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In his book "Fiction and Diction", Gerard Genette bemoans a contradiction between the pretense and the practice of narratological research. Instead of studying all kind of narratives, for Genette, narratological research concentrates de facto on the techniques of fictional narrative. Correspondingly, Genette speaks of a "fictional narratology" in the pejorative sense of a discipline that sets arbitrary limits on its area of study. In his objection, the narratology that literary scholars practice considers fictional narrative to be at least the standard case of any narrative. In other words, what is merely a special case, within a wide field of narratives, is here elevated to narrative par excellence. According to Genette, narratology does not omit the domain of non-fictional narratives from its investigations with any justification, but rather annexes it without addressing its specific elements.
What are possible ways in which this perspective, which Genette criticizes as truncated, can be set right? Can the problem, as outlined, simply be solved by expanding the area of study in narratological research? Or are there not, perhaps, important differences between fictional and nonfictional narratives which seem to encourage narratological research, understood as a fundamental discipline of literary study, under the heading of "fictional narratology"?
In order to come to an answer here, we will first discuss the problem of differentiating between fictional and non-fictional narratives, as well as the possibility of a connection between narrative and fictionality theory. Second, we will expand our considerations to encompass pragmatic and historical aspects of narratives in order to delineate the scope of our proposal.
Narrative Kommunikation
(2004)
"Eine engere Zusammenarbeit von hermeneutischen und stärker empirischexperimentell ausgerichteten Humanwissenschaften scheint endlich möglich geworden zu sein. Liegt ein sprachliches Phänomen vor, das mit rhetorischen Begriffen als Metonymie bezeichnet wird, so kann die Produktion und Verarbeitung eines solchen Textelements mit kognitionswissenschaftlichen Methoden untersucht und können die komplexen Inferenzprozesse rekonstruiert werden, die das Verständnis von den sehr unterschiedlichen Phänomenen, die darunter fallen, erst genauer ermöglichen. Dies führt notgedrungen zu einer immer stärkeren Verlagerung der Aufmerksamkeit vom Text zur Rezipientenseite, ist also Teil eines allgemeineren Trends, der auch die Literaturwissenschaft seit der Rezeptionsästhetik prägt."
Allwissendes Erzählen
(2004)
›Allwissendes Erzählen‹ und ›allwissender Erzähler‹ gehören zu den literaturwissenschaftlichen Begriffen, die viel gebraucht, aber selten definiert werden. Wer in den einschlägigen erzähltheoretischen Hand- und Einführungsbüchern nach diesen Stichworten sucht, tut es häufig vergebens. [...] Einerseits wird der Begriff des allwissenden Erzählens im literaturwissenschaftlichen Sprachgebrauch offenbar in einem erkenntnistheoretischen Sinne verwendet – es geht um ein durch keine empirischen Bedingungen begrenztes Wissen. Wenn allwissendes Erzählen aber in systematischer Verknüpfung (oder gar synonym) mit auktorialem Erzählen gebraucht wird, dann steht in der Regel ein anderer Aspekt im Vordergrund […]. Der Ausdruck ›auktorialer Erzähler‹ bezeichnet seit Stanzel einen persönlichen heterodiegetischen Erzähler, d.h. 'einen Erzähler, der zwar nicht der erzählten Welt angehört, aber eine individuelle Einschätzung und Bewertung des Erzählten zum Ausdruck bringt und dadurch ein bestimmtes ideologisches oder moralisches Profil gewinnt.' […] Trotz [einer] zeitweisen historischen Koppelung von allwissendem und auktorialem Erzählen handelt es sich jedoch um zwei systematisch voneinander unabhängige Aspekte, die in der Literaturgeschichte keineswegs immer gemeinsam auftreten. Im folgenden gehe ich nicht auf die moralischen Aspekte auktorialer Erzählerfiguren ein, sondern beschränke mich auf die erkenntnistheoretischen Besonderheiten allwissenden Erzählens.
These […] stories are chosen from anthologies with texts called 'urban legends' (sometimes they are also referred to as 'contemporary legends', or 'urban myths'). Bearing this name in mind, we tend to read these texts as 'Iegendary' narratives that relate ficticious stories of events which never happened. But what if somebody told you these stories as factual accounts of events that really happened to the friend of a friend: wouldn't you believe them to be true – or at least consider seriously the possibility of their truthfulness? Before entering in a discussion of this question, I want to introduce in more detail the kind of narrative I am seeking to analyze.
Bakhtin argues that each literary genre codifies a particular world-view which is defined, in part, by its chronotope. That is, the spatial and temporal configurations of each genre determine in large part the kinds of action a fictional character may undertake in that given world (without being iconoclastic, a realist hero cannot slay mythical beasts, and a questing knight cannot philosophize over drinks in a café). Recent extensions of Bakhtin’s theory have sought to define the chronotopes of new and emergent genres such as the road movie, the graphic novel, and hypertext fiction. Others have challenged Bakhtin’s characterization of certain chronotopes, such as those of epic and lyric poetry, arguing that these genres (and their chronotopes) are far more dynamic and dialogic than Bakhtin’s analysis seems at first glance to allow. Rather than taking issue with Bakhtin’s characterization of particular genres here, however, I wish to argue that we should pay closer attention to the heterochrony, or interplay of different chronotopes, in individual texts and their genres. As Bakhtin’s own essay demonstrates, what makes any literary chronotope dynamic is its conflict and interplay with alternative chronotopes and world-views. Heterochrony (raznovremennost) is the spatiotemporal equivalent of linguistic heteroglossia, and if we examine any of Bakhtin’s readings of particular chronotopes closely enough, we will find evidence of heterochronic conflict. This clash of spatiotemporal configurations within a text, or family of texts, provides the ground for the dialogic inter-illumination of opposing world-views.
One of the most fundamental problems of systemic approaches to literature is the question of how systemic principles might be translated into a manageable methodological framework. This contribution proposes that a combination of functionalistsystemic theories (in casu Itamar Even-Zohar’s Polysystem theory – especially the textually oriented versions – and the prototypical genre approach proposed by Dirk De Geest and Hendrik Van Gorp 1999) with Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope theory shows great promise in this respect. Since I am primarily interested in literary genres, the prototypical genre approach assumes a central position in my theoretical framework. My main argument is that Bakhtin’s chronotope concept offers interesting perspectives as a heuristic tool within a functionalist-systemic approach to genre studies, enabling the study not only of the constitutive elements of genre systems, but also of their mutual relations. Bakhtin’s own vague definitions of the concept somewhat hamper the process of putting it into practice for this purpose, but with the aid of the distinction between generic and motivic chronotopes, that problem can be solved. A detailed, comprehensive account of the theoretical premises underlying my proposal can be found in Bemong (under review); here I restrict myself to the basics.
Bakhtin and Dostoevsky shared the conviction that human life must be understood in terms of temporality. Both thinkers were obsessed with time’s relation to life as people experience it. For each, a rich sense of humanity demanded a chronotope of open time. In many respects, the views of Bakhtin and Dostoevsky coincide. Theologically speaking, one could fairly call them both heretics, as we shall see. Their differences reflect their different starting points. Bakhtin began with ethics, whereas Dostoevsky thought about life first and foremost in terms of psychology. For Bakhtin, any viable view of the world had first of all to give a rich meaning to moral responsibility. Dostoevsky could accept no view that was false to his sense of how the human mind thought and felt.
This paper proposes a reflection on the potential of the chronotope as a heuristic tool in the field of adaptation studies. My goal is to situate the chronotope in the context of adaptation studies, specifically with regard to perhaps the most central treatise in the field of literary adaptation, Gérard Genette’s “Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree”, and to draw attention to perhaps one of the most overlooked works in the field of adaptation studies, Caryl Emerson’s chronotope-inspired “Boris Godunov: Transpositions of a Russian Theme”. I will demonstrate how the chronotope might be used in the study of literary adaptation by examining the relationships between Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe”, its historical sources, and Michel Tournier’s twentieth-century adaptation of the Robinson story, “Friday”. My analysis draws upon three of the semantic levels of the chronotope presented in the introduction to this volume: (1) chronotopic motifs linked to two opposing themes: enthusiasm for European colonial expansionism and skepticism regarding the supremacy of European culture; (2) major chronotopes that determine the narrative structure of a text; and (3) the way in which such major chronotopes may be linked to broader questions of genre.
The Fugue of Chronotope
(2010)
As the survey by Nele Bemong and Pieter Borghart introducing this volume makes clear, the term chronotope has devolved into a veritable carnival of orismology. For all the good work that has been done by an ever-growing number of intelligent critics, chronotope remains a Gordian knot of ambiguities with no Alexander in sight. The term has metastasized across the whole spectrum of the human and social sciences since the publication of FTC in Russian in 1975, and (especially) after its translation into English in 1981. As others have pointed out, one of the more striking features of the chronotope is the plethora of meanings that have been read into the term: that its popularity is a function of its opacity has become a cliché. In the current state of chronotopic heteroglossia, then, how are we to proceed? The argument of this essay is that many of the difficulties faced by Bakhtin’s critics derive from ambiguities with which Bakhtin never ceased to struggle. That is, instead of advancing yet another definition of my own, I will investigate some of the attempts made by Bakhtin himself to give the term greater precision throughout his long life. In so doing, I will also hope to cast some light on the foundational role of time-space in Bakhtin’s philosophy of dialog as it, too, took on different meanings at various points in his thinking.
The aim of this introductory article [to the volume of the same title], firstly, is to recapitulate the basic principles of Bakhtin’s initial theory as formulated in “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes toward a Historical Poetics” (henceforth FTC) and “The Bildungsroman and its Significance in the History of Realism (Toward a Historic Typology of the Novel)” (henceforth BSHR). Subsequently, we present some relevant elaborations of Bakhtin’s initial concept and a number of applications of chronotopic analysis, closing our state of the art by outlining two perspectives for further investigation. Some of the issues which we touch upon receive more detailed treatment in other contributions to this volume. Others may offer perspectives for future Bakhtin scholarship.