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Introduction
Paul Goetsch
Reader Figures in Narrative
Fraz K. Stanzel
The “Complementary
Story”: Outline of a Reader-Oriented Theory of the Novel
Herbert Grabes
Turning Words on the
Page into “Real” People
Jan Alber
Bibliography of German
Narratology
The goal of this issue and its sequel is to provide an English-language sampler of recent German work in narratology. The outpouring of publications on narrative since the 1970s has its source in a long tradition of theory and analysis in German (by, e.g., André Jolles, Käte Hamburger, and Gunther Müller), but was stimulated first by the influence of French structuralist and Russian formalist studies, and later by influences from American scholarship as well as from work in other disciplines (as diverse as cognitive science and cultural studies). This introduction aims to complement the essays selected by providing a survey of major figures, themes, and publications in German-language narratology over the past thirty years. A particular hotbed of activity has been the field of Anglistik (English studies), as reflected in the present selection, representing work by scholars from F. K. Stanzel to Ansgar Nünning.
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Paul Goetsch, “Reader Figures in Narrative”
/ 188
Two types of reader figures are distinguished from one another: the
fictive (extradiegetic) reader on the level of the narrator and the fictional
(intradiegetic) reader on the level of the action. Both types help to illustrate
and thematize the process of narration and are important instruments of
activating and controlling the real reader’s responses.
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Fraz K. Stanzel, “The ‘Complementary Story’:
Outline of a Reader-Oriented Theory of the Novel” / 203
We are all narrators—even in our role as readers. We supplement narratives
in the reading process and add our own “complementary stories” to them.
In the course of a narrative, readers frequently fill in gaps or continue
the story as a kind of experiment based on their own experiences. Sometimes
readers may also construct variations of a fictional event. It is the sum
of these concretizing and complementing acts that constitutes the “complementary
story.” Furthermore, the reading of a narrative as an intertwining of narrated
and complementary stories represents a constant oscillation between defamiliarization
and identification, between the openness to innovation and the tendency
to stereotypification. Every major novel ventures into unknown fictional
territories; by creating a corresponding “complementary story” readers
integrate the topography of this fictional world into their familiar image
of the world that is based on their experiences.
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Herbert Grabes, “Turning Words on the Page into
‘Real’ People” / 221
When we read novels or plays, human figures emerge from the page, and
quite a few of them begin to exist wellnigh autonomously, first in individual
and then also in collective memory. This process of figuring-forth, the
transformation of a scattering of sequentially perceived signs in a text
during reading into full-blown figures complete with bodies, feelings,
and minds, is the topic of this essay. It deals in some detail with the
conditions of figuring-forth, the process of figuration, and the resulting
creation of illusion, mustering above all the resources of both empirical
psychology and reception theory for their explanatory power.
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Vera Nünning, “Unreliable Narration and
the Historical Variability of Values and Norms: The Vicar of Wakefield
as a Test Case of a Cultural-Historical Narratology” / 236
This article proceeds from the premise that the narratological process
of ascribing (un)reliability to specific narrators is dependent on the
values and norms of the critic. Since the attributes individual scholars
accept as “normal” or “natural” vary from culture to culture and from epoch
to epoch, every analysis of unreliability has to take the (historically
variable) values and norms that govern the attribution of (un)reliability
into account. In order to demonstrate the importance of the cultural context
I will concentrate on the history of the reception of Oliver Goldsmith’s
novel The Vicar of Wakefield, since this illustrates strikingly how readers
and critics in different times have come to diametrically opposed conclusions
regarding the reliability of the narrator. The article ends with a discussion
of the general importance of a cultural-historical approach that can also
be used to explicate other aspects of literary works, such as irony and
humor.
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Jan Alber, “Bibliography of German Narratology”
/ 253
A selective listing of influential work in German on narrative theory,
from 1975 to the present (but also including some important material published
earlier). Hard-to-locate items, as well as work published in English or
English translation, also feature heavily on the list.
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