scholarly journals Unnatural Temporalities and Projected Places in Sam Shepard’s Cowboys #2

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-84
Author(s):  
Omid Amani ◽  
Hossein Pirnajmuddin ◽  
Ghiasuddin Alizadeh
Keyword(s):  
Reading Strategies ◽  
Synthetic Approach ◽  
Unnatural Narratology ◽  
Fictional Worlds ◽  
Literary Cartography ◽  
Abrupt Shifts ◽  
Unnatural Narratives

Sam Shepard’s Cowboys #2 (1967) belongs to his first period of play writing. In this phase, his works exhibit experimental, remote, impossible narrative/fictional worlds that are overwhelmingly abstract, exhibiting “abrupt shifts of focus and tone” (Wetzsteon 1984, 4). Shepard’s unusual theatrical literary cartography is commensurate with his depiction of unnatural temporalities, in that, although the stage is bare, with almost no props, the postmodernist/metatheatrical conflated timelines and projected (impossible) places in the characters’ imagination mutually reflect and inflect each other. Employing Jan Alber’s reading strategies in his theorization of unnatural narratology and Barbara Piatti’s concept of projected places, this essay proposes a synthetic approach so as to naturalize the unnatural narratives and storyworlds in Shepard’s play.

Literary Geographies in Balzac and Proust

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Conroy
Keyword(s):  
Physical Space ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Place Names ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Geographical Analysis ◽  
The Core ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Literary Geography ◽  
Fictional Worlds ◽  
Literary Cartography

Literary geography is one of the core aspects of the study of the novel, both in its realist and post-realist incarnations. Literary geography is not just about connecting place-names to locations on the map; literary geographers also explore how spaces interact in fictional worlds and the imaginary of physical space as seen through the lens of characters' perceptions. The tools of literary cartography and geographical analysis can be particularly useful in seeing how places relate to one another and how characters are associated with specific places. This Element explores the literary geographies of Balzac and Proust as exemplary of realist and post-realist traditions of place-making in novelistic spaces. The central concern of this Element is how literary cartography, or the mapping of place-names, can contribute to our understanding of place-making in the novel.

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

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.

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

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-200 ◽  
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.

How professional readers process unnatural narrators

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Alber ◽  
Jessica Jumpertz ◽  
Axel Mayer
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Reading Strategies ◽  
First Person ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Fictional Worlds

Abstract In an experiment, the authors tried to find out how professional readers deal with unnatural narrators (such as a narrating parrot and a speaking coin). The hypotheses and research questions were mostly derived from Jan Alber’s proposed reading strategies and operationalized to be measured with the help of a close-ended questionnaire. Thirty-two students of English from RWTH Aachen University took part in the study and were presented with four text passages that featured two natural and two unnatural first-person narrators. These excerpts represented a gliding scale of defamiliarization or estrangement in the sense of Shklovsky that ranges from (1) a realist backpacking tourist in India to (2) a narrator who suffers from hallucinations (both natural), and from there to (3) a narrating parrot and, finally, (4) a speaking coin (both unnatural). The results indicate that the participants perceived the narratives that featured unnatural narrators as being more estranging than the ones that contained natural narrators, and that unnaturalness was regarded as an indicator of fictionality. Furthermore, it was easier for the participants to emotionally engage with the natural (compared to the unnatural) narrators. The study also shows that blending was used as a strategy to make sense of the unnatural narrators, and that the participants thought that fictional worlds were relevant for their own world experiences – regardless of whether the narrators were unnatural or not. Furthermore, most of the participants were reminded of familiar genres (fantasy stories or fairy tales) when they dealt with the unnatural narrators.

Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narratology: Beyond Mimetic Models

Narrative ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Alber ◽  
Stefan Iversen ◽  
Henrik Skov Nielsen ◽  
Brian Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Unnatural Narratology ◽  
Unnatural Narratives

scholarly journals Unaturlige fortællinger. Hinsides mimetiske modeller

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (112) ◽  
pp. 7-32
Author(s):  
Jan Alber ◽  
Stefan Iversen ◽  
Henrik Skov Nielsen ◽  
Brian Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Unnatural Narratology ◽  
The Future ◽  
Unnatural Narrative ◽  
Unnatural Narratives

UNNATURAL NARRATIVES, UNNATURAL NARRATOLOGY | In recent years, the study of unnatural narrative has developed into one of the most exciting new paradigms in narrative theory. Both younger and more established scholars have become increasingly interested in the analysis of unnatural texts, many of which have been consistently neglected or marginalized in existing narratological frameworks. By means of the collaboration of four scholars who have been developing unnatural narratology, this article seeks to summarize key principles, to consolidate some conclusions, to extend the work through carefully chosen examples, and, finally, to point toward the future.

scholarly journals Ukronier i Svend Åge Madsens forfatterskab

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (112) ◽  
pp. 155-176
Author(s):  
Rikke Andersen Kraglund
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Unnatural Narratology ◽  
Unnatural Narratives ◽  
Selection Of

NON-MIMETIC SCENARIOS IN SVEND AAGE MADSEN’S WRITINGS | In 2010 the article “Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narratology: Beyond Mimetic Models” appeared in the American journal Narrative, where the theory of an ‘unnatural narratology’ waspresented. This theory opposes the claim that the basic elements of narrative can be explained by models based on real-world parameters. According to this theory, narratives that feature impossible or anti-mimetic elements have been marginalized in existing narratological frameworks. This article discusses some of the concepts that are developed in the first manifesto of unnaturalnarratology and illustrates the applicability of these concepts in relation to a small selection of the numerous non-mimetic scenarios found in Svend Aage Madsen’s works.

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