The article ties in with and attempts to further interests in the rhetorical aspects of personal ... more The article ties in with and attempts to further interests in the rhetorical aspects of personal storytelling by examining what is taken to be a pervasive yet understudied form of purposeful storytelling. The overall aim is to investigate how the narration of intimate biographical events may be used to influence or mold matters of decorum or appropriate behavior. Through close reading of the use of narratives in a Facebook post by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the article argues for the potential meta-decorous nature of such posts; in addition to their private content, they are about what posting is or should be, and therefore also about what it may be, or should mean, to be someone posting on Facebook. Consequently, these personal stories are read as peculiar amalgamations of the personal, the strategic, and the moral.
This special issue presents a "crossover" between two strands of contemporary narrative theory: a... more This special issue presents a "crossover" between two strands of contemporary narrative theory: a second-generation cognitive approach that foregrounds the linkage of stories, mind, and the human body; and an unnatural approach, which focuses on narratives that depart from and challenge everyday cognitive parameters, including those involved in so-called literary realism. In this introduction to the special issue, we take our cue from Franz Kafka's " Wish to Become a Red Indian" (a paragraph-long short story) to illustrate these ways of theorizing about narrative and to
The European Narratology Network (ENN) has established a forum for research on narrative across m... more The European Narratology Network (ENN) has established a forum for research on narrative across multiple national traditions and languages, across disciplines and across media, with its biennial conference. The papers presented at previous ENN conferences have been published in the Narratologia series in carefully edited book volumes that show narratology's emergent vectors in great depth (see Hansen, Pier, Roussin, Schmid 2017). Starting with ENN5 in Prague, the European Narratology Network has entered a partnership with the journal Frontiers of Narrative Studies, and the first project in this partnership is the present special issue. In addition to the conference publication in the Narratologia series, we showcase the latest research presented at ENN5 with a series of selected articles, published here within a year of the conference taking place.
Traditionally, immersion has been conceived of as transparently directing attention towards what ... more Traditionally, immersion has been conceived of as transparently directing attention towards what has been referred to as the “language-independent reality” that is presented by the fictional text (position 1), while defamiliarization is seen as operating through directing the reader’s attention to the artificial nature of the construction of the fictional world (position 2).Drawing on recent developments in cognitive and unnatural narratology we question this view. We argue that immersion may also take place in texts with lower degrees of suspension of disbelief (position 2) and that immersion and defamiliarization can both serve to imitate and direct the attention of the reader towards their immersion in the world (position 3) and by means of providing new perceptions also lead the reader to question the nature of what lies beyond the text (position 4).
This essay sets out to do two related things: to investigate how the documentary films The Act of... more This essay sets out to do two related things: to investigate how the documentary films The Act of Killing and The Ambassador challenge the political and ideological ground of their audiences through radical experiments with documentarist strategies and fictional discourse. In order to carry out this investigation, the essay, secondly, presents and further elaborates a new way of approaching and making sense of fictional discourse using the concept of 'fictionality' , an approach inspired by The Rhetoric of Fictionality by Richard Walsh and recently developed further by
Barack Obama's 2009 speech on health care reform, given to Congress, will likely go down as one o... more Barack Obama's 2009 speech on health care reform, given to Congress, will likely go down as one of the most important talks during his time as American president. The purpose of the speech was as clear as it was challenging: to sway opinions of the mediators of change, members of the House and the Senate, in order to make them vote in favor of the Obama administration's ambitious plan for a thorough reform of the health care system. Toward the end of the speech, after having presented the content of the reform as well as reinforced and refuted arguments for and against it, Obama turns to
This is a response to the questions asked by Franco Passalacqua and Federico Pianzola as a follow... more This is a response to the questions asked by Franco Passalacqua and Federico Pianzola as a follow-up of the 2013 ENN conference. The discussions that originated at the conference were rich and thought-provoking and so the editors of this special section of «Enthymema» decided to continue the dialogue about the state of the art and the future of narratology.
[*preprint version*-final version in Style 2016] Brian Richardson's work on the unnatural, spanni... more [*preprint version*-final version in Style 2016] Brian Richardson's work on the unnatural, spanning more than ten years, presents and refines two insights that continue to strike me as original and important. The first is the observation that what Richardson calls " anti-mimetic tendencies " are an integral part of (not only modern) literary narratives. The second is the idea that most of the dominant unified theories of narrative have been hindered in dealing adequately with these tendencies, due to their implicit or explicit reliance on models of storytelling derived from the way in which nonfictional narratives typically function. The following suggestions should be situated in the context of this broad appreciation of the general thrust behind Richardson's contribution to narrative theory. What I want to suggest is that rather than talking about the unnatural narrative as a certain type of fictional narrative, an autonomous innovative or experimental text, we might consider talking pragmatically about the unnatural as a rhetorical device, defined in relation to existing processes of sense-making, rather than in relation to existing texts or poetics. While inspired by, and in most instances compatible with Richardson's position, the approach suggested is motivated by an attempt to address a concern raised by the observation that the idea of the unnatural as anti-mimetic is based on what I find to be a debatable distinction between fiction and nonfiction. A pragmatic, rhetorical approach might be considered better-designed for addressing not only the different functions of unnatural devices but also the many cases where such devices appear locally in otherwise traditional types of narratives, or appear outside of generic fiction, be it in poetry, in everyday communication, or in rhetorical discourse, such as advertisements. An example of the last is the advertisement featuring " Puppymonkeybaby, " a video spot aired in 2016 to promote the soft drink MTN DEW Kickstart (Mountain). The main protagonist of the short narrative is a CGI-generated, photorealistic, and fully-animated, hybrid creature with the head of a dog, the torso of a monkey, and the legs of a human baby. I establish my thesis through a short discussion of one of the main premises underlying Richardson's definition of unnatural narratives, followed by a rereading of one of the most
The article ties in with and attempts to further interests in the rhetorical aspects of personal ... more The article ties in with and attempts to further interests in the rhetorical aspects of personal storytelling by examining what is taken to be a pervasive yet understudied form of purposeful storytelling. The overall aim is to investigate how the narration of intimate biographical events may be used to influence or mold matters of decorum or appropriate behavior. Through close reading of the use of narratives in a Facebook post by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the article argues for the potential meta-decorous nature of such posts; in addition to their private content, they are about what posting is or should be, and therefore also about what it may be, or should mean, to be someone posting on Facebook. Consequently, these personal stories are read as peculiar amalgamations of the personal, the strategic, and the moral.
This special issue presents a "crossover" between two strands of contemporary narrative theory: a... more This special issue presents a "crossover" between two strands of contemporary narrative theory: a second-generation cognitive approach that foregrounds the linkage of stories, mind, and the human body; and an unnatural approach, which focuses on narratives that depart from and challenge everyday cognitive parameters, including those involved in so-called literary realism. In this introduction to the special issue, we take our cue from Franz Kafka's " Wish to Become a Red Indian" (a paragraph-long short story) to illustrate these ways of theorizing about narrative and to
The European Narratology Network (ENN) has established a forum for research on narrative across m... more The European Narratology Network (ENN) has established a forum for research on narrative across multiple national traditions and languages, across disciplines and across media, with its biennial conference. The papers presented at previous ENN conferences have been published in the Narratologia series in carefully edited book volumes that show narratology's emergent vectors in great depth (see Hansen, Pier, Roussin, Schmid 2017). Starting with ENN5 in Prague, the European Narratology Network has entered a partnership with the journal Frontiers of Narrative Studies, and the first project in this partnership is the present special issue. In addition to the conference publication in the Narratologia series, we showcase the latest research presented at ENN5 with a series of selected articles, published here within a year of the conference taking place.
Traditionally, immersion has been conceived of as transparently directing attention towards what ... more Traditionally, immersion has been conceived of as transparently directing attention towards what has been referred to as the “language-independent reality” that is presented by the fictional text (position 1), while defamiliarization is seen as operating through directing the reader’s attention to the artificial nature of the construction of the fictional world (position 2).Drawing on recent developments in cognitive and unnatural narratology we question this view. We argue that immersion may also take place in texts with lower degrees of suspension of disbelief (position 2) and that immersion and defamiliarization can both serve to imitate and direct the attention of the reader towards their immersion in the world (position 3) and by means of providing new perceptions also lead the reader to question the nature of what lies beyond the text (position 4).
This essay sets out to do two related things: to investigate how the documentary films The Act of... more This essay sets out to do two related things: to investigate how the documentary films The Act of Killing and The Ambassador challenge the political and ideological ground of their audiences through radical experiments with documentarist strategies and fictional discourse. In order to carry out this investigation, the essay, secondly, presents and further elaborates a new way of approaching and making sense of fictional discourse using the concept of 'fictionality' , an approach inspired by The Rhetoric of Fictionality by Richard Walsh and recently developed further by
Barack Obama's 2009 speech on health care reform, given to Congress, will likely go down as one o... more Barack Obama's 2009 speech on health care reform, given to Congress, will likely go down as one of the most important talks during his time as American president. The purpose of the speech was as clear as it was challenging: to sway opinions of the mediators of change, members of the House and the Senate, in order to make them vote in favor of the Obama administration's ambitious plan for a thorough reform of the health care system. Toward the end of the speech, after having presented the content of the reform as well as reinforced and refuted arguments for and against it, Obama turns to
This is a response to the questions asked by Franco Passalacqua and Federico Pianzola as a follow... more This is a response to the questions asked by Franco Passalacqua and Federico Pianzola as a follow-up of the 2013 ENN conference. The discussions that originated at the conference were rich and thought-provoking and so the editors of this special section of «Enthymema» decided to continue the dialogue about the state of the art and the future of narratology.
[*preprint version*-final version in Style 2016] Brian Richardson's work on the unnatural, spanni... more [*preprint version*-final version in Style 2016] Brian Richardson's work on the unnatural, spanning more than ten years, presents and refines two insights that continue to strike me as original and important. The first is the observation that what Richardson calls " anti-mimetic tendencies " are an integral part of (not only modern) literary narratives. The second is the idea that most of the dominant unified theories of narrative have been hindered in dealing adequately with these tendencies, due to their implicit or explicit reliance on models of storytelling derived from the way in which nonfictional narratives typically function. The following suggestions should be situated in the context of this broad appreciation of the general thrust behind Richardson's contribution to narrative theory. What I want to suggest is that rather than talking about the unnatural narrative as a certain type of fictional narrative, an autonomous innovative or experimental text, we might consider talking pragmatically about the unnatural as a rhetorical device, defined in relation to existing processes of sense-making, rather than in relation to existing texts or poetics. While inspired by, and in most instances compatible with Richardson's position, the approach suggested is motivated by an attempt to address a concern raised by the observation that the idea of the unnatural as anti-mimetic is based on what I find to be a debatable distinction between fiction and nonfiction. A pragmatic, rhetorical approach might be considered better-designed for addressing not only the different functions of unnatural devices but also the many cases where such devices appear locally in otherwise traditional types of narratives, or appear outside of generic fiction, be it in poetry, in everyday communication, or in rhetorical discourse, such as advertisements. An example of the last is the advertisement featuring " Puppymonkeybaby, " a video spot aired in 2016 to promote the soft drink MTN DEW Kickstart (Mountain). The main protagonist of the short narrative is a CGI-generated, photorealistic, and fully-animated, hybrid creature with the head of a dog, the torso of a monkey, and the legs of a human baby. I establish my thesis through a short discussion of one of the main premises underlying Richardson's definition of unnatural narratives, followed by a rereading of one of the most
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