Unnatural Narratives

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Jan Alber (Universität Freiburg)

The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

Domains

Literary Concept
Literature Topic

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Prose Fiction Narrative

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

In recent years, the study of unnatural narratives and the development of an unnatural narratology has become one of the most exciting new fields in narrative theory (Richardson 1987, 1991, 1997, 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2002, 2006, 2007; Alber 2002, 2009, in progress; Alber/Heinze in progress; Nielsen 2004, under review; Mäkelä 2006; Tammi 2006, 2008; Iversen 2008, in progress; Heinze 2008).

What are unnatural narratives? Brian Richardson defines unnatural narratives as anti-mimetic texts that move beyond the conventions of ‘natural’ narratives, i.e. “the mimesis of actual speech situations”, or violate the “established boundaries of realism” (2006: 5; 138). Stanislaw Lem’s novel The Cyberiad (1967) is an example of the former because the narrator is not a human being but a

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1896 words

Citation: Alber, Jan. "Unnatural Narratives". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 December 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=7202, accessed 22 November 2024.]