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Interdisziplinärer Sammelband untersucht produktive Variationen von Geschichte in unterschiedlichen Medien, Epochen und kulturellen Kontexten Sonja Georgi / Julia Ilgner / Isabell Lammel / Cathleen Sarti / Christine Waldschmidt (Hg.): Geschichtstransformationen. Medien, Verfahren und Funktionalisierungen historischer Rezeption. Bielefeld: Transcript 2015 (= Mainzer Historische Kulturwissenschaften, Bd. 24). 542 S. EUR 49,99. ISBN 978-3-8376-2815-9

Erin James: The Storyworld Accord. Econarratology and Postcolonial Narratives. Lincoln / London: University of Nebraska Press 2015 (= Frontiers of Narrative Series). Pp. 308. USD 60.00. ISBN 978-0-8032-4398-9

Tagungsbericht zur internationalen Tagung „Illness Narratives in Practice“, Institut für Psychologie der Universität Freiburg im Breisgau, 26./27. Juni 2015

David Ciccoricco: Refiguring Minds in Narrative Media. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 2015 (= Frontiers of Narrative Series). 317 pp. USD 55.00. ISBN 978-0-8032-4837-3

Christoph Bietz: Die Geschichten der Nachrichten. Eine narratologische Analyse teleme¬dialer Wirklichkeitskonstruktion. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier 2013 (= WVT-Handbücher und Studien zur Medienkulturwissenschaft Bd. 8). 412 S. EUR 46,50. ISBN 978-3-86821-434-5

Tagungsbericht zu „Relevance and Narrative (Research) – An International Symposium“, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, 30.09.-02.10.2014

The claim that literary fiction is a valuable source of knowledge can be confronted with the following skeptical objection: on a standard account of the conditions for both the possession and transmission of knowledge, fiction cannot be considered a source of knowledge, for we are not justified in believing any claims from fiction. Our paper argues that the skeptic is wrong. We will start by introducing the notion of self-knowledge, the knowledge a person has of their own conscious attitudes, and distinguish it from knowledge of the self. Both kinds of knowledge concern a person’s beliefs about herself, but they differ in their precise scope and justificatory conditions. We will then argue that the self-knowledge one easily gains by reading fiction is an important route to knowledge of the self, which in turn is hard to obtain, and that a case can be made for literary fiction being an especially valuable source of knowledge of the self.

Focusing on the concepts of narrative empathy and recognition, this article aims to explore ways in which personal narratives may promote a renewed perception of illness and disability. Taking its cue from studies by Rita Felski (2008) and Suzanne Keen (2013), it investigates how empathic experience reflects the force and intensity of aesthetic encounters. Specifically, it addresses two texts that deal with the experience of illness and disability: Christina Middlebrook’s Seeing the Crab. A Memoir of Dying Before I Do (1996) and Harriet McBryde Johnson’s Too Late to Die Young. Nearly True Tales from a Life (2005). These authors write their lives in order to influence the way we perceive and understand illness and disability. Their major cultural mediation lies in their willingness to connect with their readers both affectively and cognitively, counter-arguing the culture of denial of death and rejecting pity and compassion in the face of illness and disability.

Michael Neumann: Die fünf Ströme des Erzählens. Eine Anthropologie der Narration. Berlin / Boston: de Gruyter 2013 (= Narratologia, Bd. 35). 703 S. EUR 139,95. ISBN 978-3-11-031288-1

“Empirical Approaches to Narrative” is launching a series of special issues covering the wide range of theoretical, methodological and interpretive projects that contribute to narratological knowledge. This issue is dedicated to studies of narrative using empirical methods such as reading experiments, questionnaires and computer-aided tagging.

Illness narratives feature different strategies of making narrative sense out of a contingent experience. Such strategies have a lineage that goes back to narrative patterns known in medieval literature, and which retain validity in describing recent narrative attempts to generate meaning. This article argues that narrative sense is the product of a process of construction which is formed not solely by the narrator him- or herself, but is rather the result of a cooperative practice between narrator and listener or interviewer respectively. In support of this perspective, we draw on medieval literature and aspects of historical narratology to examine interviews with people suffering from epilepsy and inflammatory bowel disease. The main focus lies on the narrative patterns deployed by the narrators to report on their experiences with illness, as well as on the strategies of presentation chosen by the interviewers and scientists who summarize those interviews and present them in so-called mystories on the homepage http://www.krankheitserfahrungen.de

Irmtraud Huber: Present-Tense Narration in Contemporary Fiction. A Narratological Overview. London: Palgrave Macmillan 2016 (= Palgrave Pivot). 123 pp. GBP 54.99. ISBN 978-1-137-56212-8

The Story Telling Salon is a method that regularly brings together groups of people who, under the leadership of a moderator – the salonnière –, exchange stories about personal experiences in a social environment (an organization, a community etc.). In this way, the Story Telling Salon not only strives to generate meaningful collective narrations but also trust, collective identity and commitment in groups which suffer from social alienation. We show how the Story Telling Salon applies collective storytelling as a strategic means towards community building and the empowerment of people. This will be exemplified by the example of “Lusatia at one table” (Lausitz an einen Tisch) – a regional development project that aims at strengthening social cohesion and facilitating civic commitment in the disadvantaged rural region of Lusatia / Germany. The paper presents the empirical findings of a one-year observation of “Lusatia at one table”.

When toddlers and younger children first encounter stories, they evince a strong tendency to act them out. They use role play and toys for enactment and thereby to experience the dynamics of a storyline, to pursue possible variations, to embody divergent perspectives, to learn about characters and their attitudes, and to cope with the narrated situations. In analogy with Lev Vygotsky’s (1962) basic insight that thinking is to be considered as an interiorized form of spoken language, it may accordingly be argued that the mental imagery which readers experience in following a narrative is (at least partially) to be understood as an interiorized form of playful enactment. Drawing on insights of the cognitive sciences, phenomenology and research on embodiment, this article pursues this hypothesis and takes a few first steps towards an enactivist perspective on literary narrative. In doing so, embodied knowledge – as opposed to propositional knowledge – will be the main issue.

Markus Kuhn: Filmnarratologie. Ein erzähltheoretisches Analysemodell. Ber-lin / Boston: De Gruyter 2013. 428 S. EUR 24,95. ISBN 978-3-11-030727-6

Jan-Noël Thon: Transmedial Narratology and Contemporary Media Culture. Lin-coln / London: University of Nebraska Press 2016 (= Frontiers of Narrative Series). 558 pp. USD 60.00. ISBN 978-0-8032-7720-5

This paper explores the possibilities of a historical narratology of the life sciences – by analysing exemplary articles of two leading scientific journals of 19th century Germany. Strikingly, the old tradition of constituting scientific knowledge through first-person narrative persists into the early 19th century, although scientists develop empirical and experimental methods and abandon philosophical speculation as well as natural history. The paper argues that in the fields of geol-ogy, comparative anatomy and embryology, nature itself becomes processual and is therefore highly suitable for sequential representation; even decades before Darwin’s epoch-making publication. Thus, two major functions can be attributed to homodiegetic narration: firstly, event sequencing within early experimental contexts reduces contingencies and produces coherent lines of thought. Secondly, the truth of the represented knowledge is authenticated by a first-person narrator who has witnessed everything with his own eyes. Hence, the explanatory and the persuasive function of epistemological narration are closely interlinked.

Paul A. Cohen: History and Popular Memory. The Power of Story in Moments of Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press 2014. 279 S. GBP 50.00. ISBN 978-0-231-53729-2

‘Graphic medicine’ or ‘graphic pathography’, a subgenre of the autobiographical comic, enables patients or caregivers to relate personal encounters with disease, mostly to process these experiences. When I set out to create the graphic narrative Wij twee samen (“Us Two Together”, 2015), which deals with my father’s developing dementia and slow decline, the goal was to attract a broader audience’s interest. By using strategies and techniques that bridge the gap between fine arts, literature, design and comics, the autobiographical storyline evolved into a work of art that transcends the visual diary.

Neil Cohn (Ed.): The Visual Narrative Reader. New York: Bloomsbury 2016. 349 pp. USD 39.95 (paperback). ISBN 978-1-4725-8559-2

An Interview with Mieke Bal

Markus Engelns: Spielen und Erzählen. Computerspiele und die Ebenen ihrer Realisierungen. Heidelberg: Synchron 2014 (= DISKURSIVITÄTEN. Literatur. Kultur. Medien, Bd. 19). 412 S. EUR (D) 39,80. ISBN 978-3-939381-73-0

Alexander Honold / Ralf Simon (Hg.): Das erzählende und das erzählte Bild. München: Wilhelm Fink 2010 (= eikones). 499 S. EUR 61,00. ISBN 978-3-7705-5012-8

Jan Alber / Henrik Skov Nielsen / Brian Richardson (Eds.): A Poetics of Unnatural Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State University Press 2013. Pp. 234. GBP 63.95 (cloth), GBP 14.95 (cd). ISBN 978-0-8142-1228-8 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-8142-9330-0 (cd)

Is the editorial fiction a possible challenge to Sir Philip Sidney’s famous defence of the poets? Predicated on an assertion-based definition of lying, this paper dis-cusses two historically consecutive versions of this phenomenon: A closer analysis of Gérard Genette’s category of the disavowing authentic authorial preface reveals that Genette’s arguments cannot defend editorial fictions written by ‘author-editors’ against accusations of lying. Rather, this first version of editorial fictions occasionally embodies lies for which the authors are to be held accountable. Editorial fictions written by ‘character-editors’, in contrast, do not meet the conditions of the assertion-based account of lying with the result that, in this case, neither the author nor the ‘character-editor’ can be accused of lying.

An Interview with Ansgar Nünning

Werner Früh / Felix Frey: Narration und Storytelling. Theorie und empirische Befunde. Mit einem Beitrag von Jette Blümler. Köln: Herbert von Halem Verlag 2014 (= Unterhaltungsforschung 10). 412 S. EUR 36,00. ISBN 978-3-86962-083-1

Esther Kraus: Faktualität und Fiktionalität in autobiographischen Texten des 20. Jahr¬hunderts. Marburg: Tectum 2013. 519 S. EUR 34,95. ISBN 978-3-8288-3247-3

Sophia Wege: Wahrnehmung, Wiederholung, Vertikalität. Zur Theorie und Praxis der Kognitiven Literaturwissenschaft. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2013. 532 S. EUR (D) 48,- ISBN 978-3-89528-953-8

Hartmut Bleumer / Caroline Emmelius (Hg.): Lyrische Narrationen – narrative Lyrik. Gattungsinterferenzen in der mittelalterlichen Literatur. Berlin / New York: Walter de Gruyter 2011 (= Trends in Medieval Philology Vol. 16). 404 S. EUR 139,95. ISBN 978-3-11-021593-9

This article presents a new narratological research group operating at the University of Gdańsk, Poland: Gdańsk Narratological Group. The aim of the article is twofold: to describe in three separate sections the main areas of research into rhetorical, feminist and unnatural narratology by outlining ongoing studies and individual projects, and to delineate the group’s goals and objectives for the near future.

The article discusses the relationship between literature and lying on the basis of a neutral definition of lying. The article argues that literature itself is primarily not capable of lying, because it uncovers its own fictional ‘lies’ and presupposes a ‘pact of fiction’ implying the suspension of disbelief. Focusing on the theory of unreliable and lying narrators, the article analyses several types of lies ‘with’ and ‘in’ literature, tackling the question of the existence of specific literary lies. Thus, examination of the homodiegetic narrator of the novel Lazarillo de Tormes points to the possibility of a literary lie, whereas the case of a lying heterodiegetic narrator suggests a modification of the general theory of lying through consideration of the aesthetic dimension of lies.

Starting with the narrator’s re-reading and interpretation of her own earlier diaries in Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home, this essay explores several theoretical questions pertaining to historical narratology. The essay argues that historical narratology will work its way through several steps: 1) naming and describing specific innovations or transformations, 2) determining the functions of these changes, 3) identifying dynamic processes of change, 4) appraising the cultural meaning and significance of dynamic transformations, 5) suggesting causes (in conjunction with other discourses), and 6) presenting the findings in perspective views. However, these steps will not be pursued in a neat sequence, but will necessarily take place out of backward and forward movements, as a certain heuristic teleology cannot (and should not) be avoided.

Gary Johnson: The Vitality of Allegory. Figural Narrative in Modern and Contempo-rary Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State University Press 2012. 296 pp. Hardcover USD 41.95. ISBN 978-0814211823

Barbara Dancygier: The Language of Stories. A Cognitive Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012. 228 S. EUR 79,70. ISBN 978-1-107-00582-2

Gabriela Brahier / Dirk Johannsen (Hg.): Konstruktionsgeschichten. Narrations-bezogene Ansätze in der Religionsforschung. Würzburg: Ergon 2013 (= Diskurs Religion. Beiträge zur Religionsgeschichte und religiösen Zeitgeschichte, Bd. 2). 428 S. EUR 58,00. ISBN 978-89913-945-7

Sebastian Domsch: Storyplaying. Agency and Narrative in Video Games. Berlin / Boston: Walter de Gruyter 2013 (= Narrating Futures Bd. 4). 190 S. EUR 69,95. ISBN 978-3-11-027216-1

Molly Andrews / Corrinne Squire / Maria Tamboukou (Eds.): Doing Narrative Research. Los Angeles / London / New Delhi / Singapore / Washington DC: Sage 2013. 270 pp. Paperback GBP 27.99, ISBN 9781446252666

Armin Schulz: Erzähltheorie in mediävistischer Perspektive. Hg. von Manuel Braun, Alexandra Dunkel und Jan-Dirk Müller. Berlin / Boston: de Gruyter 2012. 431 S. EUR 119,95. ISBN 978-3-11-024038-2

Report on the 6th International Conference for Interactive Digital Storytelling: “Connecting Narrative Worlds”, Bahçeşehir University Istanbul, November 6-9, 2013

The article discusses forms of narrative orientation, both towards the ending of a narrative and governed by it. Prevalent in pre-modern fiction is a specific kind of motivation, which the German scholar Clemens Lugowski called ‘motivation from behind’. This kind of motivation operates on the level of narrative discourse. Modern fiction tends to minimize this motivation in favour of causal motivations on the level of the narrated events or story. Finality (teleology) is a trait shared by all plots, therefore a story can be anticipated by readers. The article differentiates forms of finality and inquires into the transformation of finality from the beginning of oral narration in folktales to modern fiction.

The evidence of the responsiveness of dopaminergic medication on gait in patients with Parkinson’s disease is contradicting. This could be due to differences in complexity of the context gait was in performed. This study analysed the effect of dopaminergic medication on arm swing, an important movement during walking, in different contexts. Forty-five patients with Parkinson’s disease were measured when walking at preferred speed, fast speed, and dual-tasking conditions in both OFF and ON medication states. At preferred, and even more at fast speed, arm swing improved with medication. However, during dual-tasking, there were only small or even negative effects of medication on arm swing. Assuming that dual-task walking most closely reflects real-life situations, the results suggest that the effect of dopaminergic medication on mobility-relevant movements, such as arm swing, might be small in everyday conditions. This should motivate further studies to look at medication effects on mobility in Parkinson’s disease, as it could have highly relevant implications for Parkinson’s disease treatment and counselling.

Die beiden Herausgeber des Sammelbandes Wirklichkeitserzählungen. Felder, Formen und Funktionen nichtliterarischen Erzählens, Christian Klein und Matías Martínez, gehen davon aus, dass es einen eigenen Typ von Erzählungen gibt, der in der Erzählforschung bisher nicht hinreichend abgegrenzt und untersucht wurde. Es handelt sich, mit einer Begriffsschöpfung der beiden Herausgeber bezeichnet, um „Wirklichkeitserzählungen“ (S. 6). Eine Wirklichkeitserzählung sei „die sprachliche Darstellung eines Geschehens, also einer zeitlich organisierten Abfolge von Ereignissen“, die mit dem „refentielle[n] Anspruch“ auftritt, sich „auf reale Begebenheiten, auf Wirklichkeit“ zu beziehen (S. 6). In der vorliegenden Rezension wollen wir in einem ersten Schritt anhand der Einleitung der Herausgeber den Begriff der „Wirklichkeitserzählungen“ näher beleuchten sowie das daran geknüpfte Forschungsprogramm skizzieren. Ein zweiter Abschnitt gibt einen Überblick über die thematischen Bereiche, die im Sammelband behandelt werden, und wendet sich exemplarisch einigen Aufsätzen näher zu. Ein abschließender Abschnitt nimmt Stellung zu der Frage nach der Leistung und den Grenzen des Bandes.

Over the last decade, US serial television productions have garnered critical acclaim and academic attention for their complex and innovative narrative structure. Labeled Quality Television and “not TV” (promo slogan of the pay-TV channel HBO) to signal their cultural value over the presumably lowbrow standard television fare, they have preferably been compared to more reputable narrative forms, such as the novel. This paper picks up on Mittell’s suggestion to read The Wire, one of contemporary television’s arguably most complex productions, as a procedural instead. This genre of television is characterized by a highly formulaic structure, resolving a profession-specific problem within each episode. The Wire’s episodes are neither formulaic nor self-contained. This paper compares The Wire to House, a typical, formulaic, contemporary procedural. It explores to what degree The Wire is, nevertheless, structured by comparable principles and how narrative theory can contribute to the analysis of serial plotting.

Silke Lahn / Jan Christoph Meister: Einführung in die Erzähltextanalyse. Unter Mitarbeit von Matthias Aumüller, Benjamin Biebuyck, Anja Burghardt, Jens Eder, Per Krogh Hansen, Peter Hühn und Felix Sprang. Stuttgart / Weimar: J.B. Metzler 2008. 311 S. EUR 19,95. ISBN 978-3-476-02226-4 Die große Menge narratologischer Einführungen ist ein deutliches Indiz für die eminente Bedeutung, die dem Erzählen derzeit zugeschrieben wird. Je mehr über dieses Phänomen geforscht wird, desto mehr Bedarf an Orientierung gibt es, die Einführungen zu geben versprechen. Der hier zu rezensierende Band möchte zugleich die narratologische Modellbildung vorstellen und Hilfestel¬lung für die Anwendung in der literaturwissenschaftlichen Praxis leisten. Es ist sein erklärtes Ziel, dem Leser „ein narratologisch fundiertes begriffliches und methodisches Instrumentarium an die Hand [zu] geben, mit dem die – größtenteils, aber nicht durchweg – vorinterpretative Erkundung und Beschreibung eines erzählenden Texts systematisch durchgeführt werden kann“ (S. IX). Im Vergleich zu anderen Einführungen liegt hier folglich ein deutlicher Fokus auch auf der pragmatischen Ebene, der sich vor allem in der lernerorien-tierten Aufarbeitung der vorgestellten Modelle widerspiegelt.

That the same story can be told in different media is one of the fundamental claims of narratology. Claude Bremond (1964) famously listed verbal narrative, novels, theater, movies and ballet among potential vehicles for story. He thus prepared the ground for narratology’s future as a discipline engaged in narrative research across media, in principle including single still pictures. However, narratological research concerned with pictorial narrativity generally proceeds from the assumption that although single pictures may evoke or imply stories, they are unsuitable for storytelling in a strict narratological sense. Focusing on the key issue of temporality, this essay will show that a single still picture may indeed tell “a story proper” (Wolf 2003, 180) and can thus be regarded as a narrative, even according to a narrow definition.

Jan Alber / Monika Fludernik (Hg.): Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses. Columbus, OH: Ohio State UP 2010. (Theory and Interpretation of Narrative). 323 Seiten. USD 32,95. ISBN 978-0-8142-5175-1 „Consolidation despite continuing diversity“: Untersuchungsgegenstand und Zielsetzung des Sammelbandes