Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narratology: Beyond Mimetic Models

Alber, Jan; Iversen, Stefan; Nielsen, Henrik Skov; Richardson, Brian

doi:10.1353/nar.0.0042

Cited by 144 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…By contrast, the "unnatural" approaches of narrative theory (Alber, Iversen, Nielsen, & Richardson 2010;Alber 2009;Richardson 2006) have emphasized the artificial, non-and anti-mimetic quality of (postmodern) texts. Fictional texts resist the naturalization of narrative situations for the very reason that those situations are strange by nature.…”

Section: Modeling Fictional Minds In Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mysterious Minds: The Making of Private and Collective Consciousness in Marja-Liisa Vartio's Novels

Nykänen¹

2017

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Section: Modeling Fictional Minds In Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mysterious Minds: The Making of Private and Collective Consciousness in Marja-Liisa Vartio's Novels

Nykänen¹

2017

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“…They argue that non-human storytelling should not be analyzed only through a single concept, such as "estrangement" (in Victor Shklovsky's formalist approach [17]) or "the unnatural" (suspending the conventions of natural narrative, see Alber et al [18]). For Bernaerts et al, we should view the phenomenon "as the result of a double dialectic of empathy and defamiliarization, human and non-human experientiality" ( [14], p. 69).…”

Section: For the Academy: Rotpeter's Report (Segments III And Iv)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrative Transformed: The Fragments around Franz Kafka’s “A Report to an Academy”

Densky

2017

Humanities

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Franz Kafka's "A Report to an Academy", in which the ape-turned-human Rotpeter provides a narrative account of his life, has been scrutinized with regard to its allegorical, scientific, and historical implications. This article shifts the focus toward the narrative set-up by closely reading the transformation that can be traced in the sequence of several narrative attempts found in Kafka's manuscripts. Analyzing the fragments around this topic, I show how Kafka probes different angles-from a meeting between a first-person narrator and Rotpeter's impresario and a dialogue between the narrator and Rotpeter, via the well-known "Report" itself, on to a letter by one of Rotpeter's former teachers-that reveal a narrative transformation equally important as the metamorphosis from animal to human. The focus on the narrative constellations and on the lesser-known constitutive margins of the "Report" help to better understand, moreover, the complex relationship between immediacy and mediation, the ethnological concern of speech for the self and the unknown animal other, and poetological questions of production, representation, and reception.

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“…Those who support the fashionable idea of "unnatural narratives" have argued that many literary works, especially those of innovative sort, "defy, flaunt, mock, play, and experiment with some (or all) of these core assumptions about narrative." 30 Literary works often twist readers' "natural," everyday schemas, perhaps creating new conceptions. 31 As the literary scholar Jan Alber sees it, "some literary texts not only rely on but also aggressively challenge the mind's fundamental sense-making capabilities."…”

Section: Iib the Laboratorymentioning

confidence: 99%

On Studying the Cognitive Value of Literature

Mikkonen

2015

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

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The debate on the cognitive value of literature is undergoing a change. On the one hand, several philosophers recommend an epistemological move from "knowledge" to "understanding" in describing the cognitive benefits of literature. On the other hand, skeptics call for methodological discussion and demand evidence for the claim that readers actually learn from literature. These two ideas, the notion of understanding and the demand for evidence, seem initially inconsistent, for the notion of understanding implies that the cognitive benefits of literature are ultimately nonverbal and thus inarticulate. In this article, I defend both the move from knowledge to understanding and the demand for evidence. After proposing that the cognitive value of literature is best construed in terms of enhancing the reader's understanding, I argue that the place to look for evidence for the cognitive benefits of literature is not the laboratory but the practice of literature.

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Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narratology: Beyond Mimetic Models

Cited by 144 publications

References 34 publications

Mysterious Minds: The Making of Private and Collective Consciousness in Marja-Liisa Vartio's Novels

Mysterious Minds: The Making of Private and Collective Consciousness in Marja-Liisa Vartio's Novels

Narrative Transformed: The Fragments around Franz Kafka’s “A Report to an Academy”

On Studying the Cognitive Value of Literature

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