Abstract
In this paper I will envisage the relationship between narrative modalities and point of view with the help of the narratological theory of Christo Todorov, who is a representative of the Bulgarian Guillaumist school. First, I will point to the multimodality of narrative modal logic with its combination of different types of modal categories (alethic, deontic, volitive, etc.). Then I will introduce Christo Todorov’s distinction between modal and transmodal categories, according to which modality (ability, desire, obligation) is what characterises the actions and transmodality (perception, emotion, intellection) is what characterises the subject of action. Along with Todorov I will claim that there are
 both modal and transmodal points of view, but unlike him I will define the point of view based not on the subject-image but on the directedness it introduces. My point will be that there is a double direction of the point of view: on the one hand, the direction of the subject to the object, and, on the other, the direction from one modality to another. This double direction, I will argue, is at the very basis of narrative logic, or of what I would call the ‘narrative potentiality.’
Highlights
In this paper I will envisage the relationship between narrative modalities and point of view with the help of the narratological theory of Christo Todorov, who is a representative of the Bulgarian Guillaumist school
I will point to the multimodality of narrative modal logic with its combination of different types of modal categories
I will introduce Christo Todorov’s distinction between modal and transmodal categories, according to which modality is what characterises the actions and transmodality is what characterises the subject of action
Summary
The present paper is a part of a larger research project aimed at reconsidering the problem of literary potentiality by means of a literary model theory. The more one pays attention to the characteristics of the literary works in the process of building a working model of them, the more one realises that it would be pertinent to speak of a knot of potentialities of different kinds, and not just one potentiality From this perspective the question regarding narrative modalities is of great significance. One can speak of a specific narrative potentiality whose laws are determined by the incorporation of social conventions and cultural attitudes as narrative modalities in the work These narrative modalities direct the logic of the story so that after certain moves are made, other possible moves turn out to be excluded and are no longer acceptable.[2] Exhausting the narrative potentiality would mean the end of the story.[3] Such an end may seem unlikely in the field of literature, where there is freedom to cross boundaries and invent the impossible. In this I will employ the theoretical basis provided by the Bulgarian Guillaumist School, and the theoretical heritage of Christo Todorov, whose work, while close to Greimasian semiotics, proposes a different conception of the role of modality in narrative texts
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