Inventing Unnatural Narratives

Abstract

Inventing Unnatural Narratives Henrik Skov Nielsen (bio) Brian Richardson is a dear colleague with whom I feel closely theoretically associated. His work on supplementing theoretical narrative models to better accommodate anti-mimetic, experimental, and strange narratives has been very influential. In addition, he is a reader if there ever was one, and his literary knowledge spans more than two centuries and several [End Page 467] vastly different literary cultures. If you ever wonder if a certain type of narrative exists, like, say, a second-person narrative in future tense, or a first-person-plural narrative told by a pack of dead dogs, then Richardson is the one person in the world who will know. Richardson’s generosity is huge—personally as well as professionally—and his Target Essay in this volume attests to the fact. He shows an admirable overview of the theoretical landscape and the work of a range of scholars whom he treats with great understanding and generosity in a true academic spirit. I feel grateful for his respectful and insightful engagement with my work. I hope this reply will succeed in keeping to the same spirit. In the Target Essay, Richardson, in line with his thinking generally, describes unnatural narrative theory in the opening lines as: Unnatural narrative theory is the theory of fictional narratives that defy the conventions of nonfictional narratives and of fiction that closely resembles nonfiction. It theorizes fiction that displays its own fictionality, and focuses on works that break (or only partly enter into) the mimetic illusion. (385) He also aptly states that: In most models of narrative theory, both ancient and modern, there has been little consideration of or space for highly imaginative, experimental, anti-realistic, impossible, or parodic figures and events. Instead, we generally find a pronounced inclination or even a strong bias in favor of mimetic or realistic concepts; often, fictional characters, events, and settings are analyzed in the same terms or perspectives that are normally used for actual persons, events, and settings. (386) I completely agree with his assessment that narrative theory—and literary theory broadly speaking for that matter—is built upon taking the actual and nonfictional as the horizon of expectations, as well as upon an unjustified and pre-theoretical transfer of real-world assumptions to readings of literature and fiction. However, my one point of disagreement or supplementation is to say that this holds true not only for anti-mimetic works (in Richardson’s sense of the word “anti-mimetic”), but for any and all works that use the invention associated with and possible in fictional discourse to explore options from which non-inventing communication is prevented. [End Page 468] In this article I suggest a fresh view on the relationship between the unnatural and the fictional by exploring the affordances of fictionality. My response is somewhat similar to Stefan Iversen’s in this volume, and I agree with his skepticism about Richardson’s notion of fiction and fictionality, just as I am sympathetic to his suggestion to talk about the unnatural as a rhetorical device. My own argument, though, takes a different route by saying that the imposing of real-world limitations is illegitimate not only when it comes to anti-mimetic works but to a fairly large percentage of fictional works. In one sense it generalizes Richardson’s claim, but it does so by questioning some of the premises on which it rests. First, I examine the relationship between the unnatural and the anti-mimetic and between realism and fictionality, then argue that fictionality has to do with invention and therefore—not necessarily results in but—allows for a transgression of the limitations of non-inventive discourse. This has many theoretical consequences, of which I outline two: the detrimentality of the concept of fictional narrators and of the idea that narrative is always past. I conclude that fictional and unnatural narratives are not less prototypical than their nonfictional counterparts. First, one can ask why we would need the very concept of the unnatural if it is completely synonymous with the anti-mimetic. Richardson deliberately equates the two concepts: I try to carefully distinguish unnatural, or antimimetic narratives from those that are simply nonmimetic. (“Unnatural...