Fictionality and Fields of Reference: Remarks on a Theoretical Framework

A poetics of postmodernism

The article presents a model-oriented approach to how third-person narratives are read. Building on Minsky's (1979 [1975]) theory of frames, Jackendoff's (1983; 1987) concept of preference rules, Perry's (1979) theory of literary dynamics, and Sternberg's (1982b) Proteus Principle, its main aim is to conceptualize third-person narrative situations (Stanzel 1984) in terms of cognitive models, and to explore the mechanics of top-down/bottom-up hermeneutic processes. Avoiding classical "low-structuralist" narratology with its "normal case" approach, the essay also proposes new ways of analyzing protean phenomena like description, free indirect discourse, and parenthetical discourse. It presents an integrative account of primacy/recency conflicts and sketches the possible direction of a genuinely readingoriented narratology. A Frame-Based Conceptualization of Third-Person Narrative Situations The termframe, either in its usual meaning of context, pattern or scheme, or in a variety of stipulative meanings is currently popular in a number of different disciplines-in literary theory alone, recent reference works list more than ten different uses.' In the present context, a frame will be The author wants to thank Helmut Bonheim, Monika Fludernik, Robert F. Kemp, Delphine Lettau, and Ansgar Niinning for commenting on various preliminary versions of this article. 1. See Prince 1987, Wales 1991, and Hawthorne 1992 under "frame" for a cumulative general survey. The possible impact of cognitive, empirical, and artificial intelligence issues on literary theory is also discussed in van Dijk and Kintsch 1983; Hrushovski 1982 and 1984; Poetics Today 18: 4 (Winter 1997). Copyright ? 1997 by The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.70 on Tue, 06 Sep 2016 05:10:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 442 Poetics Today 18:4 understood, as in Perry 1979, to denote the cognitive model that is selected and used (and sometimes discarded) in the process of reading a narrative text. According to Perry, a frame stores and structures the answers to questions like "What is happening? What is the state of affairs? What is the situation? Where is this happening? What are the motives? What is the purpose? What is the speaker's position?" (Perry 1979: 43). But while in Perry the term remains largely an undefined primitive, a more explicit theory of frames has been available from artificial intelligence research since about 1975. The following introductory passage from Marvin Minsky's influential exposition presents a useful working definition: (1) Here is the essence of frame theory: When one encounters a new situation (or makes a substantial change in one's view of a problem), one selects from memory a structure called a frame. This is a remembered framework to be adapted to fit reality by changing details as necessary. We can think of a frame as a network of nodes and relations. The "top levels" of a frame are fixed, and represent things that are always true about the supposed situation. The lower levels have many terminals-"slots" that must be filled by specific instances or data. Each terminal can specify conditions its assignments must meet. (The assignments themselves are usually smaller "sub-frames.") . . . Much of the phenomenological power of the theory hinges on the inclusion of expectations and other kinds of presumptions. A frame's terminals are normally already filled with "default" assignments. (1979 [1975]: 1-2) To illustrate the uses of frame theory as a general theory of cognition and knowledge, Minsky discusses cases of visual perception such as seeing a room, the semantic processing of ungrammatical sentences, and the understanding of stories and various social scenarios. Given the wide scope of frame theory, a frame conceptualization of Franz K. Stanzel's (1984) concept of narrative situations clearly falls within its range of possible applications. Although primarily conceived as tools of narratological taxonomy, the narrative situations emphasize pragmatic and cognitive detail. Part of their integrative power derives from Stanzel's decision to describe "ideal types," a notion that corresponds closely to the frame-theoretical "defaults." Despite such promising points of contact, however, a frame-oriented conceptualization of narrative situations Halasz 1987; Harker 1989; Ibsch 1990; Ryan 1991; Weber 1992; Gerrig 1993; Andringa and Davis 1994; Cook 1994; Duchan et al. 1995; as well as in several articles in New Literary History 20:2 (1989) and Poetics 19:1 (1990). Readers may also want to refer to the forthcoming papers of the 1995 Utrecht conference, Narrative Perspective: Cognition and Emotion, edited by Will van Peer and Seymour Chatman. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.70 on Tue, 06 Sep 2016 05:10:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Jahn ? Toward a Cognitive Narratology 443 is not immediately obvious. Certainly, Stanzel's own design of a "typological circle," despite achieving an impressive featural synthesis (Cohn 1981: 159), cannot satisfactorily represent the complex dependencies, intricate hierarchies, correlations, and restrictions pertaining to person, mediacy, perspective, and narrative mode that are usually apparent in any discursive account of the narrative situations. It would seem possible, however, to enlarge on Mieke Bal's (1981) proposal that the formula X relates that r sees that Z does constitutes a miniature general model of narrative situation. In Bal's formula, X is a narrator, Y a focalizer, and Z one or several actors. According to Bal, if the narrator is a focalizer and also one of the actors, the narrative situation corresponds to homodiegetic (first-person) fictional "autobiography." But if the narrator does not take part in the action, the narrative situation is a heterodiegetic, "realist" (ibid.: 45) one, which is more or less the extent of Bal's utilization of the formula. In later elaborations of the various narrator-focalizer relations (Bal 1985: 120), she resorts to a different type of formalization that is less germane to my present purpose. Marrying Stanzel's narrative situations to Bal's formula requires some adjustments in the latter. First, I will extend the formula to include a "receiver" (R) to represent the narratee, that is, the narrator's fictional immediate addressee. Thus X tells R that sees that Z does conveniently installs the text-internal pragmatic dimension and provides a possible projection of text-external pragmatics. Second, Bal's focalizer will be understood to be a reflector in Stanzel's sense, in other words, a characterial center of consciousness (I will make no use here of "external" or narrator-focalizers). Third, two cases will be separated out, one without a reflector-X tells R that Z does-and one with a covert or withdrawn narrator(X tells R that) sees Z does. These two cases correspond to Stanzel's authorial and figural narrative situations, respectively. The structural trees shown below (representing the basic syntactic relations of the respective formulas) can now serve as intuitive frame visualizations of the three major third-person narrative situations.2 In (2), the rounded squares denote the extent of narratorial control, the ellipses or "spotlights of consciousness" (Stanzel 1984: 155) indicate reflectorial seeing, the "clipboard" icons represent sets of conditions, and the small black boxes under the clipboards represent the terminal slots that hold the various agents-narrators, narratees, reflectors, and actors. Despite the drastic simplifications, (2) enables one to visualize frames as hier2. Strictly speaking, only A and C correspond to Stanzel's two "ideal" third-person types; B is an "intermediate" or "mixed" type. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.70 on Tue, 06 Sep 2016 05:10:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 444 Poetics Today 18:4 (2) Third-person narrative situations as frames:

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Frames, Preferences, and the Reading of Third-Person Narratives: Towards a Cognitive Narratology

President Barack Obama, at the end of his speech at the April 28, 2013, correspondents’ dinner, praised the journalists who had covered the recent terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon for their exemplary work, emphasizing the importance of thorough, deep-digging journalism that “painstakingly puts the pieces together” and “verifies facts” (“Watch: President Obama” 19:36–19:52). Just a few minutes earlier, however, Obama had jokingly treated several issues in a way that played fast and loose with verified facts. Among other jests, he an-

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Ten Theses about Fictionality

Cette these porte sur le renouvellement du realisme dans la production narrative espagnole des annees 2000, a partir d’un corpus de quatre romans, et se demande : en quoi consiste l’esthetique realiste actuelle, quelle est son epistemologie et quel lien entretient-elle avec d’autres discours de savoir ? Quel role jouent les recits realistes dans la configuration des imaginaires sociaux, alors que sont remis en question l’heritage de la transition democratique et le recit de la modernisation espagnole ? Sont d’abord examinees les conditions de possibilite historiques, socio-economiques et culturelles d’un renouveau du realisme – cartographie dans le champ litteraire des vingt dernieres annees. Hypothese centrale : le realisme ressurgit du fait que les debats de memoire historique depuis 2000 et la crise economique, sociale et politique depuis 2008 engagent une revision du mythe de la Transition et du projet de la modernite qui structurait les imaginaires sociaux espagnols depuis les annees 1960. Trois parties proposent des etudes de poetiques realistes, en diachronie et en synchronie, pour mettre en valeur l’evolution des modes de referentialite realistes entre le debut des annees 2000 et le debut des annees 2010, avec la crise de 2008 et ses premices pour point d’inflexion. La premiere partie porte sur deux romans (Antonio Munoz Molina, Sefarad, 2001 et Ignacio Martinez de Pison, Enterrar a los muertos, 2005) qui dialoguent avec la fabrication sociale de documents et l’historiographie pour reinterpreter la guerre de 1936, de la dictature et de la transition. Les deuxieme et troisieme parties (Rafael Chirbes, Crematorio, 2007, et Isaac Rosa, La mano invisible, 2011) analysent l’elaboration d’un recit collectif de l’Espagne developpementaliste, a l’aube de la crise, par des romans qui dialoguent avec la theorie economique et la sociologie historique. Au carrefour du litteraire, des discours sociaux, de l’histoire et de la sociologie contemporaine de l’Espagne, cette these soutient que la reappropriation du realisme dans les annees 2000 participe a la remise en question d’une identite nationale democratique et moderne, au resurgissement d’une realite problematique et d’imaginaires sociaux paramodernes apres l’ecroulement du metarecit d’une transition modele. Si les romans cherchent tous a prendre en charge le reel social selon ses representations, ils se differencient par leur traitement de la question politique de ce que « reel » veut dire, par le choix du chemin selon lequel le decrire, et par l’evaluation de la nature des causes historiques et materielles de la realite qu’habitent les ecrivains.

https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01746009/document

Nouveaux réalismes et imaginaires sociaux de la modernité dans le roman espagnol contemporain (2001-2011)

The analyses and discussions in this article are all aimed at clarifying a question that most people don't even ask because the answer seems self-evident: "Who nar rates in first-person (or what most narratologists call homodiegetic) narrative fic tion?" My hypotheses, however, are (1) that in literary fiction, as opposed to oral narrative, one cannot be certain that it is the person referred to as "I" who speaks or narrates, and therefore that (2) we need to posit an impersonal voice of the narrative. We can observe this phenomenon whenever something is narrated that the "narrat ing-I" cannot possibly know, as happens in Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, and other fictional narratives, some of which I'll examine later. To develop my hypothesis and to establish the context for my proposal about the impersonal voice, I will begin with a brief review of some contemporary discus sions of voice in literature. I will then proceed to use my proposal to examine pas sages of first-person fiction that seem difficult to explain without the concept of the impersonal voice. This examination, in turn, will lead me into a discussion of my proposal's consequences for interpretation and for our understanding of fictional worlds. Finally, I will compare my interpretations to some alternative proposals about similar textual phenomena.

Fictionality and Fields of Reference: Remarks on a Theoretical Framework

Citations

A poetics of postmodernism

Frames, Preferences, and the Reading of Third-Person Narratives: Towards a Cognitive Narratology

Ten Theses about Fictionality

Nouveaux réalismes et imaginaires sociaux de la modernité dans le roman espagnol contemporain (2001-2011)

The Impersonal Voice in First-Person Narrative Fiction

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