Some Problems with the Concept of the Narrator in Bortolussi and Dixon's Psychonarratology

TLDR: Bortolussi and Dixon as mentioned in this paper argued that real readers create their constructions from objective features in the text and that readers' constructions are manipulable for purposes of research on real readers.

Abstract: An important recent contribution to the study of narrative and, specifically, lit erary narrative, is Marisa Bortolussi and Peter Dixon's Psychonarratology: Founda tions for the Empirical Study of Literary Response. The authors combine insight and intuitions from narratology ("classical" and later developments) with research methodology from discourse and cognitive processing of narrative in order to give an "empirical turn," and push, to the study of narrative. Bortolussi and Dixon's main contention is that literary response involves real readers' constructions, as opposed to "ideal" or "virtual" readers (i.e., undifferentiated, globalized constructs of read ers) in narratology, and that real readers create their constructions from objective features in the text. The main emphasis throughout the whole book is on the distinc tion between features, "anything in the text that can be objectively identified," and constructions, "events and representations in the minds of readers" (28). The authors suggest that features may be identified in texts according to several criteria as being "objective, precise, stable, relevant, and tractable" (38), and they explain what each criterion means. As such, features are manipulable for purposes of research on real readers and also, by implication, there are constraints on readers' constructions from them?in other words, "there is a text" in Bortolussi and Dixon's class and "not everything goes."