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Marina Grishakova / Maria Poulaki (eds.): Narrative Complexity. Cognition, Embodiment, Evolution. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press 2019 (= Frontiers of Narrative Series). 468 pp. USD 75.00. ISBN 978-0-8032-9686-2

Roy Sommer’s essay “Libraries of the Mind. What Happens after Reading” engages with the nexus between narrative, reading and the future – the resonance of texts in our long-term memory. It explores various aspects of forgetting and remembering literature, including the potential and the limits of empirical and experimental approaches to our Kopfbibliotheken (‘libraries of the mind’). Blending concepts and metaphors from neuroscience, cognitive psychology and narrative theory, the featured article offers a phenomenological account of forgetting and remembering fiction. It introduces the metaphor of “architexture” to describe a hypothetical neuronal trace of our reading experiences, a vital element of worldview curation in a reader’s mind.

“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.

Life stories play a crucial role in migration discourses: they serve as testimony in journalistic work, form the core of ambassadorial storytelling by NGOs (non-governmental organizations), and inspire collaborative projects initiated by writers seeking to express their solidarity. However, this article argues, drawing on migrants’ experiences for such purposes also creates an ethical dilemma: speaking about–or even for–rather than with migrants assigns them a passive role and tends to recycle existing narrative patterns and templates. Starting with a generic distinction between what we call stories of migration (various forms of self-expression granting migrants full authority and control over their narrative) and narratives on migration (external perspectives, e.g. academic, economic, political, and legal approaches, where lived experience doesn’t matter), we explore the extensive middle ground of hybrid forms between these two extremes–i.e. different kinds of vicarious storytelling–before discussing their ethical implications. We further show how the idea of the level playing field, a key concept in economics, can be used in transdisciplinary research projects to establish level telling fields (LTFs), i.e., communicative spaces characterized by a fair dialogue on an equal footing for all participants.

Unnatural narrative theory, initiated by Brian Richardson in his book Unnatural Voices (2006), has had an invigorating effect on narratological debates on both sides of the Atlantic. The unnatural is an intriguing concept that offers a fresh perspective on established narratologies, especially those based on a cognitive framework. However, as the critical responses to Richardson's keynote lecture at the ENN Conference in Paris and to the Unnatural Narrative Panel at the ISSN Conference in Manchester (both in 2013) show, many narrative theorists remain skeptical of the new approach. It therefore seems timely to devote a special issue of Style to Richardson's contribution to narrative theory. In a now well-rehearsed manner, the Target Essay seeks to establish the relevance of this new approach by arguing not only that a large body of texts has hitherto been ignored by narratologists, but also that most existing narrative theories are conceptually flawed. How exactly unnatural narrative theory intends to set things right is only mentioned in passing: two pages refer the reader to other work both by Richardson and others. In short, we learn less about unnatural narrative theory itself than about why it is needed. Instead of engaging with this rhetoric of innovation, my response will focus on the premises and methodological foundations of unnatural narrative theory. I will briefly outline how narratological theory design usually works, starting with definitions of narrative that allow us to deduce further hypotheses, to develop models, and to propose terminologies in order to produce systematic knowledge about the forms, functions, and uses of narrative (note that terms like deduction, induction, inferences, abstraction, and knowledge are used more loosely in literary theory than in formal logic and epistemology). For reasons of space, my short introduction will focus on the kind of reasoning typical of text-oriented rather than cognitive approaches, as Richardson expresses a clear preference for the former; this does not mean, however, that I share his view of cognitive narratology in general or of David Herman's pioneering work in particular. In the body of the article, I will then juxtapose my account of narratological theory design with Richardson's inductive approach in order to discuss whether unnatural narrative theory fails to propose a coherent theoretical argument (one of the objections often raised by critics of the unnatural approach). It should be noted that narratology, as the systematic study of narrative representations, always provides nominal, not real definitions. These are not aimed at capturing the distinctiveness of specific (sets of) narratives but mainly serve to distinguish narrative from nonnarrative and antinarrative (cf. Prince, "On a Postcolonial" 373). The term narrative thus signifies an abstraction, an idea of what constitutes a narrative. Narrative, as an abstract entity, has been conceptualized in various ways, for instance as a text type or discourse type, a mode of representation, a form of communication, or, if viewed from a cognitive angle, a way of sense making or world making. Proceeding from such general premises, narratological approaches have developed well-constrained descriptions of narrative as a specific text type, as a verbal, auditory, or visual representation, a fictional or nonfictional form of communication; and they have proposed heuristic frameworks for theorizing cognitive parameters in order to further our understanding of how we make sense of narrative. This is not to say that narratological reasoning is wholly deductive: in practice, aesthetic experiences and individual preferences influence conceptual and terminological decisions (this is especially true for approaches that limit themselves to the analysis of narrative fiction). However, narratology has always sought to reconcile intuition and abstraction in a systematic manner (cf. Sommer). When outlining the project that eventually evolved into unnatural narrative theory, Richardson proceeded from rather different assumptions, as he explains in Unnatural Voices: This is an empirical study that describes and theorizes the actual practices of significant authors, instead of building on a priori linguistic or rhetorical categories; such an inductive approach is essential because many extreme forms of narration seem to have been invented precisely to transgress fundamental linguistic and rhetorical categories. …

(2004). Beyond (Classical) Narratology: New Approaches to Narrative Theory. European Journal of English Studies: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 3-11.

Die Wurzeln der narratologischen Textanalyse liegen in zwei Ansatzen, die in der ersten Halfte des 20. Jahrhunderts der Literaturwissenschaft eine neue Grundlage gaben. Dabei handelt es sich um den russischen Formalismus und den Prager Strukturalismus (vgl. dazu Hansen-Love 1978). In einer programmatischen Schrift aus dem Jahr 1928 bezeichnen Jurij Tynjanov und Roman Jakobson (1972) die Analyse von Strukturgesetzen von Sprache und Literatur als das vordringliche Ziel der Literatur- und Sprachwissenschaft (beide Disziplinen sind in ihren Augen eng miteinander verbunden) und stellen als Ergebnis einer solchen Anstrengung die »Ermittlung einer begrenzten Reihe real gegebener Strukturtypen (bzw. Typen der Evolution)« (ebd., S. 391) in Aussicht. Die wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Relevanz dieses Beitrags liegt in der Forderung nach der theoretischen Fundierung literaturwissenschaftlicher Arbeit, deren Zielsetzung Jakobson (1972, S. 31) in einer oft zitierten Passage pointiert formuliert hat: »Gegenstand der Literaturwissenschaft [ist] nicht die Literatur, sondern die Literarizitat, d. h. dasjenige, was das vorliegende Werk zum literarischen Werk macht«.

Narrative Research has over the last 15 years developed into an international and interdisciplinary field. This volume collects fifteen essays which look at narrative and narrativity from various perspectives, including literary studies and hermeneutics, cognitive theory and creativity research, metaphor studies, film theory and intermediality, as well as memory studies, musicology, theology and psychology. The topics touch on a wide range of issues, such as the current state of narratology and its potential for development, narrativity in visual and auditive art forms, the cultural functions of narrative, and the role of narrative concepts across the disciplines.