Multiperspectival Narration

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature grade: 13 University of Stuttgart (Institut für Literaturwissenschaft Neuere Englische Literatur ) language: English abstract: The idea that knowledge is always perspectival that every understanding is subjective and dependent on an observer and that by a multiperspectival way of looking at a thing our notion of this object our objectivity becomes more extensive and more complex has become a common-place idea. According to the German philosopher's Nietzsche's philosophical theory termed perspectivism there are no immaculate perceptions and knowledge from no point of view is as incoherent a notion as seeing from no particular vantage point . As Berndt Magnus puts it perspectivism also denies the possibility of an all-inclusive perspective which could contain all others and hence make reality available as it is in itself. [...]These views about the limits of human understanding and perspectivism were not developed in the field of literature but in the field of philosophy. However since the eighteenth century through the development of innovative narrative forms the novel has had a very important role in making people aware of the fact that all experience understanding and even history is bound to a person's subjectivity. As Vera & Ansgar Nünning state in their article the relationship between narration and perspectivity or rather the subjectivity of experiencing reality (Subjektabhängigkeit von Wirklichkeitserfahrung) is especially clear in the case of multiperspectival narration because in these narratives several versions of the same events are presented side by side and thus in such multiperspectival narratives the emphasis shifts from the narrated events to the mode of experiencing reality. Besides they add that by contrasting the different descriptions and interpretations there is a constant relativization of the imperfect poi