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.

Unnatural narratives, Brexit and ideology in Ian McEwan’s The Cockroach

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-146
Author(s):  
Dandan Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Historical Climate ◽  
Historical Turn ◽  
The Future ◽  
Unnatural Narrative ◽  
Unnatural Narratives

Abstract Against the backdrop of sudden shifts in global political and historical climate, our century has witnessed a convergence of turns in humanities, including the nonhuman turn and the historical turn. Ian McEwan’s latest novella, The Cockroach, is a just work along this line. Through the use of unnatural narratives within realistic context, McEwan presents readers with a world that is both strange and recognisable. By examining the unnatural narrative strategies, including the deployment of nonhuman character and omniscient narrator, McEwan expresses concerns for the future of humanity and fear for social and cultural parochialism, populism and anti-cosmopolitanism.

Unnatural narratology and premodern narratives: Historicizing a form

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
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.

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.

Unnatural Narrative Theory

Style ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Unnatural Narrative

scholarly journals The role of conviction and narrative in decision-making under radical uncertainty

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 501-523 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Tuckett ◽  
Milena Nikolic
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Causal Models ◽  
Approach And Avoidance ◽  
Rules Of Thumb ◽  
The Future ◽  
Radical Uncertainty

We propose conviction narrative theory (CNT) to broaden decision-making theory in order to better understand and analyse how subjectively means–end rational actors cope in contexts in which the traditional assumptions in decision-making models fail to hold. Conviction narratives enable actors to draw on their beliefs, causal models, and rules of thumb to identify opportunities worth acting on, to simulate the future outcome of their actions, and to feel sufficiently convinced to act. The framework focuses on how narrative and emotion combine to allow actors to deliberate and to select actions that they think will produce the outcomes they desire. It specifies connections between particular emotions and deliberative thought, hypothesising that approach and avoidance emotions evoked during narrative simulation play a crucial role. Two mental states, Divided and Integrated, in which narratives can be formed or updated, are introduced and used to explain some familiar problems that traditional models cannot.

Unnatural narratology: core issues and critical debates

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
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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