Rezensionen 131 1 See also Chatman (1990: 115), Bal (1997: 5), and Prince (2008: 19). 2 For instance, at one point, Abbott compares the degree of narrativity in the following two sentence combinations: (1) “She ate lunch. Then she drove the car to work”; (2) “Brooding, she ate lunch. Then she drove the car to work.” Given Abbott’s definition of narrative in terms of action, I was surprised to read that “the addition of that one simple word, ‘brooding,’ H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 (2 nd edition). Jan Alber H. Porter Abbott’s Introduction to Narrative is a great introduction for underand postgraduate students because it demands no previous knowledge of narrative (or narrative theory) on the part of the reader. At the same time, it is an excellent and comprehensive reference work for specialists in the field. The book is coherent and consistent; it is knit together like a tight web: Abbott frequently returns to terms and concepts that he introduced earlier on, which enables his readers to deepen their understanding. His style is accessible, clear, direct and to the point. I also like the fact that Abbott discusses a wide variety of different narrative genres. He analyses novels, short stories, plays, films, television series, narrative poetry, hypertext narratives, comic strips, paintings, role-playing games, and numerous non-fictional narratives (such as autobiographies, newspaper articles, and stories in the legal arena). Abbott’s Introduction also gets the balance right between prototypical and more marginal narratives, ‘high’ and popular culture, as well as contemporary and historical material. The book is structured in a very effective way: Abbott has added marked boxes to the running text which contain additional information, questions, or discussions. Each of the book’s fourteen chapters is followed by a list of secondary resources and additional primary texts. The book ends with a useful glossary and topical index. Despite this overall good impression, I had a few terminological and conceptual problems to which I will refer in the following summary. Abbott begins his Introduction with a very convincing discussion of the presence of narrative in almost all human discourse. He argues that “narrative is the principal way in which our species organizes its understandings of time” (3). Abbott then goes on to discuss a number of paintings that depict single events, and he shows that even these static moments imply succession: we always grasp the depicted events in the context of a story in progress. For Abbott, “our narrative perception stands ready to be activated in order to give us a frame or context for even the most static and uneventful scenes” (10). In contrast to other narrative theorists who argue that narratives require a narrator (cf., e.g., Stanzel 1984: 65, Genette 1988: 16-17, and Phelan 2005: 18), Abbott defines the term ‘narrative’ in terms of action over time, or, as he puts it, “the representation of an event or a series of events” (13) 1 . I feel that Abbott might have devoted more time to the discussion of alternative definitions and their consequences. I am particularly thinking of Herman’s focus on the role of emotional responses to experience in narrative (2002) or Fludernik’s definition of narrative in terms of experientiality, i.e. “the quasi-mimetic evocation of ‘real-life experience’” (1996: 12) 2 . Furthermore, like most narrative theorists, Abbott discriminates between Rezensionen 132 does much to augment narrativity” (25). If one follows Abbott’s definition, a higher degree of narrativity should involve more action or eventfulness (rather than an increase in emotional “depth” [25] or, as he argues later on, the existence of “a narrator” [30] - these two features are optional for him). Nevertheless, I agree with Abbott’s argument that (2) involves more narrativity than (1) because (2) correlates with a higher degree of experientiality, or, to put this slightly differently, because (2) offers more in terms of emotional insight. 3 Abbott has a complex view on the relationship between story and discourse. He argues that “it may look like there is a story out there that pre-exists the narrative discourse and therefore is ‘mediated’ by it.” However, “without first creating the narrative discourse,” authors “would never know the story.” Hence, for him, “story appears both to precede and to come after narrative discourse” (20). the “story” and the “narrative discourse”: the former refers to “an event or sequence of events (the action),” while the latter denotes “those events as represented” (19). 3 I disagree with Abbott’s argument that “all stories, like all action, go in one direction only - forward in time” (17). As Richardson (2002: 48-52) has shown, unnatural narratives frequently confront us with stories (and intradiegetic temporalities) that are circular, contradictory, antinomic (retrogressive), differential, conflated, or dual. I think it would be better to say that in most narratives, the story moves forward in time, while there are also exceptions to this rule. In the third chapter, Abbott addresses the question of where narratives end and the real world begins. While paratexts (such as book jackets, prefaces, chapter headings, program notes, and so forth) have to be placed on the threshold of narrative, postmodernist experimental fiction plays around with the outer limits of narrative. Abbott argues that up to a certain point, confusion and narrative coherence can coexist. But the question is of course, “what is the tipping point? How much frustration is too much? And what do we call this kind of writing when it is no longer called narrative” (32). Abbott leaves these questions open. My own solution to this problem would be to argue that as long as experimental texts show basic narrative features and say something about us and the world we live in, they still qualify as narratives. In Chapter 4, Abbott argues that narratives influence our thoughts and feelings in particular ways. He refers to this impact in terms of “the rhetoric of narrative” and defines it as “its power” (40). Abbott then devotes some time to a discussion of masterplots (46-52), i.e., recurring stories that are bound up with types or stereotypes (such as the Cinderella story, the Oedipus myth, or David’s fight against Goliath). According to Abbott, “much of the power of these particular masterplots [...] is their moral force. They create an image of the world in which good and evil are clearly identifiable, and in which blame can fall squarely on one party or another” (48). Moreover, Abbott argues that narratives frequently involve a conflict in which power is at stake. The ancient Greek word for conflict is agon, and the terms “protagonist” (hero) and “antagonist” (the hero’s chief opponent) are derived from it (55). For Abbott, the term “closure” refers to the resolution of a story’s central conflict (e.g., death in the case of tragedy, and marriage in the case of comedy) but also to a broad range of expectations and uncertainties: “all successful narratives [...] are chains of suspense and surprise that keep us in a fluctuating state of impatience, wonderment, and partial gratification” (57). Abbott highlights the fact that we all look for closure in narratives but we do not want closure too quickly. Rezensionen 133 In Chapter 6, Abbott discriminates between homoand heterodiegetic (firstand third-person) narrators in the sense of Genette (1980: 189-94; 1988: 21), and points out that the former exist within the projected storyworld, whereas the latter exist in a different fictional realm (75). It struck me that Abbott seems to use the terms “heterodiegetic” and “extradiegetic” interchangeably. More specifically, Abbott says that the terms “heterodiegetic” and “extradiegetic” both refer “to narration that comes from outside the storyworld” (75). At a different point, Abbott argues that the narration in Robbe-Grillet’s Dans le labyrinthe/ In the Labyrinth (1959) “appears to be largely extradiegetic, the narrator rendering the story in the third person” (169). However, Genette uses the term “extradiegetic” to refer to the level of a narrator who produces a narrative which constitutes an intradiegetic level, in which a character can appear, who may then become the intradiegetic narrator of a metadiegetic (or hypodiegetic [Bal 1981: 43]) narrative (Genette 1980: 228f.; 1988: 85). It is worth noting (and Abbott does not mention this) that homodiegetic narrators (such as ‘Chaucer’, the first-person narrator of the Canterbury Tales) can be extradiegetic as well. In the case of the Canterbury Tales, ‘Chaucer’ produces the frame narrative about the pilgrims riding towards Canterbury: hence, he is extradiegetic with reference to the framed stories. And at the intradiegetic level, several characters (such as the Wife of Bath) become intradiegetic narrators who then tell hypodiegetic narratives (such as “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”). Moreover, I do not quite understand why Abbott does not mention the different types of focalization as they were developed by Genette (1980: 189-94) and others. I can see that one may disagree with the concept of zero focalization, but I think it would have been useful for students to introduce the terms “internal” and “external focalization” (because they are frequently used by narrative theorists). Abbott’s description of a scene from Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856) may be terminologically confusing: he argues that “Flaubert’s narrator maintains a strict, external third-person narrative voice but lets us look through the eyes of someone else” (73). I think that the scene can be more clearly described as a form of heterodiegetic narration with internal focalization. Like Booth and others, Abbott relies on the presence of an implied (or “inferred”) author as that sensibility which accounts for the narrative “in the sense that the implied authorial views that we find emerging in the narrative are consistent with all the elements of the narrative discourse that we are aware of” (84). Abbott posits an intentional reading (102-103) (that tries to approximate the mind of the implied author) and avoids the neglecting of material in the text (which he calls “underreading”) as well as the importing of material that is not in the text (“overreading”) (86-90). In Chapter 8, Abbott offers two alternative types of reading, namely “symptomatic readings,” i.e., suspicious interpretations (such as deconstructive ones) “the implied author would not agree with” (104), and “adaptive readings,” which look at the use and altering of pre-existing stories (106-108). Abbott sees the process of adaptation as a form of “creative destruction” and points out that “faithfulness to the original” is not the only goal of adaptations: “an adaptation can be less or more profound, less or more sentimental, less or more fun, and so on” (113). He then discusses some of the differences between prose texts on the one hand and plays and films on the other. First, much of the flexible indeterminacy of prose texts is foreclosed on the stage and on the screen (118). Second, it is harder to represent character interiority in plays and films. Third, plays and films are Rezensionen 134 slightly weaker on figurative language. Abbott also says a few words on constraints of the market: he points out that “if the market exerts a powerful force that tends to soften the edges of produceable plays, it is not the only force operating in the circulation of narrative. Producers, especially in small, marginal theaters, regularly take risks with radically new material” (126). In Chapter 10, Abbott addresses the interrelation between self and narrative. He rejects essentialist notions of the self and argues that “it is only through narrative that we know ourselves as active entities that operate through time” (130). Following E.M. Forster, he discriminates between flat and round characters. The former have no hidden complexity (such as stock characters), while the latter are multi-dimensional and have varying degrees of depth (133-134). Abbott also highlights that it is difficult, if not impossible, to characterize actual human beings without the use of types (such as the hypocrite, the flirt, the evil child, the wimp, the nerd, or the vixen) that circulate in narratives (136-37). The two following chapters are new and were added to the second edition of Abbott’s Introduction. In Chapter 11, Abbott addresses potential differences between fictional and non-fictional narratives. He argues that there are three basic kinds of representation: “factual, false, and fictional” (157). While non-fictional accounts can be tested and falsified, fiction is not falsifiable because it is neither true nor false. Abbott also investigates the gray area between the two poles of fiction and nonfiction: he points out that narratives can be fictional but still historically correct (150-152), and he argues that there may be truth to fiction, namely “the truth of meaning rather than fact” (153). In Chapter 12, Abbott presents us with a discussion of narrative worlds. He points out that narratives do not only represent events in time but also in space. All narratives contain at least two worlds, namely (1) “the storyworld in which the characters reside and the events take place”, and (2) “the world in which the narration takes place” (169). Abbott even adds a third world to this taxonomy, namely (3) “the world of production that contains both the storyworld and the world of narration” (170). In this chapter, Abbott also discusses forking-path narratives in which competing worlds encroach on each other, especially in fantasy, science fiction, and postmodernism (167-169). Abbott moreover analyses legal narratives taken from the historic Lizzie Borden case. He argues that “a trial can be described as a huge, unpolished narrative compendium featuring the contest of two sets of authors, each trying to make their central narrative of events prevail by spinning narrative segments for their rhetorical impact” (179). Abbott then illustrates that narrative ‘battles’ in trials, political races, or intellectual controversies are always embedded into cultural masterplots that play a crucial role with regard to the finding of the most plausible story version. While Chapter 13 focuses on the contest between narratives, the final chapter (Chapter 14) returns to conflicts within narratives. Abbott here accentuates the crucial role of what he calls “passionate thinking”: “insofar as we share in our own lives the larger conflicts of which [...] narrative conflicts are particular examples, we are moved by the narrative, drawn into it, and become alert to how these conflicts play out” (198-99). Abbott also shows that the readings of the Oedipus myth by Aristotle, Freud, Propp, and Lévi-Strauss all have the same underlying orientation, namely “an attention to conflict of some kind and how it plays out” (199). Finally, Abbott points out Rezensionen 135 that at the end, narratives may resolve the central conflict (and provide closure) or leave the conflict open (and refuse closure). With regard to his own text, Abbott opts in favour of the latter. I will not spoil readers the pleasure of discovering this ending for themselves - suffice it to say that it is done brilliantly. References Bal, Mieke (1981). “Notes on Narrative Embedding”. Poetics Today 2: 2. 41-59. - (1985/ 1997). Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. 2 nd ed. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Chatman, Seymour (1990). Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London & New York: Routledge. Genette, Gérard (1972/ 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Transl. Jane E. Lewin Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. - (1983/ 1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Transl. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. Herman, David (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Phelan, James (2005). Living To Tell About It: A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. Prince, Gerald (2008). “Narrativehood, Narrativeness, Narrativity, Narratability”. In: John Pier and José Ángel García Landa (eds.). Theorizing Narrativity. Berlin & New York: de Gruyter. 19-27. Richardson, Brian (2002). “Beyond Story and Discourse: Narrative Time in Postmodern and Nonmimetic Fiction”. In: Brian Richardson (ed.). Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames. Columbus: Ohio State UP. 47-63. Stanzel, Franz Karl (1979/ 1984). A Theory of Narrative. Transl. Charlotte Goedsche, with a Preface by Paul Hernadi. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Jan Alber Englische Literaturwissenschaft Universität Freiburg