In the following we will present a typological table of modes of narrative representation (see page 34). This seems to be in contradiction to our initial criticism of combinatorial attempts to generate typologies. How- ever, our typology is by no means intended to exhaust all valid combi- nations in parameter settings: it merely tries to project some of the typical constellation that might occur along the three dimensional performative continuum of perception, reflection, and mediation onto a two dimen- sional table. This is the first step; the second will be an attempt to demon-
strate how our abstract model might be applied in the practice of textual analysis15.
This is how our table should be read: the constituent sub-processes of narration are in the first (systematic, not “real”!) instance determined by the different extensions of the narrative’s object domain (1st column). Thereafter, we capture the synchronous processes of perception, reflection and mediation in the form of three successive tabular dimensions (2nd to 4th column). In all three dimensions the standard qualification of a given parameter is measured in terms of its “relation to the object domain”. The parameters as such are (a) “spatial / temporal proximity”, (b) “cognitive / emotional / normative engagement”, (c) “semiotic disposition” (which increases step-by-step from an abstract disposition in the dimension of perception to a realized manifestation in the right-most dimension of mediation).
Within each of the three dimensions of narrative processing these pa- rameters are graded along the continuum of “low––medium––high im- pact”. Every tabular dimension is continuously interacting with the other two: the system is a fully dynamic one; in terms of computational pro- gramming approaches one might compare it to a recursive and highly in- teractive modular program architecture rather than a batch-mode “first do this, then do that” algorithm. When we read a row in our table across its three centre columns and their respective sub-columns we can see the scope of variations in relations to object domain that fall under one par- ticular “representational type”. In reality, the number of such types might be huge; we have decided to limit ourselves to just six types which seem to be best documented historically and can thus be cited as exemplary cases. Finally, the two right-most columns compare the traditional Genettian type-term with our suggested terminological replacement.
The measuring of a particular parameter in terms of its relation to ob- ject domain value is thus not a question of “yes or no”; it is a question of attributing it a particular position within an array that extends from “high to low”. If we want to measure the level of internal influence which the initiating instance of the narrative process (or the textual instances that represent it) can have, then we will differentiate along the axis of low–– medium––high interest. If on the other hand our interest lies in measuring the extent to which the process is constrained by text-external (historical and cultural) factors then we will do so along the scale of “fully––medi-
15
um––low constrained”. The values entered in our table are not of an ab- solute nature; rather they represent an ensemble of tendencies which in their combination allow us to describe the dynamics of narrative pro- cessing. From a literary history perspective the few prototypical constel- lations represented in our table can only capture a glimpse of what has been––or might still be––realized empirically.
The typology of representations is based on the following premises: (a) The qualification “narratorial” defines a position external to the nar- rated world. The narrating instance is by default completely autonomous and unconstrained; however, it is marked as narratorial on a gradual scale as soon as a level of limitation affecting its operations in the three dimen- sions becomes discernable.
(b) The qualification “actorial” defines a position within the narrated world. Again, the narrating instance is marked on a gradual scale in terms of its dimensional limitations: for example, by the spatially and tempo- rally defined position from which the instance observes simultaneously occurring events, as in the case of an eye witness account, or by the si- multaneity of experience and narration, e.g. in a protagonist’s interior monologue. The latter is in contrast with the so-called autobiographical mode of narration. This mode allows for the narrating instance’s choice of different spatial-temporal positions within the dimensions of perception (which is, by definition, experience centered) and mediation (where the focus is primarily on representation). In a typical autobiographical narrative different situations in life are defined by different constellations in the protagonist’s cognitive, emotional and normative engagement. (c) Finally, a third type of mediacy is defined in terms of hybrid positions, which we call “mixed narratorial / actorial”. Here the narrator’s acts of evaluation and mediation take place from one position, but are combined with acts of perception and reflection bound to a second position that indicates an actorial stance. Actorial mediacy, in these cases, is graded on a scale ranging from “covert” to “overt”. An example would be the difference between a completely factual eye witness report, and an af- fected by-stander’s account displaying traces of personal engagement with the ongoings16.
16 A term we deliberately avoid in our qualification of the six prototypes is “extra- diegetic”. In our opinion the term is a tautology in that it merely captures the self- evident epistemological prerequisite of all narrative representations: as soon as we talk about “diegesis” in any meaningful way, we have to associate the enunciative act with an enunciator, and dissociate the product of enunciation (the narrative, the text) from it
As we will demonstrate, representational types can be attributed to texts as a whole, but also to passages within texts as we will show below. In some instances the distinction among types is not very clear cut, as in the case of “constrained narratorial representation vs. mixed narratorial / actorial representation”: the former type also subsumes phases where the default autonomous vision of the narrating instance is temporarily re- stricted by constraining its powers of perception and reflection to those attributable to one or more actors; in the latter type the narrative instance is parameterized throughout in accordance with the epistemological and
at the same time. The logical opposite to “extradiegetic” would in fact not be “intra- diegetic”, but simply “mimetic”. The current (Genettian) use of the qualifier “intra- diegetic”, however, is not intended as a statement concerning the ontological status of the representation as such: it merely tries to point out that the act of narration is, at the same time, its own object; in other words: that diegesis is not organized as a two-level affair of signifiant vs. signifié, but rather in the form of nested instances of narration.
reflective position of a particular actor, but the overall semiotic dispo- sition will nevertheless indicate a higher-level narratorial instance.
We will now analyze two textual examples in order to illustrate how the dynamic narrative system’s mode of operation might be measured in terms of the continuously changing values which it assigns to the func- tional parameters in its three interrelated dimensions of perception, re- flection, and mediation17.
Example 1: Charles Perrault Little Red Riding Hood
Once upon a time there lived in a certain village a little country girl, the prettiest creature who was ever seen. Her mother was excessively fond of her; and her grandmother doted on her still more. This good woman had a little red riding hood made for her. It suited the girl so extremely well that everybody called her Little Red Riding Hood. One day her mother, having made some cakes, said to her: “Go, my dear, and see how your grand- mother is doing, for I hear she has been very ill. Take her a cake, and this little pot of butter.” Little Red Riding Hood set out immediately to go to her grandmother, who lived in another village.
As she was going through the wood, she met with a wolf, who had a very great mind to eat her up, but he dared not, because of some woodcutters working nearby in the forest. He asked her where she was going. The poor child, who did not know that it was danger- ous to stay and talk to a wolf, said to him: “I am going to see my grandmother and carry her a cake and a little pot of butter from my mother.” “Does she live far off?” said the wolf. “Oh I say,” answered Little Red Riding Hood, “it is beyond that mill you see there, at the first house in the village.” “Well,” said the wolf, “and I'll go and see her too. I'll go this way and go you that, and we shall see who will be there first.”
The wolf ran as fast as he could, taking the shortest path, and the little girl took a round-about way, entertaining herself by gathering nuts, running after butterflies, and gathering bouquets of little flowers. It was not long before the wolf arrived at the old woman’s house. He knocked at the door: tap, tap. […]
Little Red Riding Hood took off her clothes and got into bed. She was greatly amazed to see how her grandmother looked in her nightclothes, and said to her, “Grandmother, what big arms you have!” “All the better to hug you with, my dear.” “Grandmother, what big legs you have!” “All the better to run with, my child.” “Grandmother, what big ears you have!” “All the better to hear with, my child.” “Grandmother, what big eyes you have!” “All the better to see with, my child.” “Grandmother, what big teeth you have got!” “All the better to eat you up with.” And, saying these words, this wicked wolf fell upon Little Red Riding Hood, and ate her all up.
Moral: Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say “wolf”, but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, po-
17
The examples were taken from the web and have not been philologically verified. Yet, for the purpose of a demonstration of our model in application they should suffice.
lite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.
These passages taken from a short text present an example for our type 1 (“unconstrained narratorial representation”), including a passage of quasi- mimetic scenic representation marked in italics. In this example the dynamics of the three dimensions could be outlined as follows.
PERCEPTION: the narratorial instance’s perceptive abilities are gener- ally not constrained by the spatial or temporal limitations of any single actorial position––the path of the wolf and the path of Little Red Riding Hood are equally followed. Physical objects as well as the mental states of the wolf and Little Red Riding Hood are being presented (viz. the short sequence of introspection at the beginning of paragraph two). However, the perception of narrated events is only marginally intersected by the dimension of reflection. With a view to mediation, these formulations un- derline the narrator’s distanced and ironic position of cognitive superi- ority vis-à-vis the characters, as in this opening: „The poor child, who did not know that it was dangerous to stay and talk to a wolf [...]“. This superiority, however, will only be put to full effect in the concluding moral of the story, where the focus of “perception” no longer lies on the fantastic story of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf, but rather on the real constellations of social life.
REFLECTION:in the beginning, the amount of the narrating instance’s cognitive, emotional and normative engagement during the act of per- ception is minimal, and the semiotic disposition is unmarked. However, long before the final moral is explicated a first sign of reflection-pro- cessing is detectable in the narrating instance’s normative evaluations of the actors (Little Red Riding Hood is being spoilt by her mother and grandmother; the wolf is hungry and ravenous.) In the final “moral of the story” the normative engagement of the narrative instance increases dra- matically from medium to high interest.
MEDIATION: the initially gradual and then suddenly exponential in- crease in normative engagement is paralleled and supported by the curve which the actualization of semiotic disposition along the mediating proc- ess follows. First a number of isolated semiotic determinants manifest themselves (including introspection into the protagonists’ state of mind and the representation of character-bound attitudes, even though the latter are not explicitly marked as actorial in their verbalization) before the final
moral is presented as an explicit marker of the narratorial activity of “diegesis” (in the Platonian sense).
This first example demonstrated how a description in terms of tradi- tional narratological categories can be formalized in terms of the DNS model. Our second example will now demonstrate the added text ana- lytical capacity which sets the DNS model apart from its precursors. Example 2: Alfred Döblin The Murder of a Buttercup
[a] Yes, he had killed the flower, and it was no business of theirs, and he had the right, which he would defend against all of them. He had the right to kill flowers, and he did not feel obliged to justify it in any more detail. He could kill as many flowers as he pleased for a thousand miles around, north, south, east, west, whether they scoffed at it or not. And if they carried on laughing like that he would leap at their throats. […] [b1] Again he runs hard against a low fir; it strikes down at him with raised hands. [b2] He breaks his way through violently, the blood running in streams down his face. He spits, lashes out, kicks the trees, yelling, slides down, sitting and rolling, finally runs headlong down the last slope at the verge of the wood toward the lights of the village, his torn frock coat thrown over his head, [c] while behind him the mountain rustles threateningly, shaking its fists, and everywhere trees can be heard cracking and breaking as they run after him, cursing.
This passage (an excerpt from a longer novella) presents a type 3 example (“mixed narratorial / actorial representation”): in [a] free indirect speech is used to represent the thoughts of the protagonist (he has “beheaded” a butter cup with his walking stick). This is followed by the description of a number of actions [b] in which actor centred perception [b1] merges into the externally based perception of a narratorial instance [b2] and then [c] reverts back to actorial perception. The dynamics of the three dimensions could be outlined as follows.
PERCEPTION: as the historical present in paragraph 2 indicates, per- ception is bound to time and place of the fictional events, yet at the same time it is intermingled to a high degree with actorial emotions and eval- uations––and so is the semiotic disposition, which is determined by actor centred patterns. But this is not a fixed constellation: the dimensions of perception, reflection and mediation are being repeatedly and dynamically repositioned against one another. The effect is such that perception, by way of smooth transitions, is also characterized by the evaluations and verbalizations of the narrator. One example is the second sentence in [b2], where „toward the lights of the village“ signals that the predominantly narratorial perception––by way of a merging––is momentarily juxtaposed
with a actorial orientation, thus subtly preparing the eventual shift to a fully actorial perception in [c].
REFLECTION: the processing of perceptions mirrors the strong rela- tionship with the actorial dimension: strong in [a], [b1] und [c]; weaker in [b2]. However, semantics and syntax indicate the narrator’s intent to dem- onstrate the intense, pathological state of mind of the actor, without resorting to explicit commentary.
MEDIATION: the predominant commitment to the spatial and temporal position of the actor as well as to his cognitive, emotional and normative position is amplified during mediation processing. However, in its actual- ization of the semiotic disposition the narratorial instance upholds its claim to perform representational operations which transcend the actorial disposition.
The following presents another example from Döblin’s text:
[a] He was paying, paying for his mysterious guilt. [b] He was performing divine service with the buttercup, [c] and the calm businessman asserted now that each person had his own religion; [d] one had to assume a personal position to an ineffable God. There were things that not everybody could understand. [e] A trace of suffering had appeared in the gravity of his monkey’s face; his corpulence had also decreased, his eyes became deep set. [f] The flower, like a conscience, watched over his actions, stringently, from the most important to the smallest everyday deeds.
This is an example for a type 2 constellation (“constrained narratorial rep- resentation”). Passages of reflector bound co-vision in [a], [d] and [f] alternate with passages of “unconstrained narratorial representation” [c] and [e], which include the option of introspection and commentary. In be- tween we find passages of gradual transformation from actorial to nar- ratorial profiling of the three dimensions [b].
The summary effect is one of a medium-status which oscillates be- tween “unconstrained narratorial representation” and “mixed narratorial / actorial representation” with gradual transitions. The segments of overlap of the three dimensions change from sentence to sentence. A precise defi- nition of “who sees?” and “who speaks?” is only possible in a few promi- nently marked positions within this constant flow.
Figure 6: DNS Oscillating Between the Extremes of Type A/B-Mediation
5 Outlook
At this stage our DNS model is a first draft which obviously requires re- finement in terms of its design and the analytical categories derived there from. In the current volume the contributions by Markus Kuhn and Sa- bine Schlickers demonstrate how a literature based Genettian descriptive apparatus can be fruitfully applied to other media: it remains to be seen whether the narratological DNS model and its typology, too, extend in relevance beyond text based representations. However, we believe that two particular characteristics might make our model a strong candidate for such transmedial application: one, its constituent process dimensions and functional parameters “perception––reflection––mediation” do not show the usual bias for a particular medium of representation, nor for vis- ual metaphors. Two, the DNS model is designed to account for the gener- ic as well as the historical dimension of narrative: it conceptualizes the dynamics of narrative processing as one that governs all narrative speci- men, yet it always remains susceptible to change and creative “mutation” itself.
References
Currie, Mark (2007). About Time. Narrative, Fiction and the Philosophy of Time. Edin- burgh: Edinburgh UP.
Genette, Gérard (1980). Narrative Discourse. Tr. J. E. Lewin. Oxford: Blackwell. – (1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. Tr. J. E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell UP.
Grabienski, Olaf et al. (2006). “Stimmen-Wirrwarr? Zur Relation von Erzählerin- und Figuren-Stimmen.” A. Blöhdorn et al. (eds). Stimme(n) im Text. Narratologische