ImaginingDe Reand the Symmetry Thesis of Narration

Abstract

A recurring topic in the study of narratives is the question of the symmetry of narration across different media. Readers and critics are generally familiar with the features and theoretical agents of literary narration: the fictional narrators of literary works, implied authors, literary point of view, plotting, and so on. But philosophers dealing with artworks in other media are still sorting through the possibility of finding analogues to our models from literary works. Is narration in film or in comics (and so on) structurally like narration in literature, or is there some fundamental difference apart from media constraints? According to the symmetry thesis, narration in narrative artworks is identical with respect to its structural features, regardless of the medium in which the work is crafted.1 As with any appeal to similarity, there are symmetries between narration in literature and narration in other media; there are asymmetries as well. A defense or a debunking of the symmetry thesis of narration is a project for this generation of philosophers of art, and it is certainly possible that we will discover that while the symmetry thesis (conceived broadly) is false, there are nonetheless interesting and philosophically revealing symmetries to be noted. With that caveat in mind, in this article I defend one piece of the symmetry thesis; I argue that narration across media is symmetrical with respect to the existence of overarching fictional narrators. Regardless of the medium in which a narrative is presented, I claim that we are prescribed to imagine a fictional narrator for a narrative work N if and only if we are prescribed to imagine de re of the text of N that it occurs within the world of the fiction generated by N. Further, I argue that this is a robust claim with respect to films, comic strips, and dance; there are fictional narrators (both explicit and implicit) in films and there is the possibility of fictional narrators in comic strips and dance works, so this biconditional is not satisfied merely trivially. I conclude with a brief discussion of embedded narration in literature and film, which adds further intuitive support to my biconditional claim.