Unnatural narrative : impossible worlds in fiction and drama / Jan Alber.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Alber, Jan, 1973- author.

Series:

Frontiers of narrative.

Frontiers of narrative

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Narration (Rhetoric).

Uncanny, The (Psychoanalysis), in literature.

Fiction--History and criticism.

Fiction.

Drama--History and criticism.

Drama.

Postmodernism (Literature).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (329 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, [2016]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A talking body part, a character that is simultaneously alive and dead, a shape-changing setting, or time travel: although impossible in the real world, such narrative elements do appear in the storyworlds of novels, short stories, and plays. Impossibilities of narrator, character, time, and space are not only common in today's world of postmodernist literature but can also be found throughout the history of literature. Examples include the beast fable, the heroic epic, the romance, the eighteenth-century circulation novel, the Gothic novel, the ghost play, the fantasy narrative, and the science-fiction novel, among others. Unnatural Narrative looks at the startling and persistent presence of the impossible or "the unnatural" throughout British and American literary history. Layering the lenses of cognitive narratology, frame theory, and possible-worlds theory, Unnatural Narrative offers a rigorous and engaging new characterization of the unnatural and what it yields for individual readers as well as literary culture. Jan Alber demonstrates compelling interpretations of the unnatural in literature and shows the ways in which such unnatural phenomena become conventional in readers' minds, altogether expanding our sense of the imaginable and informing new structures and genres of narrative engagement.

Contents:

Cover ; Title Page ; Copyright Page ; Contents ; Acknowledgments; Part 1. Concepts of the Unnatural; Introduction: The Range of the Impossible; Theorizing the Unnatural; Part 2. Unnatural Narrative Features; 2 Impossible Narrators and Storytelling Scenarios; 3 Antirealist Figures: Paper People Gone Wild; 4 Unnatural Temporalities; 5 Antimimetic Spaces; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780803286719

0803286716

9780803286696

0803286694

OCLC:

935112877