Alan Palmer

Bio: Alan Palmer is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Narrative & Narratology. The author has an hindex of 8, co-authored 11 publications receiving 287 citations.

Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction

Abstract: Brian Richardson. Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006. 166 pp. $55.95 cloth; $24.95 paper. Brian Richardson's Unnatural Voices is a major contribution to narratology. Its starting point is the highly convincing thesis that 'narrative theory, despite its emphasis on narrative and narrators, has not yet systematically examined the impressive range of unusual postmodern and other avant garde strategies of narration', in part because postmodernism 'has often proven resistant to traditional narrative theory' (ix). He explains that the book is intended to rectify these unfortunate absences. It explores in depth one of the most significant aspects of late modernist, avant garde, and postmodern narrative - the creation, fragmentation, and reconstitution of narrative voices - and offers a theoretical account of these unusual and innovative strategies. This is an empirical study that describes and theorizes the actual practices of significant authors . . . Such an inductive approach is essential because many extreme forms of narration seem to have been invented precisely to transgress fundamental linguistic and rhetorical categories, (ix) In essence, the book comprises an inventory and theoretical overview of a large number of innovative contemporary uses of narrators and narration. These are contrasted with current theories of narrative poetics that, Richardson plausibly argues, cannot fully comprehend them. Such innovations include a new kind of narrative that hinges on the unexpected disclosure of a homodiegetic narrator towards the end of an apparently heterodiegetic text (for example, Ian McEwan's Atonement); 'it', 'they', and passive voice narration; second person narration (divided into standard, hypothetical, and autotelic); 'we' narration; multiperson narration (for example, texts that employ first and third person narration); indeterminate speakers; impossible acts of narration; interlocutor narration (for example, the 'Ithaca' episode in Ulysses); 'denarration' (narrators denying the truth of what they have just said); 'permeable' narration ('the uncanny and inexplicable intrusion of the voice of another within the narrator's consciousness' [95]); distinctively postmodern types of unreliable narrators such as fraudulent, contradictory, incommensurate, and disframed narrators; and unusual narrators in contemporary drama. And all in one hundred and forty pages! The final chapter, after discussing the modernist origins of contemporary anti-realist practices, ends with a plea for a general 'anti-poetics' of narrative that should be considered as a supplement and foil to traditional poetics. The proposal is not for a different poetics but for an additional one; that is, for an anti-mimetic poetics that supplements existing mimetic theories. Such a model will allow us to greatly expand the area covered by narrative theory, and will allow it to embrace a host of earlier non-mimetic literatures. And only in this way can we begin to do justice to the most effective imaginative achievements in narrative in our time. (138) Specifically, he suggests that 'we will be most effective as narrative theorists if we reject models that insist, based on categories derived from linguistics or natural narrative, on firm distinctions, binary oppositions, fixed hierarchies, or impermeable categories' (139). In Richardson's view, instead of such rigid typologies, we need an alternative model that stresses the permeability, instability, and playful mutability of the voices in non-mimetic fictions. Unnatural Voices is just what a narratological book should be: its proposals for narrative theory are original and important, and it also contains a number of illuminating readings of individual works. The book features an encyclopedic reference to a wide range of narratives from various countries, both postmodern and other (although the regular use of Samuel Beckett narratives provides a thread of continuity). …

The Construction of Fictional Minds

Abstract: In his introduction to a recently published volume of essays, Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis, David Herman explains what is meant by the term "postclassical narratology." He states, "Recently we have witnessed a small but unmistakable explosion of activity in the field of narrative studies; signs of this minor narratological renaissance include the publication of a spate of articles, spe cial issues, and books that rethink and recontextualize classical models for narrato logical research" (1). He also notes that "Postclassical narratology ... is marked by a profusion of new methodologies and research hypotheses; the result is a host of new perspectives on the forms and functions of narrative itself" (2-3). Such "recent research has highlighted aspects of narrative discourse that classical narratology ei ther failed or chose not to explore"(2). This is a response to that stirring call for papers. I suggest that the topic of fic tional minds is an area of study that would benefit from a postclassical perspective, because classical narratology has neglected the whole minds of fictional characters in action. At first sight, this may seem to be an implausible claim. What about the study of free indirect discourse? Interior monologue? Focalization? Reflectoriza tion? Characterization? Actants? My answer is that these concepts do not add up to a complete and coherent study of all aspects of the minds of characters in novels. Put another way, several of the devices that are used in the constructions of fictional minds by narrators and readers, such as the role of thought report in describing emo tions and the role of behavior descriptions in conveying motivation and intention, have yet to be defamiliarized. As Hegel remarks, "What is 'familiarly known' is not properly known, just for the reason that it is 'familiar' " (92). Manfred Jahn refers, in a different context, to "a number of interesting cognitive mechanisms that have

Intermental Thought in the Novel: The Middlemarch Mind

Abstract: Introduction This essay is about intermental thought in the novel. Such thinking is joint, group, shared, or collective, as opposed to intramental, individual, or private thought. It is also known as socially distributed, situated, or extended cognition, and as intersubjectivity. It is a crucially important component of fictional narrative because much of the mental functioning that occurs in novels is done by large organizations, small groups, work colleagues, friends, families, couples, and other intermental units. Notable examples include the army in Evelyn Waugh's Men at Arms; the town in William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"; the group of friends in Donna Tartt's The Secret History; the villainous Marchioness de Merteuil and the Viscount de Valmont in Laclos's Les Liaisons Dangereuses; and Kitty and Levin in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, who, in a famous scene, write out only the initial letters of the words that they wish to use but who nevertheless understand each other perfectly. It could plausibly be argued that a large amount of the subject matter of novels is the formation, development, and breakdown of these intermental systems. However, this aspect of narrative has been neglected by traditional theoretical approaches such as focalization, characterization, story analysis, and the representation of speech and thought. One of the most important characters in George Eliot's Middlemarch is the town of Middlemarch itself. I call the intermental functioning of the inhabitants of the town the Middlemarch mind. I go much further than simply suggesting that the town of Middlemarch provides a social context within which individual characters operate; indeed, I argue that the town literally and not just metaphorically has a mind of its own. The Middlemarch mind is complex, interesting, clearly visible to a close reader of the text, and vitally important to an understanding of the novel because it explains a good deal of the motivation behind the actions of the other main characters. It is, however, invisible to traditional narrative approaches. After introducing the concept of intermental thought, I discuss the construction of the Middlemarch mind in the opening few pages of the novel. I attempt to show that the beginning of the novel is saturated with the Middlemarch mind and that the initial descriptions by the narrator of the three individual minds of Dorothea, Celia, and Mr. Brooke are focalized through it. After trying to anticipate possible objections to the idea of intermental functioning in fictional narrative, I finish with a few general comments on cognitive approaches to literature. The background to my argument is as follows. Narratology is concerned, in part, with the study of the mental functioning of the characters who inhabit the storyworlds created by fictional narratives. It addresses the question of how, when reading a novel, we construct from the words in the text an awareness of the mental functioning of the characters in that novel. Readers enter the storyworlds of novels and then follow the logic of the events that occur in them primarily by attempting to reconstruct the fictional minds of the characters in that storyworld. Otherwise, readers lose the plot. These constructions of the minds of fictional characters by narrators and readers are central to our understanding of how novels work, because fictional narrative is, in essence, the presentation of fictional mental functioning. It is not possible to follow the plot of Middlemarch without following the thought processes of Lydgate, Dorothea, Rosamond, and the other characters in the novel. In fact, the plot consists of those thought processes (for more on this, see Palmer). You may be feeling some doubt about the claim that intermental thought has been neglected. Surely we have always known about the importance of groups right from the very beginning of Western literature, for example the role of the chorus in Greek tragedy'? …

Point of View in Plays: A Cognitive Stylistic Approach to Viewpoint in Drama and Other Text-Types

Abstract: Dan McIntyre. Point of View in Plays: A Cognitive Stylistic Approach to Viewpoint in Drama and Other Text-types. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006. 203 pp. $119 hardbound. Point of View in Plays suggests that a good deal of attention has been given to point of view in prose fiction, but very little to point of view in drama. It argues that the notion is applicable to drama because some plays have narrative aspects and possess discourse structures that are similar to prose fictions, and that the concept would illuminate a number of features of dramatic texts. After considering existing taxonomies of viewpoint in prose fiction (including the narratological idea of focalization), their strengths and weaknesses, and their potential for drama, the book reviews what little work there has been on point of view in plays. McIntyre argues that the theory on point of view in both prose and drama has failed to take account of the subtlety and variety of the co-occurring viewpoints that arise in the reading of a text, and the many ways in which readers or audiences are exposed to them. In an attempt to provide an explanation of point of view in drama which satisfactorily accounts for these features, he considers various categories of deixis and deictic fields, and puts forward a modified form of deictic shift theory that incorporates contextual frame theory as well as Catherine Emmott's work on narrative comprehension. His next step is to extend the notion of deictic shift theory by mapping it onto Marie-Laure Ryan's typology of possible worlds. This new conceptual framework reveals how readers move in and out of characters' possible worlds and hence how readers can experience characters' perspectives on their storyworld. Next, McIntyre examines the relationship between point of view and Roger Fowler's concept of mind style, and proposes that, in addition to such cues as grammatical patterns and metaphor, mind style can be indicated through a character's use of logic and idiosyncratic reality paradigms. He then makes use of all of this theoretical underpinning in an extended analysis of the viewpoint effects in a single text: Alan Bennett's play The Lady in the Van. In doing so, various issues are considered: the narrative aspects of the play, how these affect viewpoint, how individual characters express point of view, and how readers and audiences might react to these features. He mentions that the point of view effects in The Lady in the Van are part of what makes it such a successful and innovative play. The book concludes with a suggestion that the cognitive study of point of view in drama is able to give us further insights into point of view in prose texts as well, and also into language and communication generally. McIntyre adopts a thorough and painstaking approach to his subject, devoting a good deal of time to the important intuitions contained in the work of previous scholars and also to the shortcomings that he identifies there. The book is very carefully signposted so that the reader is never left in any doubt about where a particular section of the book fits into the whole. It is to Mclntyre's credit that he brings together a number of different paradigms such as point of view, deictic shifts, possible worlds, and mind style in order to illuminate the specific question of point of view in plays. The results, when applied to Alan Bennett's play, are very illuminating. Despite McIntyre's best efforts, though, I continue to have a general concern about the whole notion of point of view. I should stress that it relates to studies of point of view generally, and not specifically to this one, although I am afraid that Mclntyre was not able to allay my concern. Part of the reason that he did not do so is that he does not define the term point of view. You may think it odd to ask for a definition of the term. Surely everybody knows by now what it is! But do they? My guess is that we all know what we ourselves mean by the term, but can often discover that other people mean slightly different things. …

An Introduction to Narratology

Abstract: An Introduction to Narratology is an accessible, practical guide to narratological theory and terminology and its application to literature. In this book, Monika Fludernik outlines: the key concepts of style, metaphor and metonymy, and the history of narrative forms narratological approaches to interpretation and the linguistic aspects of texts, including new cognitive developments in the field how students can use narratological theory to work with texts, incorporating detailed practical examples a glossary of useful narrative terms, and suggestions for further reading. This textbook offers a comprehensive overview of the key aspects of narratology by a leading practitioner in the field. It demystifies the subject in a way that is accessible to beginners, but also reflects recent theoretical developments and narratology’s increasing popularity as a critical tool.

The Emergence of Mind: Representations of Consciousness in Narrative Discourse in English

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction - David Herman Part I: Representing Minds in Old and Middle English Narrative 1. 700-1050: Embodiment, Metaphor, and the Mind in Old English Narrative, Leslie Lockett 2. 1050-1500: Through a Glass Darkly or, the Emergence of Mind in Medieval Narrative, Monika Fludernik Part II: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Minds 3. 1500-1620: Reading, Consciousness, and Romance in the Sixteenth Century, F. Elizabeth Hart 4. 1620-1700: Mind on the Move, Elizabeth Bradburn Part III: Contexts for Consciousness in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries 5. 1700-1775: Theory of Mind, Social Hierarchy, and the Emergence of Narrative Subjectivity, Lisa Zunshine 6. 1775-1825: Affective Landscapes and Romantic Consciousness, David Vallins 7. 1825-1880: The Network of Nerves, Nicholas Dames Part IV: Remodeling the Mind in Modernist and Postmodernist Narrative 8. 1880-1945: Re-minding Modernism, David Herman 9. 1945- : Ontologies of Consciousness, Alan Palmer Contributors Index

Impossible Storyworlds—and What to Do with Them

Abstract: One of the most interesting things about fictional nar ratives is that they do not only mimetically reproduce the world as we know it. Many narratives confront us with bizarre storyworlds which are governed by prin ciples that have very little to do with the real world around us. Even though many narrative texts teem with unnatural (i.e., physically or logically impossible) scenarios that take us to the limits of human cogni tion, narrative theory has not yet done justice to these cases of unnaturalness or the question of how readers can come to terms with them. In what follows, I define the term unnatural and outline a cognitive model that describes ways in which readers can make sense of unnatural scenarios. Second, I use these reading strategies to discuss examples of unnaturalness in postmodernist narratives.1 Arguing that ideas from cognitive narratology help illuminate

Univerzita palackého v olomouci

Abstract: The thesis is focused on residents at senior citizens homes and their subjective view about the importance of various indicators concerning quality of life which are influenced by regular physical activity. The research was performed within the Bruntal region and included eighty-five informants. The first part of SQUALA standardized questionnaire was used for collecting information about the quality of life, in particular to discover the subjective importance of component dimensions, and data about physical activity was collected by means of the IPAQ standardized questionnaire. The thesis is based on methodology of the research plan for MSVVaS SR VEGA project No. 1/0702/10 solved at Faculty of Natural Sciences of Comenius University in Bratislava. The findings have shown that the most important indicator for the participating group of informants is their health. The physical self -sufficiency and capability to take care of oneself has come second and at the same time the informants consider regular physical activity not very important. By making a comparison of both researches considerable differences between their findings have been found out. Both inter-individual and intra-individual differences, such as probands’ age, gender, knowledge, regularity, intensity, and frequency of physical activity, were taken into consideration in the evaluation process of individual indicators as well as dimensions. It was revealed that also those variables af fect the subjective perception of life-quality. Probands aged under sixty-nine are more interested in indicators of physical health and the level of physical self -sufficiency dimension than the other participants. Physically active people attach great significance to surroundings as a dimension alongside all variables which are in connection with physical activity. A statistically significant finding of the evaluation in terms of gender was that female-informants attach greater significance to mental health as well as social relationships dimension than male-informants and that differences occured at two less important indicators as far as the evaluation is concerned.