Unnatural Narratology: Extensions, Revisions, and Challenges

Unnatural narratology is one of the most important branches of the contemporary (postclassical) narratology. Its aim is to redefi ne narrative and its properties. Despite its growing popularity over the last ten years, unnatural narratology is still highly contentious around the world and relatively unknown in Poland. In my paper I discuss what unnatural narratology is and its basic analysis elements (unnatural storyworlds, unnatural minds and unnatural acts of narration). Finally I refer to scholars offering critical comments against unnatural narratology.

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Unnatural narratology: core issues and critical debates

Journal of Literary Semantics ◽

10.1515/jls-2015-0007 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 44 (2) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Shang Biwu

Keyword(s):

The Core ◽

Unnatural Narratology ◽

Primary Object ◽

Feminist Narratology ◽

Cognitive Narratology ◽

Postclassical Narratology ◽

Unnatural Narrative ◽

Rhetorical Narratology ◽

Core Issues

AbstractTaking anti-mimetic narratives as its primary object of investigation, unnatural narratology aspires to establish its status as a discipline of unnatural poetics. In recent years, it has rapidly developed into one of the most prominent sub-branches of postclassical narratology, standing in direct parallel to feminist narratology, rhetorical narratology, and cognitive narratology. This paper begins by delineating various definitions of unnatural narrative and proceeds to discuss unnaturalness, interpretative strategies, heuristic values, and the interrelations between unnatural narratology and other schools of narratological thought, so as to investigate the core issues of unnatural narratology and the critical debates on it. The paper ends with an outline set of directions for future explorations in this field.

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LINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF «UNNATURAL» NARRATOLOGY: THE IMAGE OF A NON-EXISTENT TEXT AUTHOR

Studia Linguistica ◽

10.17721/studling2019.15.17-30 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 17-30

Author(s):

Florij Batsevych

Keyword(s):

Real Life ◽

The Body ◽

Narrative Strategies ◽

Story Telling ◽

Narrative Approaches ◽

Linguistic Pragmatics ◽

Unnatural Narratology ◽

Speech Genre ◽

Points Of View ◽

Special Points

The article tries to implement the methods of the so-called «unnatural» narratology to analyse the texts of the collection of short stories «Absolute Emptiness» («Doskonała prόżnia»), which is a set of reviews on non-existent texts. In story-telling structures of this kind, an author usually forms and a reader usually cognitively processes: (a) new types of these structures (schemes), which are not generated in non-estranged texts; (b) new narrative strategies, in particular, the reference part of the textual story may contain actors impossible to be met in «usual» texts; (c) narrative approaches to the formation and evaluation of story-telling structures where there are objects, persons, etc. absent in the real life; (d) means of «restoring» the images of the non-existent authors in the «body» of other texts (in particular, paratexts similar to reviews). The article proves that literary narratives that reflect the non-existent texts demand additional cognitive efforts from an addressee to perceive the communicative senses generated in them. The most important source of such senses creation is a specific logic of the world perception and its reflection, which is non-characteristic to the «classical» speech genre of a review. In view of linguistic pragmatics, these texts actualize special points of view, empathy, and means of their focus. The author’s standpoint about the non-existent text and its reconstruction in paratexts form a shifted focus of empathy, and, what is more, generate non-usual communicative senses, the perception of which demands additional cognitive and psychological efforts from the addressee (a reader, a listener).

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The world that wasn’t there: Interstitial ontological spaces in contemporary video games

Frontiers of Narrative Studies ◽

10.1515/fns-2018-0008 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 112-122

Author(s):

Shawn Edrei

Keyword(s):

Video Games ◽

Fictional World ◽

Unnatural Narratology ◽

The World ◽

Recent Trends ◽

Fictional Worlds ◽

Magic Circle

AbstractThis paper will examine three contemporary video games – Undertale, The magic circle and Pony Island – with an eye towards delineating the ways in which their unique storyworlds and ontological structures align with recent trends in unnatural narratology. Specifically, these games contain interstitial diegetic spaces, and empower the player to move through ‘cracks’ in the façade of the fictional world by acting as a metaphorical programmer, manipulating game files and other extradiegetic components. The metaleptic processes enabled by these actions expose aspects of the respective storyworlds which have been deliberately concealed. Consequently, the games in question literalize existing theories regarding our projection and cognitive exploration of fictional worlds, as they are singular in their capacity for experimentation and transgression of established ontological frameworks.

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Unnatural narratology and premodern narratives: Historicizing a form

Journal of Literary Semantics ◽

10.1515/jls-2017-0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 46 (1) ◽

pp. 1-23 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Eva von Contzen

Keyword(s):

Narrative Theory ◽

Medieval Literature ◽

Unnatural Narratology ◽

Alternative Approach ◽

Dynamic Form ◽

Unnatural Narrative ◽

Historical Trajectory ◽

Narrative Forms

Abstract‘Unnatural’ narratology has been a thriving new field of narrative theory in recent years. What its various sub-fields share is that they are concerned, very broadly, with narratives that transcend the parameters of conventional realism. One of the field’s promises is that it can also account for earlier ‘unnatural’ narrative scenarios, for instance in ancient and medieval literature. Focusing on two recent publications by Alber and Richardson, this essay challenges the historical trajectory the movement envisages. Paying special attention to the influence of religion on premodern narratives and its implications for the concept of the unnatural, this essay argues that unnatural narratology is reductionist and adheres to a structuralist paradigm, and thus cannot do justice to the idiosyncrasies of premodern narrative forms and functions. An alternative approach to the unnatural as a dynamic form is introduced as an outlook.

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Delving into Impossible Storyworlds of Terror: The Unnaturalness of Hassan Blasim’s Short Narrative Fiction

Arcadia - International Journal for Literary Studies ◽

10.1515/arcadia-2017-0010 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 52 (1) ◽

pp. 183-200 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Shang Biwu

Keyword(s):

Short Stories ◽

Human Suffering ◽

Narrative Fiction ◽

Broad Category ◽

Unnatural Narratology ◽

Recent Scholarship ◽

The World ◽

Unnatural Narrative ◽

Short Narrative ◽

Unnatural Narratives

AbstractMany of Hassan Blasim’s short stories fall into a broad category of unnatural narrative. In line with the most recent scholarship on unnatural narratology, this article first discusses the unnatural worldmaking strategies adopted by Blasim that include dead narrators, conflicting events, and ontological metalepsis. Second, it analyzes a set of unnatural acts closely related to the characters’ death and their consequential corporeal impairments. Third, it examines the mentality of Blasim’s characters by focusing on a particular type of unnatural mind – the paranoid mind, which in radical cases involves two conflicting minds simultaneously emerging in one character. By resorting to unnatural narratives, Blasim makes his short stories anti-mimetically impossible but nightmarishly real, which not only generates effects of defamiliarity and horror but also forces us to ponder over what is now happening in the seemingly remote parts of the world and to raise our common concerns for human suffering.

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