I speak incorrectly; everything, even the most everyday thing, even the most mediocre, is as significant as the most extraordinary, – but the significance is not so conspicuous. – – Thus, insignificant, that is – not very striking –) The descent of the skull from the eye bone shows, I would like – to say, determinacy of the sensory faculty. [13. Der Hund hat schon mehr Festes; zwar was Gemeines, Unbedeutendes – (ich spreche unrichtig; alles, auch das Alltäglichste, auch das Mittelmäßigste, ist so bedeutend, als das Ausgezeichneteste – aber die Bedeutung ist nicht so auffallend. – – Unbedeutendes also, das heißt – nicht sehr Frappantes –) Das Abgehen des Schädels vom Augenknochen zeigt, möcht ich – sagen, Bestimmtheit der Sinneskraft.] (MA 2.2, 528)

The commentary in brackets interrupts the series of skull descriptions and draws attention to the interpretative basis of the physiognomic method. The significance of osteological forms is fragile; it becomes apparent in a series through classification and through a particular attention, and the text is not able to explain the basis of this attention. The series – here fox, dog, and wolf – thus play a considerable part in semanticizing the skulls of these animals. Furthermore, the example of the lion skull shows that Goethe is less interested in anatomical details than in this semanticization: If only (9) the lion were better drawn; but already in Büffon, which is where this one is copied from, precisely this magnificent skull is so imprecisely formed. Even so, how strange the elongated, obtuse occiput! The curvature, how noble; the descent of the abutting lines, how gentle! – the fall of the muzzle, how quick, how powerful! The forehead, how packed! strong! calm, and powerful!

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worthy of the most specialized comparison with the tiger! How little, how much the two are different! [Wäre 9. der Löwe besser gezeichnet; aber schon im Büffon, woraus diese kopiert sind, steht just dieser herrliche Schädel am unbestimmtesten gebildet. Wie merkwürdig auch schon so, der länglichstumpfe Hinterkopf! Die Wölbung, wie edel; der Abgang der anstoßenden Linien, wie sanft! – des Schnauzbeins Niedersteigen, wie schnell, wie kräftig! Der Vorderkopf, wie gepackt! stark! ruhig und gewaltig! wert der spezialsten Vergleichung mit dem Tiger! Wie wenig, wie viel sind beide verschieden!] (MA 2.2, 529)

The illustration of the skull obviously does not serve the acquisition of knowledge here but is rather only the starting point for a series of hymnal exclamations that praise the “magnificent skull” [herrliche[n] Schädel] (MA 2.2, 529). The basis for semanticizing the bones is emphatically left out. This omission conceals the inferences of physiognomy, which have, as my analysis has shown, a narrative character and are dependent on a serial mode of representation. The praise of the skull only refers to a close comparison with the tiger; but the comparison is not undertaken; instead, it is displaced onto their differences in character. The last skull the text examines is that of the hyena: 18. The hyena . . is very noticeably different from all the others in its occiput. In humans, this head shows, when it is hard and massive, and when it does not define the entire curvature of the head – hardness of mind and strength of heart. – On the whole, this profile seems to express an iron-like tenacity. [18. Die Hyäne . . ist durch das Hinterhaupt von allen sehr merklich verschieden. Dieser Kopf zeigt bei Menschen, wenn er hart und massiv ist, und wenn er nicht die ganze Wölbung des Kopfes ausmacht – Hartsinn und Herzenskraft. – Im Ganzen scheint dies Profil eine eisenmäßige Hartnäckigkeit auszudrücken.] (MA 2.2, 530)

Goethe’s contemporaries were already arguing intensely about the pitfalls of transferring human physiognomy back to animal skulls (for example, Niekerk 1995, 7–8). Animal skulls – as the text states at the beginning – are characterized by dominant features that suggest specific character traits. And all these character traits are present in humans, which, by implication, makes animal skulls paradigmatic for human character traits. With reference to the hyena, Goethe explicitly names this method, because the skull can only be deciphered through character traits observed in humans. The warning against the “application [of physiognomy] to the diversity of human skulls” [Anwendung auf die Verschiedenheit der Menschenschädel] (MA 2.2, 526), which was formulated so cautiously at the beginning, is thus thrown to the wind by the text itself at the end. It is no longer animal skulls that are paradigmatic for the study of human physiognomy, but the other way around: because human anatomy unites all character traits, it explains the characters of animals, which are not defined by individual devia-

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tion but always stand for their entire species. What can be recognized in the “hard and massive” formation of the occiput in humans who are characterized by a “hardness of mind and strength of heart” can also be found in all hyenas, whose species can consequently be attributed with certain character traits. With its narratives, the text thus suggests causality where there is only coincidence. This mechanism functions through the narrative arrangement of descriptions not according to anatomically based characteristics but rather according to external characteristics that are then associated with the bone structure. The character of animals thus seems to depend only on their bone structure, but the argumentation and its presentation in normative exclamations show exactly the opposite: bone structure is inferred from the form and familiar characteristics of animals, as found, for example, in animal fables. The transference of the characteristics to human anatomy finally shakes up the argumentative series and reverses the argument. The text is thus characterized by the mutual dependence of its inferential methods, which all function metaleptically – that is, as transferences without intermediary steps: first it infers about animals from humans, so as then to infer human characteristics on the basis of various osteological features in animals. By reversing this mechanism again in the case of the hyena, Goethe deprives physiognomy of its epistemological foundation. Thus, the narrative representation does not cover up the limits of knowledge but rather emphasizes them.

4 The intermaxillary bone: Animals and humans Goethe’s most famous osteological text is more solidly grounded in science, including from a contemporaneous perspective. The “Versuch aus der vergleichenden Knochenlehre,”14 which was published in 1784, does not derive character traits

 In the Münchner Ausgabe, which I use here, the essay is printed under the title “Dem Menschen wie den Tieren ist ein Zwischenknochen der obern Kinnlade zuzuschreiben” and with the addition “Jena 1786.” Both the incorrect date, which is due to a revision by Goethe, and the divergent title are from the second publication of the text in volume 1, issue 2, of Zur Morphologie in 1820. Since the version in the Münchner Ausgabe deviates from the first publication of the text as a manuscript in 1784 only in one small but decisive point for my argument, this edition forms the basis of this paper; it is supplemented with the first publication from 1784 from the Frankfurter Ausgabe at the one decisive deviation. For a very instructive history of the text and its reception, see: Lorenz (1996, 85–92). On the significance of the text in the context of Goethe’s osteological writings from 1780 to 1786, see: Bräuning-Oktavio (1956). I build on Lorenz’s investigation of the scientific language in the text but focus on narrative links of the individual elements that run through the entire text and that cannot be ascribed – as Lorenz illustrates for the text’s structure – to an analytical, scientific method

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from bone structure, but it does still question the human–animal boundary. Goethe’s “Naturgeschichtlicher Beitrag zu Lavaters Physiognomischen Fragmenten” is informative as a precursor to the “Versuch” because it was Goethe’s first osteological text to conflate the comparative method with the formation of series. The “Versuch” applies this conflation programmatically to the intermaxillary bone: Some attempts at osteological drawings have been put together here with the intention of presenting experts and supporters of comparative anatomy with a small discovery that I believe I have made. [Einige Versuche osteologischer Zeichnungen sind hier in der Absicht zusammen geheftet worden, um Kennern und Freunden vergleichender Zergliederungskunde eine kleine Entdeckung vorzulegen die ich glaube gemacht zu haben.] (MA 2.2, 530)

The first sentence already argues with an intentionally arranged sequence of anatomical drawings that Wilhelm Waitz produced according to Peter Camper’s anatomical method and that are at the center of the text.15 These plates first serve to illustrate the intermaxillary bone in various animals: after a brief introduction, the skulls of the horse, ox, fox, lion, walrus, and monkey are examined for the intermaxillary bone so that Goethe can finally explain the presence of the intermaxillary bone in humans with four illustrations. After the first plate, which shows the upper jaw of a horse, the text also inserts a table (MA 2.2, 533), which not only serves as a legend for the first plate but also postulates an arrangement. Thus, to prove that the intermaxillary bone cannot serve as the keystone to differentiating between apes and humans, Goethe is not satisfied with merely comparing apes and humans: he forms a series, albeit a provisional one, that should convince through its “appearance” [Augenschein] (MA 2.2, 530). For the intermaxillary bone has a “very different form in different animals” [bei verschiedenen Tieren von sehr verschiedener Gestalt] (MA 2.2, 531) and therefore requires precise explanations. The classifications that the text then makes to describe the various plates have a programmatic purpose: Perhaps it will sometimes not be immediately apparent why one has established this and that classification and chosen one or another name. Nothing has happened without a cause, and if one looks through and compares several skulls, then the difficulty I thought of above will stand out even more.

or a synthetic, natural-historical one and that are not limited to the sections dominated by these two methods (1996, 100).  Camper was the leading anatomist at the time and the manuscript edition of Goethe’s text was addressed and sent to him.

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[Vielleicht wird es hier und da nicht sogleich in die Augen fallen, warum man diese und jene Einteilung festgesetzt und eine oder andere Benennung gewählt hat. Es ist nichts ohne Ursache geschehen und wenn man mehrere Schädel durchsieht und vergleicht, so wird die Schwierigkeit deren ich oben schon gedacht noch mehr auffallen.] (MA 2.2, 533–534)

The arrangement is therefore not arbitrary but serves with its “linear order” (Kleinschnieder 1971, 37)16 the goal of describing precisely the intermaxillary bone in animals in its most diverse variants so as to prove its existence in humans; a continuous causal chain is its declared goal. Teeth, bone canals, and sutures become the features that can be evidenced in different ways in different expressions. The sequence now does not just reproduce the principle of arrangement of the scala naturae but rather uses the principle of continuity, since Goethe tries to form series that are as complete as possible. In doing so, he even postulates the functional equivalence of different bones across different animals, which Manfred Kleinschnieder refers to as “group constancy” (1971, 39). The “report on the plates” [Anzeige der Tafeln] (MA 2.2, 534) accordingly operates with analogies, because it proves the intermaxillary bone in each of the listed and illustrated animal skulls and thereby establishes the constancy of the phenomenon in the group of vertebrates. The comparative method explicitly serves to make a bone in question recognizable. In the case of the fox skull, for example, Goethe describes the “canales nasopalatini” [Canales naso-palatini], which are determinant for the intermaxillary bone, as “elongated and already more closed than in the ox and the horse” [länglich und schon besser geschlossen wie beim Ochsen und Pferde] (MA 2.2, 536). The partially elliptical descriptions of the individual bones become a narrative arrangement not only through the series but also through the verbs used to denote osteological features – particularly bone sutures: bone parts retract, flow together, or disappear (MA 2.2, 532); sometimes – as in the case of the sutures in the monkey skull – they even come out, run toward, creep away, or pass through (MA 2.2, 539).17 The bone sutures thereby refer to different bones with different functions. What’s more, through the activity verbs, the text stages the sutures as active elements in bone formation. This phylogenetic dimension is complemented by an ontogenetic one when Goethe first refers to “the skull of a child or of embryos” [den Schädel eines Kindes, oder Embryonen] (MA 2.2, 543) as evidence for the intermaxillary bone in humans to explain his theory of the comparatively

 More generally, see also: Pörksen (1986, 79–80).  Narrative procedures are thus also recognizable in the middle part of the text, which, according to Lorenz, follows a largely scientific mode of presentation; these techniques are especially apparent in the verbs, which undermine a strict separation of the object of knowledge and the subject of knowledge (1996, 93–96).

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small size of the bone in humans and its fusion with other bones. The series thus forms a network of evidence that allows Goethe to trace the intermaxillary bone. The method of forming analogies, which trains one’s attention in the series of animal skulls in order to then notice “the same suture” [dieselbe Sutur] (MA 2.2, 543) in humans, is not, however, based on a linear succession of plates and successive explanations of them. The text rather jumps back and forth using references when certain forms in the human skull can be illustrated particularly well with another animal’s skull (MA 2.2, 542). The animal skulls are thus clearly arranged in the text with respect to the argument so as to prove the presence of the intermaxillary bone in humans. After referring to other anatomical works, the text can thus conclude: There is thus no longer any doubt that this bone group is found in both humans and animals, although we can only precisely determine a part of the borders of this bone in our species, since the others are fused together and connected with the upper jaw in the most exact way. [Es wird also kein Zweifel übrig bleiben, daß diese Knochenabteilung sich sowohl bei Menschen als Tieren findet, ob wir gleich nur einen Teil der Grenzen dieses Knochens an unserem Geschlechte genau bestimmen können, da die übrigen verwachsen und mit der oberen Kinnlade auf das genaueste verbunden sind.] (MA 2.2, 543)

The text still tries to explain different expressions through different formations of the teeth and finally announces a large-scale series in the comparative study of bones, which would include fish and amphibians in addition to birds and whales. At this point, the text becomes programmatic for future studies: where its own sequence of different intermaxillary bones is incomplete and limited, it promises a complete sequence, which is unattainable and therefore also remains in the subjunctive, with a “detailed examination” [ausführliche[n] Betrachtung] (MA 2.2, 544) that would do justice to the “extraordinary diversity” [außerordentliche[n] Mannigfaltigkeit] (MA 2.2, 544) of the phenomenon: One could then go into more detail and, by progressively and precisely comparing several animals, advance from the simplest to the more composite, from the small and confined to the immense and expansive. What a gap there is between the os intermaxillare of the turtle and that of the elephant, and yet a series of forms can be placed between them that connects both. What nobody denies in the case of whole bodies could be shown here in a small part. [Man könnte alsdann mehr ins einzelne gehen und bei genauer stufenweiser Vergleichung mehrerer Tiere, vom Einfachsten auf das Zusammengesetztere, vom Kleinen und Eingeengten auf das Ungeheure und Ausgedehnte fortschreiten. Welch eine Kluft zwischen dem os intermaxillare der Schildkröte und des Elefanten, und doch läßt sich eine Reihe Formen dazwischen stellen die beide verbindet. Das was an ganzen Körpern niemand leugnet, könnte man hier an einem kleinen Teile zeigen.] (MA 2.2, 544–545)

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The complete sequence announced here no longer obeys the analytical principle of naming the various parts of the intermaxillary bone and then arranging the examples in such a way that the various aspects can be seen particularly clearly. Instead, this arrangement seeks to clarify the stages of anatomy. It thus answers much more than the question of the anatomical difference between apes and humans, because it dreams of the completeness and connection of discrete forms in the osteological suite. Form is here the keyword that defines the text. For instead of a “series of forms” [Reihe Formen] (MA 2.2, 545; LA I.9, 161), the first publication states a “series of beings” [Reihe Wesen] (FA I.24, 23) (Bräuning-Oktavio 1956, 50–51). While this substitution, which probably dates to 1786, clearly expresses the text’s theoretical intention, the original version suggests that the text intended to provide a more or less direct representation of a chain of beings in its proposed sequence (Bräuning-Oktavio 1956, 61).18 This chain would stabilize the zoological typology and contribute to “natural history” [Naturgeschichte] (MA 2.2, 545).19 The goal of these anatomical comparisons is clear: to find the common denominator of nature across its expressions and to establish that it remains “always the same, always more admirable” [immer gleich, immer mehr bewundernswürdig] (MA 2.2, 545). This common denominator is not, however, theoretically postulated but rather narratively established through metaleptic procedures – the comparative series with transferences without intermediary steps – that depict the different expressions of the intermaxillary bone so completely that it can also be found in the human skull.

5 A regulative principle: Causes and consequences What the osteological sequences of the texts I have so far analyzed lack is a regulative principle: they proceed for the most part descriptively and work through the commonalities and differences of anatomical structures. By contrast, in addition to a demand for uniform terminology, the “Versuch über die Gestalt der Tiere” postulates a regulative principle, which it develops with the osteological

 By contrast, Dorothea Kuhn is of the opinion that the change cannot be dated (FA I.24, 899).  The beginnings of this can be found in the “Beschreibung des Zwischenkieferknochens mehrerer Tiere bezüglich auf die beliebte Einteilung und Terminologie” [Description of the intermaxillary bone of multiple animals with regard to the favored classification and terminology], which describes the intermaxillary bones of the deer, hare, pig, and elephant in addition to those discussed so far.

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type and demonstrates with examples. Type thus explicitly becomes an epistemological key for both describing and explaining the forms of animals. The osteological texts thus increase their degree of abstraction and their claim to offer an explanation. If the “Naturgeschichtlicher Beitrag” first presents a typology of different skull bones, then this typology of the intermaxillary bone concentrates on a specific difference or commonality. In the “Versuch über die Gestalt der Tiere,” Goethe goes further by trying to explain the similarity of the different animals through their anatomy. For this purpose, he elevates type as the blueprint for an animal to the cause of anatomical development and conceives of individual animal species as merely differently formed realizations of this blueprint. In this text, Goethe thus makes a major inference about a prototype from a multitude of skulls. In deriving this prototype, he cannot avoid metaleptic procedures, which postulate necessity and reverse the inferential method. The “Versuch” is divided into three chapters, the first of which is further divided into three parts, while the second and third chapter are only fragmentary sketches. The first part summarizes research in comparative anatomy and formulates current problems in anatomy, which has, according to the text, developed a set of detailed descriptive tools for individual phenomena but makes erroneous inferences when it moves from these individual phenomena to a more general principle without a tertium comparationis. The second part abstractly explores various ways of overcoming this problem, and the third part finally proposes the osteological type as a tertium comparationis that would be a solution. A second and third chapter follow, but they – like the last sections of the third part – remain fragmentary and are only formulated in bullet points. In the introduction, entitled “Preliminary reminder” [Vorerinnerung], the “Versuch” already narrows down both parts of the title: instead of dealing with all animals, the text will confine itself to mammals, and instead of dealing with form in general, it will concentrate on osteology. “The author will save the rest for the future” [Das Übrige behält sich der Verfasser für die Zukunft vor] (MA 4.2, 134), but not without hinting at the inferential direction: from mammals, one can later make inferences about other animals, and from anatomical structure about “the softer parts of the structure” [auf die weicheren Teile des Gebäudes] (MA 4.2, 134). The first part of the “Versuch” reviews the state of the research in anatomy to identify desiderata. For this purpose, it analyzes the method anatomy uses to acquire knowledge. The task of anatomy is to make similarities visible through comparisons. But according to the text’s reproach, contemporary anatomy applies similarity insufficiently: the similarity of animals to each other is less problematic than the “similarity of animals to humans” [Ähnlichkeit der Tiere mit dem Menschen] (MA 4.2, 134). At the latest at this point, the method of anatomy, which does not go beyond “describing, dissecting, and arranging” [Beschreiben Zerglie-

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dern und Ordnen] (MA 4.2, 134), comes to its limits. The isolated examination of anatomical parts actually prevents comparisons because it develops separate terminologies: “riders, hunters, butchers” [Reiter, Jäger, Fleischer] (MA 4.2, 135) “each” have “their own” [jeder für sich] (MA 4.2, 135) terms for their objects and do not consider a common basis of comparison, which results in “false comparisons” [falsche Vergleichung] (MA 4.2, 135) that lead to false inferences. Elevating humans to the “basis of comparative anatomy” [Base der vergleichenden Anatomie] (MA 4.2, 135) also leads to false inferences because it “reduces” animal bone structure “to the terminology of human parts” [auf die Terminologie der menschlichen Teile reduziert] (MA 4.2, 135). Thus, a new basis is needed, a unified tertium comparationis, which Goethe has given himself the task of finding. The second part formulates the necessity of this tertium comparationis in a paragraph interspersed with conditional phrases and subjunctive formulations: But the way that science could now achieve consistency with so many excellent preparatory studies and with the daily continued work of so many individual people and even of whole schools, the way that a general guideline through the labyrinth of forms could be provided, and the way that a general framework in which every single observation could be laid down for general use could be developed appears to me to be if a general type would be elaborated and set up, a general schema to which both men and animals would be subordinated, with which the classes, species, genera would be compared, according to which they would be judged. [Wie nun aber gegenwärtig bei so vielen trefflichen Vorarbeiten bei täglich fortgesetzten Bemühungen so vieler einzelner Menschen, ja ganzer Schulen, die Wissenschaft auf einmal zur Konsistenz gelanget, ein allgemeiner Leitfaden durch das Labyrinth der Gestalten gegeben ein allgemeines Fachwerk, worin jede einzelne Beobachtung zum allgemeinen Gebrauch niedergelegt werden könne, aufzubauen wäre, scheint mir der Weg zu sein wenn ein allgemeiner Typus, ein allgemeines Schema ausgearbeitet und aufgestellt würde, welchem sowohl Menschen als Tiere untergeordnet blieben, mit dem die Klassen, die Geschlechter die Gattungen verglichen, wornach sie beurteilt würden.] (MA 4.2, 136)

A schema that spans the boundaries between humans and animals in anatomy, that does “not” proceed “empirically” [nicht empirisch] (MA 4.2, 136), but rather “rationally” [rationell] (MA 4.2, 136) attempts abstractions is thus the goal of anatomy. The argumentation of the “Versuch” is particularly striking when it comes to discrediting fallacies: it introduces a causal method of inference that “infers the consistency of the structure from a congruent form” [von der übereinstimmenden Gestalt, auf die Konsequenz des Baues] (MA 4.2, 137). Because the bone structure is the cause for the appearance of the form, the reverse inference also suggests itself. The “consistency of the structure” means that the bone structure is the consequence of the form (Wenzel 2012, 26). It can thus be inferred from the human form that the human skull possesses an intermaxillary bone, even if the bone itself is no

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longer visible in anatomical analysis because it is fused with neighboring bones. The inferential method thus inverts what the essay calls the “formation of a creature” [Bildung eines Geschöpfes] (MA 4.2, 136). The sequence of nature (first bones, then form) has a different direction than the sequence of epistemic representation (first form, then bones). The proposed type would decipher the “traces” [Spuren] (MA 4.2, 137) of formation and thus determine and establish to what extent each part is necessary and always present, whether it is sometimes merely concealed in a wonderful form, is accidentally hidden through a fusing of sutures, appears in a diminished number, is lost in a hardly identifiable trace, is largely subordinated, or even must be viewed as superseded. [bestimmen und festsetzen: inwiefern ein jeder Teil notwendig und immer gegenwärtig sei, ob er sich manchmal nur durch eine wunderbare Gestalt verberge durch eine Verwachsung der Suturen zufällig verstecke in verminderter Zahl erscheine sich bis [auf] eine kaum zu erkennende Spur verliere, für überwiegend untergeordnet oder gar als aufgehoben betrachtet werden müsse.] (MA 4.2, 137)

The method trained by this metaleptic rearrangement makes things visible that are not accessible to the eye; it finds sutures that are not there but must be there. The third part makes exactly this suggestion and once again shows how obsessively Goethe operates with causal structures. First, he announces that he will explain the “reasons” [Ursachen] (MA 4.2, 137) that led him to arrange the schema in the way he did. But before that, there are “some observations that must be dispatched with in advance” [einige Betrachtungen voraus zu schicken] (MA 4.2, 137). These observations represent a paradigm shift, because they no longer just compare different animals synchronically on the basis of their anatomical structures but look for the type in the diachronic development of individual animals: “it may be that such [bone groups, S. M.] can be clearly seen in some animal species in their fully grown state or in others only in younger animals, perhaps even only in embryos” [es mögen solche an einigen Tierarten in ihrem ausgewachsenen Zustande sich deutlich sehen lassen oder bei andern nur an jüngeren Tieren vielleicht gar nur an Embryonen zu erkennen sein] (MA 4.2, 138). It is no longer a matter of the synchronic comparison of different anatomical structures but of the diachronic development of these structures. The osteological sequence thereby acquires an additional temporal quality, because the bones are not simply arranged narratively but develop from each other. The type thus helps to identify bones and “how nature separates, forms, and determines them” [wie sie die Natur sondert bildet und bestimmt] (MA 4.2, 138), leading to “a higher standpoint of knowledge” [einen höhern Standpunkt der Erkenntnis] (MA 4.2, 139). It makes it possible to trace the manifold forms of nature back to certain laws but also demands a close look at these different formations. In contrast to, for instance, Goethe’s “Naturgeschichtlicher Beitrag

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zu Lavaters Physiognomischen Fragmenten,” it becomes possible “to even compare the animal with itself” [sogar das Tier mit sich selbst zu vergleichen] (MA 4.2, 139), that is, the realization with its type. Decisive variables of these formations are “size, position, direction, and proportion” [Größe, Lage, Richtung und Verhältnis] (MA 4.2, 139), but all of these can be traced back to the “invariable connection of the parts to each other” [unveränderliche Verbindung der Teile unter einander] (MA 4.2, 139). The text offers the skulls of animals as a first example of this inference. In doing so, the text posits not only that nature forms this main part of the animal structure according to one and the same pattern but also that it achieves its purpose in all of them through the same means, that the manifold beginnings of bones and the resulting bone groups are completely the same in the skulls of all animals and are basically present in the same manner, although in the most manifold modifications. [daß die Natur nicht allein diesen Hauptteil des tierischen Gebäudes, nach einem und demselben Muster bildet, sondern daß sie auch ihren Zweck bei allen durch einerlei Mittel erreicht, daß die mannigfaltigen Knochenanfänge und die daraus entstehenden Knochenabteilungen, an den Schädeln aller Tiere völlig dieselben, und überall im Grunde auf einerlei Weise, obgleich in den mannigfaltigsten Modifikationen gegenwärtig seien.] (MA 4.2, 140)

This pattern forms the type, which makes it possible to describe the common denominator of the anatomical structure and thereby also serves as a guideline for anatomical analysis. For if the form suggests that a bone part should be there, then it must be possible to find it: One will look for these parts carefully, and because one is sure that one must be able to find them, one will not rest until one has found them and precisely described their form and their relation to the other parts. [Man wird diese Teile sorgfältig aufsuchen und weil man gewiß daß man sie finden müsse nicht eher ruhen bis man sie ausgefunden und ihre Gestalt ihr Verhältnis gegen die übrigen Teile genau bezeichnet.] (MA 4.2, 140)

The “consistency of form” [Konsequenz der Gestalt] (MA 4.2, 140) thereby comes into its own; the type makes it possible to formulate a “principle of formation” [Bildungs-principio] (MA 4.2, 140) that – at least theoretically – does not stop at the process of formation and examines embryos and immature animals. The text concretizes its approach with two examples: the lacrimal bone of the ox and the connection of the upper jaw and the nasal bone in “fanged animals” [reißenden Tieren] (MA 4.2, 141) like the bear. In both cases, bones are joined that – according to the osteological blueprint – should not actually be joined. The contradiction can be resolved in both cases by tracing the bones back to the “os wormianum” [os wormianum] (MA 4.2, 142), which, as a suture bone, suggests the connection,

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even if it is no longer visible because it has fused with the other bones. Through the discovery of a “third bone point” [dritten Knochenpunkt[es]] (MA 4.2, 142) – in one case the fontanelle in the ox and in another the suture bone in the bear – Goethe can conclude that the blueprint is correct and has enabled the discovery of these barely visible or invisible bone parts. The text then breaks with its previous narrative procedure when it first repeats the already explained theses in bullet points and then fleshes them out to a certain extent. It is particularly striking that type, which is not conceptualized in the first section, is now explicitly referred to as an image. The “elaboration of this image” [Ausarbeitung dieses Bildes] (MA 4.2, 143) remains in the subjunctive, just as the text generally remains in the status of an announcement. Before the text tapers off in its cursorily drafted second and third chapters, the last paragraph of the first chapter also breaks off mid-sentence: If the sequence now shows that only from the most precise knowledge of these bone groups can the actual general type be elaborated and, finally, the intellectual point of comparison emerge, then hopefully the cause will [Wenn sich nun in der Folge zeigen wird; daß nur aus der genausten Kenntnis dieser Knochenabteilungen der eigentliche allgemeine Typus ausgearbeitet und zuletzt der geistige Punkt der Vergleichung hervorsteigen kann; so wird hoffentlich die Ursache] (MA 4.2, 145)

The approach to type, which is supposed to form the regulative principle of comparative osteology, ends with, of all things, the concept of cause. The “Versuch über die Gestalt der Tiere” represents a far-reaching milestone in Goethe’s osteological studies because it acknowledges diachronic development in the osteological sequence, which initially only relates different anatomical objects synchronically to each other. The search for a cause, which this development demands, nevertheless remains in the subjunctive and is finally terminated in, of all things, a hope for the discovery of the cause in a syntactic ellipsis.

6 The type of the animal skull: Sequence and structure In the “1. Abschnitt. Versuch einer allgemeinen Knochenlehre,” which the Frankfurter Ausgabe places under the general title “Zur Vergleichungslehre” [On the theory of comparison], a description of an animal skull shows concretely how metaleptic procedures produce the osteological sequence, thereby revealing its own epistemological structure. The essay no longer describes one or more specific animal skulls but rather the type of skull of the so-called higher animals, as

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the “Versuch über die Gestalt der Tiere” demanded. A typical skull stands for all the skulls of vertebrates; the inferential method is thus synecdochic. The order in which Goethe describes the eleven bones is therefore not arbitrary; their order constitutes a sequence, since this sequence stages itself as particularly suitable to the object, even as “natural” [natürlich] (MA 4.2, 146), and so employs motivations. But this natural sequence requires a justification, and here we find the remnants of physiognomy as analyzed at the beginning of this paper. While descriptions of the human skull begin with the frontal bone since it is significant for the intellectual activity that distinguishes “human nature” [menschliche Natur] (MA 4.2, 146), in the case of animals one has to start with the “tools of alimentation” [Werkzeuge[n] der Nahrung], because animals can be characterized by the way they eat. This bone “defines” [bestimmt] animals (MA 4.2, 147). The intermaxillary bone thus becomes the starting point for the narrative exploration of the typical animal skull. But by calling it the incisive bone, the “Versuch” explicitly gives it a different name and distances itself, at least terminologically, from the studies on the intermaxillary bone. Yet it states that this bone is “most curious” [höchst merkwürdig] (MA 4.2, 147) because “one can infer almost from it alone about the way of life of an animal” [fast allein, schon auf die Lebensweise eines Tieres schließen] (MA 4.2, 147). From its function in the animal’s feeding behavior and the resulting typology, Goethe comes to a description of the bone, which he now calls the “keystone” [Schlußstein] (MA 4.2, 147) of animal anatomy. By making this keystone the starting point of the narrative, the text suggests an inverted chronology for its narration, proceeding from the end to the beginning of bone formation. Related to this is the idea that the “Versuch” conceives of the type at this point as a kind of scaffolding that makes different variations possible: the type leaves open whether the animal has incisors and what exact form the various parts of the bone take; it is a system of potentiality. The text can accordingly assess a wide variety of mammals, from the ox and deer to the hare, bear, and walrus, to illustrate the same bone. Its equivalent task in food intake remains constant across all of them. From the intermaxillary bone, the text comes to the upper jaw, then to the cheekbone, and through the lacrimal bone to the palatine bone. Two narrative features are noteworthy in the description of these five bones. First, in a manner quite similar to the text on the intermaxillary bone, the bones are granted at least rhetorical agency when they become the subject of the description. Thus, different bones join together, allow openings, and demand closures. Second, the dominant first-person plural gives the impression of a guided description that leads from one station to the next. “We classify” [Wir teilen] (MA 4.2, 151), “We look for” [Wir suchen] (MA 4.2, 152) certain bones with their parts, and in doing so “we observe” [betrachten wir] (MA 4.2, 152) a whole range of phe-

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nomena. After the first five bones, the treatise pauses to recapitulate and move on to the other bones: We now want to take up the bones described so far in combination, in part to indicate the reasons why we took them up in this order, in part to compare them with each other, insofar as that can be done, in part also to have an overview of the structure as it has now been presented. [Wir wollen die bisher beschriebenen Knochen, nunmehr in einem Zusammenhange vornehmen, teils um die Ursachen anzuzeigen warum wir sie in dieser Ordnung vorgenommen, teils um sie, insofern es geschehen kann unter einander zu vergleichen, teils auch das Gebäude so weit es jetzt aufgeführt ist mit einem Blick zu übersehen.] (MA 4.2, 154)

Here the text not only synthesizes phenomena that were narrated successively; it also decidedly reflects on its arrangement, which is by no means necessary if we consider the diagram of a mammalian skull (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Schematic of a mammal skull in side view (MA 4.2, 1036).

Since Goethe does not explain the motives for the transitions between the individual bones, except for at the start, but only arranges them, he now belatedly provides this motivation and at the same time changes the point of view to create an overview. In doing so, Goethe first forms a group of three bones and thereby builds the basis for a “structure” [Gebäude] (MA 4.2, 155), which, however, “is missing both its content and its roof” [sowohl sein Inhalt als seine Decke fehle]

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(MA 4.2, 155) and also initially ignores the lower jaw. He thus does not really describe the anatomical structure of a skull but rather builds up his own object in linking the individual descriptions, as is indicated by the continual architectural metaphors. Unlike the metaphor of the keystone, however, these ones no longer argue starting from the end of bone formation but rather build a structure starting from the upper jaw as the foundation. As a “transition” [Übergang] (MA 4.2, 155) to the next six bones, each of which receives its own section in addition to the previous five, the text then describes six smaller bones and focuses on the ethmoid bone, which combines “strange characteristics” [sonderbare Eigenschaften] (MA 4.2, 157) and also threatens the arrangement of the narrative. For its structure actually suggests inferences about other bones, which, however, the textual organization forbids: At present, we can only hint at this concept here; and only in the future, when we can compare the labyrinth of the ethmoid bone with the body of the sphenoid bone, will it become apparent to what extent such an opinion is justifiable. [Wir können diesen Begriff gegenwärtig hier nur andeuten; und es wird erst künftighin, wenn wir das Labyrinth des Siebbeins mit dem Körper des Keilbeins vergleichen können, [sich zeigen] in wiefern solche Meinung Grund hat.] (MA 4.2, 157)

The labyrinth suggests that the metaphorical structure of the skull is not only traversed in this way but also formed. The terms become precarious in this context and endanger the continuous sequence of presentation: But only the announcement of all of these can be done at present, since these concepts can only be developed and confirmed by comparison in the sequence when we have put together the whole bone structure. [Es kann aber von allem diesen nur gegenwärtig die Anzeige getan werden, indem in der Folge wenn wir das ganze Knochengebäude zusammengestellt, durch Vergleichung diese Begriffe erst entwickelt und bestätiget werden können.] (MA 4.2, 157)

The “Versuch” thus persistently refuses to make its theses explicit and instead becomes lost in insinuations so as then to switch to the remaining six bones in the second half of the treatise. It is no coincidence that the second part starts with the frontal bone, which was the starting point for every description of the human skull, as the introduction demands. Here, however, the treatise must “distance itself completely from the concept the human frontal bone has impressed upon us” [von dem Begriff, den uns der menschliche Stirnknochen eingeprägt, völlig entfernen] (MA 4.2, 158). Now, instead of describing the frontal bone, the text makes a few observations that determine its relation to other bones of the skull. Only later does the text supply a “description of its general form” [Beschreibung der allgemeinen Gestalt] (MA 4.2, 160). Finally, when the

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seventh bone is described, the sphenoid bone again provides the opportunity to step back from the series of bones placed side by side: If we look at the structure we have presented so far as a whole, then we can continue to compare the parts of it with each other and make the things that have so far only been placed side by side more vivid to us through the lively faculty of judgment. [Betrachten wir das von uns bisher aufgeführte Gebäude im ganzen, so können wir fortfahren die Teile desselben unter einander zu vergleichen und die bisher nur neben einander gestellten Dinge uns durch die lebendige Kraft des Urteils auch lebendiger zu machen.] (MA 4.2, 163)

Once again, the text assembles groups and makes this grouping the basis of its comparison. The regulative principle of the narrative is thus hidden in the arrangement and its sylleptic conflations, which turn an underspecified juxtaposition into a narrative sequence. That the “Versuch” persistently employs building metaphors here – a building that the text creates, as it were, through metaleptic procedures in a series whose causes are only subsequently revealed – calls attention to the relations of equivalence that underlie the narrative sequence. The “Versuch” does not, however, explicate these relations of equivalence but rather produces them through metaleptic procedures. Form and osteological relation thus become the common denominator of frontal and nasal bones, despite their different sizes. The blueprint of the type emerges in the narrative generation of the skull as a structure. The remaining four bones form the “second section of the skull, which is simply easier to conceive and to connect forward and backward” [zweiten Abschnitt des Schädels [. . .] welcher einfach leichter zu denken und vor- und rückwärts zu verbinden ist] (MA 4.2, 163–164). The posterior sphenoid bone is connected to the temporal bone, the mastoid bone, and the petrous bone, and so it closes the building; the text explains the last parts of the posterior skull more strongly in connection to one another: the petrous bone, for example, as the last bone, is “difficult to describe without the connection to the previous ones” [ohne den Zusammenhang mit den vorigen schwer zu beschreiben] (MA 4.2, 167). After the petrous bone, Goethe concludes with an analogy between animals and humans. The last three bones are separately visible in animals, especially in goats; in humans, however, they are only visible after one has trained the skill of anatomical observation on animals. Here the text reverses the much-criticized direction of making inferences about animal anatomy from human anatomy. The human being can be known by analyzing animals. This animal is not, however, a simple individual but a type, which can only be known in the sequence of different animals and can also only be represented as such.

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7 Conclusion The four analyzed texts are thus characterized by a double increase in complexity, since both their objects and their narrative procedures become increasingly elaborate. The “Naturgeschichtlicher Beitrag zu Lavaters Physiognomischen Fragmenten” arranges a narrative sequence of different animals and infers their character traits through this sequence. This typological sequence is based on comparing them with humans, a comparison that is established through metaleptic procedures that suggest causality where there is only coincidence. The “Versuch aus der vergleichenden Knochenlehre” on the intermaxillary bone first adopts its approach from the “Naturgeschichtlicher Beitrag”: it describes a series of animal skulls and arranges them in a sequence. But it modifies the narrative procedure by explicitly comparing animal skulls in the sequence to cover all the variations of the intermaxillary bone, although a gapless series remains the unrealized goal. In any case, a regulative of this sequence, as this gapless series could provide, is first postulated in the “Versuch über die Gestalt der Tiere,” which identifies the type as the tertium comparationis for making analogous inferences from the comparison. The causality of the argument can be inverted with sylleptic transpositions such that the consistency of the structure promises to explain the consistency of the form. Finally, the “Versuch einer allgemeinen Knochenlehre” undertakes what the “Versuch über die Gestalt der Tiere” demands: with a type, it no longer explains different animal species but the genus of mammals; its inferential method depends on the basic synecdochic pattern, which sets a typical skull as a pattern for all vertebrates. The individual animal becomes an example for a type. This synecdochic procedure employs a metaphorical substitution that visualizes the skull as a structure and forms or constructs it in a successively arranged sequence of the represented bones according to the blueprint of the type. All the texts examined here as examples allow us to see how Goethe forms narrative sequences on his way from the physiognomy of animals to the osteological type. These narrative sequences lead from comparing arranged elements to an abstract model. Goethe’s early osteological writings thus show how an initially comparative method turns into a general theory of bones in the interplay of knowledge and narration in double sequences. For the comparative study of bones to become a general theory of bones, Goethe needs narrative procedures because only they make it possible to derive the common denominator for comparison and the laws of formation from dead animals. Goethe formulates these laws not in a propositional form but in a narrative form. By narrating bones, he at the same time reveals the basis of this narrative, because he connects the double temporal progression with conflicting motivations, and he can only perform his argument with this narrative freedom.

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References Axer, Eva, Eva Geulen, and Alexandra Heimes. 2019. “Zeit und Form im Wandel: Goethes Morphologie und ihr Nachleben im 20. Jahrhundert.” In Ästhetische Eigenzeiten: Bilanz der ersten Projektphase, edited by Michael Bies and Michael Gamper, 325–343. Hanover: Wehrhahn. Bies, Michael. 2012. Im Grunde ein Bild: Die Darstellung der Naturforschung bei Kant, Goethe und Alexander von Humboldt. Göttingen: Wallstein. Bräuning-Oktavio, Hermann. 1956. Vom Zwischenkieferknochen zur Idee des Typus: Goethe als Naturforscher in den Jahren 1780–1786. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth. Contzen, Eva von, and Stefan Tilg, eds. 2019. Handbuch Historische Narratologie. Stuttgart: Metzler. Genette, Gérard. 1980. Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Geulen, Eva. 2016. Aus dem Leben der Form: Goethes Morphologie und die Nager. Cologne: August. Geulen, Eva. 2017. “Keeping It Simple, Making It Difficult: Morphologische Reihen bei Goethe und anderen.” In Komplexität und Einfachheit: DFG-Symposion 2015, edited by Albrecht Koschorke, 357–373. Stuttgart: Metzler. Geulen, Eva. 2019. “Morphologie und gegenständliches Denken.” Goethe Yearbook 26: 3–15. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 1988. The Collected Works. Volume 12: Scientific Studies. Edited and translated by Douglas Miller. New York: Suhrkamp Publishers. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 1987–2013. Sämtliche Werke. Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche. 40 vols., edited by Hendrik Birus et al. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 1947 ff. Goethe. Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft. Complete edition with explanatory notes commissioned by the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, 11 text and 18 commentary vols., edited by Dorothea Kuhn, Wolf von Engelhardt, and Irmgard Müller. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 1985–1998. Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens. Münchner Ausgabe. 33 vols., edited by Karl Richter in collaboration with Herbert G. Göpfert, Norbert Miller, and Gerhard Sauder. Munich: C. Hanser. Gray, Richard T. 2003. “Goethe als Stiefvater der modernen Physiognomik.” In Körper – Diskurse – Praktiken: Zur Semiotik und Lektüre von Körpern in der Moderne, edited by Brigitte Prutti and Sabine Wilke, 93–125. Heidelberg: Synchron. Groddeck, Wolfram. 2008. Reden über Rhetorik. Zu einer Stilistik des Lesens. Frankfurt a.M./Basel: Stroemfeld. Günzler, Claus. 1964. Das Teleologieproblem bei Kant und Goethe. Freiburg i.Br.: Druck R. Oberkirch. Heusser, Peter, ed. 2000. Goethes Beitrag zur Erneuerung der Naturwissenschaften. Bern: Haupt. Jannidis, Fotis. 1996. Das Individuum und sein Jahrhundert: Eine Komponenten- und Funktionsanalyse des Begriffs ‘Bildung’ am Beispiel von Goethes ‘Dichtung und Wahrheit.’ Tübingen: Niemeyer. King, Martina. 2017. “‘Ich habe im Sommer des Jahres 1838 eine Reihe von Beobachtungen angestellt’: Naturwissenschaftliches Erzählen im frühen 19. Jahrhundert.” Diegesis 6 (1): 20–45. Kleinschnieder, Manfred. 1971. Goethes Naturstudien: Wissenschaftstheoretische und -geschichtliche Untersuchungen. Bonn: Bouvier. Koschorke, Albrecht. 2012. Wahrheit und Erfindung: Grundzüge einer allgemeinen Erzähltheorie. Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer. Kuhn, Dorothea. 1997. “Goethe und die Biologie.” In Ein unteilbares Ganzes: Goethe, Kunst und Wissenschaft, edited by Günter Schnitzler and Gottfried Schramm, 323–357. Freiburg i.Br.: Rombach.

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Lorenz, Ute. 1996. “Sprache als wissenschaftshistorischer Faktor: Eine wissenschaftssoziologische und sprachrezeptive Untersuchung zu Goethes Aufsatz über den Zwischenkieferknochen.” Goethe Jahrbuch 113: 85–103. Mattenklott, Gert. 1984. “Goethe als Physiognomiker.” In Goethe: Vorträge aus Anlaß seines 150. Todestages, edited by Thomas Clasen and Erwin Leibried, 125–141. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang. Matussek, Peter, ed. 1998. Goethe und die Verzeitlichung der Natur. Munich: Beck. Meixner, Sebastian. 2019a. “Erkennen und Erzählen: Zu einer historischen Narratologie des 18. Jahrhunderts.” Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert 43 (1): 28–47. Meixner, Sebastian. 2019b. Narratologie und Epistemologie: Studien zu Goethes frühen Erzählungen. Berlin: De Gruyter. Morgan, Mary S. 2017a. “Narrative Ordering and Explanation.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 62: 86–97. Morgan, Mary S. 2017b. “Introduction: Narrative Science and Narrative Knowing.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 62: 1–5. Müller-Sievers, Helmut. 1998. “Skullduggery: Goethe and Oken, Natural Philosophy and Freedom of the Press.” Modern Language Quarterly 59 (2): 231–259. Niekerk, Carl. 1995. “‘Individuum est ineffabile’: Bildung, der Physiognomikstreit und die Frage nach dem Subjekt in Goethes ‘Wilhelm-Meister’-Projekt.” Colloquia Germanica 28 (1): 1–33. Pier, John. 2014. “Narrative Levels.” In The Living Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn et al., Paragraphs 1–4. Hamburg: Hamburg University Press. http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/node/ 32.html. Pörksen, Uwe. 1986. Deutsche Naturwissenschaftssprachen: Historische und kritische Studien. Tübingen: Narr. Pörksen, Uwe. 1999. Raumzeit: Goethes Zeitbegriff, abgelesen an seinen sprachlichen und zeichnerischen Naturstudien. Stuttgart: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur. Saltzwedel, Johannes. 1993. Das Gesicht der Welt: Physiognomisches Denken in der Goethezeit. Munich: Fink. Schäfer, Armin. 2009. “‘Ich lehre nicht, ich erzähle’: Versuch über einen Essay von Goethe.” In Versuchsanordnungen 1800, edited by Sabine Schimma and Joseph Vogl, 175–188. Zurich/Berlin: Diaphanes. Wellbery, David E. 1996. “Zur Physiognomik des Genies: Goethe/Lavater; ‘Mahomeths Gesang.’” In Geschichten der Physiognomik: Text, Bild, Wissen, edited by Rüdiger Campe and Manfred Schneider, 331–356. Freiburg i.Br.: Rombach. Wenzel, Manfred. 1982. “Goethe und Darwin: Goethes morphologische Schriften in ihrem naturwissenschaftlichen Kontext.” PhD diss., Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Wenzel, Manfred. 1983. “Goethe und Darwin: Der Streit um Goethes Stellung zum Darwinismus in der Rezeptionsgeschichte der morphologischen Schriften.” Goethe-Jahrbuch 100: 145–158. Wenzel, Manfred, ed. 2012. Goethe-Handbuch: Supplemente 2: Naturwissenschaften. Stuttgart: Metzler. Wyder, Margrit. 2004. “Von der Stufenleiter der Wesen zur Metamorphosenlehre: Goethes Morphologie und ihre Gesetze.” In Von der Pansophie zur Weltweisheit: Goethes analogischphilosophische Konzepte, edited by Hans-Jürgen Schrader and Katharine Weder, 31–53. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Angela Gencarelli

The ‘Mystery’ of Quantum Physics: Narrating the Wave-Particle Duality in a Richard Feynman Lecture 1 Introduction Ever1 since narratology has extended its area of study to include the vast field of factual narratives – or, more catchy, “reality narratives” [Wirklichkeitserzählungen] (Klein and Martínez 2009)2 – the sciences have always been on the list of potential fields of investigation.3 Of particular interest has been the extent to which narrative has been able to gain a foothold in a field that, according to its own self-understanding, is committed to “‘explaining’ rather than interpretively understanding the world” and “whose textual production is seen merely as a transparent medium for transmitting these facts” (Brandt 2009, 81).4 Indeed, it is not obvious that precisely the supposedly soft cultural technique of narration is to be found in the supposedly hard sciences, especially in their “textual production.” At least one of the central conventions of scientific writing, to which the literary scholar and linguist Harald Weinrich has drawn attention, seems to oppose this assumption: Weinrich (1989) describes essential cross-disciplinary5 features of scientific language as a set of three prohibitions: “First prohibition: a scientist does not say ‘I’” (132). “Second prohibition: a scientist does not narrate” (135). And the “[t]hird prohibition: a scientist does not use metaphors” (138).6 To

 I’d like to thank Melissa Ann Sheedy (University of Wisconsin-Madison) for both her excellent proofreading of this article and her thoughtful advice regarding style and translation.  All translations of quotations from the German are mine. The original wording will be included either in the footnotes or in the main text in square brackets.  Arianna Borrelli is the first to provide an instructive research report that takes into account studies on the significance of narrative in the sciences from the standpoint of both narrative research and science studies. Cf. Borrelli (2020). On the narratological exploration of physics see also: Gencarelli (2017), Leane (2007), and Mecke (2015).  Transl. by A.G. “das ‘Erklären’ von Welt und weniger deren interpretatorisches Verstehen”; “dessen Textproduktion lediglich als transparentes Medium zur Vermittlung dieser Fakten gesehen wird.”  In his study, Weinrich does not distinguish between the ‘natural sciences’ and the humanities, but rather he aims to draw attention to cross-disciplinary characteristics of scientific languages.  Transl. by A.G. “Erstes Verbot: Ein Wissenschaftler sagt nicht ‚ich‘.”; “Zweites Verbot: Ein Wissenschaftler erzählt nicht.”; “Drittes Verbot: Ein Wissenschaftler benutzt keine Metaphern.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111319971-004

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address the second prohibition, the ban on narration, Weinrich draws on the modern science of biology. Using Watson and Crick’s paper on the discovery of DNA as an example, he points out that narrative accounts of new findings are not part of the accepted repertoire of scientists in the twentieth century. At most, there is a brief report that quickly gives way to the “actual scientific procedure,” namely “the argumentation” (Weinrich 1989, 136).7 In addition, the avoidance of the first person pronoun, the ‘I-taboo,’ as identified by Weinrich, also seems to contradict the notion, sometimes expressed as a matter of course, that scientists are to be classified alongside storytellers:8 If the writing scientist, the “agent [agens]” (Weinrich 1989, 133), has to be grammatically erased or at least rhetorically veiled in the name of ‘objective truth,’9 there is little room left for creating narratives that are hardly conceivable without protagonists.10 And finally, a further central convention of scientific writing not considered by Weinrich seems to prevent any narrative digressions of researchers: In the modern sciences, especially in physics, textual production is based on the directive of using formulae, a ‘formula imperative’ (to put it in Weinrich’s manner).11 The imperative to use mathematical language in order to establish natural laws also sets tight limits on the creation of narrative, since the abstract language of mathematics is incompatible with central narrative qualities such as vividness [Anschaulichkeit] or experientiality [Erfahrungshaftigkeit]. In short, the outlined writing and presentation directives, which affect the broad spectrum of a discipline’s text types (Weinrich 1989, 140–146), appear downright hostile to narrative, especially in physics. If one finally considers that narration is frowned upon by scientists because “narratives are traditionally associated with fiction,” especially by researchers “working in fields like fundamental physics, where the ‘facts’ being presented for the most part lack plausible referents in intermediate experience” (Borrelli 2020, 430), it is reasonable to assume that this cultural technique has not played too great a role in physics since the last12 century.

 Transl. by A.G. “das eigentlich wissenschaftliche Verfahren, nämlich das Argumentieren.”  In Priya Venkatesan Hays’ narratological study on molecular biology, for example, one can read generalizing statements such as the following: “[S]cience is an entity of storytelling” (2006, 5).  Hans-Jörg Rheinberger has also drawn attention to the grammatical erasure of the author in scientific texts (2005, 88).  Monika Fludernik has particularly emphasized this aspect (2013, 14–15).  On the use of formulae in scientific texts, see: Niederhauser (1996, 48–51).  Bea Klüsener and Joachim Grzega have pointed out that numerous “discourse types” such as monographs, papers, textbooks, or lectures, especially in the ‘natural sciences’, still worked “with narrative elements” in the nineteenth century (2009, 1491). Accordingly, the prohibitions pointed out by Weinrich, especially the ban on narrative, are not fixed and timeless, but rather have a historical index. According to Klüsener and Grzega, conventions such as the avoidance of narra-

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However, as is well known, commandments and prohibitions exist in order to be broken. The behavior of physicist Richard P. Feynman is a prime example: He is considered one of the most unconventional scientists, famous for breaking all the rules (Davies 2011, xii).13 In addition to his technical contributions in fields such as quantum electrodynamics, the Nobel laureate is best known for the Feynman Lectures on Physics, held in the early 1960s. The lectures, published in three volumes in 1964,14 are considered anything but “conventional teaching texts” in terms of “style and presentation” (Davies 2011, xiii). For this reason, the lectures have become one of the most successful textbooks on physics (Resag 2018, 239). A “highlight” (Resag 2018, 228) of the three volumes is Feynman’s lecture on the “heart of quantum mechanics” (Feynman 1971a, 2), that is, the wave-particle duality. In this lecture, as my paper demonstrates, Feynman not only breaks with the ‘I-taboo,’ but he also undermines the commandment to introduce the “novice[s]” (Feynman 1971a, 2) to one of the basic elements of quantum mechanics in the usual way, namely by means of “the full machinery of the differential equation approach” (Feynman 1971b, v). Instead, he unfolds the physical paradox in a pronounced narrative manner, thereby also subverting the ban on narration. This paper aims at a close narratological analysis of Feynman’s lecture on the “mysterious” quantum behavior (Feynman 1971a, 2). It will demonstrate that the physicist employs both elementary and sophisticated narrative techniques in order to give the central paradox of quantum behavior a vivid and comprehensible form. Feynman’s approach mainly comprises the construction of a central acting instance, the narrative visualization [Veranschaulichung] of the behavior of atomic objects in a special experimental setting, and the narrative staging [In-SzeneSetzen] of the inexplicable “mystery” of quantum behavior (Feynman 1971a, 2), in-

tive elements in scientific prose, which are still valid today, emerged at the end of the nineteenth century (2009, 1491).  Paul Davies portrayed Feynman as a person who rode “roughshod over t[he] strict code of practice” in physics, including “rigorous formalisms” (2011, xii). Furthermore, Feynman, according to Davies, “treated authority and the academic establishment with [. . .] disrespect” and had a “distaste for formality” (2011, xii).  For publication, the lectures were edited by Feynman’s Caltech colleagues Robert Leighton and Matthew Sands, “sometimes extensively and sometimes less so,” as Feynman acknowledges in the preface (1971b, iii). Their names therefore appear alongside Feynman’s on the book cover. In the preface of the Millennium Edition, Leighton and Sands are even listed as Feynman’s coauthors (Thorne 2015, ix). However, I speak decidedly of Feynman’s lectures, since the physicist devised them himself (with the exception of two lectures prepared by Sands, as Feynman explicitly mentions (1971b, v)). Leighton and Sands have also emphasized that the lectures were Feynman’s work and thus followed his specific approach (Leighton 1977, 7; Sands 1971, viii).

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cluding all complications that arise in the attempt of its elucidation. Finally, Feynman constructs a dramatic course of a series of experiments in which the waveparticle duality emerges as the event in the history of physics, breaking all norms and expectations. The disclosure of the lecture’s pronounced narrative character does not aim, however, at classifying Feynman’s lecture or scientific texts of physicists in general as merely fiction and thus accusing scientists of being unscientific, which has been claimed occasionally in the course of social constructivist attacks on science.15 Rather, this paper reveals the extent to which precisely these narrative elements and techniques employed by Feynman contribute to fostering a deeper understanding of the wave-particle duality on the part of both the “novice[s]” and the “experienced physicist[s]” (Feynman 1971a, 2). In this respect, narrative turns out to be not just an arbitrary didactic ingredient enhancing the entertainment factor of a physics lecture about a ‘dry’ subject matter, but rather a powerful instrument of communicating knowledge within a scientific discipline.16

2 Narrating the “heart of quantum mechanics” From 1961 to 1963, Feynman delivered his “legendary” (Resag 2018, 137) Lectures on Physics at Caltech. The lectures were part of a two-year introductory physics course that was soon attended not only by undergraduates, but also by graduate students and faculty members (Goodstein and Neubauer 1989, 27–28). One could say that Feynman’s lectures on the fundamentals of physics such as thermodynamics, mechanics, electromagnetism, gravitation, and quantum mechanics were an event in the academic world of physics not to be missed. In 1964, the lectures were published as a revised textbook consisting of three volumes, which have been translated into a dozen languages and reprinted several times, most recently in 2015 in a digital “New Millennium Edition” (Feynman et al. 2015). The lectures have been praised by physicists especially for their “distinctive Feynman style” (Davies 2011, xi). With this phrase, Davies and other physicists (e.g., Resag 2018, 67, 220) describe both Feynman’s specific style of thinking and his way of presenting abstract quantum phenomena. As Davies puts it, instead of using “mathematical machinery” and “complicated systems of equations,” Feynman approached quantum mechanics

 Rom Harré considers the polished or embellished version of the research process in the scientific paper a “tale,” “a piece of fiction” (1990, 86).  According to Rosemarie Gläser, lectures, textbooks, and other texts with didactic purposes are part of the internal communication of science and show a high degree of specialization and technical expertise (1990, 47, 50).

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with “intuition,” “just the right analogy or everyday illustration,” and “lucidity” (2011, xi–xiv). In particular, the 21 lectures on quantum mechanics in the third volume have been considered a special sample of the “Feynman style.” From the series of lectures, physicists have singled out the first lecture on the “mysterious behavior” (Feynman 1971a, 2) of matter and light as being an “absolute highlight” (Resag 2018, 228) and a “masterly analysis” of the fundamental paradox (Davies 2011, xvi).17 This lecture may indeed be considered a “highlight” not only from the technical perspective of physicists but also from a narratological viewpoint, since Feynman approaches the “mystery” of quantum mechanics, as he puts it, in an “imaginative fashion” (1971a, 2), namely through narration. However, it is important to point out that Feynman does not exclusively make use of narrative modes of presenting the waveparticle duality; his lecture also includes argumentative passages,18 mathematical formulas, and visualizations, including graphical representations. Nevertheless, narrative plays a crucial role in the text. This can be seen immediately in the central position that narrative occupies in the overall structure of the text: The lecture, which is divided into three parts,19 begins with a brief argumentative introduction in which Feynman hints at the “strange” behavior of atomic objects that act “like nothing that you have ever seen” (1971a, 1). In the concluding summary, which also has an argumentative character, he confirms his opening statement that quantum behavior is inexplicable. Furthermore, he draws the far-reaching conclusion that physics has given up trying to solve the puzzle (1971a, 14). These two parts constitute the frame for the extensive main section and core of the lecture. Here, Feynman unfolds the fundamental paradox of quantum behavior of atomic objects, the wave-particle duality, by means of a well-composed sequence of experiments. It is in this key part of the lecture, especially in the representation of the individual experiments and in the dramaturgy of the series of experiments, that some fundamental narrative modes come into play in a constitutive way. In the main part of his lecture, Feynman presents a series of vivid experiments in order to make the abstract paradox of wave-particle duality comprehensible:  The lecture was published separately alongside five others under the title “Six Easy Pieces” in order to make it accessible to a wide(r) audience. However, the “Six Easy Pieces” are not to be confused with popular scientific texts. Rather, the editors use this title to refer to the fortunate instance that “Feynman chose to present certain key topics in largely qualitative terms without formal mathematics” (Leighton and Sands 2011, vii).  Frederic Holmes is among the few scholars who have paid special attention to argumentation and narration as well as their specific interplay in scientific texts (1991).  The three parts of the lecture are followed by a brief coda (Feynman 1971a, 14–15), which is separated from the main text. Since this concluding section is not part of the storyline of the preceding parts, it will not be considered further here.

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“We try to understand the quantum behavior of electrons,” which are considered representative of atomic objects behaving in the same way, by studying “their behavior [. . .] in a particular experimental setup” (1971a, 2). This introductory comment already points to a central dimension of Feynman’s style of presentation: Instead of using abstract mathematics (“full machinery of differential equations approach”), he obviously wants to demonstrate how electrons behave in a “particular experimental setup.” This is of fundamental importance, since the abstract quantum paradox is thus translated into a sequence of events, which in turn brings narrative into play as an appropriate form of representation. However, this level of action – namely the behavior of electrons under certain experimental conditions – is not the only one which contributes to the narrativity of Feynman’s lecture. Rather, the quote just cited reveals a further important protagonist: Feynman describes the quantum behavior through the lens of an imaginary we-instance who is explicitly present almost throughout the entire lecture.20 Omnipresent phrases such as “we do/make,” “we see,” “we find,” or “we conclude” (Feynman 1971a, passim) indicate that the imaginary we-speaker is the central acting, observing, and

 I use the term imaginary we-speaker/we-protagonist to indicate that the we-instance is a constructed character in the text who acts, observes, and reflects in the course of investigating the quantum “mystery.” Therefore, the we-speaker/we-protagonist cannot be equated with Feynman and the addressed audience. To make this argument clear, the referential values of the firstperson plural pronoun must be considered: As linguist Johannes Helmbrecht has pointed out, the prototypical use of ‘we’ refers to the actual “speaker plus various sets of addressees and nonspeech act participants” (2002, 44). Although at first glance it appears that Feynman’s ‘we’ refers precisely to himself as well as to the original listeners of his lectures and the later readers of the published book (= “non-speech act participants”), the text proves otherwise: The we-instance in Feynman’s text performs experiments, makes observations, and draws conclusions that were in fact not performed, observed, or inferred by himself and the audience (listeners or readers), but by the scientific community of quantum physicists. Feynman’s ‘we’ is thus to be seen against the backdrop of the collective process of scientific knowledge acquisition. Hence, Feynman allows (or forces) the ‘we’-speaker to ‘see’ exactly those things that have already been observed by the scientific community. However, some imputed reactions of the ‘we’-instance (e.g., astonishment in view of unusual quantum behavior) may also refer to the ‘novices’ addressed (or, more precisely, to the implicit reader who is imputed with assumptions about ‘novices’). Furthermore, Feynman at times uses the pronoun ‘we’ to refer to himself and his colleagues Robert Leighton and Matthew Sands, who edited the published volume. Feynman’s use of ‘we’ is thus quite complex and has different referential values (as is true for this pronoun in general; Helmbrecht 2002, 33). Christina Brandt, who examined articles of biology from the second half of the twentieth century, has also pointed out that “an acting ‘we’ [handelndes Wir]” (2014, 31), which is common in papers with multiple authorship, is a “hybrid construct [hybrides Gefüge]” (52) that shows the conflicting tendencies to anonymize authorship and to articulate positions of the acting subject(s) (52–53).

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reflecting entity.21 With regard to the lecture genre, the we-mode may not be surprising at first glance: Since the speaker and the audience are usually co-present during a lecture, the use of we-perspective is an obvious gesture to engage with the audience. Especially when it comes to communicating science to newcomers, the integrating gesture aims to motivate the audience to actively participate. However, Feynman’s extensive use of the we-mode cannot be attributed to didactic considerations alone. Rather, it serves the physicist’s approach of making the abstract quantum paradox a matter of experience: Precisely by constructing a we-protagonist, Feynman turns his audience into participating observers who experience (or ‘see’) how the object under investigation behaves. As will be shown, Feynman’s lecture gains an increasing degree of narrativity on both of these levels of action: on the level of the observed objects and the observing instance. In order to demonstrate quantum behavior, Feynman chooses a “particular experimental setup,” the so-called double-slit experiment (or two-slit experiment), which has become famous among physicists due to its clarity and vividness:22 “We first consider,” as Feynman opens the series of experiments, “the behavior of bullets,” which he uses as an example of the “familiar behavior” of large, or macroscopic, objects (1971a, 2). The simple experimental setup is described by Feynman as follows: We have a machine gun that shoots a stream of bullets. It is not a very good gun, in that it sprays the bullets (randomly) over a fairly large angular spread [. . .]. In front of the gun we have a wall (made of armor plate) that has in it two holes just about big enough to let a bullet through. Beyond the wall is a backstop (say a thick wall of wood) which will ‘absorb’ the bullets when they hit it. In front of the wall we have an object which we shall call a ‘detector’ of bullets. It might be a box containing sand. Any bullet that enters the detector will be stopped and accumulated [. . .]. The detector can be moved back and forth (1971a, 2).

Even if this text passage appears rather descriptive at first glance, it has a narrative core. Following historian of science Frederic L. Holmes, it can be argued that any “experimentation has an intrinsic chronological structure which makes narrative

 Feynman’s explicitly presented we-speaker/we-protagonist stands out in view of the “anonymized scientific communication of the late nineteenth and twentieth century that declares both author and reader an unmarked category” (“anonymisierte[] Wissenschaftskommunikation des späten 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, die sowohl den Autor als auch den Leser zur unmarkierten Kategorie erklärt,” King 2017, 38).  Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the double-slit experiment and its different variants have played a major role in demonstrating the particle and wave nature of light and matter. In 2002, the double-slit experiment with electrons was voted the “most beautiful experiment in physics” by the physics community (Crease 2002, 19–20).

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the natural mode in which to describe it” (1991, 179). A chronological structure, which has likewise been seen as a basic criterion of narrative in narratological studies (e.g., Chatman 1990, 9), is also evident in Feynman’s experimental setup: A gun fires bullets at random; some bullets pass through the holes in the wall, while others “may bounce off the edges of the hole” (Feynman 1971a, 2). In the first case, bullets hit the backstop (i.e., second wall) at a certain point and will be registered by a detector. Since this temporal sequence of events emerges as the organizing principle of Feynman’s description of the experimental setup, this description may already be considered narrative in a basic sense.23 After introducing the experimental setup, Feynman asks the audience to imagine the experimental process, namely the simple sequence of events (1971a, 2) just mentioned. He then focuses on the experimental findings, visualizing what “we” find at the backstop wall with the detector after firing numerous bullets: “We see,” as Feynman proceeds, that the bullets, after having passed either hole 1 or 2, “always arrive in lumps,” and in the detector “we find [. . .] always one whole bullet” (1971a, 3). The same applies “if we do our experiment again after covering up hole 2, and once more while covering up hole 1” (1971a, 3). Furthermore, Feynman points out that the bullets strike some areas of the wall more frequently, for example when the detector “is on a straight line with the gun” and either hole 1 or 2, and the bullets are able to pass through the holes more or less directly without any deflection (1971a, 3). From the point of view of narrative researchers, who might bear in mind the sophisticated narrative techniques of literature, this account of the double-slit experiment with bullets seems to be a rather basic form of narrative, or a “minimal narrative [Minimalerzählung],”24 since it focuses on a rudimentary and ordinary course of events in a simple experimental setup. Feynman himself seems to reduce the narrative features of this section even more: He undermines any element of surprise and excitement when he identifies the behavior of the bullets as completely familiar and totally in line with expectations (1971a, 2). It should be noted, however, that Feynman’s narrative of the ordinary behavior of bullets il Chatman distinguishes narrative from description according to the fact that the former is based on a temporal structure, while the latter follows a more random logic (1990, 9). Taking Feynman as an example, it can be argued that description has a narrative character in cases in which it follows a temporal order.  According to Martínez, minimal narratives fulfill the basic criterion of representing a temporally ordered sequence of events related to each other (2017, 2–3). However, Martínez regards the criterion of the representation of events a “necessary but not a sufficient feature of narratives” (2017, 3). Rather, he defines narrative by the catchy formula that narrative is “representation of events + x,” in which the variable ‘x’ represents various additional factors such as eventfulness, tellability, or the narrator (2017, 3–6).

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lustrates a fundamental natural law: Projectiles such as bullets have a defined trajectory that is influenced by environmental conditions and circumstances. Nevertheless, bullets will arrive at a specific point which, if all conditions are known, is precisely predictable, just as the flight path itself. In this respect, it is reasonable to consider such minimal narratives, which illustrate natural laws through a sequence of events (in an experimental setting), as a fundamental narrative form in the sciences, particularly in physics. Apart from that, Feynman’s representation of the bullet experiment is far from being the climax or the conclusion of his lecture. On the contrary, Feynman points to this example only as a contrast to the completely unusual quantum behavior of electrons, which is “absolutely impossible [. . .] to explain” (1971a, 2). To illustrate how the quantum behavior of electrons differs radically from the behavior of bullets, Feynman draws on a “thought experiment,” which, as he admits, is impossible to conduct due to the required small scale of the apparatus (1971a, 6). Nevertheless, he has chosen this experiment, as he adds, “because it shows the effects” that have already come to light in many real experiments (1971a, 6).25 In the case of this modified experiment, the audience is asked to imagine an electron gun instead of the former machine gun, a metal plate with two holes instead of the armor plate, and, instead of the bullet detector, a Geiger counter as a detecting device, connected to a loudspeaker (1971a, 5–6). The acoustic devices added in the experimental setup already hint at the importance of audible impressions in Feynman’s subsequent account of the (imagined) events occurring in the experiment: “The first thing we notice with our electron experiment is that we hear sharp ‘clicks’ from the detector (that is, from the loudspeaker) [. . .]. We would also notice that the ‘clicks’ come very erratically. Something like: click . . . . .click-click . . . click . . . . . . . .click-click . . . . . . click . . ., etc.” (1971a, 6). Even more clearly than in the case of the first experiment with bullets, Feynman now uses typical narrative techniques such as visualizing (Brosch 2017, 293–302) experimental events by describing in detail the visual and/or acoustic perceptions when looking at the imagined experiment. Feynman even attempts to imitate the experimental events by re-enacting the speed of the electrons (the “rate of clicks,” 1971a, 7) when hitting the detector at the backstop wall. In this way, Feynman creates the impression that the observed events are taking place right in front of the audience witnessing the experimental scene. It is precisely by describing in detail what “we see,” “hear,” or “notice” while ‘looking’ at the experiments set into scene that the physicist evokes experientiality, a central

 The diffraction experiment with electrons described by Feynman had actually already been conducted by Claus Jönsson in 1959. Feynman was obviously not aware of this experiment when he was writing his lectures (Resag 2018, 228).

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narrative effect.26 In terms of narrativity, this account therefore clearly exceeds the first minimal narrative of the bullet experiment. The narrativity of Feynman’s account of the electron experiment increases even more when the physicist goes into further detail regarding the unexpected behavior of the “epistemic thing” (H.-J. Rheinberger): Although the electrons strike the backstop wall with the ‘clicks’ described by Feynman, their probability of arrival by no means corresponds to the probability of arrival of the bullets. Rather, the distribution of electrons at the backstop wall indicates that the electrons interfere with each other (1971a, 7). This “interference” phenomenon Feynman had reported and illustrated a few pages earlier via his account of a doubleslit experiment with water waves: When a water wave hits the wall with two holes, it “is diffracted at the holes, and new circular waves spread out from each hole” (1971a, 4). Depending on their wavelength and amplitude, the waves either interfere “constructively,” meaning that their “peaks add together,” or they interfere “destructively” and thus their intensity decreases (1971a, 5). While the “interference effects” (1971a, 10) are not unusual in the case of water waves, the interference of matter such as electrons is completely unexpected or “mysterious,” as Feynman puts it (1971a, 2). It is even more “mysterious,” since electrons, which have long been considered to be corpuscles (or “lumps” such as bullets), behave as if they were “particle waves” (1971a, 1) passing through both holes at the same time, interfering with each other, and finally arriving, nevertheless, at the backstop wall with single “clicks,” that is, as “lumps” (= particles). However, Feynman precisely deduces this result from his narrative account of the thought experiment with electrons: “The electrons arrive in lumps, like particles, and the probability of arrival of these lumps is distributed like the distribution of intensity of a wave” (1971a, 8). Feynman has thus arrived at the core of the waveparticle duality: It states that, under certain conditions, an electron (or matter and light in general, 1971a, 1) “behaves sometimes like a particle and sometimes like a wave” (1971a, 8). This behavior poses a riddle, since the corpuscle and wave nature of matter and light are mutually exclusive or “complementary,” as physicists say, or in other words: Particles are ‘local,’ whereas waves are spatially extended. Complications like these are to be considered the “center of energy [Kraftzentrum]” in ideal-typical narratives, as Albrecht Koschorke points out in his study dedicated to the general theory of narrative (2018, 50). This is also true in Feynman’s case: It is immediately striking that Feynman does not simply state that the

 For Monika Fludernik, experientiality, i.e., “the quasi-mimetic evocation of ‘real-life experience’” (1996, 12), is the core element of narrative.

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strange quantum behavior is “absolutely impossible to explain.” Rather, he highlights the inexplicability of quantum behavior in a particular way: “How can such an interference come about? [. . .] Perhaps [the electrons] go in a [. . .] complicated way. They split in half . . . [. . .]. [P]erhaps some of them go through [hole] 1, and then they go around through 2, and then around a few more times, or by some other complicated path . . .” (1971a, 7). With these speculations, Feynman gives the impression that the puzzling quantum behavior calls for equally puzzling explanations (or attempts at explanation). Moreover, this passage makes clear that the increasing degree of narrativity in Feynman’s lecture is also a result of the specific way of representing the behavior of the object observed: Feynman sets the quantum paradox into scene by narrating vividly and in detail the strange or almost absurd actions of the electrons at the double slit. By pointing out more and more complications, Feynman further emphasizes both the absurdity and the mysteriousness of quantum behavior: “We block off hole 2 and make our counts of the clicks from the detector,” (1971a, 7) and then “we observe” the following: “There are some points at which very few electrons arrive when both holes are open, but which receive many electrons if we close one hole, so closing one hole increased the number from the other. [. . .] It is all quite mysterious. And the more you look at it the more mysterious it seems” (1971a, 7–8). At the latest in this passage it becomes apparent that the pronounced narrative character of Feynman’s lecture arises precisely on both levels of action,27 the level of the observed objects and the imaginary observer instance, and their specific interplay: Narrativity is increased here by both the detailed account of the unusual behavior of the observed objects and by the reactions of the observer, who is apparently more and more affected by the enigmatic actions of the electrons. By describing the observer’s reactions, Feynman clearly aims to evoke similar reactions on the part of the ‘real’ audience. Besides astonishment, the physicist intends to trigger suspense and curiosity by pointing to the mystery of quantum mechanics and simultaneously postponing its resolution. This approach inevita It is noteworthy that the two different levels of action in Feynman’s lecture are related to two different forms of narration: On the one hand, a marked homodiegetic narrator, namely the wespeaker, is present for almost the entire lecture and describes how the experiments are performed, what can be seen in the experimental setup, and which conclusions have to be drawn. On the other hand, an unmarked heterodiegetic narrator, who is not (any longer) part of the diegetic world, occasionally appears and gives a seemingly objective account of the behavior of the object under investigation. This tendency to shift from a homodiegetic to a heterodiegetic narrator, especially when the illusion of an ‘unmediated’ report of bare facts was to be evoked, or when general (natural) laws were reported, was still common in scientific writing until the end of the nineteenth century (Peters 2021, 83). I owe these insights to Martina King’s careful reading and her references to further reading.

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bly recalls fundamental procedures of crime narratives. In crime fiction, puzzles, especially those surrounding mysterious crimes, along with the exciting process of resolution (the “intellectual challenge [Denkaufgabe],” Düwell 2018, 190) are core elements that define the genre (Genç 2018, 5). Although Feynman clearly does not investigate a crime in his lecture, guns, bullets, and devices of detection nevertheless appear in the ‘case’ of this mystery. Moreover, Feynman’s imaginary “we” is called to investigate the mysterious occurrences under the guidance of the “superior analytical intellect” (Genç 2018, 5) of the investigator. However, the resolution of the case, which in crime fiction commonly releases the audience from suspense at the end, never takes place in Feynman’s text. In fact, just the opposite occurs: The climax and conclusion of Feynman’s lecture is a further double-slit experiment with electrons, one that pushes any attempt to solve the riddle of quantum mechanics to the limits of absurdity. By means of this last28 experiment, Feynman focuses on the simple but urgent question of which path the electrons take (“where the electron goes,” 1971a, 9) in order to shed light on the paradoxical behavior of electrons. In order to register the way electrons pass through the holes, the “electron apparatus” is thus supplemented by a “very strong light source” (1971a, 8) placed behind the first wall: If an electron passes through hole 1 [or hole 2, respectively], we would expect to see a flash from the vicinity of the upper hole [or lower hole, respectively]. If it should happen that we get light from both places at the same time, because the electron divides in half . . . Let us just do the experiment! Here is what we see: every time that we hear a ‘click’ from our electron detector (at the backstop), we also see a flash of light either near hole 1 or near hole 2, but never both at once! (1971a, 9)

Again, Feynman evokes experientiality and thereby adds to the narrative character of his lecture by describing the visual and audible perceptions of the observer. This time, however, the remarkable presence of the observer corresponds to the central insight of the experiment: From the findings just cited, “[w]e must conclude that when we look at the electrons the distribution of them [. . .] [at the backstop wall] is different than when we do not look” (1971a, 10). According to Feynman’s conclusion, the observation process itself causes a major “disturbance” (1971a, 11), or change, in the behavior of electrons. Thus, the observers

 In the above-mentioned coda to the lecture (see footnote 19), Feynman describes a further – and in fact last – double-slit experiment (1971a, 14–15). Since it is a “special case” (Feynman 1971a, 14) of the preceding experiment and merely an appendix to the lecture, it will not be considered in detail here.

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themselves become the focus of the experimental setting, apparently influencing it fundamentally. This finding central to quantum mechanics turns out to be a substantial turn in the history of physics, since quantum phenomena undermine the ideal of classical physics, according to which the independence of an object or phenomenon from the observer has to be assumed.29 In Feynman’s lecture, this finding is indeed marked as a turning point, since the physicist announces that “a terrible thing happens” (1971a, 11): This “terrible thing” lies in the fact that there is no possibility at all of seeing “the electrons without disturbing them” (1971a, 11). Feynman narratively highlights precisely this finding at the climax of the series of experiments by presenting further and further attempts, all of which fail to solve the mystery of quantum behavior. Subsequently, Feynman presents to the audience numerous attempts to adjust the light source (1971a, 10–11) in such a way that the electrons can be observed while passing through the hole without disturbing their “wave nature.” The electrons, however, seem to stubbornly resist revealing their secret, as if they had their own mind. Feynman does not simply state this observational dilemma, caused by the wave-particle duality and established by Heisenberg as the uncertainty principle. Rather, by narrating it, he allows the audience to experience the inexplicability of quantum behavior as a supposedly open, dynamic process that jumps from complication to complication. At the end, the observer has to admit that exactly the nature of the “epistemic thing” makes it “impossible” to “tell which hole the electron went through! We just know it went somewhere” (1971a, 11). The preceding remarks on Feynman’s lecture clearly show that the degree of narrativity increases significantly throughout the entire series of double-slit experiments. While Feynman’s representation of the ‘normal’ behavior of bullets (and water waves)30 appears to be a minimal narrative, both the vivid account of the quantum behavior of electrons and its absurdities, along with the narrative staging of the quantum mystery (including numerous failed attempts at resolution), nevertheless approach sophisticated narratives. In addition to the increasing narrativity of the reported experimental scenes, the specific linkage of the individual experiments also contributes to the pronounced narrative character of Feynman’s lecture: Ideal-typical narratives, as Koschorke has pointed out, are usually based on a “five-act schema” known from drama, culminating in a “complicating action” as “its inner core” (2018, 50). In Feynman’s lecture, the sequence  See on this issue for example: Heisenberg (1959).  Since the accounts of the double-slit experiment with bullets and with water waves (Feynman 1971a, 4–5) are very similar, a more detailed consideration of the latter experiment is omitted here.

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of experiments also depicts a dramaturgy of increasing tension: Following the discussion of the expected behavior of bullets and water waves, the physicist narrates the surprising behavior of electrons, which clearly evokes the dramatic element of “rising action” (see Freytag’s dramatic ‘triangle’). The sequence of experiments then culminates in the “complicating action” par excellence – the failed attempts to elucidate the mystery of the “epistemic thing” whose nature obviously resists observation. Through this specific linkage of the narrated experimental scenes, Feynman not only dramatizes the wave-particle duality, but he also narrativizes it at the same time: By virtue of the sequence of experiments described, the physical paradox achieves a specific narrative quality, namely eventfulness. According to Wolf Schmid, eventfulness usually coincides with tellability and thus constitutes the “raison d’être” of a story (2014, 20). Eventfulness is typically based on an event or action that undermines a norm or breaks with expectations (both communicated in the text; Schmid 2014, 16–17). Feynman’s narrative account of the wave-particle duality fulfills both criteria and even surpasses them: The physicist begins his lecture with experiments that illustrate the “more familiar behavior of particles like bullets, and [. . .] waves like water waves” (1971a, 2). Next, he draws attention to the experiment with electrons and their absurd behavior (“they split in half . . . [. . .], some of them go through 1, and then they go around through 2 . . .,” 1971a, 7), followed by experiments demonstrating their persistent ‘refusal’ to be observed while passing through the holes. Feynman thus connects the single experiments in such a way that quantum behavior appears to be increasingly distant from both everyday experience and common sense (bullets pass through hole 1 or 2). Accordingly, Feynman’s imaginary observer expresses astonishment (“it is all quite mysterious”) as a reaction to the unusual behavior of the electrons. In Feynman’s lecture, however, quantum behavior does not merely undermine “ordinary experience” (1971a, 2) and therefore breaks with expectations. Rather – and probably even more importantly for both the “novice” and the “experienced physicist” – the fact that it is impossible to observe the electrons’ path in the simple experimental setup implicates a major violation of a norm that has been accepted for centuries in physics: “Yes! Physics has given up,” as Feynman sums up, rather more emphatically than resignedly (1971a, 14). “We do not know how to predict what would happen in a given circumstance, and we believe now that it is impossible [. . .]. It must be recognized that this is a retrenchment in our earlier ideal of understanding nature” (1971a, 14). Feynman’s narrative of the “heart of quantum mechanics” (1971a, 2) thus culminates in the fact that the wave-particle duality shatters a central norm of the physical explanation of nature and therefore shakes the foundation of classical physics. Through Feynman’s purposeful narrativizing of the quantum paradox, it consequently emerges as the event, the ‘unheard-of event’ [‘unerhörte Begebenheit’] in the history of physics.

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Moreover, the wave-particle duality manifests as a plot, since Feynman presents it in a dramatically climactic series of experiments, which in essence tells the following story: “We,” the readers, are experiencing an extraordinary moment in the history of physics in which the inexplicable mystery of wave-particle duality overthrows classical physics, whose worldview had been considered valid for centuries, and thus ushers in a new epoch of understanding and explaining physical nature. Hence, Feynman has indeed made good on his introductory announcement to approach the “heart of quantum mechanics” in an “imaginative fashion” – namely, in the “fashion” of storytelling.31

3 Functional aspects of narrative In view of this considerable narrative effort that Feynman undertakes in order to help ‘novices’ understand wave-particle duality, it is remarkable that the different narrative elements and techniques prove to be beneficial for communicating scientific knowledge on several levels: At a basic level, the physicist brings narrative into play as a tool for enhancing knowledge and understanding by translating the abstract physical paradox into a sequence of events in an experimental setting and vividly depicting the quantum behavior with its visual and acoustic effects. It is precisely the visualization and vivid depiction of the abstract, typically achieved by using narrative techniques that, according to studies in cognitive science, have a profound positive effect on comprehension, cognition, and gaining knowledge (Brosch 2017, 294). This is especially true in Feynman’s case, since his subject matter itself has a sparse visual quality – or as Feynman has put it, atomic objects “behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about” (1971a, 1). Against this backdrop, Feynman’s detailed visualization of the behavior of electrons at the double slit fulfills a further important function: it transforms the abstract quantum behavior into a matter of experience, placing it for observation before the audience’s eyes. In his lecture, Feynman not only accomplishes the narrative visualization of quantum behavior, but he also unfolds the inexplicable mystery of quantum mechanics in the form of a compelling story. With this specific narrative shaping of the physical paradox, he evokes further effects that support the process of commu-

 Since Feynman’s lecture features several conventional narrative elements defined as “superstructure” (Dijk 1980, 104–144), namely actions and reactions of persons, events that meet the criteria of “interestingness,” complications, (failed) resolution, episodes, plot, and story, it follows to classify this technical text as itself a narrative.

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nicating knowledge: Studies in cognitive science have shown that basic operations such as sequencing and linking elements contribute to facilitating understanding and memorization (Herman 2003, 137–138). If this is already true for basic forms of sequencing and linkage, then it applies all the more to narrative, which is known for sophisticated forms of structuring and ordering action (Koschorke 2018, 55–59). Feynman’s approach is an apt example: The physicist first breaks down the physical paradox into single experiments, each of which is supposed to make the audience aware of a different facet of the peculiar quantum behavior. He then links the single experiments into a gripping story with dramatic tension, several complications, and an unexpected climax. By virtue of being shaped as a story, the abstract wave-particle duality gains a high degree of comprehensibility and memorability. In light of the function of narration as a tool that enhances comprehension and knowledge, it should also be considered that Feynman gave his narrative of quantum behavior a strong affective character: First of all, Feynman evokes tension and excitement by announcing at the beginning of his lecture that the waveparticle duality turns out to be the “only mystery” of quantum mechanics still unsolved. Both curiosity and attention are heightened as Feynman’s plot moves from the ordinary behavior of bullets to the unexpected performance of electrons as a ‘moment of excitation.’ At the climax of the story, the audience is amazed – or as one physicist put it, “dazzled” (Davies 2011, xvi) – by the ‘unheard-of event’ in the history of physics. Furthermore, Feynman’s narrative account of the wave-particle duality arouses the audience’s pleasure in both investigating the “mystery” and trying to solve the puzzle. This pronounced affective dimension of Feynman’s narrative should not be underestimated, especially when it comes to processes of understanding in general and, in particular, to the communication of highly complex scientific knowledge within the sciences and beyond based on the ideal of objectivity. Through extensive use of narrative techniques, Feynman creates another effect that is even more conducive to cognition and understanding: At the core of his lecture, Feynman’s audience experiences the wave-particle paradox as a seemingly ongoing process that aims at a resolution of the quantum mystery, and yet leads to further and further complications. The physicist thus allows his audience to participate almost directly in the problem-solving process, as if the discovery of the central paradox had only just taken place before their eyes. It is precisely by means of this narrative mode that Feynman creates what Koschorke has called a “problem-solving community” (2018, 50): Narration allows its addressees to experience “the dynamic emerging from the complication at hand” as a process with a seemingly “open horizon,” thereby forming for an “imaginative moment” a community that cooperatively searches for solutions to the problem (Koschorke 2018, 50–51). In Feynman’s narrative exposition of the wave-particle

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problem, the attempt to build an imaginative community among the ‘novices’ is particularly strong, since his entire lecture is written in the ‘we-mode’.32 Thus, by making the investigation of the quantum puzzle a collective enterprise, Feynman encourages the ‘novices’ to actively reflect on the problem and possibly explore the mystery even further. In this respect, it is a major advantage that the mystery remains unsolved: As a narrative without closure, Feynman’s account of the quantum paradox leaves the audience with “unfinished business,” as Koschorke puts it for all kinds of narratives lacking a resolution (2018, 46). The ‘incomplete’ narrative provokes nothing less than “agitation” which leads, if not to “new attempts at narrative” (Koschorke 2018, 46), at the very least to further reflection and investigation.

4 Conclusion Alongside other talks, Feynman’s lecture on the “heart of quantum mechanics” has had a substantial impact on the scientific community: To this day, Feynman’s account of the wave-particle duality is cited again and again in textbooks, and physicists constantly use it as a guide to introduce students to the fundamental paradox.33 Thus, Feynman’s lecture on the “shocking” wave-particle duality has become, as Paul Davies puts it, “classic in the history of scientific exposition” (2011, xvi). Feynman’s lecture has not only proven to be a canonical way to familiarize “a generation of students across the world” (Davies 2011, xiii) with the wave-particle duality.34 Rather, it apparently has also inspired even “experienced physicists,” who, like Davies, have praised Feynman’s “masterly analysis” of the double-slit experiment (Davies 2011, xvi) and thus have emphasized the lecture’s great explanatory power even among experts.35 Given the original audience of the lecture series, which, according to contemporary witnesses, had comprised of “more and more faculty and graduate students,” it has been speculated that “it was not really” the students who “were able to benefit most” from Feynman’s gift

 Taking fictional we-narratives as an example, Natalya Bekhta has also emphasized that “the uttered ‘we’ transcends, in some sense, the mere ‘I’ and can create a collectivity, a collective identity” (2017, 109).  See for example: Dürr and Lazarovici (2020), Michielsen and De Raedt (2014, 240–242, 9–12), Shankar (2016, 406–441), Silverman (1995, 1–8), Zubairy (2020, 121–127).  In view of the enormous success of the Feynman Lectures, which became an international bestseller within the field of physics, Davies concludes that the lecture series has influenced “a generation of students across the world” (2011, xiii).  For similar statements on Feynman’s lecture(s) see for example: Frémont (2014, 36–37), Lindsay (1966, 80–83), Resag (2018, 228), Townsend (2000, xii, 9).

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of explaining things with lucidity (Goodstein and Neugebauer 2011, xxiv). “It was his peers – scientists, physicists, and professors – who would be the main beneficiaries” of Feynman’s “extraordinary” teaching and contributions to enhancing knowledge (Goodstein and Neugebauer 2011, xxiv). Physicists have attributed Feynman’s “magnificent achievement,” particularly evident in his lectures on quantum mechanics, primarily to his “specialty of reducing deep ideas to simple, understandable terms” (Goodstein and Neugebauer 2011, xiii). As this paper has shown, however, the strong narrative character of the examined lecture must be equally considered as a major factor for its success. The vividness, the eventful quality, the dramatically climactic form, the affective power, and the community-creating dimension that the wave-particle paradox gains by virtue of its narrative shaping are all essential to the explanatory power of the lecture. Feynman’s strong alliance with narrative must thus be seen as a central element of the lecture’s success in furthering and deepening knowledge about the “heart” of quantum mechanics.

References Bekhta, Natalya. 2017. “Emerging Narrative Situations. A Definition of We-Narratives Proper.” In Emerging Vectors of Narratology, edited by Per Krogh Hansen, John Pier, Philippe Roussin, and Wolf Schmid, 101–126. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Borrelli, Arianna. 2020. “Narrative in Early Modern and Modern Science.” In Narrative Factuality: A Handbook, edited by Monika Fludernik and Marie-Laure Ryan, 429–442. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Brandt, Christina. 2009. “Wissenschaftserzählungen: Narrative Strukturen im naturwissenschaftlichen Diskurs.” In Wirklichkeitserzählungen: Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens, edited by Christian Klein and Matías Martínez, 81–109. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Brandt, Christina. 2014. “‘We Feel’, ‘We See’, ‘We Must’. Über Figurationen biowissenschaftlicher Autorschaft.” Nach Feierabend. Zürcher Jahrbuch für Wissensgeschichte 10: 31–58. Brosch, Renate. 2017. “Veranschaulichen/Vergegenwärtigen.” In Erzählen: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, edited by Matías Martínez, 293–302. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Chatman, Seymour. 1990. Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY/London: Cornell University Press. Crease, Robert P. 2002. “The Most Beautiful Experiment.” Physics World 15: 19–20. Davies, Paul. 2011. “Introduction.” In Richard Feynman: Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher, edited by Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands, introduction by Paul Davies, ix–xviii. New York: Basic Books. Dijk,Teun A. van. 1980. Textwissenschaft: Eine interdisziplinäre Einführung. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Dürr, Detlef, and Dustin Lazarovici. 2020. Understanding Quantum Mechanics: The World According to Modern Quantum Foundations. Cham: Springer.

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Düwell, Susanne. 2018. “Rätsel.” In Handbuch Kriminalliteratur: Theorien – Geschichte – Medien, edited by Susanne Düwell, Andrea Bartl, Christof Hamann, and Oliver Ruf, 189–196. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Feynman, Richard P. 1971a. “Quantum Behavior.” In Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. III: Quantum Mechanics [bilingual edition with German translation by Henner Wessel], 1–15. Munich/Vienna: R. Oldenbourg. Feynman, Richard P. 1971b. “Feynman’s Preface.” In Richard P. Feynman, Robert B.Leighton, and Matthew Sands: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. III: Quantum Mechanics [bilingual edition with German translation by Henner Wessel], iii–vi. Munich/Vienna: R. Oldenbourg. Feynman, Richard P., Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands. 2015. The Feynman Lectures on Physics, The New Millennium Edition, 3 vols. New York: Basic Books. Fludernik, Monika. 1996. Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. Fludernik, Monika. 2013. Erzähltheorie: Eine Einführung, 4th edition. Darmstadt: WBG. Frémont, François. 2014. Young-Type Interferences with Electrons. Basic and Theoretical Challenges in Molecular Collision Systems. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer. Genç, Metin. 2018. “Gattungsreflexion/Schemaliteratur.” In Handbuch Kriminalliteratur: Theorien – Geschichte – Medien, edited by Susanne Düwell, Andrea Bartl, Christof Hamann, and Oliver Ruf, 3–13. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Gencarelli, Angela. 2017. “‘Entdeckungsgeschichten’ der Quantenphysik: Zur narratologischen Erforschung einer naturwissenschaftlichen Erzählform.” Diegesis 6 (1): 1–19. Gläser, Rosemarie. 1990. Fachtextsorten im Englischen. Tübingen: Narr. Goodstein, David L., and Gerry Neugebauer. 2011. “Special Preface.” In Richard Feynman: Six Easy Pieces. Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher, edited by Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands, introduction by Paul Davies, xix–xxiv. New York: Basic Books. Harré, Rom. 1990. “Some Narrative Conventions of Scientific Discourse.” In Narrative in Culture: The Use of Storytelling in the Sciences, Philosophy, and Literature, edited by Christopher Nash, 81–101. London/New York: Routledge. Hays, Priya Venkatesan. 2006. Molecular Biology in Narrative Form: A Study of the Experimental Trajectory of Science. New York: Peter Lang. Heisenberg, Werner. 1959. “Die Entwicklung der Quantenmechanik.” In Werner Heisenberg: Wandlungen in den Grundlagen der Naturwissenschaft: Zehn Vorträge, 9th extended edition, 26–42. Stuttgart: Hirzel. Helmbrecht, Johannes. 2002. “Grammar and Function of We.” In Us and Others: Social Identities across Languages, Discourses and Cultures, edited by Anna Duszak, 31–49. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Herman, David. 2003. “How Stories Make Us Smarter: Narrative Theory and Cognitive Semiotics.” Recherches en Communication 19: 133–153. Holmes, Frederic L. 1991. “Argument and Narrative in Scientific Writing.” In The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument: Historical Studies, edited by Peter Dear, 164–181. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. King, Martina. 2017. “‘Ich habe im Sommer des Jahres 1838 eine Reihe von Beobachtungen angestellt’: Naturwissenschaftliches Erzählen im frühen 19. Jahrhundert.” Diegesis 6 (1): 20–45. Klein, Christian, and Matías Martínez, eds. 2009. Wirklichkeitserzählungen: Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Klüsener, Bea, andJoachim Grzega. 2009. “Wissenschaftsrhetorik.” In Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik, edited by Gert Ueding, Vol. 10, 1486–1508. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Koschorke, Albrecht. 2018. Fact and Fiction: Elements of a General Theory of Narrative. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.

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Leane, Elizabeth. 2007. Reading Popular Physics: Disciplinary Skirmishes and Textual Strategies. Aldershot: Ashgate. Leighton, Robert B. 1977. “Foreword.” In Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. 1: Mainly Mechanics, Radiation, and Heat, 7–8. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. Leighton, Robert B., and Matthew Sands. 2011. “Publisher’s Note.” In Richard Feynman: Six Easy Pieces. Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher, edited by Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands, introduction by Paul Davies, vii. New York: Basic Books. Lindsay, Bruce R. 1966. “Recapturing the Excitement.” Physics Today 19 (2): 80–83. Martínez, Matías. 2017. “Was ist Erzählen?” In Erzählen: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, edited by Matías Martínez, 2–6. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Mecke, Klaus. 2015. “Zahl und Erzählung: Metaphern in Erkenntnisprozessen der Physik.” In Quarks and Letters: Naturwissenschaften in der Literatur und Kultur der Gegenwart, edited by Aura Heydenreich and Klaus Mecke, 31–83. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Michielsen, Kristel, and Hans De Raedt. 2014. “Event-Based Simulation of Quantum Physics Experiments.” In Quantum Foundations and Open Quantum Systems: Lecture Notes of the Advanced School, edited by Theo M. Nieuwenhuizen, Claudia Pombo, Claudio Furtado, Andrei Khrennikov, Inácio A. Pedrosa, and Václav Špička, 237–306. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. Niederhauser, Jürg. 1996. “Darstellungsformen von Wissenschaften als Thema der Fachsprachenforschung.” In Fachliche Textsorten: Komponenten – Relationen – Strategien, edited by Hartwig Kalverkämper and Klaus-Dieter Baumann, 37–64. Tübingen: Narr. Peters, Christine. 2021. “Historical Narrative versus Comparative Description. Genre and Knowledge in Alexander von Humboldt’s Personal Narrative.” In Narratives and Comparisons. Adversaries or Allies in Understanding Science?, edited by Martin Carrier, Rebecca Mertens, and Carsten Rheinhardt, 63–84. Bielefeld: Bielefeld University Press. Resag, Jörg. 2018. Feynman und His Physics: The Life and Science of an Extraordinary Man. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. 2005. “Mischformen des Wissens.” In Hans-Jörg Rheinberger: Iterationen, 74–100. Berlin: Merve. Sands, Matthew. 1971. “Foreword.” In Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. III: Quantum Mechanics [bilingual edition with German translation by Henner Wessel], vii–viii. Munich/Vienna: R. Oldenbourg. Schmid, Wolf. 2014. Elemente der Narratologie. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Shankar, Ramamurti. 2016. Fundamentals of Physics II: Electromagnetism, Optics, and Quantum Mechanics. New Haven: Yale University Press. Silverman, Mark P. 1995. More than One Mystery: Explorations in Quantum Interference. New York: Springer. Thorne, Kip S. 2015. “Vorwort zur New Millennium Edition.” In Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands: Feynman-Vorlesungen über Physik, Vol. 3: Quantenmechanik, vii–xii. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Townsend, John S. 2000. A Modern Approach to Quantum Mechanics. Sausalito, CA: University Science Books. Weinrich, Harald. 1989. “Formen der Wissenschaftssprache.” Jahrbuch 1988 der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 119–158. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. White, Hayden. 2005. “Emplotment.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, edited by David Herman, Manfred Jahn, and Marie-Laure Ryan, 137. London/New York: Routledge. Zubairy, M. Suhail. 2020. Quantum Mechanics for Beginners: With Application to Quantum Communication and Quantum Computing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Felix E. Rietmann

Of Still Faces and Micro-Plots: Audiovisual Narration in Infant Mental Health 1 Introduction This paper explores factual narration in audiovisual recordings from medical research and clinical practice. It is meant to spark a discussion about the extent to which we can apply narratological categories to these sources and where we may encounter limitations to such an approach.1 I will address these issues with a concrete example. Specifically, I will make an argument about the role of audiovisual narratives in the history of infant mental health. Infant mental health is a recent multidisciplinary field at the intersection of pediatrics, child psychiatry, and developmental psychology. The field focuses on psychological problems in early childhood, primarily approaching these problems on the level of the parentinfant relationship. Historically, research in the field has heavily relied on a particular experimental setting, discernible in Fig. 1: face-to-face interaction between parent and infant, recorded and analyzed with the help of film and video technologies (Rietmann 2018; Guedeney and Tereno 2012; Osofsky 2016). In this essay I will focus on historical and structural aspects of the face-toface setting. In a nutshell, I will argue that we can observe a historical development that appears like an inversion of what Kindt and King (this volume) describe for discharge letters: If we see in discharge letters how a lived experience (i.e., a patient’s narrative) is transformed into a temporally compressed and emotionally truncated account, we can observe in audiovisual research of infantmother interaction how a decontextualized and truncated infant experience is  To my knowledge, there is no narratological study of research film and/or clinical recordings in medicine. However, there are three bodies of film scholarship that touch on relevant aspects: First, there is a considerable body of scholarship on narrative strategies in documentary film. The focus of these works differs from the present approach to the extent that documentary film heavily relies on narrative means that are almost absent in research recordings such as multiple changes in camera angle, close-ups, and extensive editing (Nichols 1991; Renov 1993; Rony 1996). Second, there is an emerging body of scholarship on research and scientific film. The focus has mostly been on questions of objectivity, ways of representing the body, and film epistemology; narratological considerations are almost absent. If present, they are more concerned with the question of how narrative blurs the border between fact and fiction than with how it works for epistemic purposes (e.g., Curtis 2015; Cartwright 1995; Wellmann 2011). Finally, narratological scholarship has so far been concerned with narration in fiction film. For a good review: Kuhn and Schmidt (2013). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111319971-005

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translated into a temporally extended and emotionally enriched narrative. This process of translating or retelling infant experiences is complex and requires an engagement with structural, historical, and epistemological aspects of research practices in infant mental health. Furthermore, our understanding of this retelling depends on our approach to audiovisual sources. Can we consider an audiovisual recording that represents a change of state already as a narrative? Does such a recording contain a plot? How do we approach the referentiality of factual images? And, how do we understand the scientist qua narrator? In the first section of this essay, I will address these questions with the analysis of a recording of one of the most paradigmatic experiments in the field: the still face condition. The recording provides an appropriate example of how infant researchers and mental health practitioners construct a clinically meaningful infant today. I will argue that this construction heavily draws on audiovisual techniques of storytelling. Through a combination of staging, editing, and telling the infant appears as an actor in a dramatic plot. In the next two sections, I will turn to the history of early childhood psychiatry and discuss the genesis of the still face experiment and the present vision of infancy. I will follow the work of several key figures of the field of infant mental health in the USA from the 1970s to the present. In this context, I will point to the analytical and historical work that underlies, what I will call, a narrative embedding of infant experiences. I will argue that this embedding relied on processes of temporally structuring and restructuring infant experiences with the help of audiovisual recordings. We could also describe these processes as operations of decontextualizing and recontextualizing, or of telling and retelling. What is now intriguing about infant mental health is the fact that this temporal embedding eventually engendered the view that the infant’s experience itself is narratively organized. In other words, we see an interplay between an epistemological condition of using narrative strategies for understanding the infant’s mind and ontological assumptions about how this mind is made up.2 At the end of the essay, I will point to some clinical implications of the narrative embedding of infant experiences with the work of the US psychologist Beatrice Beebe.

 From this perspective, the narrative embedding follows a “tools-to-theory” heuristic that has many precedents in the history of psychology (Gigerenzer 1991; Cowles 2015).

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2 The still face: Narration and experiment Fig. 1 shows a series of snapshots from a documentary film that illustrates the still face experiment for a broad public. The movie was produced in the late 2000s and features as narrator the US psychologist Edward Tronick. As I will discuss in greater detail below, the still face was invented in the 1970s by Tronick and his colleagues at Harvard University and has since been used as a paradigm for exploring infant-caregiver interaction (Mesman 2009; Dicorcia 2016). My discussion of the presentation of the experiment in the movie will serve two interrelated purposes. First, it will introduce us to some aspects of the narrative embedding of infant experiences that informs current psychological and psychiatric approaches to infancy. The video clip illustrates how infant experiences are understood by infant mental health practitioners and how they are communicated to a wider public, a point that I will discuss more fully in the last section.3 Second, I will argue that the present scientific view of infancy is constructed on the basis of audiovisual techniques of storytelling. From this perspective, I will suggest, it is situated somewhere in between a factual narrative (an account with the aspiration to refer to real facts) and a scientific fiction (a narrative construction of these very facts).4 The techniques of storytelling are anchored in the experiment itself.5 More precisely, the experimental design includes elements that lend themselves to narrativization:6 It takes place in a specific setting and follows a characteristic sequence. To put it into the language of the literary scholar Wolf Schmid, it contains static and dynamic elements (Schmid 2010, 5). The static elements can be attributed to mise-enscène, cinematography, and display, which I will discuss presently; the dynamic elements to the temporal structure of the experiment, which I will discuss in the next paragraph. As discernible in Fig. 1, mother and infant are arranged in a face-to-face position with the baby being installed in an infant seat (mise-en-scène); the scene is

 The exact interpretation of the experiment remains a controversial issue in the scientific literature until today. However, the element central to this paper – that the experiment shows how the infant participates in social interaction – is commonly agreed on (Adamson and Prick 2003; Dicorcia 2016).  Infant mental health practitioners acknowledge the constructed nature of present approaches, but still consider them valid and correct approximations of how the infant experiences the world. From this perspective, their accounts qualify as factual narrations: they seek to relate real occurrences, even if they contain highly hypothetical and speculative aspects. For an example: Stern (1992). On factual versus fictional narration see: Klein and Martínez (2011, 1–12), Blume (2019, 12–16).  On the narrative structure of experiments: Brandt (2011), Dear (1991), Holmes (1987).  I follow Hyden White’s definition of narrativization as “to impose upon [reality] the form of a story” (White 1981, 2).

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recorded with two video cameras, one on each partner’s face and upper torso (cinematography); the recording is finally transmitted to a split screen (display). Mise-enscène, cinematography, and display define the visual field of the observer and focus (scientific) attention: they foreground facial and behavioral exchanges between mother and infant and stage mother and infant as agents who perform acts in relation to one another. Consequently, the static elements already suggest the five key terms of what literary theorist Kenneth Burke has called “a grammar of motives”: Scene, agents, and, by extension, acts (Burke 2009). They also implicitly suggest a thinking in terms of agency (or instrumentality) and purpose (or goal), the two remaining elements of Burke’s pentad: the staging of the mother and infant as an interactive dyad implies that their behavioral exchanges (agency) are guided by specific purposes (goal-oriented behavior). The experimental set-up situates mother and infant in a semantic field of action.7 These semantic features obtain “integration” and “actualization” in the temporal structure, that is through the dynamic elements of the experiment (Ricœur 1984, 1:56–57). The experiment follows a sequence of three phases of approximately two minutes each, shown in Fig. 1. During the first phase, mother and infant play together (Fig. 1a). The phase is followed by a dramatic change of state that qualifies, we may say, as a narrative event: a disruption of play due to the so-called still face condition. The mother assumes a neutral face expression and looks at her baby without motions (Fig. 1b). The eventfulness of this change lies, among other things, in its violent deviation from expectations and norms of the “story world” (e.g., the baby expecting her mother to continue playing) (Lotman 1977, 233–234; Schmid 2010, 8–11). Finally, during the last phase, the mother returns to normal play, which corresponds to a resolution of the tension introduced by the still face condition (Fig. 1c). As already indicated with my choice of words (event, story-world, narrative event, resolution of tension), I suggest that the experimental procedure has the structure of a plot, or, to be more precise, it is designed in a way that makes mother-infant interaction readable as a plot: a temporal sequence of (inter)actions is complicated by a significant event (the adoption of the still face condition); the complication (potentially) resolved by a reconstitution of the play situation. The still face condition is enacted to cause a change of affairs. The experiment thus structures contingent behavioral exchanges between infant and mother in a way that allows a reading as a plot, that is, as a causal arrangement of a temporal sequence of events (as opposed to, e.g., a chronicle as a mere temporal sequence of

 Following Ricœur, we may consider the experimental staging of the mother and infant as a mimetic activity: the static elements delimit a “conceptual network of actions” that always already refers to motives, goals, and instrumentality (Ricœur 1984, 1:54–57).

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(a)

(b)

(c)

Fig. 1a–c: Still Face Experiment (2009).

events).8 The structure also meets some of Aristotle’s requirements for a tragic plot, such as a division into beginning, middle, and end (corresponding to the three phases of the experiment), unity of the narrative world (among others through the continuous focus on the dyad), and a storyline that includes complication and resolution (Aristotle 1996, Chs. 6–14, 18). The presentation of the experiment in the movie foregrounds the plot structure, adds motivation and intention to infant behaviors, and dramatizes dyadic interaction. The images are cut together to emphasize both moments of strong emotional engagement and violent disruption of engagement due to the still face condition.

 Authors vary in their uses of the terms chronicle, story, and plot. For the purpose of this essay, I am using Forster’s definition of plot as a causal arrangement of a temporal sequence of events (Forster 1985, 86). For an overview see: Martínez and Scheffel (2016, 28).

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For example, the movie only shows thirty seconds of the first phase of the experiment. The sequence exclusively consists of two moments of intense dyadic interaction that are spliced together from the overall recording of the phase. We see, first, how the girl points to an object outside of the frame and rejoices when the mother reacts to her pointing, and, then, how the mother engages her in a play of tickling to which the baby reacts with coos and giggles. Consequently, the first sequence (the beginning) sets up the storyline, depicting the dyad in a harmonious state of positive emotion and attributing this state to motivated actions of baby and mother. The infant figures as an agent during the exchange, reciprocating and initiating interaction with emotions (giggling), intentions (pointing), and, by implication, beliefs (expecting the mother to respond to her pointing). The cuts and emphases are partly due to the fact that the movie was produced for a broad public. Still, it does reproduce some of the elements that characterize laboratory settings. For example, the split screen of shot-reverse shot of the mother and infant has been introduced, as we will see below in greater detail, in the 1970s and was a condition for examining mother-infant interaction. We will also see that the plot structure of the experiment contains assumptions about what infant-mother interaction is, and how it unfolds over time and in the minds of the interactants. Another aspect that we will encounter in scientific publications concerns the interplay between image and voice. The narrative voice reinforces emphasis and structure, and adds interpretation. It conveys meaning to gestures and actions of the mother and infant, using different narrative modes. On the one hand, Tronick describes the set-up and the actions of the mother and infant: “In the still face experiment [. . .], the mother sits down and plays with the baby [. . .]”, or, later: “She smiles to the mother, she points [. . .]” On the other hand, Tronick’s extra- and hetero-diegetic voice interacts with intra-diegetic sounds, combining interpretation with a reduction of distance to the narrative world. For example, during the first phase, Tronick explains, “[the mother] gives a greeting to the baby, the baby gives a greeting back to her.” He then pauses and the viewer sees mother and infant looking at one another, while the baby is cooing and the mother saying, “oh, yes.” Tronick resumes, “They are working to coordinate their emotions and their intentions.” In this instance, the synchronization between narrative voice and intra-diegetic sounds creates an effect comparable to direct speech (reduction of distance), while Tronick’s interpretations mark the speech as part of a broader narrative structure (greeting being an element of the beginning of the story/experiment).9

 On distance: Martínez and Scheffel (2016, 50–67), Genette (1990, 162–185).

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Dramatizing and interpreting functions of the voice-over become especially pronounced during the second phase, the still face condition. Tronick introduces the phase as a moment of severe disruption. In slowed down voice with emphatic timbres, Tronick tells us: “And then we ask mother to not respond to the baby. The baby very quickly picks up on this. And then she uses all of her abilities to try to get the mother back.” On the screen, we see how the baby girl smiles, how she points, “because she is used to the mother looking where she points” (Tronick), and how she puts both hands up in front of her, “saying, ‘what’s happening here’” (Tronick). The transition of the narrative voice to direct speech emphasizes the subsequent breakdown of the baby: she looks increasingly unhappy, makes “screechy sounds” (Tronick) and finally starts crying. At that moment, the third phase sets in: the tension resolves in a return to interactive play. The mother comforts the baby and the two reengage in playful exchanges. As narrator, Tronick reinforces both plot structure and dramatic texture. Tronick not only marks the still face condition as a critical turning point of the plot, but also adds pathos (suffering) and prepares catharsis (purgation): texture (pitch, speed) and content of his comment emphasize the baby’s distress and her effort to animate her mother, building up tension until its final resolution in the last phase of the experiment.10 In the last section, I will suggest that the mediation of suffering through narration also plays a role in the clinical encounter of baby, parent, and therapist qua narrator. To briefly summarize: in the still face experiment, we have a staged encounter between an infant and a mother. The encounter contains static and dynamic elements that convey a rudimentary plot structure to the behavioral exchanges of the dyad. Infant mental health practitioners use audiovisual techniques of storytelling to embed these behavioral exchanges in a dramatic narrative. Images are cut together to dramatize dyadic interaction. A voice-over attributes internal motivations and intentions to acts, gestures, and sounds. It conveys intentional agency to the infant. The baby is narratively constructed as an actor in a brief dramatic plot. In its very artificiality, its dependence on a combination of staging, editing, and telling, this construction approaches a scientific fiction: the view of the infant is produced through an elaborate manipulation and imaginative interpretation of film material.11

 Pathos and carthasis are extensively discussed terms, and I am using them in a somewhat deflationary way to point to the resonances between the narrative structure of the still face experiment and clinical applications of the face-to-face position. On pathos and carthasis: Aristotle (1996, Chs. 6, 11, 14).  Arguably, there is always a fictive aspect in the scientific interpretation of the pre-verbal mind. On this issue, e.g.: Rietmann et al. (2017).

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The question I would now like to address is: How do we understand the construction of this fiction from a historical perspective? How did the infant become an actor in a drama of human relations? I will address this question in turning to the history of early childhood psychiatry and in reconstructing some of the historical and analytic work that underlies the presentation of the still face experiment. I will argue that the present reading grew out of a successive embedding of infant experience into a new temporal frame. It would go beyond the scope of this essay, if I tried to comprehensively trace this embedding. Rather, I will focus on some milestones in the history of the field.

3 Towards a new semantics of infant-mother interaction: Infant research in the early 1970s The new temporal embedding was based on a microanalysis of moving images that entered infant research in the USA in the late 1960s. Fig. 2 shows an early example: a drawing from a 1971 paper by the psychiatrist Daniel Stern. The broader context is that Stern and his contemporaries argued that already very young infants, basically from birth on, actively participated in interaction with their caregivers. At that time, this was a bold claim that entailed major revisions of theories of infant development. Most of previous psychiatric research had concentrated on the influence of the environment and, in particular, the mother on early development. The infant was mostly considered to be passive and emotionally dependent. This predominant focus on pathologies of maternal care (such as “overprotective” or “rejecting” mothering) has found entrance in historical scholarship under the name of “mother-blaming” (e.g., Ladd-Taylor and Umansky 1998; Plant 2010; Zeanah and Larrieu 2000). Now, Stern and his peers argued that, if one changed the temporal scale of looking at an infant, one could see that the mother-infant relationship was not a one-way street but based on rhythmic interactive patterns (Rietmann 2018, Ch. 2). Fig. 2 illustrates one of these patterns. Stern called it an approach-withdrawal pattern: in images one to four, the mother approaches, and the infant withdraws; in images five to eight, the infant approaches, and the mother withdraws. It is important to note that this “pattern” took place in less than half a second. Hence, Stern’s intervention was a major critique of clinical perception: According to Stern, clinically, the mother showed an intrusive behavior towards her child, disrupting his development. Yet, if one recorded short sequences of mother-infant face-to-face interaction and analyzed these recordings frame-by-frame, on a scale of split seconds, one could see that something else was going on between infant and mother: “The interaction in

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Fig. 2: Approach-Withdrawal-Pattern (Stern 1971, 509), with permission from Elsevier.

which maternal behavior appears ‘controlling’ and ‘overstimulating’ is not solely directed by the mother. It is (at this point of its formation) a mutual interactive event – an event in which specific infant and maternal behaviors together produce repetitive sequences” (Stern 1971, 513). Stern’s paper aimed at shifting both observational level

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and clinical semantics of infant psychiatry from maternal influence to interactive dynamics. On a structural level, we find in Stern’s paper in embryonic form some of the narrative elements that we have seen in the video of the still face situation. As in the still face, we have a staged encounter between mother and infant that is made comprehensible by two means: first, a temporal sequence of images and, second, an interpretative voice in form of a scientific text. I will discuss these two aspects in turn. From a commonsense perspective, the images are strange. They represent movements that are hardly visible in real life due to the low time scale (0.3 seconds). Their representation relies not only on a staging of dyadic interaction in a prearranged setting (mise-en-scène and cinematography), but also on cinematographic techniques of temporal and spatial editing. As I have detailed elsewhere, the (post-)production of the images included a strenuous process of extracting “patterns” from the audiovisual material (Rietmann, forthcoming): Stern recorded dyadic interaction on videotape, selected a “characteristic” sequence of seven minutes and transferred the sequence to 16 mm film. The transfer was necessary since microanalysis was difficult to realize on videotape at that time. After the transfer, Stern could examine the sequence frame-byframe using a “hand-operated movie viewer” (Stern 1971, 504). The analysis required Stern to move back and forth between single frames and took several hours for a sequence of a few minutes. In other words, the analytic process included a slowing down of motion that would find a correspondence in the modification of the time scale of interaction in the scientific paper: the “interactive event” being situated on the level of split seconds. Now, the important point for our purposes is that this change of time-scale was not simply related to a temporal but to a causal argument, in which the “interactive event” qualified as a narrative event in nuce (meaningful for the ‘story world’ of dyadic interaction): the purpose of frame-by-frame analysis was to identify “smaller and larger units” and to explore “how they fit together, what the hierarchies [were], and the sequences” (Stern 1973, 120); that is, the purpose was to see how mother-infant interaction was temporally and causally structured, how it formed a pattern that could explain dyadic dynamics. Accordingly, the strangeness of the images (a comic strip of 0.3 seconds real time) partly resulted from a process of de- and recontextualization that isolated and thereby produced “events”: it embedded nonverbal behavior that was formerly considered ephemeral in a different temporal order (of dyadic interaction) and attributed to it a broader meaning (for the mother-child relationship). From this perspective, Stern’s paper employed a sci-

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entific mode of cinematographic storytelling that “refigured” temporal experience and semanticized behavior.12 However, in contrast to the video clip of the still face experiment, we do not yet find any attribution of intentions and internal states on a textual level. Throughout the scientific paper, the interpretative voice is externally focalized, describing observations of infant and mother behavior in a distanced mode. Stern reports how long infant and mother “stay face to face,” how the “infant cue[s] the mother to terminate contact,” and how the mother “turns away.” He analyzes these interactions in terms of “temporal relatedness,” “interactive events,” “rhythms,” “patterns” and “repetitive sequences” (Stern 1971). Stern’s paper combines a cinematographic semantization of mother-infant interaction with a consciously assumed epistemic stance (a narrative instance) that refrains from textual representations of subjectivity and perspective (of the human agents).13

4 Narrativizing infant experiences In the 1970s and 80s, the scientific interpretation of infant-mother interaction gradually gained subjectivity and perspective, going along with an increased complexity of its micro-analytic staging.14 The bulk of research that contributed to this piecemeal narrativization of infant experiences relied on recording dyadic interaction on videotape in naturalistic laboratory settings. To illustrate these changes, I will return to Edward Tronick and the still face experiment, but now to one of its first published version in a 1978 paper. The paper differs in important aspects from the movie that I have discussed in the first section, and an examination of this first published version of the experiment will provide a window on how internal states and motivations were gradually attributed to the infant. It thus exemplifies the stepwise transition of  On “refiguration”: Ricœur (1984, Ch. 3). Ricœur is primarily concerned with narrative fiction, attributing a pivotal function to emplotment. For him, “refiguration” largely (but not exclusively) hinges on the configuration of narrative texts. However, his concepts are helpful for thinking about audiovisual narration as they highlight the function of temporal order in the construction of meaning. In other words, a change of temporal characteristics and structure is central in the move from one figuration to another, which is exactly the point for my reading of Stern’s work.  Arguably, Stern’s account lacks narrativity because it does almost not include human experientiality. On narrativity and experimentality: Fludernik (2002, 26–30). Note, however, that Fludernik’s “natural narratology” attempts a cognitive grounding of narratology that moves away from the structural approach employed in this essay.  While infant-mother interaction remained the primary focus of research, researchers also increasingly paid attention to infant-father as well as triadic family interactions (e.g., FivazDepeursinge and Corboz-Warnery 1999).

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narrative strategies from an epistemic condition for explaining infant behavior to an ontological assumption about the inner working of the infant’s mind. The paper grew out of a decade of research at one of the internationally leading centers of infant research, the Child Development Unit at Harvard University, directed by pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton.15 The original paper was entitled: “The Infant’s Response to Entrapment between Contradictory Messages in Face-to-Face Interaction” (Tronick et al. 1978). Already the title indicates a thinking about exchanges of messages in a communication system. As such, it goes a tiny step further than Stern and includes a notion of intentionality (and not of an almost automatic pattern). To understand how this intentionality was constructed it is important to briefly discuss the analytic procedure. The procedure relied – and this is valid until today – on a minute coding of behavior of each interacting partner. Tronick worked with a dynamic second: one second slowed down to seven seconds. The coded variables included, for example, arm, hand, and head movements, but also vocalizations, mimics, and body posture. The intermediary result was a table of coded movements. The table was then translated into (or retold as) an ethological description. I quote from what Tronick called “greeting” in normal mother-infant play: As his mother comes in, saying, ‘Hello’ in a high-pitched but gentle voice, he follows her with his head and eyes as she approaches him. His body builds up with tension, his face and eyes open up with a real greeting which ends with a smile. His mouth opens wide and his whole body orients toward her. He subsides, mouths his tongue twice, his smile dies, and he looks down briefly, while she continues to talk in an increasingly eliciting voice [. . .] (Tronick et al. 1978, 5)

The ethological description narrativizes the coded behavior: it sets the movements of the dyadic partners in relation to one another and presents them a temporal sequence of interrelated actions. To be sure, the narration is externally focalized and almost entirely blends out interpretations in terms of internal states and feelings. Yet, it does provide us with scene, agents, acts and agency, and suggests a semantic field of communicative action. This suggestion is implicit in the way the episode is retold: the stretched time of the ethological description reduces the distance to acts and agents; representation of direct speech (“Hello”), juxtaposition of relational movements (“he follows”), and indirect markers of internal states (“builds up with tension”) convey a sense of internal perspective. The scientific interpretation makes the semantics of action explicit: the authors characterize the infant-mother dyad as “a goal-oriented, reciprocal system in which the infant plays a major active role, constantly modifying his own commu-

 For a historical account of the Child Development Unit: Rietmann (2018, Ch. 3).

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nicative displays in response to the feedback provided by his partner” (Tronick et al. 1978, 10). The plot structure of the still face adds motivation: “If the system is violated by a partner’s non-reciprocity [still face condition], the infant will respond in an appropriate manner which indicates how powerfully he is affected by the disturbance” (Tronick et al. 1978, 10). The infant is “affected,” he is internally motivated to act. Notions of internal states become more pronounced in the conclusion of the paper: “Language is not yet a part of the interaction, but there appears to be a lexicon of expression [the coded micro-behaviors] that conveys information to each about their partner’s inner emotional state and serves to regulate the interaction” (Tronick et al. 1978, 11). In comparison to Stern’s early work, we then see a more complex cinematographic semantization of (micro-)behavior (the still face experiment) combined with a less distanced description of that behavior: a (predominantly) externally focalized, but slowed-down account of behavioral exchanges now seen as evocative of internal motivations. The attribution of internal states and motivations to the infant increased in the following years and it continued to thrive on the temporal and, we may say, narrative structure of the infant experiences in face-to-face settings. An important example is the later work of Daniel Stern. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Stern collaborated in various research projects with Edward Tronick, both being key players in a large but closely knit network of infant mental health practitioners that emerged during that time. In 1995, Stern published a much-cited book (somewhat awfully) entitled The Motherhood Constellation, that provided a review and synthesis of the soaring interactive research on infancy of the preceding decades. In the book, Stern turned to sociolinguistics and structural narrative theory (the works of William Labov, Kenneth Burke, Paul Ricœur, and others) to explain how infants experienced the relationships with their mothers. Stern’s effort figured within a broader interest of this cognitive psychologists in narratology in the 1980s and 90s. Much of this interest directly grew out of research with young children and was guided by larger questions about the role of narratives in human thinking and culture. For example, based on studies of language acquisition from the 1980s, the Harvard psychologist Jerome Bruner argued that a study of narrative as an “instrument of mind” could provide insights into how human beings negotiate conflict and attributed meaning to human interactions and the social world (Bruner 1983, 1986, 1990).16 Stern’s intervention was to turn the study

 The psychological interest in narrative and narrative theory echoed a contemporary engagement with narrative in a number of disciplines, including anthropology, linguistics, art history, philosophy, and literary critique (Bruner 1991; Mitchell 1981). In its most radical articulations, a broad understanding of narrative was used to put into question distinctions between fact and fiction, a position that was retrospectively called pan-narrativism (Blume 2019, 12–16). The con-

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of narrative into a means for understanding not only verbal expressions in children but also non-verbal behavior in infants. Stern argued that the infant lived in a “proto-narrative envelope” and attributed to this envelope a structural function for early experience. In The Motherhood Constellation, he illustrates this proto-narrative structure with the example of a hungry infant who is about to be breastfed by his or her mother: When the motive or desire [hunger] is enacted in an interpersonal situation [crying], it creates, subjectively, a narrative-like structure. As the motivated event moves in time towards its goal [the mother moving to the infant], it generates a dramatic line of tension [. . .]. This line of tension is created by the temporal unfolding of events, from a phase of action that complicates the plot, through a phase of crisis (the dramatic high point) [nipple is put in the baby’s mouth], to a phase of resolution [growing satiation] [. . .]. The result is the subjective formation of the other main elements of a narrative-like structure, namely a proto-plot with an agent, an action, an instrumentality, a goal, and a context. (Stern 1995, 90–91, square brackets added by me)

Stern proposed that infants as young as three months could exhibit a “narrative-like mode of thought that concern[ed] motivated, goal-oriented behavior” (Stern 1995, 90). They were able to “differentiate self from other,” “recognize” their “own agency,” appreciate “primitive forms of causality,” perform instrumental (goal-oriented) behavior, and sense the context (when and where) of behavior (Stern 1995, 93). The affective tensions within mother-infant interaction corresponded to narrative-like structures not only from the point of view of the observer but also in the subjective experience of the infant. The infant was not simply part of a “goal-oriented, reciprocal system” but both appeared for the observer and perceived himself as a proto-agent in a proto-plot. In Stern’s work, narrative became a means to create both epistemological access and ontological continuity to the pre-verbal mind.17

cern of cognitive psychologists was a different one, even if it also entailed an extension of the concept and its partial dissociation from textual and oral transmissions. As I mentioned for Bruner, psychologists sought to explain how the human mind attributed meaning to individual experiences and the social world. In this context, narrative was seen as one instrument of mind among others, specifically linked to human happenings, as opposed to, e.g., the use of logic to make sense of the natural world (Bruner 1991, 1986).  From this perspective, the recourse to narrative provided a new answer to the question of ontological continuity that had haunted developmental psychology since its inception in the late nineteenth century (Shuttleworth 2010; Steedman 1990; Smuts 2006).

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5 Beebe’s microplots Until today, the epistemic condition for understanding the assumed proto-narrativity of the infant’s mind continues to rely on a strenuous work of temporally and narratively structuring and restructuring infant experiences. I will further illustrate this point with the work of the psychologist Beatrice Beebe, which will also bring us to some of the clinical applications of audiovisual narration in infant psychiatry. Beebe was a student of Daniel Stern and is one of the leading scholars in the research field of mother-infant interaction. In numerous papers, she argues that the infant lives in a split-second world and experiences micro-plots. These micro-plots easily escape ordinary vision but are discernible in what she calls the “social microscope” of video registration (Beebe et al. 2016, xi; Beebe 2014). Fig. 3 shows an example of how Beebe uses the “microscope” to tell the microplots of mother-infant interaction. The images stem from a public presentation that Beebe gave in 2018, but they are discussed in similar terms in The Mother-Infant Interaction Picture Book published in 2016. I will first give an example of Beebe’s reading of infant-parent interaction and then discuss the function and nature of narration in her work. In the presentation, Beebe shows a video of face-to-face interaction between a three-and-a-half-month-old infant and her mother, and translates this interaction into a dialogue about feelings. Baby and mother interact in a face-to-face setting. Initially, both are smiling and Beebe describes how they perform together tiny movements of their faces, heads, and arms. Then, she describes a complication, shown in Fig. 3a: the mother moves her hand into the seat of the infant, “and,” Beebe comments, “they are both saying, ‘Oh what was that?’” Beebe then switches several times between Fig. 3a and 3b, while explaining: And, then, 17 to 18 [seconds], the baby says, ‘Uh, I am so surprised!’ And, the mother says, 17 to 18, ‘Oh, I am so surprised!’ Right, their eyebrows both go up at once, 17 to 18, ‘Oh, I am so surprised!’

Beebe moves on to Fig. 3b and 3c, continuing: Then, the baby says, less than a second, right, 18:05 to 18:25, the baby says, ‘I am not happy!’ Right, see that expression, ‘I am not happy!’ And, the mother says, coming back here, 18 to 18:20, ‘Oh, I am sorry!’ Right, so watch that again, ‘I am not happy!’ ‘Oh, I am sorry!’

Beebe continues to show and comment the images as the story unfolds. The baby says: “Yeah, it’s bad.” The mother responds: “Oh, I am really sorry,” and continues: “Maybe, it’s not that bad.” Baby: “I don’t know.” Mother: “I think you are ok.” Baby: “Really?” And, then: “All right!” Mother: “Is everything all right?” Baby: “Oh, I like you!” Mother: “I like you, too!” In these sequences, Beebe reads Tiny non-verbal cues of infant and mother as a dialogue about feelings. This dialogue includes a

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(a)

(b)

(c)

Fig. 3: Beebe’s Microplots (Decoding the Nonverbal Language of Babies 2018).

plot: a complication – the irritation of the baby (“I am not happy!”), and a resolution – the repair of the irritation by a sympathetic apology of the mother (“I am really sorry!”), followed by a coordination of affect (“Oh, I like you!”). To the audience, The “micro-plot” becomes “readable” through strategies of narration that include staging, temporal restructuring and retelling; in this case, with a radical reduction of distance through a mimetic mode of narration (direct speech).

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This narration of infant-mother interaction has direct clinical relevance: in video feedback therapy such tiny readings are taken to approach problems of the parent-infant relationship. In this context, pathos and catharsis play a pivotal function. In a sense, the basic rationale of using video feedback relies on an attempt at mediating suffering. According to Beebe, the goal is to “translate the parent’s presenting complaints into specific behaviors which can then be understood as an unfolding ‘story’ of the relationship” (Beebe 2010, 33). As in the example above, special attention is paid to the way the dyad “copes with disruptions” and “negotiates repairs” (Beebe 2010, 25). Beebe provides the example of a mother, Mrs. C, who has the feeling that her baby boy, Cecil, does not like her and “seems more connected to the babysitter” than to her (Beebe 2010, 25). Beebe videotapes the dyad and later reviews a section of the video with the mother. She points out to the mother the “infant’s blinks and startles,” his “subtle face expressions” and “hints of shifts in cheek tonus,” and translates these movements into tiny “stories” (Beebe 2010, 27). While the thrust of the therapeutic work lies in an emphasis on moments of good interaction (of which the parent is unaware), the reviewing is also meant to show the parent what goes wrong in the “stories” and what can be done to put it right. In Cecil’s case, Beebe and Mrs. C came to an agreement that the mother was overstimulating the baby, “trying to get the infant’s attention when he was turned away, and calling the infant in a ‘greeting’ contour at moments when the infant was clearly not receptive” (Beebe 2010, 27). The result was that she “could not get Cecil to engage” and felt increasingly “desperate” during the interaction. Beebe encouraged Mrs. C to lower the stimulation, to “try less hard” and be receptive to “the infant’s remarkable non-verbal language” (Beebe 2010, 25–28). So, the mother’s complaint of feeling distant from her baby (her suffering) was situated in the pathos (painful missteps) of a story of non-verbal affective communication. The mother was then assisted in making tiny changes in her behavior in order to achieve a state of smooth “action-dialogue,” to bring the story to a successful resolution and thereby achieve both narrative and therapeutic catharsis (Beebe 2010, 25). The link between narration and therapeutic catharsis has, of course, a long history, intimately linked to psychoanalysis (as talking cure).18 Beebe’s use of audiovisual stories both builds on and modifies this tradition. The narratives of non-verbal interaction provide an interface for an exchange of stories: the “story that unfolds in the videotape,” the story of the present complaint, but also the story of the parent. For Beebe, it is a conscious effort at integrating “procedural and declarative modes  The scholarship on psychoanalysis and narrative is extensive, ranging from philosophical inquiry to therapeutic application. Examples include Forrester (1999), Ricœur (1970), Schafer (1981), Boothe (2011). For a nuanced account of the concept of carthasis in the history of psychoanalysis including parent-infant psychotherapy: Gödde (2018).

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of processing,” to make a connection between painful interactional dynamics and mental representations (including sub- and unconscious representations). In Cecil’s case, the narratively assisted viewing of how he “dampened his face, lowered his arousal, averted his gaze, and turned away” evoked in Mrs. C the image of her own mother “who was controlling, distant, and quite depressed” (Beebe 2010, 27). According to Beebe, she came to realize that this aroused “anxious” feelings in her and made her “keep trying harder, as a way of reaching” her son (Beebe 2010, 27–28). Watching (and being told) her interaction with Cecil as an audiovisual narrative, she could connect this narrative to her own mental representations during the psychotherapeutic interview. Audiovisual storytelling has become a therapeutic tool.

6 Conclusion What does the storytelling of infant-mother interaction tell us about doctors’ stories and factual narration in audiovisual documents? In this paper, I have traced the evolution of narratives in infant mental health on two levels: the level of the audiovisual recording and the level of the scientific commentary. I have argued that the recordings exhibit a complicated form of referentiality. Their production relies on sophisticated forms of staging, and their analysis and presentation depend on temporal and spatial techniques of editing. In the history of infant mental health, they allowed decontextualizing, temporally restructuring and retelling infant experiences. They have had the epistemological function of creating understanding through a change in the temporal and spatial order of events and behaviors. As such, their function is similar to the general function of narratives in both science and everyday life. However, the images heavily depend on scientific commentary and narrative voice. I have shown that this voice went through a complex historical evolution that culminated in a view of the infant in which narrativity is seen as both an ontological condition of infancy and an epistemological condition for approaching its psychopathology. In turn, audiovisual story-telling has become a means to both explain and modify infant experiences; it has become both a scientific instrument and a therapeutic tool.

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References Adamson, Lauren B., and Janet E. Prick. 2003. “The Still Face: A History of a Shared Experimental Paradigm.” Infancy 4 (4): 451–473. Aristotle. 1996. Poetics. Translated by Malcolm Heath. New York: Penguin. Beebe, Beatrice. 2010. “Mother–Infant Research Informs Mother–Infant Treatment.” Clinical Social Work Journal 38 (1): 17–36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-009-0256-7. Beebe, Beatrice. 2014. “My Journey in Infant Research and Psychoanalysis: Microanalysis, a Social Microscope.” Psychoanalytic Psychology 31 (1): 4–25. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035575. Beebe, Beatrice, Phyllis Cohen, and Frank Lachmann. 2016. The Mother-Infant Interaction Picture Book: Origins of Attachment. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Blume, Peter. 2019. Fiktion und Weltwissen: Der Beitrag nichtfiktionaler Konzepte zur Sinnkonstitution fiktionaler Erzählliteratur. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. https://www.esv.info/lp/esv-open/download?q= 9783503187218. Boothe, Brigitte. 2011. “Erzählen im medizinischen und psychotherapeutischen Diskurs.” In Wirklichkeitserzählungen: Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens, edited by Christian Klein and Matías Martínez, 51–80. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Brandt, Christina. 2011. “Wissenschaftserzählungen. Narrative Strukturen im naturwissenschaftlichen Diskurs.” In Wirklichkeitserzählungen: Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens, edited by Christian Klein and Matías Martínez, 81–109. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Bruner, Jerome. 1983. Child’s Talk: Learning to Use Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bruner, Jerome. 1986. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bruner, Jerome. 1990. Acts of Meaning. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bruner, Jerome. 1991. “The Narrative Construction of Reality.” Critical Inquiry 18 (1): 1–21. https://doi. org/10.1086/448619. Burke, Kenneth. 2009. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cartwright, Lisa. 1995. Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Cowles, Henry M. 2015. “Hypothesis Bound: Trial and Error in the Nineteenth Century.” Isis 106 (3): 635–645. https://doi.org/10.1086/683528. Curtis, Scott. 2015. The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany. New York: Columbia University Press. Dear, Peter. 1991. The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument: Historical Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Decoding the Nonverbal Language of Babies. Produced by the American Enterprise Institute. 2018. Accessed March 26, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yVU2lmlMdk. Dicorcia, Jennifer A. 2016. “Evaluating the Nature of the Still-Face Effect in the Double Face-to-Face Still-Face Paradigm Using Different Comparison Groups.” Infancy 21 (3): 332–352. https://doi. org/10.1111/infa.12123. Fivaz-Depeursinge, Elisabeth, and Antoinette Corboz-Warnery. 1999. The Primary Triangle: A Developmental View of Mothers, Fathers and Children. New York: Basic Books. Fludernik, Monika. 2002. Towards a “Natural” Narratology. London: Routledge. Forrester, John. 1999. The Seductions of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan and Derrida. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forster, E. M. 1985. Aspects of the Novel. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Genette, Gérard. 1990. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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Gigerenzer, Gerd. 1991. “From Tools to Theories.” Psychological Review 98 (2): 254–267. https://doi. org/10.1037/0033-295X.98.2.254. Gödde, Günter. 2018. “Katharsis.” In Kritische Lebenskunst: Human-, sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Analysen und Strategien, edited by Günter Gödde and Jörg Zirfas, 260–268. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04644-4_34. Guedeney, Antoine, and Susana Tereno. 2012. “La vidéo dans l’observation d’évaluation et d’intervention en santé mentale du jeune enfant : un outil pour la transmission.” Neuropsychiatrie de l’Enfance et de l’Adolescence 60: 261–266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neurenf. 2011.12.001. Holmes, Frederic L. 1987. “Scientific Writing and Scientific Discovery.” Isis 78 (2): 220–235. Klein, Christian, and Matías Martínez, eds. 2011. Wirklichkeitserzählungen: Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Kuhn, Markus, andJohann N. Schmidt. 2013. “Narration in Film (Revised Version; Uploaded 22 April 2014).” In The Living Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn et al., Paragraphs 1–39. Hamburg: Hamburg University Press. https://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/node/56.html. Ladd-Taylor, Molly, and Lauri Umansky, eds. 1998. “Bad” Mothers: The Politics of Blame in TwentiethCentury America. New York: New York University Press. Lotman, Yuri M. 1977. The Structure of the Artistic Text. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Martínez, Matías, and Michael Scheffel. 2016. Einführung in die Erzähltheorie. Munich: C.H.Beck. Mesman, J. 2009. “The Many Faces of the Still-Face Paradigm: A Review and Meta-Analysis.” Developmental Review 29 (2): 120–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2009.02.001. Mitchell, W. J. T., ed. 1981. On Narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nichols, Bill. 1991. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Osofsky, Joy D. 2016. “Infant Mental Health.” In APA Handbook of Clinical Psychology: Roots and Branches, edited by John C. Norcross, Gary R. VandenBos, Donald K. Freedheim, and Melanie M. Domenech Rodríguez, 43–58. Washington: American Psychological Association. Plant, Rebecca Jo. 2010. Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Renov, Michael. 1993. Theorizing Documentary. New York: Routledge. Ricœur, Paul. 1970. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ricœur, Paul. 1984. Time and Narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rietmann, Felix E. 2018. “Seeing the Infant: Audiovisual Technologies and the Mind Sciences of the Child.” PhD diss., Princeton University. https://search.proquest.com/docview/2158088791/ 5799417884E8455EPQ/1. Rietmann, Felix E. Forthcoming. “Between Film and Tape: Media Transfers and Epistemic Shifts in Infant Research.” In Epistemic Screens: Science and the Moving Image, edited by Scott Curtis, Oliver Gaycken and Vinzenz Hediger. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Rietmann, Felix, Mareike Schildmann, Caroline Arni, Daniel Thomas Cook, Davide Giuriato, Novina Göhlsdorf, and Wangui Muigai. 2017. “Knowledge of Childhood: Materiality, Text, and the History of Science – an Interdisciplinary Round Table Discussion.” The British Journal for the History of Science 50 (1): 111–141. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000708741700005X. Rony, Fatimah Tobing. 1996. The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle. Durham: Duke University Press. Schafer, Roy. 1981. “Narration in the Psychoanalytic Dialogue.” In On Narrative, edited by W. J. T. Mitchell, 1–24. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schmid, Wolf. 2010. Narratology: An Introduction. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.

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Shuttleworth, Sally. 2010. The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science, and Medicine, 1840–1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smuts, Alice Boardman. 2006. Science in the Service of Children, 1893–1935. New Haven: Yale University Press. Steedman, Carolyn. 1990. Childhood, Culture, and Class in Britain: Margaret McMillan, 1860–1931. London: Virago. Stern, Daniel N. 1971. “A Micro-Analysis of Mother-Infant Interaction: Behavior Regulating Social Contact between a Mother and Her 3 1/2–Month-Old Twins.” Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry 10 (3): 501–517. Stern, Daniel N. 1973. “‘On Kinesic Analysis’: A Discussion with Daniel N. Stern.” The Drama Review 17 (3): 114. https://doi.org/10.2307/1144848. Stern, Daniel N. 1992. Diary of a Baby: What Your Child Sees, Feels, and Experiences. New York: Basic Books. Stern, Daniel N. 1995. The Motherhood Constellation: A Unified View of Parent-Infant Psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books. Still Face Experiment: Dr. Edward Tronick. Produced by Zero-to-Three and U Mass Boston. 2009. Accessed March 26, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0. Tronick, Edward, Heidelise Als, Lauren Adamson, Susan Wise, and T. Berry Brazelton. 1978. “The Infant’s Response to Entrapment between Contradictory Messages in Face-to-Face Interaction.” Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry 17 (1): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/S00027138(09)62273-1. Wellmann, Janina. 2011. “Science and Cinema.” Science in Context 24 (3): 311–328. https://doi.org/10. 1017/S0269889711000135. White, Hayden. 1981. “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality.” In On Narrative, edited by W. J. T. Mitchell, 1–24. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zeanah, Charles H., and Julie A. Larrieu. 2000. “Mother-Blaming, Relationship Psychopathology, and Infant Mental Health: A Commentary on Ward, Lee, & Lipper (2000).” Infant Mental Health Journal 21 (6): 443–447. https://doi.org/10.1002/1097-0355(200011/12)21:63.0. CO;2-7.

Section 2: Medicine

Lucia Aschauer

Narrating Birth: The Emergence of Male Expertise in Obstetrical Case Reports around 1800 1 Introduction On February 12th 1799, a small and delicate woman of 21 years of age gives birth to her first child, a boy. Following premature labor, the delivery proceeds too rapidly, causing a severe perineal laceration. When the woman’s physician Dr. Schüssler first examines his patient a few days after the unlucky delivery, he finds her in a deplorable state of restlessness and frailty, exhibiting all the symptoms of childbed fever. Despite the worrying size of the woman’s injury, he decides against sewing up the wound and, instead, resorts to the use of a lunar caustic called Höllenstein, also known as silver nitrate – which eventually leads to a complete recovery. The anonymous case of this young woman was witnessed and written down afterwards by her physician, Dr. Schüssler. In 1801, it was published under the title “Bemerkungen über die Zerreissung des Perinaeum, ihre Verhütung und Heilung, nebst einer Beobachtung” [remarks on the tearing of the perinaeum, its prevention and cure, together with an observation] in Hufeland’s Journal der practischen Arzneykunde und Wundarzneykunst (Schüssler 1801). As one of the first medical periodicals in vernacular language, Hufeland’s Journal was, alongside its French and English counterparts, Journal de médecine, chirurgie, pharmacie, etc. and Medical Facts and Observations, the long-awaited forum for an increasingly professionalized medical community.1 Case reports – Beobachtungen in German or observations in French and English – featured prominently in these new semi-public spaces. As a standardized “epistemic genre” (Pomata 2010),2 they cater towards the contemporary appetite

 The Journal der practischen Arzneykunde und Wundarzneykunst, edited by Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, was published between 1795 and 1844; Medical Facts and Observations was published between 1791 and 1800 (London: printed for J. Johnson); the Journal de médecine, chirurgie, pharmacie, etc. (1758–1793; 1800–1817) was first published under the name Recueil périodique d’observations de médecine, de chirurgie et de pharmacie (1754–1758).  Gianna Pomata defines the concept of epistemic genre as follows: “[Genres] are highly structured and clearly recognizable textual conventions – textual tools, we may call them – handed down by tradition for the expression and communication of a particular content – in the case of epistemic genres, a content that is seen as primarily cognitive in character. Epistemic genres give https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111319971-006

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for empirical knowledge that emerged from medical practice.3 For historians of medicine, case reports of difficult pregnancies and deliveries have proven to be valuable sources for reconstructing the realities of childbirth around 1800. The medical accounts shed light on changing obstetrical practices and often intense professional rivalries between midwives, physicians, and surgeons. In doing so, they illustrate the shift from a traditionally female-dominated, barely institutionalized practice towards a male-dominated, highly institutionalized and professionalized scientific discipline.4 This paper proposes to evaluate these obstetrical accounts not only as sources on the history of pregnancy and birth, but as historical phenomena in their own right – in other words, as factual narratives which do not only mirror historical change, but actively shape it. My main interest therefore is methodological: how can a narratological analysis of obstetrical case reports help us understand the conflicts of power and knowledge between competing agents involved in childbirth around 1800? And more precisely: how can it shed light on the role of these case reports in creating and stabilizing the necessary epistemic authority by which male physicians and surgeons eventually succeeded in establishing themselves in the field of obstetrics? Five selected case reports published between 1757 and 1817 in both Hufeland’s Journal and the French Journal de Médecine will serve to illustrate my analysis. By virtue of their standardized format, they are exemplary for the hundreds of similar case reports written by aspiring male physicians and surgeons and published in medical journals at this crucial time in the history of clinical medicine and of obstetrics in particular. The first section of this paper briefly outlines the premises and structure of a narratology of obstetrical case reports. The analytical part fo-

a literary form to intellectual endeavour, and in so doing they shape and channel the cognitive practice of attention” (Pomata 2010, 197).  This preference for empirical knowledge over medical doctrine is explicitly formulated in Hufeland’s editorial to the Journal’s first volume: “I herewith commence such a collection, where the value of the contributions should not consist in scholarly splendour and theoretical art but only in practical usefulness, and where we welcome every true observation, drawn from nature” [Hier eröffne ich nun eine solche Sammlung, wo der Werth der Beyträge nicht in gelehrtem Prunk und theoretischer Kunst, sondern lediglich in der practischen Brauchbarkeit bestehen soll, und wo uns jede wahre und der Natur treu nachgezeichnete Beobachtung [. . .], willkommen seyn wird] (Hufeland 1795, V). Here and in the following, in both footnotes and main text, all translations of quotations are by Kilian King. The original wording is included in square brackets following the translation.  While the struggle for the interpretative power over the bodies of women in labour had been smouldering since the sixteenth century, it reached a peak at the end of the eighteenth century, when medical practice and theory evolved towards the clinic. For an overview of the French and German historiography on this topic, see: Gélis (1988) and Metz-Becker (1997).

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cuses on the narrative structure, the creation of epistemic authority via the ‘epistemic pact’ and the strategies by which evidence is produced in the obstetrical case report. A final section shows how the different agents involved in childbirth are characterized in these accounts and how the reader is invited to identify with the protagonist.

2 A narratology of obstetrical narration? If the field of narratology was traditionally concerned with literary texts (Fludernik 2015), scholars from disciplines like linguistics (Labov and Waletzky 1967) or history (White 1973) have pointed out from early on that non-fictional texts, while having a clearly defined function, rely on similar narrative structures and strategies to convey their content, and are therefore suited for narratological analysis. Recently, the narratology of factual narratives has developed into a small, still relatively heterogenous, but dynamic field of research. Narratives, whether they are fictional or factual, essentially contain two areas of interest: what is narrated (histoire) and how it is narrated (récit and narration) (Genette 2010, 11–15). This distinction is fundamental for any narratological analysis and can, as I suggest in this paper, be used for a better understanding of obstetrical case reports. As a written reconstruction of obstetrical events (histoire), the case report selects, arranges, and presents said events in a specific textual form (récit). This specific form is itself regulated by a narrative instance (narration). Once this analytical frame is established, classic narratological tools such as the separation of author and narrator, the concepts of character and characterization, or the concept of focalization can be applied.5 One should however keep in mind the specific nature and historical context of the textual genre at hand. Like most factual narratives, obstetrical case reports have a clearly defined function and are above all designed to convince peers. Furthermore, obstetrical Beobachtungen or observations fulfilled a wide range of epistemic and social functions in the scientific communication of the eighteenth-century medical community. Deployed as concrete illustrations of theoretical arguments, as building blocks of a kind of knowledge yet to be developed, or as a means for the popularization of science – depending on the context of publication –, obstetrical case reports also served as paradigmatic cases around which the growing commu-

 The following analysis mainly draws on the terminology developed by Gérard Genette in Discours du récit (1972) and Nouveau discours du récit (1983). The most recent German translation (Genette 2010), which I use in this paper, consists of these two studies.

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nity of male obstetricians crystallized. A narratological analysis of these narratives has to take into account this functional aspect of obstetrical storytelling. Obstetrical case reports like the one published in Hufeland’s Journal are part of a real historical network of communication, in which the writing of a real author was read by real readers. Without aiming to oversimplify the theoretical issues raised by the debate on the distinction between factuality and fictionality, this paper argues for a pragmatic definition of factuality.6 Instead of focusing on textual or formal characteristics, as a semantic or syntactic approach would require, I suggest defining the factuality of obstetrical accounts in context; this context consists of the history, culture, and society in which these accounts were produced and used. What matters for these narratives of pregnancy and birth is therefore not the actual veracity of narrative contents, but rather the fact that their authors have a claim to realism and their readers a corresponding expectation.7 Lastly, a narratological analysis of obstetrical case reports must pay special attention to the genre-inherent representational aporias of the medical Beobachtung or observation, which are, in many ways, exacerbated by the specific context of French obstetrics between 1750 and 1830. For the contemporary theorists of medical observation, the scientific legitimacy of the text genre relies on the value of direct, first-hand experience and the epistemic power of testimony.8 However, when reading the many obstetrical Beobachtungen and observations published in the second half of the eighteenth century, one cannot help but notice the discrepancy between the attitude of epistemic authority displayed by the male obstetricians and the reality of childbirth, which was – in practice – still largely dominated by women and thus excluded men from direct contact with, and therefore direct observation of, women in labor. This discrepancy, I suggest, posed challenges to the authors of obstetrical case reports and made them conceive sophisticated narrative strategies to cover it up. One could therefore say that the history of obstetrics pushes the genre ‘case report’ to its limits and reveals its narrative structure like no other medical discipline.

 The pragmatic definition of fictionality draws on John Searle’s speech act theory (1979), in that it understands fictional texts as “pretended speech acts.” Schaeffer (2012) provides a useful overview over the different models which conceptualize the opposition between fictionality and factuality.  The central role of referentiality in both the production and the reception of factual narratives has been emphasized by Klein and Martínez in their seminal anthology Wirklichkeitserzählungen. Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens (2009).  For an overview over the prolific theoretical literature on medical observation which appears at the same time as the many case reports published in medical journals and case collections, see: Senebier (1775, 1802), Petit-Radel (1792), Pinel (1819), Diderot and d’Alembert (1765).

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3 The narrative structure of obstetrical case reports Obstetrical case reports typically consist of two distinct, yet simultaneously overlapping chronologies: the chronology of pregnancy and birth on the one hand, and the chronology of scientific inquiry on the other hand. The former is simply retold by the obstetrician-narrator, who does not influence this timeline in any way; meanwhile, the separate chronology of diagnosis and medical discovery is actively constructed by the narrator-protagonist, and, despite beginning with the first encounter between the physician and the pregnant woman, stretches into the past through the anamnesis and into the future through the prognosis. Taking the case report quoted in the introduction as an example, narratives labelled as Beobachtung or observation usually start with key information like dates, name, age, and characteristics of the patient, setting the story’s time and place: “A young, tender, small woman of 21 years of age gave birth for the first time on February 12th 1799 to a very small boy, some days early and very quickly” [Eine junge, zärtliche, kleine Frau von 21 Jahren gebar den 12. Februar 1799 das erste Mal ein ganz kleines Knäbchen, mehrere Tage zu früh, sehr schnell] (Schüssler 1801, 179). In the terminology of classic dramatic theory, this prologue could be defined as the exposition in which all relevant characters are introduced and information is given to the reader.9 In the logic of the medical encounter, the prologue corresponds to the anamnestic interview conducted by the doctor. What follows is the case itself, which is usually narrated in chronological order and follows the classic dramatic phases: rising action, climax, falling action, and finally resolution. The first highlight of the case’s plot is the personal encounter between the first-person narrator and the pregnant woman. Before the said encounter, the narrative is fast paced and years and months are dealt with in a few sentences; after that, the time of narration slows down, occasionally even to an hourly report. Interestingly enough, the moment of childbirth itself is not necessarily the climax of the chronology of scientific inquiry, despite doubtlessly being the climax in the chronology of pregnancy and birth. This has very practical reasons, since the physician or surgeon is usually called only when the delivery is going badly and sometimes misses the main events, or – if he makes it in time – is not allowed

 The following analysis draws on the dramatic theory developed by Fritz Schütze (1976, 12), whose five dramatic phases can fruitfully be applied to obstetrical narration (Phase 1: Exposition [Vorspiel/Exposition/Orientierung], Phase 2: Appearance of complications [Auftauchen von Krisenfaktoren/ Komplizierung], Phase 3: Crisis/Climax [Krise/Höhepunkt], Phase 4: Solution [Krisenabwicklung/Auflösung], Phase 5: Final stage/conclusion [Endzustand/Konklusion]).

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into the patient’s room. In the example cited above, Dr. Schüssler first examines his patient a few days after the delivery, which he therefore could not observe first-hand. More generally speaking, the actual observation conducted by the male obstetrician is usually quite short when compared to the total length of pregnancy and delivery in the historical context of eighteenth-century obstetrics – which is not entirely unproblematic if one considers the claim to scientific legitimacy of a genre called Beobachtung or observation. The purpose of the obstetrical case report, therefore, is arguably not so much the reconstruction of pregnancy and delivery in the form of a narrative but rather the appropriation of this story by the narrator-obstetrician. This can be seen as a transformation of the natural female chronology into a scientific male chronology. The best example for this narrative appropriation is the abundance of generalizing scientific reflections which typically conclude the case reports. In the quoted example, we find an extensive scientific frame narrative in which the Beobachtung is embedded. In a detailed prologue, the author first discusses the different techniques with which perineal injuries during delivery can be prevented. On page 4, he introduces the actual case (“And now the observation” [Nun die Beobachtung]) which provides an example for his introductory remarks. The short conclusion serves as an additional argument for the medical use of the famous Höllenstein. One could argue that the scientific frame narrative which consists of the prologue and the scientific conclusion does not, strictly speaking, belong to the main plot. It fulfils a different epistemic function than the case narrative itself: in the frame narrative, the narrator consolidates his interpretative authority by creating an overview of the obstetrical plot as well as establishing a scientific place- and timelessness. Linguistic elements which distinguish the frame story from the actual case are the collective pronoun nous/wir [we] or the impersonal form instead of je/ich [I], as well as the use of the present tense instead of the past tense. Both elements create a considerable degree of abstraction and generalization, thereby emphasizing the author-narrator’s claim of universal validity.

4 The epistemic pact and the production of epistemic authority To further analyze the production of epistemic authority in the obstetrical case report, I am going to take a closer look at the text’s narrative instance by looking at another example from my corpus, published in 1757 under the title “HISTOIRE d’une fausse-couche singulière, suivie peu de tems après d’une grossesse extraor-

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dinaire”10 in the French Recueil périodique d’observations de médecine, de chirurgie et de pharmacie (Deydier 1757). Let us first briefly summarize this account of two strange pregnancies and deliveries: shortly after entering into holy matrimony, the 37-year-old Demoiselle Siccaud becomes pregnant with her first child. But the creature that comes into the world four months later during a nocturnal miscarriage has no human qualities: the patient first emits a considerable quantity of coagulated blood and then gives birth to a small solid body which her doctor describes as “une sauterelle privée de ses ailes” [a locust stripped of its wings] (Deydier 1757, 411). Her second pregnancy at first appears to be rather standard; however, the scheduled date of birth goes by, nothing happens, and it is only one year later – after a gestation period of 18 months in total – that the woman delivers a dead child. After the standardized introductory sentence which presents the key data of the reported case, the first-person narrator is introduced as follows: “Je fus appelé, je touchai le ventre & je trouvai à la région du bassin une grosseur & une résistance” (Deydier 1757, 410). The contemporary reader of these lines will generally (and correctly) assume that the first-person narrator marked with “je” [I] is identical with the author mentioned in the title of the publication: “Par M. DEYDIER, Ecuyer, Docteur en Médecine de l’Université de Montpellier, & Médecin de l’Hôpital de Nismes” (Deydier 1757, 410). This seemingly banal equation is, I would like to argue, the basic operating principle of medical case reports. I want to refer to it – following Philippe Lejeune’s concept of the autobiographical pact (Lejeune 1992, 2005) – as the ‘epistemic pact’ of the medical Beobachtung or observation.

4.1 The epistemic pact As is the case in the ideal-typical autobiography, the male obstetrician is simultaneously author, narrator, and protagonist of the obstetrical case report (A=N=P). This formal identity is, however, not stated in the text itself, but rather appears as an implicit agreement, a pact between the author and the reader of the case report. Moreover, this pact is not a transtemporal, universal phenomenon; it depends on changing modes of reading and writing which correspond to varying, or rather growing degrees of scientificity or objectivity (Daston and Galison 2007). This being said, there are a number of conventions, codes or markers which are necessary to conclude such a pact in a specific historical context. These

 “History of a unique miscarriage, followed shortly afterwards by an extraordinary pregnancy” (transl. by Lucia Aschauer).

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markers can be paratextual, as in the case of Demoiselle Siccaud where we find the reference to the genre observation and the name of the author in the title. In the text itself, the epistemic pact becomes evident through the indication of the precise date, time, and place of the obstetrical events, or the name of the pregnant woman: “La Demoiselle Siccaud, âgée d’environ trente-sept ans, d’un tempérament sanguin, vif & bilieux, se maria en Septembre de l’année 1754 [. . .]”11 (Deydier 1757, 410). This is because this information, which is given before the main narrative body, clearly refers to an extra-textual reality. Following the pragmatic definition of factuality, these textual markers do not guarantee that the story is actually true but should rather be seen as signaling the author’s claim to reality. The acceptance of this referential claim by the reader depends on whether the author manages to create credibility or, in other words, narrative reliability. For this endeavour, the social and scientific status of the author is a determining factor. If we go back to our example, the subtitle (“Par M. DEYDIER, Ecuyer, Docteur en Médecine de l’Université de Montpellier, & Médecin de l’Hôpital de Nismes”) reveals that the author is a man of distinction: he holds a doctorate in medicine from the prestigious University of Montpellier, and with his aristocratic title “Ecuyer”, he is also an appropriate doctor for his patient, the Demoiselle.12

4.2 Author figure and epistemic authority: The case report’s narrating instance In order to understand how the narrating instance of the obstetrical case report functions, it is important to distinguish the scientific author as a person from the scientific author as a character, i.e. between the historical figure M. Deydier and the protagonist-obstetrician marked with “je”. Unlike the historical author M. Deydier, the author-character in the text is a rhetorical construction which is intended to produce epistemic authority.13 In the context of eighteenth-century obstetrics, epistemic authority can be defined as the ability to make and defend epistemic claims about pregnancy and birth, or, more abstractly speaking, the ability to gain and maintain the interpretative power over the pregnant woman’s body.

 “Demoiselle Siccaud, aged approximately 37 years, of sanguine, bilious and lively humour, got married in September 1754 [. . .]” (transl. by Lucia Aschauer).  Until the late eighteenth century, the term demoiselle simply indicated that the woman belonged to the nobility or the grande bourgeoisie irrespective of marital status.  On the narrative production of epistemic authority, see: Azzouni et al. (2015).

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In narratological terms, the author figure in this case report is an autodiegetic narrator, whose split of the self into the experiencing self and the narrating self creates two epistemic perspectives within the narrative: the practical perspective of the protagonist – that is, the obstetrician – and the retrospective and analytical perspective of the narrator – that is, the scientist. I want to argue that this double perspective is essential for the epistemic function of the genre Beobachtung or observation. Of particular interest are the narrative shifts between these two perspectives: at which points in the narrative does the narrating self appear more clearly? And when, in turn, is the experiencing self in the spotlight? We can discuss these changing perspectives and their epistemic effects with the terminology of focalization which Genette defined as the selection of narrative information in relation to the experience and knowledge of the narrator (2010, 118–124). Whereas the main plot of the obstetrical Beobachtung or observation is usually narrated in internal focalization, the prologue is often narrated in zero-focalization, sometimes communicating narrative information the protagonist cannot possibly know at this point of the story since he has not met the patient yet. The following prologue of an observation, published in 1783 in the Journal de médécine, exemplifies this feature of the genre: The wife of one Barthel, an egg merchant, resident in the village of Hatterville, married in the year 1775, gave birth to three children in the first five years of marriage (the first is alive and in good health, the other two are dead). There was nothing special about their births. Roughly three years ago this woman showed signs of pregnancy; in the fourth month she felt movement; at the end of the ninth month she experienced the pangs of labor: the summoned midwife confirmed the proximate parturition; the contractions lasted for three days, but they were far weaker than with the preceding births. On the fourth day the woman lost a large amount of blood & her belly sunk considerably; her child stopped moving; she did not experience any more contractions; she believed, as did the midwife, that it had been a false pregnancy; & on the sixth day she went about her tasks as usual. [La femme du nommé Barthel, coquetier, demeurant au village de Hatterville, paroisse de Hauterivoire, mariée en 1775, dans les cinq premières années de son mariage, avoit eu trois enfans (le premier est vivant et jouit d’une bonne santé, les deux autres sont morts). Ses couches n’avoient eu rien de particulier. Il y a environ trois ans que cette femme eut des signes de grossesse; à quatre mois & demi, elle sentit remuer; &, à la fin du neuvième mois, elle éprouva les douleurs de l’enfantement: la sage-femme appelée assura que l’accouchement se feroit bientôt; les douleurs continuèrent pendant trois jours, mais elles étoient moins fortes qu’elles n’avoient été aux trois accouchemens précédens. Le quatrième jour la femme perdit beaucoup de sang, & son ventre s’affaissa considérablement; son enfant cessa de remuer; elle n’eut plus de douleurs; elle crut, ainsi que la sage-femme, que c’étoit une fausse-grossesse; & au sixième jour, elle se remit à ses travaux ordinaires.] (Genil 1783, 334–335)

This paragraph does not explicitly report the results of the doctor’s anamnestic questioning. Rather, the pieces of information about the patient’s obstetrical pre-

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history are put together to form an introductory narrative in which the first-person narrator is (still) absent. In fact, the narrator of this paragraph cannot be located unambiguously since he seems to possess information about the two other characters, the patient and the midwife. Furthermore, not only actions but also private thoughts and perceptions of these characters are described to the reader (“elle sentit”, “elle éprouva”, “elle crut, ainsi que la sage-femme”). Using Genette’s vocabulary, this narrative is written in “zero-focalization” (2010, 121). Still following Genette, we might understand the variations in the narrative mode within a single case report as alterations, meaning transgressions of the informational norm established by the focalization of a text (2010, 121). Genette distinguishes between ‘paralipses’ (meaning ‘too little’, in other words a lack of information) and ‘paralepses’ (meaning ‘too much’, in other words externally added information). Based on the assumption that the genre ‘obstetrical observation’ is generally speaking internally focalized, this instance of a zero-focalized introductory narrative can be called a paralepsis. This is because we are given information about the thoughts of non-focalized characters and about events which the male obstetrician and focalizer could not have observed since they happened before his first encounter with the pregnant woman. There is, however, another possible interpretation of the shifting focalization in the obstetrical observation as this problem is considerably complexified by taking into account the divergence of the ‘experiencing I’ and ‘narrating I’ which characterizes any autodiegetic narration. After all, the identity between narrator and protagonist does not, according to Genette, necessarily imply that everything is narrated in internal focalization from the perspective of the protagonist. The autodiegetic narrator is merely bound to his current state of information, not to his past state of information as protagonist (Genette 2010, 2017). If and when the narration focusses on the past experiencing ‘I’ is purely a strategic question of narrative composition. In this sense, the paragraph quoted above seems to be a passage focalized by the narrating ‘I’, rather than a zero-focalized paralepsis with ‘too much’ information. Following the same logic, the passages focalized by the ‘experiencing I’ could be understood as paralipses with restricted information. These alterations at first glance seem somewhat surprising since, as mentioned above, the scientific legitimacy of the genre Beobachtung or observation is based on the veracity of direct, first-hand experience. However, zero-focalized passages do not disturb the epistemic status of the observation, but serve an epistemic purpose by giving the reader the impression of authority and competence. The male obstetrician does not actually spend much time at the childbed of his patient and therefore has very limited opportunity to observe first-hand. As the narrator of the observation however, he is able to simulate a much longer observational period, thereby extending his interpretative power to the whole process of pregnancy and birth. As long as the passages narrated in zero-focalization are

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skillfully interwoven with the internally focalized ones, they actually strengthen the epistemic authority of the narrator. To sum up, we can say that the authority of the obstetrical case is created by the interaction between the two autodiegetic epistemic perspectives. The first perspective is the one of the experiencing self whose credibility is based on the evidence of direct observation. Here, epistemic authority is generated through testimony. The second perspective is the one of the narrating self, which is used to turn the list of observations into a scientific argument in the context of a newly emerging medical discipline – obstetrics. While observed facts are selected, arranged, and assessed, links are made and causalities are established; it is the combination of these two perspectives which creates the epistemic authority of the obstetrical case report. The experiencing self needs the analytical skills of the narrating self, while the narrating self needs the authenticity and immediacy of the experiencing self. How effective and relevant each text is depends on how skillfully these two perspectives are interwoven. From the reader’s point of view, the experiencing and the narrating self should blend as harmoniously as possible into one reliable authorial figure.

5 Strategies of evidence production in the obstetrical case report In order to produce scientific evidence, the marriage of these two perspectives is taken one step further by the narrative, resulting in the illusion that experience and narration are happening simultaneously.

5.1 Narrative evidence or the narrative reiteration of observation Eighteenth-century medical theory states that the case report, Beobachtung or observation, should be nothing more than a pure transcript of the act of medical observation. In other words, the text is merely supposed to convey the observed facts like a perfect vessel in a lucid and plastic manner, so as to let Nature speak for herself. This highly ambiguous mission results, on a narrative level, in the elimination of the temporal distance between experience and narration. The goal of the Beobachtung or observation is to create an illusion in which the examination of the pregnant woman in her bed, the recording of observations, and the reception by the reader are all happening simultaneously.

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How does the observation, as a retrospective narrative, create the illusion of simultaneity? The following passage from the case report “OBSERVATION Sur un enfant venu au monde sans aucune apparence de vie,” published in 1776, will serve to illustrate this: The child was very large, especially the head, which appeared first. It was born unmoving, pale, and almost without its own body heat; the muscles of its upper and lower extremities were atonic. [. . .] I supposed that its condition resulted from a compression of the umbilical cord, which was wrapped once or twice around the neck of the infant; thereby it had constricted the jugular as well as prevented all the functions of the umbilical cord itself during labor, despite all the precautions I took during the delivery. As a result of this, I decided to let the blood of the umbilical cord flow after cutting through it. [L’enfant étoit très volumineux, sur-tout par la tête qui se présenta première. Il naquit sans mouvement, pâle, & presque sans chaleur naturelle; les muscles des extrémités, tant supérieures qu’inférieures, étoient dans l’atonie. [. . .] Je présumai que l’état où il étoit, étoit l’effet de la compression que le cordon ombilical, qui faisoit une ou deux circonvolutions autour du cou de l’enfant, avoit faite sur les jugulaires externes; & de celle qu’il avoit éprouvée lui-même de la part de la tête de l’enfant quelques moments avant l’accouchement, malgré toutes les précautions que je pus prendre dans ces mêmes moments. En conséquence je pris le parti de laisser couler le sang du cordon après l’avoir coupé.] (Lavalée 1776, 90)

In this example, obstetrical science takes place within the narrated world. Scientific procedures and modes of thought such as observing, defining, expressing doubts, judging, approving, and disapproving occur in this paragraph as narrated actions. First, the lifeless child is described and an explicit assumption (“je présumai”) is given about the causes of the lifelessness; what follows is a decision (“je pris le parti”) and a concrete action (“après l’avoir coupé”). Assumptions and actions are causally connected (“En conséquence”). This logical connection of observing, judging and acting finally leads to the desired result, namely the resuscitation of the child which was thought to be dead. As soon as the first spoonful of blood had flown off, the heart of the child began to beat, it yawned, and regained its natural colour; &, after two hours it was in a fit condition to be given suck by the wetnurse. [A la première cuillerée qui s’épencha, le mouvement du cœur devint sensible au tact, à la seconde l’enfant bâilla, [. . .] sa chair reprit sa couleur naturelle; &, au bout de deux heures, il fut en état de prendre le teton de la nourrice qui le lui présenta.] (Lavalée 1776, 90–91)

The obstetrical insights in this observation are arranged chronologically, which means that the timeline of producing new knowledge is reiterated within the timeline of the actual events of the birth.

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This paper argues that the genre Beobachtung or observation functions like a narrative reiteration of observational and medical practice. The resolution of each case, which might for instance be the accurate diagnosis, is not anticipated in the narration. Instead, the narrating voice accompanies the reader step by step in his own discovery of the case. The epistemic priority that the narrating self logically has over the experiencing self is artificially eliminated. Or, more accurately, this epistemic priority is deliberately used to guide the reader’s own problem solving via the careful scattering of clues throughout the text.14

5.2 Epistemic gaps: The epistemic appeal structure of the obstetrical case In order to understand this process better, let us take a closer look at the reader, who plays a constitutive role in the narrative reiteration of medical practice. To develop this argument, I would like to refer to Wolfgang Iser’s reception theory of ‘Leerstellen’ and to modify this a bit with regards to the process of understanding, reasoning, and inferencing on the reader’s side. Following Iser, gaps (Leerstellen) within literary texts call for the reader’s participation, forcing her/him to use her/ his own ability for establishing connections to give the text a coherent flow. If we apply this model to obstetrical narratives, or more generally to medical or scientific narratives, we could argue that these narratives also come to life only through the process of reading – in other words, that the meaning of a scientific text, that is to say its epistemic content, is actually created by the act of reading. The gaps present in factual narratives, which I would like to call epistemic gaps, are an invitation for the reader to become involved with the narrative, especially with its scientific reasoning. Often, the title already contains an invitation for the reader to solve the case together with the protagonist, especially if it is presented like a mystery or, conversely, if the diagnosis is stated right from the start. The paratext could therefore be seen as guiding the reader in the reading process and encouraging her/him to scan the text for clues that support the announced diagnosis. The main epistemic gap, however, adds to the narrative structure of the Beobachtung or observation which is, as shown above, typically concluded with generalizing thoughts based on the concrete pathological events presented in the case report. This final section, where the author reveals the point of the case, its resolution, is the telos of the narrative.

 Kathryn Hunter Montgomery (1991) rightly compares the medical case report to a detective story in which the plot is simultaneously an act of uncovering and the story of that uncovering.

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The aforementioned case report of Demoiselle Siccaud (Deydier 1757) provides a concrete example of this narrative structure. In the scientific frame narrative – more precisely in the conclusions following the actual case – the authornarrator argues that frequent bloodletting in the early months of the pregnancy could have prevented the recounted miscarriage: And because the woman of whom we have spoken is of a sanguine, bilious and lively temper, we are led to believe that the frequent blood-lettings from the arm, by diminishing the excessive quantity of humours, and by making them move towards the superior passage of the aorta, diminished and slowed their access to the uterine arteries. [. . .] [W]e should have flattered ourselves for having prevented the miscarriage whose history we have reported. [Et parce que la femme dont on a parlé, est d’un tempérament sanguin, bilieux et vif, on est porté à croire que des fréquentes saignées du bras, en diminuant la trop grande quantité des liqueurs, & en les faisant dériver vers le tronc supérieur de l’aorte, en eussent diminué & ralenti l’abord vers les artères utérines [. . .] on auroit dû se flatter de prévenir la faussecouche dont on a rapporté l’histoire.] (Deydier 1757, 420)

If we read this observation carefully, a series of small, seemingly unrelated comments on the sanguineous temperament of the patient can be identified, which discuss her profuse menstruation and the virtues of bloodletting. At a closer look however, these comments combine to form the most important argument of the case report.This is an attempt to argue for the virtues of bloodletting during pregnancy, and has been carefully argued throughout the entire narrative. The trained reader approaches case reports with this structure in mind and starts making guesses about the soon-to-be-revealed resolution of the case by gathering clues along with the protagonist, reevaluating parts of the narrative as s/he goes. In doing so, the reader takes an active part in the process of knowledgecrafting, walking along the beaten track, linking what is supposed to be linked, understanding what is supposed to be understood, and ultimately being rewarded in the last section of the narrative, when the implicit becomes the explicit, and what feels like her/his own epistemic performance is validated.

6 Characterization and reader identification A fourth and last aspect of obstetrical narration around 1800, and the last point I would like to make in this paper, concerns characters, characterization, and reader identification. We have to bear in mind that Hufeland’s Journal, like its French counterpart the Journal de médecine, is not only an invaluable collection of scientific cases which allowed a previously unheard type of knowledge to develop. The

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case reports were also the perfect stage for new medical players such as male obstetricians who used this public forum to establish themselves as social and scientific authorities in the field at the expense of more traditional female actors. Two narrative strategies to this end can be identified in these medical narratives produced by male doctors and surgeons: the first is their attempt to aggressively discredit their main competitors, i.e. the midwives, by means of negative characterization. The second is a strategy of self-heroization by the narrators which aims to make the reader identify with the obstetrician.

6.1 Characterization: The midwife The midwife, a classic character in obstetrical case reports from that period, offers a vivid example of both direct characterization and indirect characterization based on reader inferences. In Hufeland’s aforementioned Beobachtung (Schüsseler 1801), the midwife character is explicitly mentioned only once, when we learn that the severe injury suffered by the young woman was caused by her own misconduct and the midwife’s malpractice: Since my order was not obeyed, that the woman in labor should stay in bed and since she insisted violently on giving birth on the chair – which had been recommended by the wives as a means of promoting delivery – and since the midwife was scared and didn’t think of the perineal flesh because the child’s head appeared so quickly, the former tore very deeply, namely up to the anal sphincter muscle. [Und da man meinen Befehl nicht befolgt hatte, dass die Gebärende im Bette bleiben sollte, und sie auf Zureden der Weiber mit Gewalt auf dem Stuhle zu gebären verlangte, weil man ihr denselben als ein Beförderungsmittel der Geburt angerühmt hatte, und die Hebamme wegen des schnellen Hervortretens des Kopfes aus Angst nicht mehr an das Mittelfleisch dachte, so riss dieses sehr tief und zwar bis an den Schließmuskel des Afters hin.] (Schüssler 1801, 180)

While the direct characterization of the midwife is rather brief, it is indirectly supported by a broader cultural discourse that emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century in England, France, and Germany and promoted a negative stereotype of midwives as naïve, ignorant, arrogant, cruel, and incapable (Laget 1982, 201–213). Elements of this discourse can be found in the frame story that accompanies the Beobachtung, in which the author discusses the advantages and disadvantages of different obstetrical techniques for the prevention of perineal ruptures: I think that the midwives would do less damage and be more helpful if they used the aforementioned procedure instead of their usual rough procedures. The latter is frequently ac-

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companied by a smaller or greater rupture of the perineum which they are mostly not even aware of and fail to call attention to, or sometimes even conceal deliberately. [Ich glaube, dass durch obigen Handgriff die Hebammen weniger schaden und mehr nützen würden, als bei ihrer gewöhnlichen rohen Handlungsweise, bei welcher eine kleinere oder größere Zerreissung des Perinaei nur noch zu häufig ist, und welche sie meistens nicht einmal wissen und anzeigen, oder geflissentlich verschweigen.] (Schüssler 1801, 178–179)

This negative and grossly generalizing statement about the group of obstetrical actors identified as the midwives [die Hebammen] deliberately hints at the aforementioned popular discourse on the violent, ignorant, and lying midwife, encouraging the reader to complete the midwife’s characterization through inference. The narrator, on the other hand, is here shown to identify himself with medical progress and Enlightenment, and to implicitly claim to be the educator of the midwives. By this strategy of contrasting characterizations, he makes his readers a tempting offer: together with the protagonist, they can rise above the inferior knowledge and expertise of the midwife and join the ranks of the enlightened scientists.

6.2 Self-fashioning and reader identification: The male obstetrician The obstetrical case report as a first-person narrative invites the reader to identify with the narrating instance in its two-fold nature, that is as the obstetrician (protagonist or experiencing self) on the one hand and as the scientist (narrator or narrating self) on the other. This process of reader identification is central to the functioning of the genre. By projecting himself into the diegesis, the contemporary reader of the case report becomes – together with the protagonist – a witness of the obstetrical events and therefore vouches for the veracity of the narrative.15 One can further argue that the protagonist becomes a role model for the reader through a process of ‘admirative identification’ (Jauß 1977), thereby contributing to the creation of a positive professional identity for a still fragile community. This is especially the case when the narrative sets up the obstetrician as a medical hero and saviour of women in distress, a common topos in obstetrical case reports from this period. A typical example of this self-fashioning of the male obstetrician can be found in an observation about a twin birth published in 1817 in the Journal de médecine. The author, M. Lévêque, reports about the 19 year old Madame R. who is in labor

 On the connection between testimony and epistemic authority, see: Danneberg and Spoerhase (2017).

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with her first child. The plot reaches a first climax when the patient suffers from increasingly unbearable pain while the contractions fail to induce the onset of the delivery: What was to be done? I had still to exhaust all the resources of medicine.There was one path still left open to me which I placed all my hopes on, but the exhaustion of the patient rendered it exceedingly dangerous. [Que faire? . . . je n’avais pourtant pas encore épuisé toutes les ressources de la médecine. Il me restait un moyen auquel je rattachais toutes mes espérances, mais que l’épuisement de la malade pouvait rendre bien dangereux.] (Lévêque 1817, 58)

What dangerous treatment is the narrator talking about? The carefully built up narrative tension is resolved in the next paragraph, just as the the suffering patient is saved by her doctor. The painful position of madame R, however, and the imminent danger in which she found herself in, induced me to attempt the bloodletting. I drew about 10 ounces from her arm; and this little operation, which the patient endured without difficulty, was a complete success. [Cependant, la position douloureuse de madame R . . ., l’imminence du danger où elle se trouvait [. . .], me décidèrent, et j’osai pratiquer la saignée. Je tirai du bras environ une palette de sang; et cette petite opération, que la malade soutint assez bien, et un succès complet.] (Lévêque 1817, 58)

From a dramaturgical perspective, the alarming state of the patient and her immense pain move the doctor to the bold, even heroic step of bloodletting. However, the narrative exaggeration and dramatisation of this moment of deliverance in no way corresponds to the historical reality of bloodletting. In the next part of the narrative, the situation once again dramatically escalates: For two hours the head of the child had not made any progress [. . .]. Her fatigue became greater and her pulse weaker; it was easy to see that her nature would without fail have led to death if left to itself. [. . .] I decided to come to her aid; and even though the head had not fully come free yet, I decided to employ the forceps. I succeeded. [Depuis deux heures la tête ne faisait plus de progrès [. . .]. Ses défaillances continuaient, le pouls s’affaiblissait; il était facile de voir que la nature abandonnée à elle-même aurait infailliblement succombé. [. . .] Je résolus de venir à son secours; et quoique la tête ne fût pas entièrement engagée, je me décidai à l’application du forceps. J’y parvins.] (Lévêque 1817, 59)

Here is another example of the tried and tested structure of the heroic climax: a deadly threat, followed by the life-saving intervention of the obstetrician. This pattern lets us see a rather simple principle at work: the more dramatic the patient’s condition, the more heroic the intervention of the male obstetrician. In the quoted

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text, the obstetrician-narrator displays the traits necessary for ‘admirative identification’ (Jauß). He heroically withstands nature (“il était facile de voir que la nature abandonnée à elle-même aurait infailliblement succombé”) and even when faced with daunting difficulties (“quoique la tête ne fût pas entièrement engagée”), he intervenes courageously (“Je résolus de venir à son secours; et [. . .] me décidai à l’application du forceps”) before immediately proclaiming the success of his life-saving measure (“J’y parvins”). This process of admirative identification is completed by what Jauß called ‘sympathetic identification’: here, the protagonist is no longer an unattainable ideal, but a more human hero who makes mistakes and suffers. In the section of the observation quoted above (Lévêque 1817, 58), the self-confident image of the narrator is occasionally disrupted by the adressing of his own doubts and uncertainties. He communicates feelings of hope (“Il me restait un moyen auquel je rattachais toutes mes espérances”) and worry (“moyen [. . .] que l’épuisement de la malade pouvait rendre bien dangereux”). Rhetorical questions such as “Que faire?” highlight his bewilderment and allow the reader to emphathize with the male experiencing ‘I’. Through this process of sympathetic identification, the reader is able to imagine himself in the shoes of such an everyday hero and thereby becomes an imaginary member of the upcoming professional community of male obstetricians.

7 Conclusion Taking as examples selected obstetrical case reports from Hufeland’s Journal der practischen Arzneykunde and the French Journal de médecine, chirurgie, pharmacie, etc., this paper has argued that a narratological analysis provides valuable insight into the narrative creation and maintenance of epistemic authority in the field of obstetrics around 1800. Building from the analytical framework developed by Gérard Genette, this paper’s aim was to define the narrative structure of the obstetrical case report and its two-fold narrative instance. Pinning down the text genre Beobachtung or observation as a narrative reiteration of medical practice and observation, the analysis moreover highlighted how evidence is produced by different narrative strategies, such as the guiding of the reader via epistemic gaps, the use of characterization, and finally making it easy/attractive for the reader to identify with the narrator. Narratological analysis, by uncovering the overlap between the structure of knowledge and the structure of narration in obstetrical case reports, provides valuable insight into the mechanics of knowledge-crafting at a crucial moment in the history of pregnancy and birth. It reveals how narrative dynamics establish

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new borders between knowledge and ignorance, experts and laypeople, and male and female, thus enabling us to understand the gradual emergence of male expertise in the highly competitive field of obstetrics around 1800.

References Azzouni, Safia, Stefan Böschen, and Carsten Reinhardt, eds. 2015. Erzählung und Geltung. Wissenschaft zwischen Autorschaft und Autorität. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft. Danneberg, Lutz, and Carl Spoerhase. 2017. “Auctoritas und Testimonium. Epistemologien der Glaubwürdigkeit und des Vertrauens.” Forschungsstelle Historische Epistemologie und Hermeneutik. Accessed 10 November 2021. http://fheh.org/?page_id=43. Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Louis Galison. 2007. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books. Deydier. 1757. “HISTOIRE d’une fausse-couche singulière, suivie peu de tems après d’une grossesse extraordinaire, par M. DEYDIER, Ecuyer, Docteur en Médecine de l’Université de Montpellier, & Médecin de l’Hôpital de Nismes.” Recueil périodique d’observations de médecine, de chirurgie et de pharmacie 6: 410–421. Diderot, Denis, and Jean Baptiste Le Rond d’Alembert, eds. 1765. Art. “Observateur”; Art. “Observation.” In Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, Vol. 11, 310–313; 313–323. Paris: Briasson. Fludernik, Monika. 2015. “Narratologische Probleme des faktualen Erzählens.” In Faktuales und fiktionales Erzählen. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven, edited by Monika Fludernik, Nicole Falkenhayner, and Julia Steiner, 115–138. Würzburg: Ergon. Gélis, Jacques. 1988. La sage-femme ou le médecin. Une nouvelle conception de la vie. Paris: Fayard. Genette, Gérard. 2010 [1972/1983]. Die Erzählung, 3rd revised and corrected edition. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink. Genil. 1783. “OBSERVATION Sur un enfant putréfié dans le sein de la mère, & dont les os sont sortis par le nombril, à la suite d’un dépôt; par M. GENIL, ancien chirurgien de l’Ecole royale pratique de Paris, ancien chirurgien du grand Hôtel-Dieu de Lyon, & chirurgien de la ville de Montbrison en Forez.” Journal de médecine, chirurgie, pharmacie, etc. 60: 334–338. Hufeland, Christoph Wilhelm. 1795. “Vorwort.” Journal der practischen Arzneykunde und Wundarzneykunst 1: III–XXII. Iser, Wolfgang. 1990. Der Akt des Lesens. Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung. Munich: Wilhelm Fink. Iser, Wolfgang. 1994. “Die Appellstruktur der Texte. Unbestimmtheit als Wirkungsbedingung literarischer Prosa.” In Rezeptionsästhetik. Theorie und Praxis, edited by Rainer Warning, 228–252. Munich: Wilhelm Fink. Jauß, Hans Robert. 1977. ästhetische Erfahrung und literarische Hermeneutik. Band I: Versuche im Feld der ästhetischen Erfahrung. Munich: Wilhelm Fink. Klein, Christian, and Matías Martínez, eds. 2009. Wirklichkeitserzählungen. Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Laget, Mireille. 1982. Naissances. L’accouchement avant l’âge de la clinique. Paris: Le Seuil. Lavalée. 1776. “OBSERVATION Sur un enfant venu au monde sans aucune apparence de vie, ranimé par une méthode simple & facile; par M. LAVALÉE, maître en chirurgie, & inspecteur des nourriçons & des nourrices au département de Meaux.” Journal de médecine, chirurgie, pharmacie, etc. 45: 89–91.

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Lejeune, Philippe. 1996 [1975]. Le pacte autobiographique. Paris: Le Seuil. Lévêque. 1817. “TROIS OBSERVATIONS CHIRURGICALES; Par M. Lévêque, docteur en médecine de Paris, chirurgien de l’Hôpital-général et du Séminaire d’Orléans, membre de la Société des Sciences physiques, médicales, et d’agriculture de cette ville.” Journal de médecine, chirurgie, pharmacie, etc. 40: 56–61. Metz-Becker, Marita. 1997. Der verwaltete Körper. Die Medikalisierung schwangerer Frauen in den Gebärhäusern des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus Verlag. Montgomery, Kathryn Hunter. 1991. Doctors’ Stories. The Narrative Structure of Medical Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pomata, Gianna. 2010. “Sharing Cases. The Observationes in Early Modern Medicine.” Early Science and Medicine 15: 193–236. Petit-Radel, Philippe. 1792. Art. “Observateur.” In Encyclopédie méthodique: Chirurgie, Vol. 2, edited by Daniel de La Roche and Philippe Petit-Radel, 98–99. Paris: C. L. F. Panckoucke. Pinel, Philippe, and Isidore Bricheteau. 1819. Art. “Observation.” In Dictionnaire des sciences médicales, Vol. 37, 29–35. Paris: C. L. F. Panckoucke. Schaeffer, Jean-Marie. 2012. “Fictional vs. Factual Narration.” In The Living Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn et al. Accessed 10 November 2021. http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/arti cle/fictional-vs-factual-narration. Senebier, Jean. 1775. L’art d’observer. Geneva: Cl. Philibert et Bart. Chirol. Senebier, Jean. 1802. Essai sur l’art d’observer et de faire des expériences. Seconde édition, considérablement changée et augmentée. Geneva: J. J. Paschoud. Schüssler. 1801. “Bemerkungen über die Zerreissung des Perinaeum, ihre Verhütung und Heilung, nebst einer Beobachtung.” Journal der practischen Arzneykunde und Wundarzneykunst 13: 176–184. Schütze, Fritz. 1976. “Zur soziologischen und linguistischen Analyse von Erzählungen.” In Internationales Jahrbuch für Wissens- und Religionssoziologie, edited by Günter Dux and Thomas Luckmann, 7–41. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Searle, John. 1979. “The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse [1975].” In John Searle: Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, 58–75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yvonne Wübben

Console, Classify and Advertise: Narrative Structures of Case Reporting and Their Epistemic Function in Early NineteenthCentury Psychiatry (Pargeter, Arnold, Pinel) 1 Introduction The rise of psychiatry as a medical field is – as Jan Goldstein (1987) pointed out in her seminal work on the French alienist Philippe Pinel – particularly linked to the rise of certain practices: the practices of classification and of consolidation. The first presumably derived from botany and can be traced back to nosologists of the seventeenth century such as Bossier de Sauvages. The latter goes back to religious caretakers who worked in asylums for the poor. In this essay, I will examine the extent to which these practices can be linked to specific narrative patterns in case reporting,1 if these narrative patterns allow us to distinguish different modes of case reporting and if they have different epistemic functions. As starting point, I chose psychiatry as it was established as a new medical field at the beginning of the nineteenth century. I will discuss three texts from the English and French psychiatric tradition, namely the works of William Pargeter, Thomas Arnold, and Philippe Pinel.2 Pinel’s Traité medico-philosophique sur lʼalienation mentale [Medico-Philosophical Treatise on Mental Alienation] (1801) will be in the center of my argument. I did not choose it because it is considered one of the founding texts of psychiatry. I chose it because it contains different modes of case reporting which can presumably be aligned with different epistemic functions.

 Studies that deal with narrative in medicine often lack a more detailed analysis of specific narrative structures and focus on narrativity in a general sense. See for example Kathryn M. Hunter (1991, 83–85): the term ‘narrative’ refers to recurring elements of a story, ‘story’ basically means ‘plot’, and ‘history’ refers to an individual patient’s histories (of illness). See also Yvonne Wübben (2014, 2012).  I could not analyze the significant contributions of the English physicians Alexander Crichton (1756–1856) or William Perfect (1734–1809) in this essay and had to limit myself to the three authors mentioned above. An analysis of Crichton and Perfect will follow in an article on the rise of doctrinal genres in psychiatry. I also left out German treatises which will also be discussed elsewhere. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111319971-007

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In the first part of my essay, I will present Pinel’s text and discuss some of the epistemological problems accompanied with the foundation of psychiatry as a medical field. In the second part, I will scrutinize different narrative patterns and modes of case reporting. In the last part, I will briefly draw some conclusions in the light of a more general history of epistemic functions of narratives.

2 Psychiatry: How to define a field that is ‘obscure by nature’ ‘Psychiatry,’ or ‘medical psychology,’ as the discipline was initially called in England, advanced extremely rapidly through the ranks of the medical disciplines of the nineteenth century. This rise is also evident from a number of doctrinal genres, including the treatise, the textbook, and the manual.3 These genres often reflect the standards their authors were seeking to establish in a discipline whose classification remains contentious to this day. The doctrinal genres may therefore be ascribed an important function in the codification of knowledge. Philippe Pinel’s medico-philosophical treatise on alienation defined a field of knowledge that subsequently became the medical discipline ‘psychiatry.’ And the book – perhaps surprising from today’s perspective – was a bestseller.4 When the French writer Stendhal wanted to purchase it for his library in 1806, it had already been out of print for a number of years (Weiner 1992). The text presents various cases of mental illness that took place during the French revolution. The title page carries the date AN IX (Year 9 in the French republican calendar) and was itself an emphatic proclamation that a new era was dawning. Nor was this world-historical event without consequence for Pinel’s own career. Having come to Paris with a degree from Toulouse and no license to practice in the capital, he initially earned his living as a journalist. Until his appointment at the Hospice de Bicêtre in 1793, Pinel mainly wrote and edited articles, first for Gazette de Santé, later for the Dictionnaire

 Exemplary: Andrew Harper (1789); Jean-Étienne Esquirol (1838); Johann Christian August Heinroth (1818).  This is also evident from several translations which appeared shortly after the first publication of the Traité, see Michael Wagner: Philosophisch-medizinische Abhandlung über Geistesverirrungen oder Manie (Vienna, 1801); Luis Guarnerio y Allavena: Tratado medico-filosofico de la enagenadón del alma o mania (Madrid, 1804); D. Davis: A Treatise on Insanity (London, 1806). The Italian translation followed later: C. Vaghi: Trattato medico-filosofico sopra l’alienazione mentale (Lodi, 1830).

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methodique. It was not until the French revolution with its abolition of privileges that he was able to treat patients at all.5 The Traité was first published under the full title Traité medico-philosophique sur l’alienation mentale ou la manie and combines an old name (manie) with a new one (alienation). According to the literary historian Franco Moretti, a title should be read as ‘a coded message in a market situation’ that designates the status of a text. As an artificially created object, negotiated between the publisher and the author, it governs the text’s subsequent reception (Moretti 2009, 134). A treatise on a disease did not necessarily have to contain case histories. It generally involved the investigation of the causes, its occurences and possible therapies. Unlike for instance English authors Pinel does not name causes in his title. A look into the table of contents might explain this omission. The first section of the Traité deals with the definition of the disease, the second with the therapy, the third with the causes, and the fourth with its different forms. The fact that causation shifts towards the end of the treatise might be an indication of the declining significance of certain forms of causal, logical thinking. It could indicate that the theoretical, speculative search for a causa prima was not Pinel’s primary objective, he rather focusses on historia as a source for his inquiry. Apparently, the Traité was written in the conviction that the historia – experience – would, in the near future, be able to complete the as yet incomplete knowledge of the mental diseases, then also including the causes. As historia had the emphatic meaning of preparatory knowledge, it also gives rise to the new significance of case reporting. Let me now take a closer look at different modes of case reporting and narrative patterns that can be found in psychiatric treatises around 1800. During this time, various modes of case reporting were prominent in the writings of alienists. Most of them had in common that they were practical, empirical, i.e. relying on facts and that they could be associated with the new role of observation in Natural Science and Medicine (Pomata 2011). From the early modern period onwards, we can distinguish at least three different modes of medical case reporting associated with Natural Science and Empirical Medicine. 1. Observationes: They were generally based on both the autopsy and/or reports by third parties. They contained facta memorabilia – cited cases notable for their singularity –, or simply descriptions of a matter (without giving the reasons for it). This subgenre is also widespread in Natural History. 2. Curationes: This is a mode of case reporting that arises in the early modern period. It is usually employed by physicians in order to praise a certain therapy.

 For the political context see also Marcel Gauchet and Gladys Swain (1980).

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Historia morbi: This mode generally concentrates on the course and outcome of a disease, but not a particular but a collective one, in other words an epidemic outbreak. Cases of epidemic outbreaks were arranged according to the strict pattern of the Epidemics in the corpus hippocraticum. They begin with precise information on place and time and concentrate on the description of the symptoms, the clinical course, and outcome of the disease.

All three modes were common in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century psychiatry. Often, we see a combination of the various modes within one doctrinal genre and even within the case itself. The narrative structure of the cases also varies widely. It seems that there is no common basis or agreement on how to tell a case or which narrative techniques to employ. Case reports differ in length, degree of focalization, purpose, and general perspective. None of the reports can be characterized by a narrative structure which is considered typical of “Wirklichkeitserzählungen,”6 i.e. an externally focalized and distant narration. Whereas the narrative patterns show a great variety, modes of case reporting can more clearly be distinguished according to their purpose, content, and according to the epistemic tradition with which they are aligned. In the following, I will illustrate the various modes of case reporting, starting with the English physician William Pargeter.

3 William Pargeter’s use of the case: Curationes, anecdotes, and moral accounts William Pargeter’s famous Observations on Maniacal Disorders, published in 1792, contain mixed modes of case reporting. Pargeter (1760–1810) was an English physician who studied various forms of madness early in his career. As the son of a clergyman, he obtained his medical degree from Marischal College in Aberdeen and entered St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1783, later he worked for the Navy where he also received his Holy Ordeal. My first case example is taken from the earlier work, the Observations, and carries the title ‘a curious case,’ indicating that the case was worth being reported because it implied an extraordinary event. The case can be found in a passage in which Pargeter discusses various passions as remote causes of madness: Some years ago, a poor man, who having studied the art of government and the balance of the European power with greater attention than his business, grew insane, and fancied

 For an overview see Stephan Jaeger (2009).

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himself a king, and, in this situation, was admitted into the workhouse of St. Giles’s in the Fields, where there happened to be an idiot of nearly his own age; this imaginary king appointed the idiot his prime minister, besides which post, he officiated as his barber and menial servant; he brought their common food, and stood behind his majesty whilst he dined, when he had permission to make his own répast. They would sit, the king upon an eminence, and his minister below him, for whole days, issuing their precepts to their imaginary subjects; in this manner they lived about six years, unfortunately, the minister, impelled, so far deviated from his line of allegiance, as to eat his breakfast before his sovereign appeared, which so exasperated the king, that he flew upon him, and would certainly have put a period to his existence if he had not been prevented, when his anger was thought to have abated, the minister was again introduced to his quondam sovereign, but he seized him immediately, and could never after be prevailed on to see him. The degraded minister catched a fever in his exile, and when his majesty was beginning to relent, and almost prevailed upon to forgive him, he died; which had such an effect upon this fancied monarch, that, after living almost without sústenance, in a continued silence, a few weeks, he died of mere grief. (Pargeter 1792, 21)

The case begins with vague information regarding place, person, and time and thereby follows the model of the Epidemics: “Some years ago”; “a poor man [. . .] was admitted into the workhouse of St. Giles’s in the Fields.” In the preface of the book, Pargeter accounts for this vagueness as a form of patient’s protection whose real names he did not wish to disclose (Pargeter 1972, preface). Except for the vagueness the narrative sets out in accordance with the historia morbi of the Hippocratic tradition, narrating the order of symptoms in the order of their appearance. At the same time, the case report shows a high degree of narrativity. It has two turning points (the first being the ‘negligence’ or ‘revolt’ of the so-called minister, the second being his death). One purpose of the case report is to inform the reader about an unusual course of madness. The case is noteworthy as it shows a co-dependency of two patients in their delusional state that finally leads to their mutual death. In this respect, the disease presented in the case can be interpreted as a folie à deux – a technical term that was introduced later. Moreover, the case shows the importance of maintaining the patient’s delusion for the sake of his well-being. It establishes a fictive patient’s perspective by using internal focalization and direct speech. The narrator also uses words that the alleged minister or the lunatic king could have used (such as “his majesty”). Pargeter is not only interested in narrating an exemplary case of a folie à deux. In addition, the case of the mad king is transformed into an anecdote by narrative elaboration and alludes to the political context of Pargeter’s own time. Ill-fated monarch! thou couldest not as can the illustrious monarch of the present day, if his minister were to “pay his tribute to the treasury to which we must all be taxed” appoint another who would guide the reins of empire with as much prudence and success as the present one hath done: throughout thy whole territory, there was not found one hardy enough to engage in the arduous talk; and equally unable to support the weight of government alone,

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as to descend to the peaceable, but unhonoured, vale of retirement, thou didst quietly yield up thy life and sceptre together! Perhaps it may afford some satisfaction to the reader, to be informed, that this anecdote is founded in fact; the name of the king having stood in the books of the parish, with the addition of “the lunatic king”, for several years, the first entry being January 1st, 1727. (Pargeter 1792, 22–23)

In addition to reporting a medical case, Pargeter is concerned with drawing a witty comparison between the patient and the sovereign – the King of England Georg III. The relation is first established by contrasting the insane monarch with the present one. The latter can find a substitute for the deceased prime minister, the former could not. The author then sees a parallel between both kings as they were both insane. Therefore, the case must be read within the cultural context of its time: in 1788, king Georg III. underwent treatment for an episode of madness and was cured by the then famous physician Francis Willis who, in 1789, published a bulletin on his successful cure.7 Seen in this light, the contrast between the mad king and the present king seems less pronounced, as both were (at least episodically) insane. In Pargeter’s text, the narration serves different functions: first, it is designed to capture the reader’s attention by drawing a parallel between the king of England, George III, and a patient. Secondly, it serves to entertain, to make the reader laugh and even feel pity for the lunatic king. Besides narrative techniques, standard rhetorical devices are also employed to achieve this effect.8 Exclamations such as “Ill-fated monarch” appeal to the reader’s emotions. The narrator directly addresses the mad king showing empathy for his desolate situation. Several cases go beyond describing of the course of disease as common in the historia morbi of Hippocrates’ Epidemics. Unlike the historia morbi Pargeter’s cases often focus on therapy as a crucial moment within the narration and, thereby, seem to resemble the curationes: When I was a pupil at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, as my attention was much employed on the subject of Insanity, I was requested by one of the sisters of the house, to visit a poor man, an acquaintance of hers, who was disordered in his mind. I went immediately to the house and found the neighborhood in an uproar. The maniac was locked in a room, raving and exceedingly turbulent. I took two men with me, and learning that he had no offensive weapons, I planted them at the door, with directions to be silent, and to keep out of sight, unless I should want their assistance. I then suddenly unlocked the door – rushed into the room and caught his eye in an instant. The business was then done – he became peaceable in a moment, trembled with fear, and was as governable as it was possible for a furious madman to be. (Pargeter 1792, 50)

 See Ida MacAlpine and Richard Hunter (1969). For this context see also Laure Murat (2011).  On the rhetoric of French alienists see the seminal work of Juan Rigoli (2001).

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The case obviously derived from Pargeter’s own praxis and is reported in order to present a successful method of treatment consisting of an unexpected gaze into the patient’s eye. Here, Pargeter praises his therapeutical skills as commonly done in the curationes which also served as advertisements in curing madmen. Mostly, the curationes-paradigm seems to outweigh the one of the historia morbi by a considerable margin. In Pargeter’s work, curationes have a narrative pattern which is often typical of this mode of case reporting. They are first-person singular-narrations in which the physician serves as an authoritative figure who validates the reported facts by his reputation. This narrative strategy can be aligned with an epistemic function. Here, the agent of the narration – the physician – guarantees that the observation is adequate and established by autopsy. Let me quote one last case of Pargeter’s case collection in order to demonstrate how the case report often shifts between reporting, narrating, and commenting. I shall subjoin a case or two in which insanity was caused by religious delusion. Case I. I was sent for to a respectable farmer in the country; I found him very low and melancholy-inconsistent in his conversation, and seemed to labour under great distress concerning his future state. His friends had been obliged some time before to place him in a house for the reception of lunatics. I could do him very little service, as I was unable to remove the cause. This man’s misfortunes originated in a very curious fact: he was publicly reproved by a clergyman for sleeping during divine service, which gave him so much offence, that he seceded from the Church, and attached himself to the Methodists; these deluded people soon reduced him to the unhappy state in which I found him. I could not learn on strict enquiry, that previously to his circumstance, he had exhibited any symptoms of mental derangement; but was esteemed a lively, cheerful, and pleasant companion. (Pargeter 1792, 32–33)

In this passage, the case serves as an example of the disastrous effects of the Methodists on the mental health of their parishes. Embedded into the narration are moral judgments (“deluded people,” “unhappy state”), commentaries and mostly warnings against their fanaticism and growing influence in the communities which allegedly resulted in an increase of insanity: ‘Fanaticism,’ Pargeter writes, ‘is a very common cause of madness.’ In this example, the narration consists of a case (casus) and commentary (explanatio). The commentary takes on the form of remarks on the political or social situation of his time. Overall, Pargeter’s cases are mostly illustrations, as is customary in doctrinal genres. They illustrate a successful treatment (case 2) or the supposedly disastrous influence of the Methodists (case 3). They vary in the mode of reporting and in narrative patterns. In the first case, Pargeter reports a curious fact, the story of a folie à deux. This case points to a potential rare form of madness. He also transforms this case into an anecdote alluding to the political context of his time. In

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the second case, Pargeter advertises his own practice and his skills as physician. Here, we see a narrative pattern typical of the curationes, i.e. a first-person singular account whose purpose is to authorize the reported facts. The third case serves as a moral example and has the function to admonish.

4 Arnold’s classification of mental illness and the “pathognomic” mode of disease representation Let me now turn to the English physician Thomas Arnold (1742–1816) in order to discuss a different approach in early psychiatry.9 While Pargeter often adopts the curationes-model as a mode of case reporting, other authors espouse a more ambitious use of the case. Thomas Arnold (1710–1790) who ran a private asylum (Leicester Lunatic Asylum) had published numerous case studies for which he chose the title Observations on the Nature, Kinds, Causes and Prevention of Insanity, Lunacy and Madness (1782, 1786).10 Unlike Pargeter’s, Arnold’s book foregrounds classification of mental disease – and hence the question of the relationship between the specific and the general, the individual case and the type or category –, thus representing the classificatory thought of psychiatry (Munsche and Whitaker 2012). When the first edition of his book appeared, Arnold was not primarily a practitioner who called on patients, he was the director of an asylum in Leicester which he had previously built. In the madmen business he was succeeding his father who already ran a successful asylum in Leicester. Before working in the family business, Thomas Arnold was sent off to Edinburgh to study medicine. There, he became a pupil of William Cullen (1710–1790) and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. His education and medical training allowed Arnold to adopt a more sophisticated nosology than other physicians working in the field. He partly followed Cullen’s nosology and method of classification and dedicated himself to the precise study of mental disorders and their

 Ernest R. Frizelle and Janet D. Martin (1971); Richard Hunter and Ida MacAlpine (1963); Roy Porter (1987).  On the treatise see, for example, Denis Leigh (1961); Robert Hoeldtke (1967).

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classification according to ‘determinate species.’11 Doctors, he believed, should describe species and genera in the manner of botanists.12 Whereas Arnold also published singular case studies in which he praises his therapeutic successes (Arnold 1793), his Observations on the Nature, Kinds, Causes and Prevention of Insanity, Lunacy and Madness introduced a new mode of representing diseases which was not common in most alienist’s treatises of the time and which corresponds to his classificatory approach: 1. Ideal Insanity 1.1. In Phrenitic Insanity the patient raves incessantly, or with short and rarely lucid intervals, either about one, or various objects; and laughs, and sings, and wistles, weeps, laments, prays, shouts swears, threatens, attempts to commit violence either to himself or others, or does whatever else the nature of his deliriums prompts him to do: – or is as incessantly employed about something, which is either absurd, or uncommon – and is almost wholly intend on the solitary idea, or on the world of ideas within: and scarcely knows or attends to external objects about him; and when he does perceive external objects, is apt to perceive them erroneously – thus I have known a patient in this state [. . .] – or he is apt erroneously to connect them with other images; which exist, as he supposes them to exist, only in his distempered brain: as when a patient, of that sort, imagined that the physician who came to attend him had arrows sticking in his eye, but, in general, all the varieties of phrenitic Insanity agree in this, that the patient sleeps very little. (Arnold 1786, 125–131)

This passage does not contain a narration in the strict sense of the term, i.e. presenting a course of events. Rather, it lists various symptoms that are commonly found in a circumscribed type of insanity, here: “Ideal Insanity.” Consequently, the passage does not deal with a single patient but with a type. Possible symptoms are enumerated and linked by “and” or/and “or.” Arnold calls this specific mode of presenting a disease entity ‘pathognomics,’ referring to William Cullen who coined the term.13 This mode is typical of the nosologists and can also be seen in Bossier de Sauvages. According to Arnold, pathognomics consist of listing elements, i.e. actions and states reflecting different

 “This part of the work I have endeavoured to execute according to the ideas of Sydenham; to whole recommendation ‘that every disease should be reduced to certain, and determinate species, with the same care, and accurarcy, with which we see botanists define, and arrange, the species of vegetables’” (Arnold 1786, IV).  This approach might have even been rooted in Arnold’s early work for the local pharmacists Pulteney notable Baptist and Linnaean. See Peter K. Carpenter (1989, 200); William Withering (1818). A copy of Withering’s book, which acknowledges Arnold’s help, is in the library of the Leicester Medical Society. See also Horwood and Noel (1933, cxcvi).  “Pathognomics – that is, that those few symptoms might be set down which are so proper to each disorder, that from them alone any one might be quickly and certainly distinguished from another” (Cullen 1793, 6). See also Pinel (1801, Section 1, 8).

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variants of the disease. Interestingly, the elements in the main text are described in more detail in the footnotes; generally, one element corresponds to one passage in the footnote. There, Arnold quotes cases and establishes a certain relation between the individual case and the type circumscribed in the pathognomics. In this context, the case serves as a member of a class of illness that is represented in the type. This relation is realized typographically by the differentiation of main text and footnote. The footnotes with its individual observations and cases serve as ‘confirmation’ (Arnold 1786, 123) of the general type.14 They elaborate on general aspects, i.e. the type is amplified by way of individual cases. Thus, rather than helping to recognize the recurrence of the same illnesses in clinical practice – as illustrating cases do –, the cases provide additional justification of the classification in that they help to understand it more profoundly. In Arnold’s work, we see cases being converted into references or glosses. In Pargeter’s book, cases never illustrated a type or category (species or class) of illness, but merely the treatment or the influence of the Methodists. Observation therefore held no relevance for the arrangement of the categories or types (species or classes). Thus, in Arnold’s treatise the observation serves a new function, the individual case becomes part of a class. In the main text, we find no narration in the strict sense. The case narrative can only be found in footnotes where it merely serves as reference. Overall, the pathognomic mode of presenting is different from the mode of psychiatric story-telling we came across in Pargeter.

5 Pinel’s version of the curationes-model: Mentalizing the patient Let us return now to Pinel and look at the modes of case reporting employed in his famous treatises. Pinel’s treatise was, as mentioned earlier, widely read in the early nineteenth century. Although Pinel makes reference to Bossier de Sauvages and William Cullen in his preface – in 1785, several years before the publication

 For instance, in the passage dealing with ‘ideal insanity’ Arnold quotes and translates a case taken from Johannes Wier’s (1515–1588) treatise De Praestigiis Daemonum et Incantationibus ac Venificiis: “A certain elderly nobleman would sometimes, on a sudden, fancy that he was attacked by an enemy; and springing from his seat would, in imagination, thrust together such as he could seize upon an oven which was on his back” (Arnold 1786, 126).

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of the Traité Pinel also translated Cullen into French –,15 his main purpose is not to further elaborate on the classification of mental illnesses (Postel 1981, 216). Instead, he assumes that there is only one form of madness with different variations. Pinel also draws eminently upon Hippocrates as a model of observation and empirical medicine.16 Compared to his contemporaries, Pinel’s treatise contains a greater variety of cases.17 In general, we can differentiate the following modes in the Traité by their function and content. 1. Cases as examples Most cases function as examples, as is customary in doctrinal genres: They illustrate the foregoing and do not describe the course of an illness or give a detailed account of the individual symptoms. 2. Moral case histories Pinel often replaces pathognomics with moral case histories (especially in the 1809 edition of the Traité). The section on the species (espèce) is interspersed with many brief case histories. These are not divided into classes or genera.18 3. Cases as deviation of a norm and prove In this type of case, singularity is defined as a deviation from an established norm. The individual case is interpreted in the manner of modern case reporting. A single case ‘proves’ (‘preuve’) that the malformation of the brain, for instance, is the first cause (causa prima) of the illness (idiotism).

 Translation of William Cullen: Institutions de médecine pratique, traduites sur la quatrième et dernière édition de l’ouvrage anglais de M. Cullen, Professeur de médecine pratique dans l’Université d’Edimbourg, etc., Premier médecin du roi pour l’Ecosse, 2 vols. Versailles 1785.  Dora Weiner (1999); Jackie Pigeaud (2001); Juan Rigoli (2003).  As far as I can see, this mode cannot be found in other treatises on mental illness of his time and it corresponds with the search of physical causes of idiotism.  “Caractère spécifique de la mélancholie – Délire exclusif sur un objet, ou sur une série particulière d’objets; nul penchant à des actes de violence que celui qui peut être imprimé par une idée dominante et chimérique; d’ailleurs, libre exercice de toutes les facultés de l’entendement; certaines fois égalité constante d’humeur; ou même état habituel de satisfaction: dans d’autre cas, habitude d’abattement et de consternation, ou bien aigreur de caractère qui peut être portée jusqu’au dernier degré de misantropie, quelque fois dégoût extrême de la vie” (Pinel 1801, Section 4, 149).

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4. Cases as starting points for further investigation The case also serves as starting point for the investigation of predisposing factors, i.e. triggers and concomitant triggers (causa proxima) of the illness. It is cited as a typical example, but without any explanation (historia with no knowledge of the primary efficient causes). The relationship between the case and the presumed first cause (causa prima – force vital) remains unclear. Certain questions are discussed with regard to facts derived from the observations of the insane. The relationship between theory and practice is complex here: Observations are cited in refutation or confirmation of suspected causes or theories. 5. Cases modelled after the curationes It is evident that Pinel also adopts the curationes-model. This mostly involves developing a series of cases (Traité, 1801) that serves to extol the merits of the therapy. A tendency towards individualization is apparent. Many cases discuss the individual disposition and furnish detailed descriptions of the patient’s background. In contrast to the historia morbi, the focus here is not on the illness, but frequently on the individual. In the first edition of the treatise, only the second chapter covers a series of cases. It is not the chapter on different forms of disease, but the chapter on moral therapy. The cases derive from Pinel’s work at the Hospice de Bicêtre where he was appointed general physician in 1793. When he began working as general physician at Bicêtre, Pinel was not yet experienced in the treatment of the insane, as he had only obtained his license to practice in Paris shortly after the Revolution. Consequently, he mostly refers to patients that Jean-Baptiste Pussin (1745–1811), the governor of the ward for the insane, had successfully treated. Pinel cites several lengthy cases and employs similar narrative techniques. Several of the case reports begin by describing the patient (“a young student,” “a soldier”), sometimes naming his/her age and his/her profession. Most of the cases also have turning points which correspond with the moment of crisis and cure as it is common in the curationes-model. The first case report deals with an unsuccessful treatment of a brilliant young law-student who became insane when moving to Paris. As in other case reports, the turning point indicates a crisis. When the young student visits a play, his madness deteriorates: His despair was exasperated by the confusion of ideas to which he was constantly subject, and which interfered so much with his studies. But what appeared, altogether, to overwhelm him, was the distressing conviction that his pursuit of fame and professional distinction must be forever abandoned. Complete lunacy, at length, established its melancholy empire. One night, he bethought himself that he would go to the play, to seek relief from his own too unhappy meditations. The piece which was presented, was the “Philosopher without knowing it”. He was instantly seized with the most gloomy suspicions, and especially

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with a conviction, that the comedy was written on purpose and represented to ridicule himself. He accused me with having furnished materials for the writer of it, and the next morning he came to reproach me, which he did moșt angrily, for having betrayed the rights of friendship, and exposed him to public derision. His delirium observed no bounds. (Pinel 1806, 57–58)

The narration is supposed to illustrate that the deterioration is due to a sudden lack of trust in the one person that could have provided cure for the patient. The report shows several elements often found in Pinel’s stories: the narrative construction of an internal world by ascribing thoughts to the patient’s mind. The narrator knows what the patient thinks and feels like the omniscient narrator in fictional prose. In accordance with some of his contemporaries, Pinel focusses on the patients’ internal life, he ‘mentalized’ them by narrating their thoughts and feelings. Thus, he aims at creating an understanding for the mad who by this mode of depiction are turned into individuals and human beings not significantly different from the reader. On rare occasions, Pinel uses the first person singular and speaks of “I.” Mostly, Pussin [the governor of the ward of the insane at the Hospice de Bicêtre – YW] is the main character of his story and Pinel seems very keen to present him in a good light. He does not describe Pussin in detail and often just simply calls him “the governor.” Nonetheless, in his stories, Pussin serves as a grey eminence, whose short presence had enormous curative effects on his patients (“with fire darting from his eyes, and thunder in his voice,” Pinel 1806, 62), effects that almost seem miraculous: A SOLDIER, who for some time had been insane, and a patient at the Hôtel Dieu, was suddenly seized with a vehement desire to join his regiment. All fair means to appease him being exhausted, coercive measures became indispensible to convey him to his chamber, and to secure him for the night. This treatment exasperated his phrenzy, and before morning he broke to pieces every thing that he could lay his hands upon. He was then bound and closely confined. For some days he was allowed to vent his fury in solitude: but he continued to be agitated by the most violent passions, and to use the language of imprecation and abuse against every body that he saw, but especially against the governor, whose authority he affected to despise. In about a week, however, he began to feel that he was not his own master; and, as the governor was going his round one morning, he assumed a more submissive air and tone, advanced with looks of mildness and contrition, and kissing his hand, said, “You have promised, upon my engaging to be peaceable and quiet, to permit me to go into the interior court. Now, Sir, have the goodness to keep your word.” The governor, with a countenance full of sweetness and affability, expressed the very great pleasure which he felt, congratulated him on bis returning health, and instantly ordered him to be set at liberty. (Pinel 1806, 60–61)

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In this story, Pinel demonstrates that moral treatment – as he understood it – can successfully cure the insane. Major elements of moral treatment are confinement, authority, oppression, and intimidation. As mentioned before, most of Pinel’s observationes are rooted in the tradition of curationes. The vast majority serve to vindicate the successful moral treatment. This is surprising, given that Pinel modeled the psychiatry after natural history. Within this epistemic model one would expect a classificatory style of thinking going along with the pathognomic mode. Why did Pinel prefer the curationes model of case reporting? Why did it seem more so important in 1802? Certainly not because moral therapy was so new in psychiatry. Pargeter himself had described an early form. Nor was it because this therapy was the product of a reform linked to the Revolution – it had in fact already been in existence in prerevolutionary Paris. Dufour had boasted that he could cure the insane in Bicêtre by moral means, and Francois Doublet experimented with electrotherapy in the depôt de mendicité at St. Denis (Goldstein 1987, 45). Of course, Pinel also wanted to show that insanity was curable. But there is another circumstance that no doubt made him especially liable to present the cases as successful treatments, especially those which employed Pussin. The fact that the stories call attention to the “governor” as a talented healer is significant in 1802. Shortly before, Pinel transferred to la Salpêtrière and hoped Pussin who was still at Bicêtre could follow him. For a doctor who had only in recent years been permitted to treat patients again, who had long been excluded from the practical side of his profession, it was essential to have an experienced caretaker by his side. Another reason for adopting the curationes-model is Pinel’s unerring nose for a good story. Many of the cases concern Parisians who were ill at the time of the Revolution. The clinical history transported a piece of world history that was of particular interest for the book’s potential readers. It also told moral stories with favorable outcomes which were consolidating, not only to the patient but also to the reader. For the reception of the treatises, the cases played a significant role. It was, above all, the cases that circulated in contemporary psychiatric textbooks and were cited in numerous non-academic publications.19

 For instance: Johann Christian Reil (1803), who quotes Pinel on p. 34, and his case histories on p. 216 and p. 242; Johann Christian Heinroth (1818, 243, 262).

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6 Conclusions So let me end with some conclusions. Precisely around the turn of the nineteenth century, when some alienist began to define a new medical field, we see a rise of doctrinal genres such as the treatise including various modes of case reporting. Cases were embedded into treatises in order to illustrate a disease, praise a new method of cure, and to entertain, admonish, or console the reader. Looking at the narrative structure, these cases employed various narrative techniques. Some had turning-points, some showed a certain degree of internal focalization and some had a first-person singular narrator who authorized the reported facts by his reputation and experience. The story-telling within a case report had various epistemic functions. In Pinel’s treatises, one of the main narrative techniques was the use of a turning point and the mentalization. It highlighted a successful treatment, served to praise the caretaker, it was meant to consolidate the reader of post-revolutionary France and to make him feel empathy for the mad. In Pargeter’s book, the story-telling was sometimes anecdotal and drew attention to social and moral aspects of the disease. His case reports also contained comments on the social or/and political situation of their time. Interestingly, it was among proponents of classification, especially within the school of nosologists, that we can find a different use of the case. In their writings, the case mainly served as a footnote-reference which illuminated the classification. The disease itself was represented by a ‘genre’ called ‘pathognomics’ which showed a low degree of narrativity and mainly consisted of enumeration.

References Arnold, Thomas. 1786. Observations on the Nature, Kinds, Causes, and Prevention of Insanity, Lunacy, or Madness. London and Leicester: Printed by G. Ireland, for G. Robinson, in Pater-Noster-Row, and T. Cadell, in the Strand. Arnold, Thomas. 1793. A Case of Hydrophobia, Commonly Called Canine Madness, From the Bite of a Mad Dog, Successfully Treated. London: Dilly. Carpenter, Peter K. 1989. “Thomas Arnold. A Provincial Psychiatrist in Georgian England.” Medical History 33 (2): 199–216. Cullen, William. 1793. A Synopsis of Methodical Nosology in Which the Genera of Disorders Are Particularly Defined and the Species Added With the Synonimous of Those From Sauvages. From the fourth edition, corrected and much enlarged, translated by Henry Wilkins. Philadelphia: Parry Hall. Esquirol, Jean-Étienne. 1838. Des Maladies Mentales. Considérées sous les Rapports Médical, Hygiénique et Médico-Légal. Tome Second. Paris: Chez J.-B. Baillière. Frizelle, Ernest R., and Janet D. Martin. 1971. The Leicester Royal Infirmary 1771–1971. Leicester: Leicester Hospital Management Committee.

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Gauchet, Marcel, and Gladys Swain. 1980. La Pratique de l’esprit humain. L’institution asilaire et la révolution démocratique. Paris: Gallimard. Goldstein, Jan. 1987. Console and Classify. The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Harper, Andrew. 1789. A Treatise on the Real Cause and Cure of Insanity in Which the Nature and Distinctions of This Disease Are Fully Explained, and the Treatment Established on New Principles. London: Printed for C. Stalker and J. Walter. Heinroth, Johann Christian August. 1818. Lehrbuch der Störungen des Seelenlebens oder der Seelenstörungen und ihrer Behandlung: vom rationalen Standpunkt aus entworfen. Erster oder theoretischer Theil. Leipzig: Vogel. Hoeldtke, Robert. 1967. “The History of Associationism and British Medical Psychology.” Medical History 11 (1): 46–65. Horwood, A. R., and C. W. F. Noel. 1933. The Flora of Leicestershire and Rutland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hunter, Kathryn Montgomery. 1991. Doctors’ Stories: The Narrative Structure of Medical Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hunter, Richard, and Ida MacAlpine. 1963. Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry. 1535–1860. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jaeger, Stephan. 2009. “Erzählen im historiographischen Diskurs.” In Wirklichkeitserzählungen: Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens, edited by Christian Klein and Matías Martínez, 110–135. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Leigh, Denis. 1961. The Historical Development of British Psychiatry, vol. 1. Oxford: Pergamon. MacAlpine, Ida, and Richard Hunter. 1969. George III and the Mad-Business. London: Allen Lane. Moretti, Franco. 2009. “Style, Inc. Reflections on Seven Thousand Titles (British Novels, 1740–1850).” Critical Inquiry 36 (1): 134–158. Munsche, Heather, and Harry A. Whitaker. 2012. “Eighteenth Century Classification of Mental Illness: Linnaeus, de Sauvages, Vogel, and Cullen.” Cognitive And Behavioral Neurology 25 (4): 224–239. Murat, Laure. 2011. The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon: Towards a Political History of Madness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pargeter, William. 1792. Observations on Maniacal Disorders. Reading: J. Murray. Pigeaud, Jackie. 2001. Aux portes de la psychiatrie. Pinel, l’ancien et le moderne. Paris: Aubier. Pinel, Philippe. 1801. Traité medico-philosophique sur l’alienation mentale ou la manie. Paris: Chez Richard, Caille Et Ravier. Pinel, Philippe. 1806. A Treatise on Insanity in Which Are Contained the Principles of a New and More Practical Nosology of Manical Disorders. Translated by D. D. Davis. London: Sheffield. Pomata, Gianna. 2011. “Observation Rising: Birth of an Epistemic Genre, ca. 1500–1650.” In Histories of Scientific Observation, edited by Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck, 45–80. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Porter, Roy. 1987. Mind-forg’d manacles. London: Athlone. Postel, Jacques. 1981. Genèse de la psychiatrie. Les premiers écrits de Philippe Pinel. Paris: Le Sycomore. Reil, Johann Christian. 1803. Rhapsodieen über die Anwendung der psychischen Curmethode auf Geisteszerrüttungen. Halle: Curt. Rigoli, Juan. 2001. Lire le Délir. Aliénisme, rhétorique et litérature en France au XIXe sciècle. Paris: Fayard. Rigoli, Juan. 2003. “L’Apprentissage du Singulier. Philippe Pinel entre ‘Histoire’ et ‘Cas’.” In Dénouement des Lumières et Invention Romantique, edited by Giovanni Bardazzi and Alain Grosrichard, 301–320. Geneva: Droz.

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Weiner, Dora. 1992. “Philippe Pinel’s ‘Memoir on Madness’ of December 11, 1794: A Fundamental Text of Modern Psychiatry.” American Journal of Psychiatry 149 (6): 725–732. Weiner, Dora. 1999. Comprendre et soigner. Philippe Pinel (1745–1826). La médecine de l’esprit.Paris: Fayard. Withering, William. 1818. An Arrangement of British Plants According to the Latest Improvements of the Linnaean System, sixth edition. London: G. G. and J. Robinson. Wübben, Yvonne. 2012. “Die kranke Stimme. Erzählinstanz und Figurenrede im Psychiatrie-Lehrbuch des 19. Jahrhunderts.” In Der ärztliche Fallbericht. Epistemische Grundlagen und textuelle Strukturen dargestellter Beobachtung, edited by Rudolf Behrens, Maria Winter, and Carsten Zelle, 151–170. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Wübben, Yvonne. 2014. “Ein moderner Roman? Erzählen im Psychiatrie-Lehrbuch des 19. Jh.” Nach Feierabend. Züricher Jahrbuch für Wissensgeschichte 10: 59–85.

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The Discharge Letter in Clinical Medicine: History and Epistemology of an Unknown Narrative Genre 1 Introduction When we talk about epistemic genres in medicine or narrative epistemology, most people think of the case report. A lot of research has been done on this genre, both historically and systematically, and Gianna Pomata has coined the since often quoted phrase ‘epistemic genre’ (Pomata 2014).1 However, the case report does not play a central role in what might be called ‘narrative sense-making’ in everyday clinical medicine. After all, the case report is a published genre created for a broad audience. Therefore, its content is only narrated because of its uniqueness or exemplary character – in narratological terms because of its tellability. And it is in its tellability that the case report shares some similarities with a certain literary genre: the detective story, which is also about singular, tellable events (see Montgomery Hunter 1991, 21–22). Similarly, the case report has been shown to be characterized by emplotment, turning points, riddle-solving, and finalization.2 In line with the central aspect of tellability, only a small percentage of in-patients are turned into case reports. Hence, the genre is certainly of epistemological value – but not at the center of everyday clinical communication. However, there is narrative sense-making in everyday clinical medicine; it just does not happen in the case report but in a related, non-print genre which is ubiquitous: the discharge letter or discharge report. For every in-patient, at least in Western medicine, a discharge report is written at dismissal and sent to the GP, to the specialist or the institution who takes care of the patient. As indicated above, this genre comes in two versions: either as a report in the narrower sense, without epistolary conventions, or in its more common version as a letter, with greeting conventions at the beginning and end. In any case, the genre is highly

 See also Gianna Pomata (2013). There has been a lot of research on the medical case report and its history between medicine and literature. See e.g., Sheila Dickson et al. (2011); Stefan Goldmann (2019); Simone Holz (2014); Sibylle Brändli et al. (2009); Rudolf Behrens and Carsten Zelle (2012); Stephanie Bölts (2016); Martina King (2019a, 2021); Thomas Wegmann and Martina King (2016); Jason Tougaw (2006); Meegan Kennedy (2010). On systematic aspects of the clinical case report see Brian Hurwitz (2011, 2017).  See Hurwitz (2017, esp. 67–68); Martina King (2019b, esp. 333–340). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111319971-008

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standardized and formalized and has a similar structure as the published case report. That means the letter comes in defined paragraphs, starting with ‘diagnosis’ (as opposed to the case report which solves a riddle and therefore comes up with the diagnosis only at the end), followed by ‘pre-history,’ then ‘diagnostic procedures’, and finally ‘clinical course and treatment.’ This last part is the main narrative section and the main point of interest for our article. Like the case report, the discharge report retrospectively represents the course of a particular illness in narrative form, that is to say as a series of occurrences which happened in the past and are told by an anonymous, heterodiegetic (historically homodiegetic) voice in the paragraph ‘clinical course and treatment.’ However, the discharge letter does not have the investigative character of the case report, does not solve a riddle, and does not depend on tellability. Instead, it starts with the diagnosis and then brings anything that led to this diagnosis and happened during hospitalization into a sequential order, into temporal and logical cohesion: laboratory tests, imaging, tissue samples, physical manifestations, courses of treatment. Its function is to provide a brief, clear, and coherent overview of the patient’s case for the actual or potential physician who receives the patient and – as will be argued here – for the writing physician him/herself; he/ she will be able to understand the clinical process, its timeline, and its causal links by writing the report. Discharge reports/letters are actually at the heart of all written clinical communication: they organize the distribution of patient data among physicians everywhere; clinicians spend several hours a day writing such reports (see Bechmann 2017, 109). Even oral exchanges between clinicians and GPs or among clinicians about chronically ill patients work only if both sides have a discharge report as starting point. But there is more to it than mere exchange – this is, as indicated above, our main hypothesis. We think that the discharge report has not only a communicative but also an epistemic function: it organizes complex courses of events in a fundamentally linear manner and therefore allows the writing doctor – or a group of doctors – to identify causal links, to draw inferences, and finally to subsume the individual case under general principles. The genre obviously has an explanatory function in the sense of Mary Morgan (2017a, 2017b). One could even say that the discharge report is the site where – since all doctors have to contribute to it – current medical knowledge is continuously repeated, internalized, stabilized, and stored. It seems remarkable, with regards to the expanding narratology of factual genres, that this text type at the heart of clinical medicine is a narrative one. However, there has been very little or hardly any research on this genre, which seems rather surprising, given its importance, its omnipresence, and its core function within clinical communication. So far, neither narratologists or linguists nor medical humanists or medical historians have engaged with the discharge

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letter – which would yet be very promising for both factual narratology and historical narratology. We know very little about the history of the genre – when did the discharge report develop, from which traditions did it emerge, when did it become obligatory within clinical communication? Neither do we know a lot about its narrative structure and epistemological function in contemporary medicine.3 There are several obvious reasons for this blind spot in interdisciplinary narratology and medical history: Firstly, discharge reports are written in expert technical language, and are therefore difficult to understand for scholars without medical education. Secondly, they are almost inaccessible because of data protection. Thirdly, hospital archives tend to destroy patient files after a certain time, meaning these precious sources disappear. Fourthly, the strict and rather normative focus on patients’ narratives within the Medical Humanities and within the movement of Narrative Medicine in particular overshadows that there is also storytelling on the doctors’ side;4 storytelling which is a worthwhile subject for scholarly investigation. Given the rather one-sided emphasis on ‘stories of illness,’ on patients’ narratives, autopathographies, personal interviews, and such like among medical humanists, doctors’ talk is too easily and too quickly declared as the opposite: non-narrative, atomistic, fragmented, technical, cold, inhuman, and therefore unworthy of any investigation. There seems to be a strong general intuition among scholars of Narrative Medicine that narrativity implies or is even identical with subjectivity, affectivity, perspectivation, experienciality.5 However, it should be noted that technical (or ‘mechanical’) objectivity in textual representations in no way excludes narrativity – assuming a basic definition of narrative as a particular series of occurrences which is temporally and causally ordered. With regards to this blind spot in narrative research, genre theory, and medical history, we present this article as a first step into a rather unexplored, yet highly promising field. In order to cover both the historical and the theoretical dimension, the article is co-authored by a narratologist and a literary scholar who is also a clinician. We will discuss historical and contemporary discharge reports from the point of view of literary scholarship, explore the stages of their development, and analyze their cognitive functions. The first part, written by Martina King, starts with preliminary observations and assumptions on the history

 Martina King has published two articles on this subject, giving preliminary data on historical files and contemporary reports in German language, see Martina King (2021, 2020).  Examples from a vast body of scholarship: Rita Charon (2006); Rita Charon et al. (2016); Trisha Greenhalgh and Brian Hurwitz (1998).  See Rita Charon (2006, 11): “Telling stories, listening to them, being moved by them to act are recognized to be at the heart of many of our efforts to find, make, and honor meaning in our lives and the lives of others.”

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of the discharge letter. In the second part, Tom Kindt offers some systematic reflections on narrative sense-making and narrative understanding in the contemporary discharge report. We both focus on surgical reports, as surgery is full of actors, actions, and events that often happen simultaneously; we want to know when, how, and why this performative eventfulness is transformed into a linear and rather skeletal chronology.

2 History of the discharge letter I: ‘Paper work’ in the patient’s file When did discharge letters firstly appear in patients’ files and under what circumstances? And when did they become a standardized and integral part of the file? For this purpose, 500 case files of the archive of the Insel Hospital, kept in Berne state archive, were explored, covering the period between 1900 and 1960.6 The collection of the archive is not systematic, it contains samples from various historical branches of the Insel Hospital, such as surgery for males, pediatrics, obstetrics, and neonatology. Hence, our first glimpse into the history of the discharge letter was restricted by this limited corpus and the disciplines it represented. Further research on this topic must obviously be performed on larger corpora, ideally include French and English samples, and systematically link it with the evolution of clinical disciplines. In order to find out in what period the discharge letter might have become relevant, we made some preliminary assumptions about the patient’s file in general. If the file is seen as ‘paper technology’ after Volker Hess and Andrew Mendelsohn (2010), the necessary precondition for a discharge report must be an independent case file for every patient; in other words, a pre-formatted folder which is firstly covered with handwritten observational entries, and secondly holds various loose documents. No patient file – no discharge letter; the latter only makes sense if the file is sufficiently detailed, which means that it must contain more than handwritten entries. In addition to these, the file is composed of

 See state archive Berne/archive of womens’ hospital [Frauenspital], case files of obstetrical hospital [geburtshilfliche Klinik] signatures StABE BB 2.4.362/363/369; archive of Inselspital II, case files of surgical hospital for men [Chirurgische Klinik Männer], signatures StABE Insel II 388/389/390/423/425/457; case files of Jenner hospital for children [Jenner-Spital für Kinder], signatures StABE BB 05.10.403/423/434/450; case files of archive of maternity and infant hospital/ Berne infant hospital Elfenau [Kantonal-bernisches Säuglings– und Mütterheim bzw. Bernisches Säuglingsspital Elfenau], signatures StABE BB 05.10.547–550/555–557/561/566/569/571/577/580.

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various diagnostic documents from a gradually differentiating diagnostic and disciplinary apparatus. In the nineteenth century, there was no such thing as an individual file containing several fragmentary snippets of clinical information. As Volker Hess (2010) has shown, doctors used to write their observational notes either in traditional ward journals – large volumes, consisting of formatted pages with pre-printed columns; or they wrote them on double-page, formatted paper folders for each patient, which finally got stich-bound as volume. This double-page form was certainly a first step towards the patient file. However, before the advent of independent diagnostic procedures such as microbiological testing, X-ray, blood count, and serum chemistry, the file contained no loose documents that hinted at a course of events with complications or resolutions. Hence, no summary narrative genre was necessary that put all these fragments into a timeline. Under the assumption that some diagnostic faculties and disciplines would emerge in the first part of the twentieth century, we started the investigation with files of the Jenner Children’s Hospital in Berne in the 1920s; they turned out to be already fairly complex. This file represents already the gradual advent of technological, pluralistic medicine in the twentieth century where the patient is quantified and fragmented with diagnostic tools: there is a record of quantitative blood cytology, still written by hand in the daily chronicle (right side), and, inside the folder, a fever chart which already contains blood pressure, heart rate, body length, and excretions. We find a separate form for documentation of feeding, and a form for syphilis serology – thus, the patient and his illness have started to disintegrate into pieces of paper. However, even if there is a bit of extra paper work, the record is still dominated by doctors’ handwritten progress notes in the folder. That means that the course of the illness remains whole: it exists in a coherent, linear temporal form that is constituted by these progress notes – so there is yet no need for a summary genre. Only a small section on the front page, titled Epicrisis, is reserved for a very brief summary – and that is obviously a narrative one: “Child has made absolutely no progress during its stay in the hospital; it is and remains a miserable little worm.” [Kind machte während des Spitalaufenthaltes keine Fortschritte, ist und bleibt ein elendes Würmchen.]7 This ‘miserable little worm’ can be seen as a minimized version of the future genre ‘discharge summary’; it should also be noted that this brief narrative is dominated by a strong metaphor, indicating subjectivity and perspectivation (see picture 1, first page, top left section).

 All translations of sources are by Martina King.

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Picture 1: Patient file, infant of 7 months, Jenner Children’s Hospital Berne, August 1920.8

 See state archive Berne, case files of Jenner hospital for children [Jenner-Spital für Kinder], signatures StABE BB 05.10.403/423/434/450.

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Moving forward in time, we found that the genre proper actually seems to emerge in the 1940s when the simple clinical file turns into a scattered collection of graphical and tabular documents: bacteriological culture, histopathology, serology, serum chemistry, blood count, X-ray pictures. Our samples of this period were records from the Surgical Hospital Berne; an estimated thirty percent of these files contained discharge reports, such as the one in Picture 2.9 It is plain to see how this text, which is both epistolary and narrative – starting with the formulaic greeting “Dear colleague” [sehr geehrter Herr Kollege] –, transforms the incoherent snippets of paper in the file into a coherent storyline. The file contains an X-ray photograph, a fever chart, a blood count, a blood sedimentation rate, and a (negative) laboratory test for tubercle bacilli in the fluid of a bone puncture; the patient suffered from chronical bone pain after a leg fracture. Now the letter connects these snippets to a linear chain of occurrences, told by a homodiegetic, first person voice in the anonymous plural form ‘we’: The X-ray picture from the 23rd of March showed a high-density calcified focus with rather sharp boundaries in the corpus and head of the left talus [. . .]. There was no accompanying fever, but the left ankle and the left talus were locally overheated and remarkably tender. However, we found no further indications of tuberculosis, apart from the aforementioned local overheating and an elevated blood sedimentation rate of 45mm after one hour. The blood count showed relative lymphocytosis, otherwise ordinary composition, Moro reaction negative. [Das Röntgenbild vom 23. Mai zeigt einen ziemlich scharf begrenzten dichten Kalkherd in Körper und Kopf des linken Talus [. . .]. Dabei bestand kein Fieber, jedoch eine deutlich erhöhte lokale Temperatur des linken Sprunggelenks, resp. des Talus, sowie ausgesprochene Druckschmerzhaftigkeit. Jedoch konnten wir keine Anhaltspunkte für Tuberkulose finden, abgesehen eben von der Temperaturerhöhung und der Blutkörperchensenkung von 42mm nach einer Stunde. Das Blutbild ergab eine relative Lymphocytose bei sonst normaler Zusammensetzung, Moro Reaktion negativ.]

Obviously, the narration does not only arrange the diagnostic procedures in a coherent chronology of events (X-ray showing A, left ankle being B, blood count showing C, and so on). It also shows why these procedures were chosen and not others: the X-ray, the blood sedimentation rate, and the blood count were all done because the doctors suspected bone tuberculosis. Hence, the narration offers insight into the decision-making process of the doctors; something that the loose diagnostic documents would not allow for. In other words: the narration produces not only coherence but causality.

 See state archive Berne, archive of Inselspital II, case files of surgical hospital for men [Chirurgische Klinik Männer], signatures StABE Insel II 388/389/390/423/425/457.

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Picture 2: First page of discharge letter, patient file of Surgical Hospital Berne, November 1940.

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However, these early and rather occasional discharge letters are primarily written not on the demand of referring doctors who would ask for coherence, overview, and understanding, but for insurance companies who do not want to pay. But even if the insurance companies are the immediate reason for writing such reports, these texts should be considered – on a more abstract level – as a clarifying response to rising complexity in their re-ordering and re-narrating the disparate snippets of illness.

3 History of the discharge letter II: Complex files and summarizing narratives Let us jump on to the 1960s; our sources here were patient files from the Maternity and Infant Hospital Berne. These files already show a substantial degree of complexity – they consist of many preprinted forms, preprinted tabular documents, diagrams, and images which represent a multiplicity of diagnostic technologies and emerging disciplines: nutrition and weight charts, extra charts for daily urine checks, blood group serology, blood chemistry, blood count, bacteriological tests, syphilis serology, ECG, daily liquor cytology, repeated X-rays, and even a sweat test [a diagnostic tool to identify cystic fibrosis, MK].10 In a certain sense, these files are compilations of individual illnesses; one could call them a material archive of medical differentiation. Hence, the coherent course of illness has completely disintegrated into various pieces of paper, each standardized in its own way. The patient is gradually atomized into organs, numbers, technologies, as is shown by this chart (see picture 3); there is obvious need for re-unification and re-ordering by narration. And this seems now the point where the discharge letter becomes standard, an integral part of the patient file: All our samples from the 1960s, roughly 100 files, contained such a letter or report (a copy) which was usually addressed to the general practitioner or medical expert who would take over the patient. That means that the letters were no longer occasionally motivated by the demands of legal or military institutions or insurance companies who needed proof of accidents, posttraumatic handicaps, and the like. Hence, these letters are no longer individual communications with individual textual structure. Instead, they now appear as a rather standardized, epistolary text-type, written on a typewriter with a carbon copy; the copy is usually preserved in the file. Here is an example from 1962 (see picture 4):

 Photographs of these examples of ‘medical material culture’ are in the possession of the authors.

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Picture 3: Complex chart for nutrition, daily weight and growth, neurological development etc., Maternity and Infant Hospital Berne, 1962.11

 See state archive Berne, case files of archive of maternity and infant hospital/ Berne infant hospital Elfenau [Kantonal-bernisches Säuglings– und Mütterheim bzw. Bernisches Säuglingsspital Elfenau], signatures StABE BB 05.10.547–550/555–557/561/566/569/571/577/580.

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Picture 4: Discharge letter of an infant with pancreatic fibrosis and meconium ileus [cystic fibrosis with severe bowel obstruction, MK], Maternity and Infant Hospital Berne, 1962.12

 This letter has an individual paragraph at the end, titled ‘constellation of heritability.’

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Picture 4 (continued)

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This representative example shows what ‘standardized’ means: The discharge letter now mimics rather closely the form of the published case report, as indicated in the introduction: it is split into pre-defined paragraphs with the headings ‘diagnosis,’ ‘pre-history’ or ‘anamnesis,’ ‘diagnostic procedures,’ ‘clinical course and treatment,’ and finally ‘medication at dismissal.’ As indicated above, the paragraph ‘clinical course and treatment’ is the main narrative section which gives the course of illness retrospectively as coherent storyline: The little patient was immediately afterwards operated in Lindenhof by Dr. K., pediatric surgeon. The entire jejunum and ileum [sections of the small bowel, MK] had been expanded and filled with a viscous, honey-like substance [. . .]. Suctioning the viscous meconium from the bowel proved to be very laborious. In order to liquify the remainder, Pankrotanon was inserted in the intestinal lumen. Surprisingly, the child survived both the major surgery and the post-operative period [. . .] rather well. Under careful feeding with tea and semiskimmed breast milk [. . .], digestion could be induced. [. . .] Body weight started to evenly increase after the 7th day of life. [. . .] Because of mild steatorrhoea [fatty diarrhea, MK], we administered [. . .] Axerol per injectionem. There was still a substantial need for pancreatic ferments, shown by the occurrence of sub-ileus on 20.11. This time, the disturbance could be fixed with conservative methods. When we started administering 8 tablets of Pantozym daily, stools gradually improved. Finally, we could replace the semi-skimmed breast milk by full-fat breast milk. The gradual switch to infant formula went equally well. In order to prevent the greatly feared development of bronchiectasis [putrid dilations in the lung, MK], we put the infant under the croupette13 several times a day after mid-December, where we nebulized Alevaire solution 20%. An X-ray before dismissal showed still totally unsuspicious lung segments. [Die kleine Patientin wurde gleich anschliessend im Lindenhof durch Dr. K., Kinderchirurg, laparatomiert. Jejunum und Ileum waren in ihrer ganzen Länge stark erweitert und mit einer zähflüssigen, honigartigen Masse gefüllt [. . .]. In mühsamer Arbeit konnte das zähe Meconium abgesaugt werden. Zur Verflüssigung der Überreste und zur Offenhaltung des Darmlumens wurde Pankrotanon hineingebracht. Erstaunlicherweise überstand das Kind den schweren Eingriff gut, ebenso die postoperative Periode [. . .]. Bei vorsichtiger Ernährung mit Tee und halbentrahmter Frauenmilch [. . .] gelang es, die Verdauung in Gang zu bringen. [. . .] Das Körpergewicht begann am 7. Lebenstag regelmässig anzusteigen. Wegen der leichten Steatorrhoe gaben wir [. . .] Axerol per injectionem. Der Bedarf an Pankreasfermenten erwies sich als sehr hoch, was sich am Auftreten eines Subileus am 20.11. zeigte. Diesmal konnte die Störung mit konservativen Methoden behoben werden. Als wir täglich 8 Kapseln Pantozym verabreichten, wurden die Stühle zusehends besser. Schliesslich konnten wir die halbentrahmte durch vollfette Frauenmilch ersetzen. Die allmähliche Umstellung auf rein künstliche Ernährung verlief ebenfalls ohne Störung. Um die gefürchtete Bildung von Bronchiektasen möglichst zu verhüten, legten wir das Kind seit Mitte Dezember mehr-

 The ‘croupette’ is a historical oxygen tent, developed during the 1950s and 60s in various European countries.

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mals täglich unter die Croupette, in welche wir eine 20%ige Alevaire-Lösung zerstäubten. Eine Röntgenkontrolle vor Entlassung zeigt noch ganz unverdächtige Lungenfelder.]

One can see how the new narrative genre came to dominate clinical communication: in this case, which is about the primary manifestation of cystic fibrosis in the bowel and pancreas of a newborn baby, the narration links surgery, laboratory, radiology, and clinical pediatrics. It puts all the scattered diagnostic and therapeutic procedures together – stool checks, X-rays, blood counts, operation, injections, pharmaceutical treatment, dietary measures, oxygen tent. And it arranges them as a coherent, strictly linear sequence of occurrences: first the meconium ileus, then the operation, then the difficult feeding, then the prophylaxis of lung problems, and finally dismissal in good condition. Consequently, this linear narration allows for linking particulars to universals and setting up arguments, such as ‘this baby has meconium ileus and feeding problems. The multisystem disease pancreatic fibrosis presents with meconium ileus and feeding problems and will lead to early lung destruction. Prophylaxis of lung destruction is needed in any such case.’ However, sequencing, ordering, and universalizing does not at all mean that the discharge report of the 1960s has the same narrative structure as nowadays. Initially – and this seems most remarkable – the new summary genre shows rather traditional elements of storytelling, and thereby contradicts general assumptions about progressive de-narrativization in the sciences (see Gross et al. 2002, 117–139). To start with, the whole account is told in the homodiegetic ‘we’mode; it does not yet have the common, contemporary heterodiegetic form that was mentioned in the introduction. Even if there are some typical elements of deagentivization such as “the little patient was operated by Dr. K.” or “Pankrotanon was inserted in the intestinal lumen,” a first-person narrator clearly dominates the whole account. This ‘we’-voice acts both as collective narrator and as collective protagonist; for example here, we quote this passage again: When we started administering 8 tablets of Pantozym daily, stools gradually improved. Finally, we could replace the semi-skimmed breast milk by full-fat breast milk. The gradual switch to infant formula went equally well. In order to prevent the greatly feared development of bronchiectasis, we put the infant under the croupette several times a day after midDecember, where we nebulized Alevaire solution 20%. An X-ray before dismissal showed still totally unsuspicious lung segments.

The narration orders the events in such a way that they do not only follow each other in the sense of a mere chronology but emerge from each other: ‘we administered A – then the stools improved,’ ‘we replaced B by C – then the switch went well,’ ‘we nebulized D – then the X-ray showed normal results.’ As in the sample from 1940, the sequencing brings about causality, just much more pronounced now: a proper chain of causal links is formed. However, it is absolutely justified to

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talk about events here, and not only about occurrences, as scholarship on scientific and medical language in the nineteenth and twentieth century might suggest. Researchers have been talking about the gradual loss of the first-person perspective, of ‘deagentivization,’ depersonalization, and objectivation.14 Interestingly, this does not fully count for the early standardized discharge letter which seems to combine perspectivation with causality: it brings about the latter not by sequencing unmarked occurrences through an anonymous voice; but by telling actions and subsequent causal changes through an authorial, first-person narrator who witnessed what happened and marks things as events (see below). This narrator guides us – being both personal witness and acting protagonist – through his process of gaining insight. In line with this, causality is not only implied by fundamental linearity on the level of story. It is also explicitly marked on the level of discourse by modal elements that represent cognitive states of the narrator – such as judging, deliberating, inferencing: ‘because of mild steatorrhea, we administered A’; ‘in order to prevent bronchiectasis, we did B.’ These modal elements reveal the text as being much less ‘mechanically objective’ (Daston/Galison) than might be assumed initially. We can even observe a representation of affective internal states, in other words subtle focalization. We hear about the “laborious” nature of meconium suctioning, about the “greatly feared development of bronchiectasis,” about the “surprise” of the child’s survival, and finally about the second sub-ileus which “this time” could be fixed conservatively. Apparently, unexpected turning points are marked as such with these affective or deictic markers – the unexpectedly good survival of the operation, the unexpected second ileus, the great fear that could nonetheless be overcome. These are markers of experienciality on the side of the narrator, and they bring about suspense and surprise; in other words, a subtle plotline. It runs from the beginning (a dangerous and laborious operation) across the middle (the second ileus) to the happy end: the dismissal without early lung damage (even though the child will die soon). The narrative paragraph ends with the following phrase: “Finally, we could dare to dismiss little X into parental care under the condition of regular medical checkups.” So, there is actually some closure; and there are various emotional states, indicated by the respective words: ‘laborious,’ ‘surprising,’ ‘greatly feared,’ ‘we could dare.’ Even if the ‘we’-narrator seems scientifically distanced at first sight, there is a good deal of subjectivity in his account. We are actually guided through the process of understanding a particular course of illness under the lens of personal experience.

 See Jürg Niederhauser (1999, 107–111); Heinz Leonhard Kretzenbacher (1994); Harald Weinrich (1989).

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At this point, one can perhaps draw preliminary conclusions about the state of the genre in the 1960s as it appears in our restricted corpus; and ask for the reason of this subtle ‘literariness.’ Discharge reports seem, at the moment of their regular introduction into written clinical communication, to be moderately subjective, testimonial accounts of illness. They are narrated by a reliable witness who guarantees the accuracy of medical decisions not by presenting unmarked facts, or even ‘immediate evidence’ – but rather by his personal testimony and his personal point of view. These results stand in stark contrast to a widespread opinion about the development of modern medicine that identifies technologization of practices with denarrativization of texts. The rather simplistic argument might go as follows: clinical medicine becomes ever more technical, anonymous, pluralistic, standardized, organcentered during the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Therefore, the tools for the representation of individual cases – case report, conversation, history-taking, discharge report – must necessarily lose all auctoriality, subjectivity, and individuality. They must become ‘mechanically objective’ descriptions of facts without agents, teller or perspectivation; in other words, without narration at all. The narrative side of medicine is preserved mainly by the patient and ideally by good doctor-patientcommunication; and this latter argument tends to get moralized and then becomes irrefutable.15 However, our results show a more detailed picture. Clinical medicine has certainly become highly technological and pluralistic by the 1960s; and the case report has certainly turned from a thrilling detective story, told by a first-person writer and protagonist (see King 2019b, esp. 333–340) into a rather linear, objective, protocol-like account of facts that only occasionally includes some emotions and some experienciality (see Hurwitz 2006, 231–237). But the new and central reporting device of this technological medicine is initially still characterized by moderate narrative subjectivity, eventfulness, and affectivity; and we have to ask for an explanation. We suggest two reasons for this unexpectedly high degree of narrativeness16 which is reminiscent of historically older forms of medical communication.17 Firstly: Even if clinical medicine in the 1960s is fairly technical and rather standardized with regards to diagnostics, treatment decisions remain – as compared to the present – comparably individualistic. Especially in internal medicine, pharmacological treatment is far away from an evidence-based, guideline-driven

 See the publications of Rita Charon and other exponents of narrative medicine in footnote 4.  See the distinction between narrativity and narrativenes made below in this article: the idea of quantitative degrees of narrativeness is generally helpful for the investigation of scientific expert genres. They might contain very subtle and very reduced bits of narrative, some integrated stories or even only phrases with retrospective event-sequencing.  See Martina King (2019a) on early clinical case reports around 1800.

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industry. There are always several options and lots of uncertainties that leave space for individual decisions; in general, hospital medicine is still much more personalized in the 50s and 60s, even celebrating great individuals, their unique discoveries, and heroic biographies.18 Therefore, it seems natural to tell a patient’s course as a personalized story: doctors, both the writer and the reader, can thus understand what the patient and his physicians, as individuals, have experienced in this case. Secondly: The early discharge letter is still able to include all the ‘narrative noise’ that emerges from a clinical case – actors and actions, turning points, perspectivation and emotions, emplotment and closure – because clinical procedures in the 60s are only moderately complex. Differentiation is advanced but not yet entirely atomistic. The number of disciplines, techniques and people involved in an individual case is still manageable; in our example, it was a surgeon who operated the little girl, one or two pediatric doctors and pediatric nurses who took care of her afterwards, a radiologist who x-rayed her chest, and presumably some lab technicians. In other words, one could afford a rather literary style with syntactic inversions, representations of cognitive states, emotions and experienciality without running the risk of turning the report into chaos. This however was to change substantially in the following fifty years where individual courses of illness – especially in ‘action fields’ such as surgery or intensive care – involve hundreds of actors and hundreds of different procedures; many of them happening simultaneously: Only the discharge letter makes the knowledge and know-how from 42 medical disciplines and over 200 special qualifications accessible to the GP and his patient [Nur der Arztbrief macht für den Hausarzt und dessen Patienten das Wissen und Können aus 42 Gebieten und über 200 Zusatzqualifikationen zugänglich],

says an article in the Rheinisches Ärzteblatt from 2010 (Bülent 2010, 23). Consequently, narrative subjectivity disappears, leaving the discharge report with the same skeletal, linear chronology as the case report. What does that mean for narrative representation? This question is ever more crucial since the discharge letter/discharge report nowadays organizes all patient-centered communication and stabilizes all medical knowledge everywhere; and it apparently does so by transforming all sorts of actions and unexpected events into a fundamentally linear, monotonous series of unmarked occurrences – thereby relating particulars to universals.

 A very good example is the self-fashioning of the surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch and his very broad reception as a public hero of post-war German Medicine. Sauerbruch’s autobiography Das war mein Leben (with Hans Rudolf Berndorff, Bad Wörishofen 1951) was reprinted many times and turned into a very successful film: “Sauerbruch – das war mein Leben” (Bavaria 1954). See Udo Benzenhöfer (1993).

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4 Narrative in discharge letters today What has become of the discharge letter since the early and formative years of the genre that have been portrayed in the preceding chapters? Using one representative report from 2018 as an example, the following paragraphs will draw attention to some small but significant changes that have occurred in the course of the genre’s further establishment and formalization over the past half century. Like the two-step survey of the discharge letter from the early twentieth century to the 1960s, the following analysis focusses on the way in which texts of the genre approach, represent, and process their particular subject by means of narrative. This focus is based on the assumption that the narrative structures of discharge reports are key to understanding how the genre works, both in terms of communication and of epistemology. It must be left to further research to determine how the reshaping of the genre’s narrative outline is related to changes in the institutional context of its medical use. The example that will be examined and compared with the reports from the 1960s is a discharge summary from 2018. The letter depicts the three-months inpatient treatment of a patient hospitalized with an adenocarcinoma of the rectum, the surgical removal of which has led to a chain of complications and medical interventions: firstly, a main vessel in the right leg was blocked by a blood clot; secondly, both the removal of the clot with a catheter and the dissolution with pharmaceuticals went wrong, so the leg had to be amputated in the end. Thirdly, the abdominal wound would not heal properly and had to be revised several times by the surgeons. To give an impression of the discharge report’s characteristic style and to gain some material for a closer narratological look at its structures, we quote the section “Clinical course and treatment” of the letter in its entirety: Because of an adenocarcinoma of the rectum, X was operated on with low anterior resection and preparation of a protective ileostoma at 20/5/2018 in hospital Y. In the following night, a complication occurred with acute ischemia of the right lower extremity and acute occlusion of the popliteal artery in the context of bilateral occlusive peripheral arterial disease. The endovascular revascularization was unsuccessful, therefore conservative treatment was started. Thereafter, chronic pain and ischemia occurred, therefore an infragenicular amputation had to be performed at 28/05/18. With regards to the abdomen, the patient was initially symptomfree. However, impairment of wound healing occurred at the site of laparotomy with necrotizing areas, therefore several debridements in the operation room were necessary. Thereafter, the wound could be closed by secondary intention in our hospital. Currently, the patient is still in rehab. [. . .] Currently, her weight is stable [. . .].19

 Translated by M. K. We thank Bernhard Egger (Fribourg University) for this anonymized source.

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[[. . .] wurde bei einem Adenokarzinom des Rektums neoadjuvant vorbehandelt und am 20.05.2018 im Spital X operiert mittels tiefer Rektumresektion und Anlage einer protektiven Ileostomie. In der Nacht zum Folgetag kam es zu einer Komplikation mit einer akuten Ischämie der rechten unteren Extremität mit akutem Verschluss der A. poplitea rechts im Rahmen einer peripheren bilateralen arteriellen Verschlusskrankheit. Die endovaskuläre Revaskularisierung war erfolglos, weshalb eine konservative Therapie eingeleitet wurde. Im Verlauf kam es zu chronischen Schmerzen und Ischämien, so dass schliesslich am 28.05.2018 eine infragenikuläre Amputation durchgeführt werden musste. Seitens des Abdomens war die Patientin initial beschwerdearm. Jedoch kam es zu einer Wundheilungsstörung über der Laparotomienarbe mit Nekrosezonen, wobei mehrere Débridements im OP-Saal notwendig wurden. Im Verlauf konnte bei uns sekundär verschlossen werden. Die Patientin ist aktuell immer noch in der Rehabilitation [. . .]. Sie hat aktuell ein stabiles Körpergewicht [. . .].]

In its general outline, the report at hand follows the genre model that has been developed on the basis of the sources from the 1960s. However, as should be evident from the quoted passage, the model is given a slightly new narrative accentuation here. To start with the basic similarities: Like the discharge summaries that have been analyzed so far, the current one converts a confusing amount of disease and treatment data into a more or less clearly arranged narrative. In order to do so, the 2018 letter applies the same core procedures as the 1960s reports, i.e., it depicts the patient’s clinical treatment in a first-person account (1) that models its events as occurrences which are chronologically ordered, causally linked, and levelled in terms of relevance (2). These two main procedures will now be described in more detail so that the slight reshaping of the genre’s narrative layout in the last decades becomes clearer. (1) The letter captures the treatment process in form of a specific type of homodiegetic narrative, namely, in form of a first-person-plural narrative presented by a ‘we’ that is a communicative creation and as such anonymous. As the voice of the treatment narrative, this ‘we’ emerges, so to speak, with the report: The narrative, which de facto results from compiling and reviewing a multitude of data, protocols, and assessments – all piled up in the patient’s file – is presented in the mode of an account of a single participant-observer who, however, spells out the report in a highly technical medical vocabulary. As the present letter, today’s discharge reports typically do not indicate that they are based on a variety of information of different types, let alone make transparent the specific materials used in the narrative; only rarely do texts of the genre contain identifications of specific sources and if so, then in functional form like, e.g., “according to the vascular surgeon.” The above quotation highlights yet another fundamental characteristic of the voice of current discharge letters: The fabricated ‘we’ that presents the treatment narrative tends to be made almost invisible on the surface of the text. Taking up the distinction between ‘foregrounded’ and ‘backgrounded’ narrators that has

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been proposed by Gregory Currie, one can summarize that the discharge report’s ‘we’ is a backgrounded instance, which means a narrator whose presence is not clearly signaled in the text but has to be inferred from it.20 In the present report, this narrating instance only appears explicitly in the third to last sentence of the section “Clinical course and treatment”: “the wound could be closed [. . .] in our hospital.”21 In a nutshell: The voice in discharge letters is a we-narrator that is both created and backgrounded for the purpose of the report. (2) Documents of this genre not only transfer many texts of different types and sources, including iconic and numeric material, into the narrative of one voice. At the same time, they give a particular shape to the events of the narrative and of their coming-about. Three features seem to be essential here. (2.1) Just as the many voices that capture the treatment process are merged into one voice, so the many actors involved in medical interventions and clinical care become one actor. The text depicts a large variety of procedures that were carried out by several doctors and many members of the clinical staff, abdominal surgeons, vascular surgeons, cardiologists, anaesthesists, intensive care doctors, specialized nurses etc. However, the narrative of the letter is set up as if the treatment had been carried out by the one ‘we’ who reports on it. (2.2) As in its role as narrator, this ‘we’ is also backgrounded in its role as actor. This effect results from the application of various linguistic devices, especially, by the use of passive forms, process verbs, and nominalizations. The following rewriting of the report’s central paragraph that replaces diagnoses with capital letters and treatment actions with numbers may illustrate the backgrounding process in question: X was operated with an A and preparation of 1. In the following night, a complication occurred with B and C. The 2 was unsuccessful, therefore 3 was started. Thereafter, D and E occurred, therefore a 4 had to be performed. [. . .] However, F occurred, therefore several 5 in the operation room were necessary. Thereafter, 6 by secondary intention . . .

The outlined way of narrating creates what above has been has labelled ‘deagentivization,’22 i.e., the impression that the discharge letter is not about something that

 See Gregory Currie (1995, 21): “I draw a distinction between a foregrounded and a backgrounded narrator. A foregrounded narrator is one whose presence is signaled in the work itself, a backgrounded one is a narrator whose presence has to be inferred (I do not claim that there is a sharp boundary between these two kinds, but indeterminacy of boundary is, of course, no argument against their distinctness).”  Our italics, T.K./M.K.  For a detailed consideration of this concept, see below.

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has been done, but about something that has simply occurred. Following a wellestablished way to distinguish basic event types in narratology, the report’s mode of narration can be described as translating an interplay of ‘actions,’ i.e., events that are intentionally brought about, into ‘occurrences,’ i.e., events that take place without an acting subject.23 (2.3) While the blending of many actors into one actor and the transformation of actions into occurrences already applies to some extent to the discharge letters analyzed above, a closer look at the procedures of backgrounding voices and actors also brings textual features into view that sets the 2018 letter apart from those from the 1960s. In the discharge report at hand, the backgrounding is significantly strengthened. In addition to the fact that the presence of a narrating instance is only explicitly marked once, the backgrounding results on the one hand from the design of the text’s perspective and on the other hand from the levelling of the events presented in the narrative. What is striking at first, is that the report consistently adopts the point-of-view of an external focalization. In contrast to older letters, the current one contains no linguistic elements that suggest conclusions about experiences, mental states, medical interpretations, or related deliberations of the doctors and the staff involved in the treatment process. Furthermore, the backgrounding of the acting and reporting instances is reinforced by the fact that the current letter presents the events of the clinical treatment in a somewhat more neutral way than the reports from sixty years ago. As noted above, the discharge report conceives of the events depicted as occurrences; however, the mode of representing events has another crucial and distinctive feature: in the sequence of occurrences unfolded in the letter, all elements are assigned the same relevance.24 The treatment narrative selects individual incidents from what has happened, puts them in a successive order (“. . . thereafter . . .”), and suggests or explicitly asserts causal links between them (“. . . therefore . . .”) – but it does not develop an indirect, let alone direct hierarchization of its events. Here is no qualification of the role and significance of particular incidents in the course of the clinical treatment, no marked distinction between foreseen and unforeseen events, almost no indication of the attitudes of the doctors towards their treatment steps and results, no narrative distinction between normal and emergency

 For this distinction, see Lars Elleström (2019, 80–81): “it is useful to distinguish between two main forms of events: actions and occurrences. Actions are events resulting from acts of volition, while occurrences are events not resulting from acts of volition.”  On this question, see also Wolf Schmid (2003).

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measures; for example, there is no distinction between ‘endovascular revascularization’ which is minimal invasive surgery and the amputation which is maximally invasive. Furthermore, there is no indication of turning points in the process such as the unexpected blocking of the major vessel in the leg etc. What can be seen here, in short, is a complete ‘levelling’ of events with regard to their medical magnitude. On the basis of the exemplary analysis undertaken, we will now conclude the characterization of the discharge letter in two steps that approach the genre from a somewhat more general perspective. Firstly, the narrative character of discharge reports will be considered once again, but this time in the broader context of different types of communication and discourses. Secondly, we will comment on the epistemological functions served by the elaborated structures of current discharge letters. Our exploration of the discharge letter’s history from the 1960s to the present day has brought some tendencies into view that have often been summarized using the label of ‘de-narrativization.’ However, as plausible as this term may seem for describing some components of the development of the genre, as a general classification that claims to capture an essential trait or the defining character of the process in question, the label is obviously insufficient and misleading. Like early discharge reports, those of the present day bring a plethora of disease and treatment data into a temporally ordered and (at least implicitly) causally connected chain of events – and precisely this seems to be something like the lowest common denominator that the vast majority of the many available and in detail very different understandings of “narrative” can agree on.25 In other words, as much as the genre has changed in the course of the last hundred years, it has obviously not lost its narrative character. In order to gain an adequate picture of the development of the genre, it is therefore necessary to abandon the all too sweeping concept of ‘de-narrativization’ and to find a differentiated and therefore more accurate description for the developments that gave rise to the introduction of the term. Two distinctions seem to be fundamental to such a description, one that comes from narrative theory and one from literary theory: first, it is important to distinguish between the concepts of “narrativity” and “narrativeness.” While “narrativity” is understood as a property that a text or other object either has or does not have depending on its specific constitution, “narrativeness” is understood as a feature that texts or other objects can have to a

 For discussions of the concept of “narrative,” see H. Porter Abbott (2008, 12–28); Tilmann Köppe and Tom Kindt (2022, 24–68).

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greater or lesser extent, i.e., to varying degrees.26 The degree of “narrativeness” attributed to a text is commonly defined by the extent to which it corresponds to or deviates from the prevailing and therefore prototypical concepts of “narrative.”27 Based on this distinction, it can already be stated that the discharge letter has not undergone a loss of narrativity in recent decades, but a decrease of narrativeness; the genre has not abandoned narrative, it has moved away from a specific prototype of narrative. This is where the second of the abovementioned distinctions comes into play, namely, the distinction between “literary narratives” and “non-literary narratives.” In the present context, it is neither possible nor necessary to spell out these concepts and their differences in any detail.28 For the intended clarifications of the genre history of the discharge letter, a rough prototypical idea of what literary narratives are and how they differ from non-literary ones is perfectly sufficient. No matter how this idea is worked out in detail, it should be clear that the features which serve to formally distinguish literary from non-literary narratives in the communicative practices (and which indicate their various basic individual and social functions) have gradually been expelled from discharge reports since the second half of the twentieth century. Particularly noteworthy in the long list of ‘symptoms’29 of literary narratives that seem to have disappeared completely from discharge letters are properties such as presupposing tellability, adopting and providing the point-ofview of human experience, stimulating awareness for processes of mediation, focusing on complex correlations of human actions instead of causal sequences in nature, telling a story, e.g., striving for an emplotment of the depicted events that, with regard to the reader, is likely to enable suspense, attitudes of empathy and sympathy with the actors of the storyworld, the impression of closure, and the like. For the description of the development of the genre, this means that the discharge letter has not lost its narrativity, rather it has lost some of its literary narrativeness. With this conclusion, the answer to another basic question regarding the communicative profile of the discharge report is by no means decided. What is meant, is the question of whether discharge letters are to be seen as fictional or as nonfictional narratives (or as some kind of hybrid form). In the present context, there is no room for any sophisticated deliberations on this issue. However, it seems to

 For more details, see Gerald Prince (2008, 19–27).  In the present context, a detailed reconstruction and critical discussion of prototypical accounts of “narrative” can be dispensed with, see, for example, Werner Wolf (2002); Marie-Laure Ryan (2007); Köppe and Kindt (2022).  According to our assessment, corresponding explications should be made in functional terms. For such a proposal, see Peter Lamarque and Stein H. Olsen (1994).  For our understanding of this term, see Nelson Goodman (1968).

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be sufficient here anyway to just prevent a misunderstanding that could have been suggested by some of the things that have been said so far about the narrative blueprint of the discharge report: We have pointed out that the genre is based on the process of narratively creating and backgrounding its reporting and acting instances, that it depicts events as if they were not actions but occurrences, and as if these occurrences in turn were of equal importance in the clinical treatment process while in fact they are of quite varied relevance. All these characterizations might now seem suitable to support the assumption that we would consider the discharge letter to be a fictional narrative genre. But that is not the case. To create narrators, actors and sequences of actions, to approach and conceive of events or objects differently from what they are approached or conceived of in the real world, to emphasize certain aspects in their representation and to ignore others, to develop simplified models of specific realms of reality, and so on – all these features are properties that do of course characterize many but obviously not only fictional narratives. These very features can also be found in a large number of non-fictional narratives and other types of texts, in different kinds of historiographical narratives, in philosophical thought experiments, in scientific models, and even in many cases of everyday communication, like, for instance, in figurative speech. In short, having these qualities is not a sufficient reason to classify a narrative as fictional narrative – and the genre of the discharge letter is a good example of this. This conclusion now leads back to the question of the epistemology of the genre, which above has already been briefly addressed. What is the function of the specific way in which discharge reports develop simplified narrative models of complex processes? In contrast to fictional or literary narratives, the creations and constructions that can be found in discharge letters obviously are neither intended nor suited to be taken as props in games of make-believe or as occasions for making aesthetic experiences.30 Instead, it seems to us, texts of this genre have two fundamental functions, the first of which we will only briefly mention and the second of which we will take a closer look at. One fundamental function that discharge reports fulfil by providing a narrative selection and arrangement of information is evident and does not need further explanation, namely, their communicative function. The discharge summary is a crucial unit in medical communication, a doctor’s story or, to be more precise, a doctor’s narrative that draws some kind of (interim) medical conclusion and lays the ground for the (possible) continuation of a treatment process. While this communicative role of the discharge letter seems to be obvious, the other of its fundamental functions has so far received even less attention

 On this idea of fiction, see Kendall L. Walton (1990).

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than the genre itself, that is its epistemological relevance. By transforming an enormous amplitude of data and assessments from different sources into an ordered sequence of events, the discharge letter does not only give an overview of a diseaseand-treatment-process; in the genre, narration also functions as a means of cognition, since it is a way of producing meaning, of penetrating and revealing causal structure, of weighing and classifying. We would like to conclude our remarks with a short illustration of this claim using a short passage from another contemporary discharge letter as example. In its narrative shaping, the report is designed like the 2018 letter that has been looked at in detail; we can therefore dispense with a close narratological analysis of the text. However, with regard to the genre’s epistemic function, the report is more illuminating than the analyzed one. The discharge letter in question depicts the treatment of a premature infant who had to be transferred to intensive care unit shortly after birth. Here is one of the central paragraphs of the letter: Admission to neonatal intensive care unit under SIMV ventilation with nasal prongs, switch to nasal CPAP was possible on 1/12; from 7/12 onwards, X was under high-flow ventilation which could be terminated on 20/12. In the context of hernia surgery on 18/01, re-admission to neonatal intensive care. Further treatment with high-flow ventilation was necessary for 4 hours. Treatment with caffeine was necessary until 11/01. Showing arterial hypotonia, X repeatedly received boli of i.v. fluid during the first days of life. An echocardiogram revealed an open ductus arteriosus which was successfully closed with Ibuprofen between 30/11 and 2/12. Because of hyperbilirubinemia, intermittent phototherapy was necessary for a total of 4 days. There were no signs of systemic infection.31 [[. . .] Aufnahme auf Frühgeborenen-Intensiv unter SIMV-Beatmung mit nasalen Prongs, seit dem 1.12. Wechsel zu CPAP mit Backupfrequenz möglich. Am 7.12. Umstellung auf High Flow, der am 20.12. beendet werden konnte. Im Rahmen einer Hernien-OP am 18.1. postoperative Wiederaufnahme auf unsere Intensivstation. Bei Sättigungsabfällen war eine HighFlowAtemhilfe für 4 Stunden notwendig. Eine Coffein-Therapie war bis zum 11.1. notwendig. Bei arterieller Hypotonie erhielt X in den ersten Lebenstagen wiederholt Volumenboli. Echokardiographisch zeigte sich ein PDA, welcher mit Ibuprofen vom 30.11. bis 2.12. erfolgreich verschlossen wurde. Bei Hyperbilirubinämie war intermittierend Phototherapie für insgesamt 4 Tage notwendig. Es ergab sich kein Hinweis auf eine Infektion.]

If one reads this paragraph of the discharge report one can follow, so to speak, on the surface of the text how the process of narrative sequencing is linked to the process of narrative reasoning. The passage illustrates in an exemplary manner how the genre aims at filtering out the relevant incidents of a treatment process and at bringing them into a chronological order, and how, by doing so, it makes causal relations within the event sequences transparent and thus paves the way  Translation by M.K. We thank Andrea Zimmermann (Munich) for this anonymized source.

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for their general classification. While the first result of the discharge report is indicated here by the continuous information on the dates, the second one is demonstrated in an exemplary manner by the marked sentences in the quote. In this text passage, the narrative of the doctor-narrator discloses a relevant causal connection in the treatment process to him/herself and his/her colleague-addressees that has not been clear in the complex and highly fragmented process itself. The sentences in question point to the fact that the treatment of the patient’s low blood pressure [hypotonia] caused an ‘open ductus arteriosus’ [the persistence of a prenatal vascular connection bypassing the lung – a common complication in extremely premature babies who receive lots of intravenous fluids, MK]. Such an epistemological use of narrative is, in our view, an essential feature of discharge reports. At the same time, it is a characteristic that distinguishes the genre from other narrative forms established in medical contexts like, especially, the case report. In case reports, narration is a tool of illustration, in discharge reports, it is a tool of reasoning. The discharge letter is, in short, a medical narrative genre that serves communication and cognition.

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Dickson, Sheila, Stefan Goldmann, and Christof Wingertszahn, eds. 2011. “Fakta, und kein moralisches Geschwätz”. Zu den Fallgeschichten im “Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde” (1783– 1793). Göttingen: Wallstein. Elleström, Lars. 2019. “Events.” In Lars Elleström: Transmedial Narration. Narratives and Stories in Different Media. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Erdogan-Griese, Bülent. 2010. “Arztbrief: mehr als eine ungeliebte Pflicht.” Rheinisches Ärzteblatt 20 (12): 23–24. Goldmann, Stefan. 2019. “Alles Wissen ist Stückwerk”. Studien zu Sigmund Freuds Krankengeschichten und zur ‘Traumdeutung’. Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag. Goodman, Nelson. 1968. Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill. Greenhalgh, Trisha, and Brian Hurwitz, eds. 1998. Narrative Based Medicine. Dialogue and Discourse in Clinical Practice. London: BMJ Books. Gross, Alan G., Joseph E. Harmon, and Michael S. Reidy. 2002. Communicating Science. The Scientific Article from the 17th Century to the Present. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hess, Volker. 2010. “Formalisierte Beobachtung. Die Genese der modernen Krankenakte am Beispiel der Berliner und Pariser Medizin (1725–1830).” Medizinhistorisches Journal 45 (3–4): 293–340. Hess, Volker, and J. Andrew Mendelsohn. 2010. “Case and Series: Medical Knowledge and Paper Technologies, 1600–1900.” History of Science 48 (3–4): 287–314. Holz, Simone. 2014. Die tiefenpsychologische Krankengeschichte zwischen Wissenschafts- und Weltanschauungsliteratur (1905–1952). Eine gattungstheoretische und -historische Untersuchung. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang. Hunter, Kathryn Montgomery. 1991. Doctors’ Stories: The Narrative Structure of Medical Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hurwitz, Brian. 2006. “Form and Representation in Clinical Case Reports.” Literature and Medicine 25 (2): 216–240. Hurwitz, Brian. 2011. “Clinical Cases and Clinical Case Reports: Boundaries and Porosities.” In The Case and the Canon. Anomalies, Discontinuities, Metaphors Between Science and Literature, edited by Alessandra Calanchi, Gastone Castellani, Gabriella Morisco, and Giorgio Turchetti, 45–59. Göttingen: V & R Unipress. Hurwitz, Brian. 2017. “Narrative Constructs in Modern Clinical Case Reporting.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 62: 65–73. Kennedy, Meegan. 2010. Revising the Clinic. Vision and Representation in Victorian Medicine and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. King, Martina. 2019a. “‘Herzensergießungen kunstliebender Ärzte’. Praktische Heilkunde und Literatur um 1800.” In Non-Fiktion: Arsenal der anderen Gattungen, Themenheft ‘Medizin’, edited by Alexander Honold and Grit Schwarzkopf, 27–65. Hanover: Wehrhahn. King, Martina. 2019b. “Historische Narratologie. Ein Weg zur Kontextualisierung von Textstrukturen.” KulturPoetik 19 (2): 319–340. King, Martina. 2020. “‘Nach Aufnahme arterielle Hypotonie’: Personenkonzept und Kommunikationsformen in der Experten-Medizin.” Gesnerus 77 (2): 411–437. King, Martina. 2021. “‘Es liegt eine aktive Blutung vor’: Erzählen in der Textsorte ‘Arztbrief’.” KulturPoetik 21 (1): 70–93. Köppe, Tilmann, and Tom Kindt. 2022. Erzähltheorie. Eine Einführung. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Reclam. Kretzenbacher, Heinz Leonhard. 1994. “Wie durchsichtig ist die Sprache der Wissenschaften?” In Linguistik der Wissenschaftssprache, edited by Leonhard Kretzenbacher und Harald Weinrich, 15–39. Berlin: De Gruyter.

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Lamarque, Peter, and Stein H. Olsen. 1994. Truth, Fiction and Literature. A Philosophical Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Morgan, Mary S. 2017a. “Introduction: Narrative Science and Narrative Knowing.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 62: 1–5. Morgan, Mary S. 2017b. “Narrative Ordering and Explanation.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 62: 86–97. Niederhauser, Jürg. 1999. Wissenschaftssprache und populärwissenschaftliche Vermittlung. Tübingen: Narr. Pomata, Gianna. 2013. “The Recipe and the Case. Epistemic Genres and the Dynamics of Cognitive Practices.” In Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Geschichte des Wissens im Dialog/Connecting Science and Knowledge, edited by Kaspar von Greyerz, Silvia Flubacher, and Philipp Senn, 131–154. Göttingen: V & R Unipress. Pomata, Gianna. 2014. “The Medical Case Narrative. Distant Reading of an Epistemic Genre.” Literature and Medicine 32 (1): 1–23. Prince, Gerald. 2008. “Narrativehood, Narrativeness, Narrativity, Narratibility.” In Theorizing Narrativity, edited by John Pier and José Ángel García Landa, 19–27. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter. Ryan, Marie-Laure. 2007. “Toward a Definition of Narrative.” In The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, edited by David Herman, 22–35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmid, Wolf. 2003. “Narrativity and Eventfulness.” In What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory, edited by Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Müller, 17–34. Berlin/ New York: De Gruyter. Tougaw, Jason. 2006. Strange Cases. The Medical Case History and the British Novel. London: Routledge. Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe. On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Cambridge/MA: Harvard University Press. Wegmann, Thomas, and Martina King, eds. 2016. Fallgeschichte(n) als Narrativ zwischen Literatur und Wissen. Innsbruck: Innsbruck University Press. Weinrich, Harald. 1989. “Formen der Wissenschaftssprache.” Jahrbuch 1988 der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 119–158. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Wolf, Werner. 2002. “Das Problem der Narrativität in Literatur, bildender Kunst und Musik. Ein Beitrag zu einer intermedialen Erzähltheorie.” In Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär, edited by Ansgar Nünning and Vera Nünning, 23–104. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.

Jarmila Mildorf

“I Had a Patient Who . . .”: Narratives of Vicarious Experience in GPs’ Discourse on Domestic Violence 1 Introduction “It’s all anecdotal, isn’t it?” This is what a general practitioner said to me when I asked her to tell me more about the domestic violence cases she had come across in patients.1 Said almost apologetically, this phrase betrays something of the low status that anecdotes and storytelling have in medical practice. Medicine as a discipline generally frowns upon storytelling as a time-consuming and, more importantly, non-scientific activity. As Richard Gunderman, vice chair of education for the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences at Indiana University School of Medicine put it in an interview: “[I]n an effort to make everything fit inside an electronic health record, we frequently squeeze the story. We negate the narrative aspect out of things in order to end up with data. [. . .] We encourage students and trainees to collect data points rather than synthesize a coherent narrative of what the patient’s experiencing, which may extend far beyond their vital signs” (Collins 2019). The textual genres that medical doctors generally engage in as part of their daily practice – patient files, medical reports, discharge letters, case studies – follow strict discursive conventions that are usually not considered as entailing storytelling or, as Gunderman suggested, they reduce narrative to “data points.” One could argue, however, as does Arthur W. Frank (2010), that the basic patterns of diagnoses and treatments into which doctors seek to fit diseases “are narrative in the basic form of being arrangements in time and space, with one thing leading to another” (52). The problem is, Frank continues, “that these narratives are radically incomplete for living with human suffering and tragedy” (52). From a narra-

 I conducted this interview as part of my research on general practitioners’ narrative discourse on domestic violence (Mildorf 2002, 2007). This study, the fieldwork for which I undertook in the city of Aberdeen, Scotland, in 2000, involved semi-structured interviews with 20 general practitioners who had been selected through purposive sampling. I analyzed the data with a view to identifying how the doctors talked about their experiences of domestic violence cases in their daily practice, using sociolinguistic narrative analysis, which involved looking at linguistic features such as, for example, passive constructions, modalities, temporalities, metaphors and narrative trajectories. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111319971-009

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tological perspective, one could say that the reason for this shortcoming is that medical ‘narratives’ lack a feature which some scholars consider a key factor in narrative discourse, namely the representation of qualia or “states of conscious awareness grounded in the felt, subjective character of experience” (Herman 2009, 22; see also Tye 2018 [2003]). Put more simply, qualia refer to what a situation or experience was like for a person – a concept I am going to return to below. Still, although storytelling and listening carefully to stories are not as a rule an accredited part of medical practice, general practitioners and other medical specialists – like most of their fellow human beings – are also ‘storytelling animals’ (see Fisher 1984), i.e., they presumably make use of narrative and storytelling as sense-making affordances in their daily life experiences, very likely also when working together and with patients. In this chapter, I want to reflect on the potential benefits of doctors’ tapping into narratives in conversations with colleagues as an additional resource that broadens their own experiential horizons. I do this by revisiting some of the stories I analyzed in my 2007 study on general practitioners’ narrative discourse on domestic violence, approaching them here from a new research angle. More specifically, I reconsider these stories as blends of narratives of both personal and vicarious experience. First, I will delineate the concept of narratives of vicarious experience (Norrick 2013) and discuss how this type of narrative dovetails with narratives of personal experience (Labov and Waletzky 1967), drawing on some examples from my previous study. I will then extend the discussion by referring to approaches within the Medical Humanities – notably Narrative Medicine and NarrativeBased Medicine – that have called for medical professionals’ heightened awareness of and attention to patients’ narratives. I will conclude by arguing that it is equally important to consider when and how doctors themselves tell stories, especially stories about others, and that this storytelling propensity might also be used as a resource in Medical Humanities contexts.

2 Narratives of vicarious experience: Epistemics and functions While narratives of personal experience have been at the center of sociolinguists’ attention ever since William Labov and Joshua Waletzky’s (1967) and Labov’s (1972) ground-breaking work, narratives of vicarious experience were placed more center-stage in the field much later (Norrick 2013). In his 2013 article “Narratives of Vicarious Experience in Conversation,” Neal Norrick delineates this sub-

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category of personal experience stories by pointing out its main distinguishing feature: narratives of vicarious experience are told in third person, and the experience related in the story need not even be one that the storyteller witnessed him- or herself (385). The three speaker functions that Erving Goffman (1981, 144–146) identified as subsidiary and complementary parts of the speaker role – author, animator, and principal – further complicate the already complex picture. Goffman contended that speakers are usually considered as the originators or authors of the stories they tell; they are said to animate these stories by speaking them and to express their own viewpoints and beliefs through these stories, which makes them appear to be responsible for what they tell. However, all this need not be the case, as Goffman cautions us. Thus, we may tell or ‘ventriloquize’ stories that originated with someone else, and in voicing a story we may not express our own set of beliefs and opinions but actually someone else’s, for example, when we speak on behalf of a group or are pressured into telling a story in a particular way (145–146). Norrick (2013) argues in his article that in narratives of vicarious experience the teller is the animator, but not the sole author, if the story is pieced together from some other source or sources, including other story tellers, books, newspapers, radio, television, or the internet. The teller does generally count as principal in bearing social responsibility for what is said, but, most significantly, the teller is not identical with the main figure. (387–388)

In narratological terms, one would say that the narrating I is not the same as the experiencing I, and large parts of the story will contain fragments of story and discourse elements that stem from another story previously told by someone else. In a sense, then, narratives of vicarious experience can be considered laminations of other people’s storytelling with one’s own retelling and therefore they offer a (re)presentation of original story existents (characters, settings, etc.) in a new narrative-discursive frame. This reframing of course has ramifications for the epistemics involved in telling someone else’s story. Storytellers may feel the need to justify their telling of someone else’s story more than they would when telling their own story (Hatavara and Mildorf 2017, 405; Mildorf 2019, 107–108). Still, storytellers engaging in narratives of vicarious experience are generally not deterred by the fact that they did not witness the events they are talking about. As Norrick (2013) puts it, “epistemic entitlement and telling rights are built in” (403) because at least the “experiencer of the events reported had direct access to details, references, and dialogue” (403). The tacit assumption is of course that the current storyteller must at some point have been told the original story by the person who actually experienced the events related in that story. Whether that is always the case can be doubted, but

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this does not seem to matter too much as long as the narrative of vicarious experience serves its function – whether it is to provide an example in a current storytelling situation, to impart news (see also Norrick 2013, 404) or, for that matter, gossip, or simply to tell an entertaining story. Norrick furthermore emphasizes the fact that narratives of vicarious experience “have no automatic relation to the teller’s identity” (403). This is correct to the extent that what is told about the experiencer does not immediately tell us anything about the teller him- or herself. However, what needs to come under closer scrutiny, I would argue, is the question why storytellers tell narratives of vicarious experiences in the first place and, consequently, how these acts of telling, in connection with what is told, ultimately reflect the teller’s identity after all, albeit in an indirect way. I will now explore these points in examples from my previous study.

3 Narratives of vicarious experience in GPs’ stories about domestic violence The first story I reintroduce here was told by a middle-aged male GP in a practice in the wider city area of Aberdeen near the university (narrative 30 in my previous study). The story was told across various turns and in response to prompts given by me to the GP to tell me more about this particular patient, whom the GP had initially only mentioned in passing in the interview. The transcription conventions are kept to a minimum here. I use square brackets to include words that cannot be fully heard in the audio recording and curly brackets to indicate overlapping speech. Back channels such as “uhm,” “er,” speech cut-offs, and the like are retained in the transcript to give a flavour of the spoken nature of conversational narratives.

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Example 1 (adopted from Mildorf 2007, 205–206):









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

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J: Mhm. Can you tell me a bit about . . .? Dr: About this lady? J: Yeah. Dr: She, well, she’s interesting. She’s a schiz-, she’s labelled as a schizophrenic but she’s not, she’s not really, she’s not, er, particularly bad in that way and she lives, uhm, in a flat she has bought and she has a partner who she wants to get out of the flat, who’s really ins-, er, installed himself in there and [has lived] there for a number of years and, uhm, he, er, er, he’s, er, mentally and physically abusive towards her and, uhm, he really just, er, pushes her around and makes her do all the shopping, he makes her carry everything, he turns off all the lights and the telly when he wants it off, he changes the TV programme if he doesn’t like it on and he resorts to physical violence and, and she came in the other week, last week, with a big black eye and some bruising and then I had a chat with her about it and, er, [she felt ashamed] and then, before I suspected it I’d never actually known that he’s been physically abusive but, er, she obviously is unhappy with him but can’t get him out of the flat. He pays rent and he’s fairly, er, aggressive [under the chum]. She likes to watch some television programme, he prefers if she puts it, the, the nasty, aggressive things on the telly. So she’s in a bit of a dilemma and, being mentally unwell, she, she hasn’t worked for a number of years, she doesn’t have, uhm, she, she’s not very skilled at times to organi-, to manage this situation. She does have support from the CPN [clinical psychiatric nurse] but I don’t think, er, it’s very difficult to know how best to help her actually ’cause I said to her last week she should go to, to seek legal advice. I suggested that she maybe goes to the Citizens Advice first to get some help with that. She’s not, well, financially, she’s badly off so she’s worried about all sorts of legal fees. I suggested to her that one option might be to come out of the flat and seek refuge and then [the Citizens Advice section] will get him out but she understandably is reluctant to do that because it’s her flat, she actually pays the mortgage and he pays her rent. That’s pretty minimal but he does. So she’s in a very unhappy situation and she really doesn’t want to get involved with him but she can’t get rid of him. J: Alright. But she was fairly upfront about the {problem?} Dr: {Very, yeah.} Well, I’ve known her for quite a, about ten years so she and, er, with her schizophrenic illness it’s taken a while getting her to talk about things but she’s actually quite well from that point of view, she’s not psychotic at all at the moment and I don’t think, er, that’s an issue. I think there’s an issue in that she is not very good at managing the situation and, and she’s, and she’s not working, she’s only forty-six but she’s not working. She has no other financial, er, input of actual benefits. Uhm, but I mean it was obvious when she had the black eye that, that she’d been assaulted but she was quite moved from that how it happened and she did say this wasn’t a new thing, it happened several times in the past.

What one notices when looking at this story more closely is that the GP in fact rolls two narratives into one. There is what I would consider the narrative proper, which concerns the consultation where the GP learnt for the first time that the patient’s partner had been both psychologically and physically abusive towards her. This can be considered a narrative of personal experience because the GP relates a specific event in the past in which he also participated as one key ‘character.’ I call this the narrative ‘proper’ because it is anchored in one particular incident or

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event (the consultation the woman sought on account of her injury) that also brought about a change in the related ‘storyworld’: the GP discovered his patient’s experiences with domestic violence. The other narrative is about the life that this patient leads with her partner, the ill treatment her partner subjects her to and his unacceptable behavior more generally. Since the situations and events related in this narrative are not ones that the GP himself witnessed, one can talk about a narrative of vicarious experience in this case. However, this narrative has many interesting features which deviate slightly from more ‘standard’ narratives in the Labovian sense. For example, the narrative is told in the present tense, which in this case generalizes the related events. Thus, rather than referring to one specific incident or a number of particular events in the life of this woman, the GP almost summarily describes what typically happens in this relationship. Thus, he details the partner’s behavior as follows: “he’s, er, mentally and physically abusive towards her and, uhm, he really just, er, pushes her around and makes her do all the shopping, he makes her carry everything, he turns off all the lights and the telly when he wants it off, he changes the TV programme if he doesn’t like it on and he resorts to physical violence” (lines 8–12). The present tense implies that these actions happen regularly or as a rule and are general examples for the partner’s constantly abusive behavior. In narratives of personal experience, what happens in one’s life as a rule is commonly not considered worthy of telling (cf. Labov and Waletzky 1967, 34). Labov (1972, 370) later called this “reportability,” i.e., the fact that what is told is usually noteworthy, exciting, exceptional, strange or in some other way interesting. One’s mundane, everyday life experiences, by contrast, form the backdrop for storyworld “disruptions” (Herman 2009, 19–21) or complications which trigger a narrative about these unexpected events. As David Herman (2009) points out, “narrative is a cognitive and communicative strategy for navigating the gap, in everyday experience, between what was expected and what actually takes place” (20). Concerning the GP’s narrative, one could argue that the patient’s generalized and presumably recurring everyday life experiences with her partner become noteworthy and therefore “reportable” for two reasons: for one thing, this kind of living together, where one partner subjects the other one by mere force, is not

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what most people would expect or wish for in a relationship.2 In that sense the related events constitute ‘deviations’ from ‘expected’ life story trajectories. Furthermore, these events gain in significance because the GP makes it clear that he was taken by surprise when hearing about this side of his patient’s life. It is not by coincidence, I would argue, that this generalized sequence about the woman’s experiences is immediately followed by the personal narrative about the consultation: “and she came in the other week, last week, with a big black eye and some bruising and then I had a chat with her about it” (lines 12–13). We can see how the narrative becomes more particularized as far as its spatiotemporal and other logical parameters are concerned. The GP specifies the time when this surprising consultation took place, first somewhat tentatively (“the other week”) and then more precisely (“last week”). Furthermore, the circumstances for this visit at the GP’s surgery are explained, and we see how the GP establishes a temporal-causal connection between the patient’s presentation of bruises and his own decision to ask further questions about it at that point (“and then I had a chat with her about it,” emphasis mine). His own surprise back then, which I would consider the main point of this story, is subsequently narrated slightly elliptically when the GP continues: “and then, before I suspected it I’d never actually known that he’s been physically abusive but, er, she obviously is unhappy with him but can’t get him out of the flat” (lines 14–16). What is not expressly verbalized here is the fact that the woman, after a moment of hesitation, opened up about her relationship – as could be expressed as follows, for example: ‘and then, before I suspected it, she told me about her partner.’ Instead, the GP foregrounds his own ignorance about this state of affairs, which becomes the pivotal point around which the story is constructed: “I’d never actually known that he’s been physically abusive.” If the main point of this narrative is to relate this moment of recognition, then the surrounding lengthy narrative of vicarious experience can be said to serve the purpose of underlining just how much the GP learnt about his patient’s actual life at that point. As I argued in my previous discussion of this narrative, the amount of detail the GP offers here indicates that he must have given this patient ample opportunity to talk about her life once she had disclosed her abusive relationship to him (Mildorf 2007, 66). At the same time, the GP in turn takes his time to elaborate on all these details about the woman’s life in his interview with me. This may show how much importance the GP now accords these daily

 I am of course aware of the fact that I ultimately express my own viewpoint here, and that acceptance of violent behavior may be an almost ‘expected’ or at least tolerated part in many people’s lives. I do not mean to denigrate such life experiences in any way.

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experiences. It may also point to the GP’s positioning in the interview situation. He uses the patient’s narrative to create an image of himself as a caring family doctor who listens attentively and offers help and advice (see, for example, lines 23–28). Interpreted in the light of the current interview situation, the narrative of vicarious experience assumes an illustrative function since it depicts in greater detail one case of domestic violence in this GP’s daily work. It also displays the GP’s good rapport with his patient, thus contributing towards the creation of the GP’s self-image as a professional but also humane medical practitioner. This counteracts Norrick’s argument that narratives of vicarious experience cannot serve speakers’ (self-)identity work. I would argue that they can also do that, albeit in an indirect and suggestive way. What is interesting from a narratological perspective is the fact this GP offers me as the interviewer insight into his patient’s life and experiences but does not do so by using narrative techniques that Monika Fludernik (1996) associated with her concept of “experientiality,” for example, free indirect discourse, interior monologue or the like. This is hardly surprising given the fact that Fludernik’s concept rests on fictional models, where there is arguably more scope for complex multi-perspectival forms of narration. The closest the GP comes to conveying the patient’s emotional state is by reporting or summarizing those emotions – which is analogous to what Geoffrey Leech and Mick Short (2007, 271) call “narrative report of thought acts” or NRTAs: “she obviously is unhappy with him” (line 15), “So she’s in a bit of a dilemma” (line 18), “she’s worried about all sorts of legal fees” (line 25), “she really doesn’t want to get involved with him” (lines 29–30), “she was quite moved from that how it happened” (lines 39–40). Unlike fictional narrators, storytellers in real life do not seem to resort as readily to narrative techniques whereby they ‘enter the minds’ of the people or ‘characters’ they portray – although one would also have to distinguish between spoken and written non-fictional narratives here. The report style is a good middle ground to avoid doubts about the epistemic authority that storytellers have because it implies that what is reported must have been told first-hand by the original storyteller at some point. Still, it is quite remarkable that this GP gives so much room to a narrative report about his patient’s emotional disposition at all. And experience tells us that it is in fact quite common for storytellers to mention or in some form refer to other people’s thoughts and emotional states in narratives of vicarious experience. In doing so, storytellers not only give their interlocutors greater insight into what a certain situation must have been like for another person, they also implicitly present themselves as tellers with the authority or ‘licence’ to talk about others’ emotions. They either imply that these other people had told them about their emotions or that they as storytellers have ‘special’ interpretative powers to

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assess the initial or original situations. In the example of this GP’s narrative, one may say that by talking about his patient’s emotions and worries he also signals that he has shown sufficient empathy towards her and is therefore in a position to be able to relate how she felt. All in all, this again supports the self-image of a medical professional who views his patients more holistically and who allows for the ‘human factor’ to become part of a consultation. That this ‘reading’ of the GP’s narrative is justified can be seen if we compare it to another narrative from my sample. The following story was related by a female GP nearing retirement who worked in a practice near the university. In this narrative, the GP does not tell a lengthy narrative of vicarious experience about a patient, but she still feels the need to stress that she “knew quite a lot about her” (line 8). Example 2 (adopted from Mildorf 2007, 191–192): J: O.k. And looking back on all these years, can you tell me a bit about your experiences with domestic violence? Dr: Uhm, well, not a lot. I’m not-, not a lot is disclosed to you. Uhm, sometimes women come in with, er, injuries that they’ve sustained or sometimes they’ll, er, you know, they’ll come, er,  for information about refuges and, er, things like that. But on the whole, er, not, not a lot presents to the GP. Uhm, sometimes you’ll pick it, er, I had a, I had, uhm, one girl who was particularly bad and her boy-friend broke her arm and she kept going back to him and, uhm, so, I knew quite a lot about her, uhm, uhm, sometimes I’m asked to give reports, uhm, for solicitors, you know, if the lady wants to pursue it, uhm.  [. . .] J: Yeah. Do you ever feel concerned you might not detect it {in a consultation?} Dr: {Yes, I think so.} Yeah. I think quite often I might suspect it. It’s the same pro- possibly with child, uhm, uhm, vio-, er, er, violence to children. [Right]. I was telling you about the girl with the broken arm. They have a small child and I suspect that the child was maybe-, er, and  that was difficult because, you know, of course you have to bring the social workers in and things like that and that, I think that, er, concerns me more if- that the children are involved as well in a violence. Uhm, but yes yes, I think they’re probably, I, there is probably a lot that I don’t pick up. Yes. Mhm. Mhm.

Like the previous example, this narrative is also not one continuous story but is distributed across various turns: the GP begins to tell the story at some point and resumes it at another point in the interview. In the excerpt presented here, we can see how the GP comes back to her initial story when reflecting on whether she would feel concerned about not detecting domestic violence in a patient’s life because she then brings up the issue of children involved in such circumstances (lines 13–15). Unlike the other narrative, this one offers comparatively little infor-

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mation about this patient’s experiences with her violent partner. Apart from the fact that they had a small child, we only learn that this young woman’s case was “particularly bad” (line 7) and that “her boy-friend broke her arm and she kept going back to him” (lines 7–8). The events are stated in a matter-of-fact way and the GP does not try to convey a sense of what the patient must have felt like or what the situation was like for this girl – although the evaluative phrase “particularly bad” hints at the severity of the situation. This of course does not mean that the GP did not know more about her patient’s life. The very fact that she expressly mentions that she “knew quite a lot about her” (line 8) implies the opposite. More importantly, what this emphatic phrase shows is that the GP wants to be perceived as a family doctor who does have good rapport with her patients and therefore is well informed as far as their life circumstances are concerned. After all, the question I had asked – which implied that she may be missing cases – posed quite a challenge to this GP’s (self-) image. In this connection, the GP’s emphatic assertion could be interpreted as an instance of verbal ‘self-defense.’ One reason why this doctor and other GPs in my sample were perhaps less forthcoming when it comes to revealing more details about their patients’ lives could be that medical professionals are generally pledged to observing confidentiality regarding patient data and therefore sense that it may be inappropriate to talk at length (and to a stranger) about their patients, even though they do this in an anonymized way (“I had a patient who . . .”). This conflicts with the storytelling needs created through the interview situation, where narratives of personal and vicarious experience serve to illustrate responses and to offer examples. Despite this conflict, it is remarkable that none of the GPs I interviewed refrained from storytelling completely. The fact that they offered more concrete stories about patients during the interviews – sometimes because I had expressly asked for this but often also without prior elicitation – already indicates that the impulse to tell stories and to thereby contextualize further what one has to say is strong even among medical practitioners. A good example is a narrative one GP told me after the interview when I had switched off the recording device. He spoke about his first encounter with a battered woman in the emergency ward in a South African hospital. She had a fractured upper arm and was apparently very badly injured. Her husband had beaten her up. One of the porters in the hospital turned around to the doctor and said to him: “If it has come to that stage, she must have done something really bad.” This viewpoint shocked the doctor, and it was then that he realized for the first time how big an issue domestic violence was. Perhaps the fact that this was ‘off the record’ made it easier for this GP to relate a personal anecdote. At the same time, we can see once again how such a personal narrative captures a mo-

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ment of recognition, a moment when the doctor learnt something or made some lasting realization. It is not surprising that such moments are often related in narrative form. The aspect of experientiality, which is so central to Fludernik’s (1996) conceptualization of narrative, or what Herman (2009) called “qualia” are best expressed through stories. And this is why stories are so important for the medical realm as well. I pointed out above that storytelling is not only a discourse mode but also a means of sense-making. Stories help one to establish coherence and evaluate the significance of past experiences as well as to retain those experiences in living memory. As my examples also demonstrate, doctors’ stories fulfil important ethical functions: in retelling their patients’ stories, the GPs again bear witness to those patients’ predicaments and suffering. At the same time, telling these stories allows them to reflect on their own role as medical professionals, to assess with hindsight whether their responses were adequate and helpful or whether other strategies in communication and patient care could possibly have led to better results (for example, to an earlier recognition of the problem). Stories match the complexity that people’s lives – and therefore, working with patients – entail. They can become templates to guide future action. Of course, doctors also learn through hearing others’ stories. One female GP, for example, told me about a seminar she went to with one of her fellow GPs to be trained about domestic violence, and she commented: “hearing so many awful tales about what partners do to each other, it’s just incredible.” The evaluative adjectives “awful” and “incredible” are important here as they suggest that those initial stories were clearly reportable and may therefore have imprinted themselves on this GP’s mind. However, rather than merely internalizing other people’s stories and thereby stocking up on their own experiential repertoires (see also Mildorf 2019), it can be equally important for medical doctors to retell such stories to other colleagues, spouses, partners or friends. Retellings bring into sharper relief what has become important about these stories and may help doctors recognize and share this with others. This sharing of insights can be said to constitute another important function of doctors’ stories, which may thus serve as instructive examples. The question of confidentiality must of course not be set aside. Quite on the contrary, it is useful and necessary that the general principle of confidentiality be observed at all times. As Gerald L. Higgins (1989) shows, the concept has changed over time with the emphasis shifting from doctors’ code of ethics to patients’ rights. He also concedes that “maintenance of strict secrecy of medical information is impossible, especially in the modern hospital, where many professionals are involved in the care of the patient and have legitimate access to such records” (926). What I am suggesting is not that doctors ought to start blurting out their

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patients’ stories to one another. All I am saying is that this may be happening to some extent anyway – which deserves closer scholarly attention – and that it need not be a bad thing. In the final part of my chapter, I want to argue that this storytelling practice may in fact be channelled into fruitful exchanges about and reflections on treatment and patient care.

4 Storytelling in medicine revisited I started this chapter by mentioning the low status of storytelling in medicine. If one considers how medicine views itself as a profession – a self-image that is passed on through medical training – it becomes clear why this form of communication is generally side-lined: clinical judgment or phronesis is expected to rest on scientific principles (Montgomery 2006). Even though advanced medical training involves learning about patient care through actual cases, including their inevitable idiosyncrasies (Montgomery 2006, 50), the main tenets of scientific enquiry that still underlie the biomedical model rest on quantification, which is meant to lead to generalizability, and evidence-based methods and procedures that are applied in order to produce outcomes which can be measured and compared (Montgomery 2006, 45). Narratives, by contrast, focus on individual cases and experiences, and the potential complexity entailed in personal stories cannot really be contained within quantifiable parameters, as Brian Schiff argues in his book A New Narrative for Psychology (2017).3 Psychiatry is arguably different from other medical fields since the focus lies on people’s mental health. And yet, both clinical psychology and psychiatry have also been subjected to the ‘scientific’ ideals of the biomedical model that dominates all of mainstream medicine today. One problem that arises for general practitioners in their daily work is that mental and physical problems cannot be easily separated and in fact often influence one another. As another GP in my study pointed out, again ‘anecdotally’: “Sixty, I mean sixty percent of the patient contacts that any general practitioner has, there’s no physical illness. So there’s an emotional or psychological or sometimes a psychiatric problem. But, er, they’re often diagnosed by exclusion, which is a lengthy, expensive process.” Research on the perception and treatment of mental health issues in general practice seems to corroborate this impression that GPs see a lot of, but are not well-equipped to deal with, non-physical problems (see, for example, The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners

 In the social sciences, ironically, attempts have been made to do precisely that, namely, to quantify narrative data by means of, for example, statistical software such as NVivo.

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2019, 3, 5). Lack of time to talk and to allow for more extended narratives to emerge as an additional resource may be part of the problem (see also my discussion in Mildorf 2007, 94–103). When physicians work as clinicians, they encounter patients and are faced with those patients’ stories. However, these stories can easily disrupt an already tight schedule and must therefore be curtailed, even though there is growing recognition among some doctors at least that patient narratives may offer valuable clues for diagnosis and treatment. Narrative Medicine and Narrative-Based Medicine (NBM) as movements that seek to reintroduce attention to narrative into medical training and practice postulate that doctors ought to ‘honor’ patients’ stories by listening carefully and by acknowledging the information thus offered (Charon 2006; Kalitzkus and Matthiessen 2009). There is a clear focus on listening skills here. Far fewer studies have foregrounded the importance of active storytelling in medical contexts, and if they do, the focus often lies on writing rather than on oral storytelling (Gask 2019; Hazelton 2010; Löyttyniemi 2005).4 By contrast, Lise Saffran (2021) even goes as far as to argue that professionals working in public health “have an obligation to get better at telling public stories” (1536). Her argument rests on the observation that people increasingly turn to the internet and other media for medical advice and support, and that it is therefore desirable that medical professionals offer their expertise and experience through such channels – also and especially in form of personal stories. Saffran for obvious reasons also underlines the importance of de-identifying patients in case histories and other narratives (1536), and she discusses two tenets that may offer a framework for such public storytelling. First, she argues “that scientific or population data in the narrative be subject to the same critical examination as narrative elements such as language, character, and structure” (1536). In her view it is important to consider why one tells a story, to whom, for what purpose and how, as well as the larger context in which this takes place. This very much ties in with the research questions I proposed above when it comes to analyzing GPs’ narratives. Saffran’s second tenet holds that medical professionals must “understand how their own perspective influences the framing of their story” (1536). Indeed, self-reflexivity should be both the guiding principle and desired outcome of any storytelling practice that is operationalized in professional contexts – be it medicine or other fields.

 There is of course the whole field of “bibliotherapy” (McCarty Hynes and Hynes-Berry 2018 [1986]), where books are used to support therapeutic interactions between a participant or participants and a facilitator. This field has received considerably more attention in recent years than my cursory overview can even begin to suggest.

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Perhaps it is not necessary to institutionalize storytelling among medical professionals – although one could envisage staff meetings or training sessions specifically dedicated to storytelling and storytelling practices.5 However, it would be helpful to alert doctors in some way or another to the storytelling practices they already engage in and to highlight how these practices may be turned into rich resources for gaining knowledge and insight. Narratives of vicarious experience, in connection with personal stories, can ultimately help medical professionals create a “web of shared experience” (Mildorf 2019, 111) that goes well beyond the experiences one single person can have.

References Charon, Rita. 2006. Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Collins, Em. 2019. “The Importance of Storytelling for Physicians.” The Spirit of Medicine, 9 August. Accessed 14 February 2021. https://medicine.iu.edu/blogs/spirit-of-medicine/importance-ofstorytelling-for-physicians. Fisher, Walter R. 1984. “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument.” Communication Monographs 51 (1): 1–22. Fludernik, Monika. 1996. Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. Frank, Arthur W. 2010. “Why Doctors’ Stories Matter.” Canadian Family Physician 56 (1): 51–54. Gask, Linda. 2019. “I Remember, I Remember: The Therapeutic Power of the Medical Memoir.” The Lancet Psychiatry 6 (6): 472–474. Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hatavara, Mari, and Jarmila Mildorf. 2017. “Fictionality, Narrative Modes and Vicarious Storytelling.” Style 51 (3): 391–408. Hazelton, Lara. 2010. “‘I Check My Emotions the Way You Might Check a Pulse . . .’: Stories of Women Doctors.” Storytelling, Self, Society 6 (2): 132–144. Herman, David. 2009. Basic Elements of Narrative. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Higgins, Gerald L. 1989. “The History of Confidentiality in Medicine: The Physician-Patient Relationship.” Canadian Family Physician 35: 921–926. Kalitzkus, Vera, and Peter F. Matthiessen. 2009. “Narrative-Based Medicine: Potential, Pitfalls, and Practice.” The Permanente Journal 13 (1): 80–86. Labov, William. 1972. Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, William, andJoshua Waletzky. 1967. “Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience.” In Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts, edited by June Helm, 12–44. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

 Some medical schools such as Stanford Medicine already offer special courses in creative storytelling (mostly writing) as part of their extracurricular activities. See, for example: https://med. stanford.edu/medicineandthemuse/events/medical-student-storytelling.html.

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Leech, Geoffrey, and Mick Short. 2007. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. 2nd ed. Harlow: Pearson Longman. Löyttyniemi, Varpu. 2005. “Doctors as Wounded Storytellers: Embodying the Physician and Gendering the Body.” Body & Society 11 (1): 87–110. McCarty Hynes, Arleen, and Mary Hynes-Berry. 2018 [1986]. Bibliotherapy: The Interactive Process: A Handbook. London: Routledge. Mildorf, Jarmila. 2002. “‘Opening Up a Can of Worms’: Physicians’ Narrative Construction of Knowledge about Domestic Violence.” Narrative Inquiry 12 (2): 233–260. Mildorf, Jarmila. 2007. Storying Domestic Violence: Constructions and Stereotypes of Abuse in the Discourse of General Practitioners. Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press. Mildorf, Jarmila. 2019. “Narratives of Vicarious Experience in Oral History Interviews with Craft Artists.” Journal of Pragmatics 152: 103–112. Montgomery, Kathryn. 2006. How Doctors Think: Clinical Judgement and the Practice of Medicine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Norrick, Neal. 2013. “Narratives of Vicarious Experience in Conversation.” Language in Society 42 (4): 385–406. Saffran, Lise. 2021. “The Art of Medicine: Public Health Storytelling Practice.” The Lancet 397 (10284): 1536–1537. Schiff, Brian. 2017. A New Narrative for Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. 2019. General Practice: Health of the Nation. East Melbourne: RACGP. Accessed 29 June 2021. https://www.racgp.org.au/health-of-the-nation /health-of-the-nation. Tye, Michael. 2018 [2003]. “Qualia.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. Accessed 15 June 2021. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/ entries/qualia/.

Contributors Lucia Aschauer is a historian specializing in the history of obstetrics. She received her PhD from the University of Bochum with a thesis on the medical case report in the context of French obstetrics (published in 2019: Gebärende unter Beobachtung. Die Etablierung der männlichen Geburtshilfe in Frankreich 1750–1830). She currently works as a lecturer for the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and at the Centre interdisciplinaire dʼétudes et de recherches sur lʼAllemagne (CIERA) in Paris. Angela Gencarelli is Universitätsassistentin at the Center for Cultural Studies, University of Graz. Her research interests include interferences between literature and science, genre theory, history of the bestiary in the Middle Ages and in Modernity (second-book project), semiotics of animals in literature, narratology of the sciences. Recent publications: “Metareflexive Tierlektüren. Zur Wiederaufnahme des mittelalterlichen Bestiariengenres am Beispiel von Harald Weinrichs Gedichtband Vom Leben und Lesen der Tiere,” in: Deutsche Chronik 65/2023 (forthcoming); (ed.): Die DDR-Literatur und die Wissenschaften, Berlin 2022; “‘Texts in Action’. Zur epistemischen Funktion von Texten in der naturwissenschaftlichen Wissensproduktion,” in: Medienobservationen-Sonderausgabe [Textbegriffe] 2022, pp. 1–18. Tom Kindt is Professor of Comparative and German Literature at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He has published widely on literary and narrative theory, humor research, and German literature of the 20th century. He is co-editor of the essay collections What Is Narratology? (2003) and Narratology beyond Literary Criticism (2005). His recent publications include: Erzähltheorie. Eine Einführung (with Tilmann Köppe, 2nd, extended edition 2022), Der deutschsprachige Nachkriegsroman und die Tradition des unzuverlässigen Erzählens (ed. with Matthias Aumüller, 2021), and Medienästhetik der Komik (ed. with Susanne Kaul, 2023). Martina King holds the chair of Medical Humanities at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). She studied medicine, Modern German literature and philosophy and worked for 15 years as a pediatrician at the University Children’s Hospital in Munich (TUM). After completing her PhD in Modern German Literature at the University of Göttingen (supervised by Gerhard Lauer; Pilger und Prophet. Heilige Autorschaft bei Rainer Maria Rilke, Göttingen 2009), she worked as a lecturer in Modern German Literature at various universities, as lecturer in Medical Humanities at the University of Glasgow, and as research associate at the university of Berne (DFG-fellowship). In 2016, she completed her double ‘Habilitation’ at the University of Berne in Modern German Literature and medical history (Das Mikrobielle in der Literatur und Kultur der Moderne. Zur Wissensgeschichte eines ephemeren Gegenstands [1880–1930], Göttingen 2021). In 2018, she was appointed as professor of Medical Humanities at Fribourg; since 2022 she is co-editor of KulturPoetik. Sebastian Meixner is Oberassistent for Modern German Literary Studies at the University of Zurich. Having completed his dissertation in 2017 at the University of Tübingen with Narratologie und Epistemologie. Studien zu Goethes frühen Erzählungen (published 2019: Studien zur deutschen Literatur 219), he currently leads the project “Poetics of Abundance. Aesthetics – Economy – Literature” (SNSF Ambizione: 2021–2025). Recent publications include The Topology of Abundance in Freytag’s Soll und Haben, in: Places of Abundance. Zur Topographie des Luxuriösen in Literatur und Kultur der

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Moderne, ed. Hans-Georg von Arburg et al. (2022) and together with Carolin Rocks (ed.): GottschedHandbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung (2023). Jarmila Mildorf teaches English language and literature at the University of Paderborn. She is the author of Storying Domestic Violence: Constructions and Stereotypes of Abuse in the Discourse of General Practitioners (University of Nebraska Press 2007) and Life Storying in Oral History: Fictional Contamination and Literary Complexity (De Gruyter 2023). Her ‘Habilitation’ (2018) was on fictional dialogue from a socio-cognitive pragmatic perspective. She has published many articles and coedited numerous essay collections and special journal issues in the fields of audionarratology, socionarratology, dialogue studies, radio drama, autobiography, conversational storytelling and the medical humanities, most recently Narrative and Mental Health: Reimagining Theory and Practice (Oxford University Press 2023). Felix E. Rietmann is research associate (SNSF Ambizione Fellow) at the Chair of Medical Humanities at the University of Fribourg, leading a research group on the cultural history of child health in the early nineteenth century. His research explores the material and visual culture of medicine from the eighteenth century to the present, with a special interest in the history of child health. His forthcoming book, Watching Babies: A History of Infant Mental Health, provides a first historical account of the scientific study and medical management of the infant’s mind across the twentieth century. He holds an MD from Charité-Berlin and a PhD from Princeton University. Anders Sydskjør is a post-doctoral research fellow in the History of Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Berne. His research interests concern methodological, metaphilosophical, and literary issues in ancient Greek and early Chinese philosophy. He wrote his PhD at Berne University on the uses of definitions in the writings of Plato and the early Chinese philosopher Xunzi. From July 2023 to January 2024, he is pursuing research into the use of narrative in Plato’s Timaeus at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies. Yvonne Wübben is professor of Literature and Anthropological Knowledge at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. She studied medicine, philosophy and German literature in Freiburg, Berlin, Paris and Austin (Texas). Yvonne Wübben holds a Phd in literature and is doctor of medicine, she teaches and researches on interdisciplinary topics such as case narratives in literature and medicine, the medical textbook, and the doctor-patient conversation. Publications include: Büchners ‘Lenz’. Geschichte eines Falls, Konstanz 2016; Verrückte Sprache. Psychiater und Dichter in der Anstalt des 19. Jahrhunderts, Konstanz 2012; Krankheit schreiben. Aufzeichnungsverfahren in Medizin und Literatur, Göttingen 2013 (with Carsten Zelle); “Mikrotom der Klinik. Der Aufstieg des Lehrbuches in der Psychiatrie (um 1890)”, in: Krankheit schreiben. Aufzeichnungsverfahren in Medizin und Literatur, edited by Yvonne Wübben and Carsten Zelle, Göttingen 2013, pp. 107–133. She is currently a visiting professor for “Narration in Psychiatry” at the Charité Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy.

Index Aristotle 13, 27–28, 30–32, 35, 37, 39–42, 54, 99 Arnold, Thomas 16, 139, 146–148 Asper, Markus 37 Axer, Eva 46 Balme, David M. 30, 35–36, 40 Bechmann, Sascha 158 Beebe, Beatrice 96, 109–112 Beer, Gillian 9 Birkner, Karin 4–5 Bois-Reymond, Emil du 2 Boissier de la Croix de Sauvages, François 139, 147–148 Borrelli, Arianna 12, 76 Bräuning-Oktavio, Hermann 46, 62 Brandt, Christina 3–4, 11, 75 Brazelton, Berry T. 106 Breger, Claudia 10 Brosch, Renate 83, 89 Bruner, Jerome 107 Burke, Kenneth 98, 107 Camper, Peter 59 Charon, Rita 4, 199 Chatman, Seymour 82 Cohn, Dorrit 34 Collins, Em 187 Crick, Francis 76 Cullen, Wiliam 146–149 Currie, Gregory 177 Dahlstrom, Michael F. 8 Daston, Lorraine 125, 172 Davies, Paul 77–79, 90–91 Dicorcia, Jennifer A. 97 Doublet, Francois 152 Düwell, Susanne 86

Föcking, Marc 10 Frank, Arthur W. 187 Freytag, Gustav 88 Galison, Peter Louis 125, 172 Gask, Linda 199 Genette, Gérard 14, 42, 47, 121, 127–128, 136 Genç, Metin 86 Geulen, Eva 46 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 13, 45–51, 53–54, 56–61, 63–65, 67–69, 71–72 Goffman, Erving 189 Goldstein, Jan 139, 152 Goodstein, David L. 78, 92 Gotthelf, Allan 29–30 Goyal, Rishi 6–7, 19 Greenhalgh, Trisha 4 Gross, Alan G. 171 Guedeney, Antoine 95 Günzler, Claus 49 Gunderman, Richard 187 Hatavara, Mari 189 Hazelton, Lara 199 Herman, David 90, 188, 192, 197 Hess, Volker 160–161 Heusser, Peter 45 Heydenreich, Aura 2–3, 8 Higgins, Gerald L. 197 Hippocrates 142–144, 149 Holmes, Frederic L. 81 Huber, Martin 2 Hühn, Peter 6 Hufeland, Christoph Wilhelm 119–120, 122, 132–133, 136 Hurwitz, Brian 4, 173 Iser, Wolfgang 131

Eliot, George 9 Erdogan-Griese, Bülent 174

Jauß, Hans Robert 134, 136

Feynman, Richard 14, 75, 77–92 Fisher, Walter R. 188 Fludernik, Monika 1–2, 5, 11, 16, 121, 194, 197

Kalitzkus, Vera 199 King, Martina 3, 6, 10, 34, 173 King, Richard A. 29

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Klein, Christian 1–2, 8, 75 Kleinschnieder, Manfred 60 Knorr-Cetina, Karin 9, 11 Koschorke, Albrecht 14, 47, 84, 87, 90–91 Labov, William 107, 121, 188, 192 Ladd-Taylor, Molly 102 Laget, Mireille 133 Larrieu, Julie A. 102 Latour, Bruno 9, 11 Leclerc de Buffon, George Luis 56 Leech, Geoffrey 194 Lennox, James G. 30, 32 Leunissen, Mariska 27, 32 Löyttyniemi, Varpu 199 Lorenz, Ute 46 Lotman, Yuri M. 98 Martínez, Matías 1–2, 5, 8, 75 Mattenklott, Gert 54 Matthiessen, Peter F. 199 Matussek, Peter 45 Meister, Jan Christoph 6 Meixner, Sebastian 48 Mendelsohn, Andrew 160 Mesman, J. 97 Mildorf, Jarmila 189, 191, 193, 195, 197, 199–200 Montgomery Hunter, Kathryn 7, 157, 198 Moretti, Franco 141 Morgan, Mary 7–8, 13, 34–35, 38, 41, 158 Munsche, Heather 146 Neugebauer, Gerry 78, 92 Niekerk, Carl 57 Norrick, Neal 188–190, 194 Osofsky, Joy D. 95 Pargeter, William 16, 139, 142–146, 148, 152–153 Pellegrin, Pierre 30 Pier, John 6, 47 Pinel, Philippe 16, 139–142, 148–153 Plant, Rebecca Jo 102 Plotnitsky, Arkady 3 Pörksen, Uwe 45

Pomata, Gianna 6, 119, 141, 157 Poster, Jacques 149 Pussin, Jean-Baptiste 150–152 Resag, Jörg 77–79 Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg 9, 11, 84 Ricœur, Paul 98, 107 Rietmann, Felix E. 95, 102, 104 Ryan, Marie-Laure 2 Saffran, Lise 199 Schaffer, Simon 9, 11 Scheidt, Carl Eduard 4 Schiff, Brian 198 Schmid, Wolf 2, 6, 88, 97–98 Schnieders, Stefan 35, 37, 40 Shapin, Steven 9, 11 Short, Mick 194 Stern, Daniel 102–109 Stukenbrock, Anja 4 Sydenham, Thomas 15 Tereno, Susana 95 Terrall, Mary 10, 34 Tronick, Edward 97, 100–101, 105–107 Tye, Michael 188 Umansky, Lauri 102 Waitz, Wilhelm 59 Waletzky, Joshua 121, 188, 192 Walsh, Richard 3, 11 Watson, James 76 Weiner, Dora 140 Weinrich, Harald 75–76 Wenzel, Manfred 45–46, 64 Whitaker, Harry A. 146 White, Hayden 121 Willis, Francis 144 Wolgar, Steve 9, 11 Wyder, Margrit 45 Zeanah, Charles H. 102