Abstract
Unnatural narrative becomes a popular theory in literary criticism. In 2016, No. 4 issue of Style is a special issue on Brian Richardson’s Target Essay “Unnatural Narrative Theory”. Narratologists such as Marie-Laure Ryan, Shen Dan, James Phelan have responded actively to this new paradigm in narrative theory. In spite of its popularity, unnatural narrative remains controversial because of its diversified definitions, the hard-to-identified manifestations of unnaturalness, and its various interpretive strategies. Accordingly, this paper tries to comb the existing literature and provide a systematic review on the definitions, the manifestations, and the interpretive strategies of unnatural narrative theory.
Highlights
Unnatural narrative is a newly-developed theory in the recent two decades
Unnatural narrative becomes a popular theory in literary criticism
Its multiface, hybridity, and heteroglossia allow scholars to delve into different aspects of unnatural narrative, including unnatural characters, unnatural spaces, unnatural time lines, unnatural emotions, unnatural minds, unnatural metalepses, unnatural acts of narration, and unnatural narrators
Summary
Unnatural narrative is a newly-developed theory in the recent two decades. American narratologist Herman (2013) observes that unnatural narratology has become “an emergent strand of work in narrative theory” (p. ix). In this new field, great contributions have been made by such specialists as Jan Alber, Brian Richardson, Henrik Skov Nielsen, Rüdiger Heinze, Stefan Iversen, Maria Mäkelä, and Per Krogh Hansen. Great contributions have been made by such specialists as Jan Alber, Brian Richardson, Henrik Skov Nielsen, Rüdiger Heinze, Stefan Iversen, Maria Mäkelä, and Per Krogh Hansen They make unnatural narrative prevalent enough to warrant scholars‟ attention. Quite a few scholars still hold a not-so-positive attitude toward it because there is no agreed standard against which to judge what is unnatural narrative. Such being the case, it is urgent to carry out a scientific and systematic review on this emerging. This review paper aims to delineate the diversified definitions of unnatural narrative, the manifestations of unnaturalness, and the interpretive strategies of unnatural narrative, hoping to make a scientific review on the theory
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