Unnatural Narratives

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Jan Alber (Universität Freiburg)

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

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Prose Fiction Narrative

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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

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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 26 December 2024.]