Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses (Theory Interpretation Narrativ)

In this volume an international group of contributors presents new perspectives on narrative. Using David Herman&;s 1999 definition of postclassical narratology from Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis (OSUP) as their launching point these eleven essayists explore the various ways in which new approaches overlap and interrelate to form new ways of understanding narrative texts. Postclassical narratology has reached a new phase of consolidation but also continued diversification. This collection therefore discriminates between what one could call a critical but frame-abiding and a more radical frame-transcending or frame-shattering handling of the structuralist paradigm. Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses discusses a large variety of different aspects of narrative such as extensions of classical narratology new generic applications (autobiography oral narratives poetry painting and film) the history of narratology the issue of fictionality the role of cognition and questions of authorship and authority as well as thematic matters related to ethics gender and queering. Additionally it uses a wide spectrum of critical approaches including feminism psychoanalysis media studies the rhetorical theory of narrative unnatural narratology and cognitive studies. In this manner the essays manage to produce new insights into many key issues in narratology. The contributors also demonstrate that narratologists nowadays see the object of their research as more variegated than was the case twenty years ago: they resort to a number of different methods in combination when approaching a problem and they tend to ground their analyses in a rich contextual framework.