Unnatural Narratology: Extension, Revisions, and Challenges ed. by Jan Alber and Brian Richardson (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Unnatural Narratology: Extension, Revisions, and Challenges ed. by Jan Alber and Brian Richardson Nozomi Irei Jan Alber and Brian Richardson, eds. Unnatural Narratology: Extension, Revisions, and Challenges. Ohio State UP, 2020. 232p. Reviews are published in alphabetical order according to the name of the author reviewed. We gratefully acknowledge the many review copies supplied by The Ohio State University Press for this issue. Jan Alber and Brian Richardson have compiled a thoughtfully diverse collection of essays as a follow-up to A Poetics of Unnatural Narrative (2013, co-edited with Henrik Skov Nielsen). The editors’ refreshing approach is apparent in their “Introduction,” which might surprise some readers who are looking for a summary of each chapter--yet, careful readers will immediately appreciate the rigorous overview of the recent landscape of unnatural narratology, various definitions of “the unnatural” and other terms (including differences in scholars’ definitions), and responses to critics of unnatural narratology. It is notable that each essay also clearly defines its use of the term “unnatural” relative to other scholars’ use of it. Summaries of the essays are saved for the “Afterword,” but this is not merely a shift in sequencing. Rather than lengthy summaries, the editors present thoughtful, fair responses to each contribution. This section makes the volume a truly engaging work. The editors offer meticulous explanations (with extensive footnotes) of why they agree/disagree and emphasize how each essay opens up possibilities for future engagement. As the “Introduction” describes, “unnatural narratology” might seem to be a “newfangled” approach, but as the essays demonstrate, unnatural narratology cannot be reduced to a study of postmodern fiction and its “deconstruction” of narrative structures. Indeed, references to more traditional texts, such as Shakespeare’s plays or those by other familiar writers like Brecht, end up proving just how “ubiquitous” the unnatural is. While some contributors state this explicitly, others do not. Nevertheless, even the latter, by dint of their analyses of a variety of textual fields and mediums--from novels, short stories, and films to staged performances, TV commercials, interactive [End Page 95] gamebooks, cartoons, and graphic narratives--make a strong argument for investigating the unnatural in textual fields where it may often be overlooked, at the expense of ignoring narrative intricacies and their larger implications. For instance, Richardson’s analysis of the “unnatural” (and its “u-effect” [156] à la Brecht) may offer new ways to consider Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt, beyond conventional discourses on alienation. Several contributions reframe traditional concepts of narratology, such as fabula, syuzhet, and diegesis, explaining how their analyses develop or challenge these concepts. There are also efforts to delineate the differences between concepts, for instance, of “nonmimetic” versus “anti-mimetic” or unnatural narration versus “magical realism.” Each essay, regardless of the historical placement of the analyzed text, highlights the implications for narrative studies that could not be investigated as long as we took for granted concepts of mimesis. In this way, the collection is tied to unnatural narratology’s post-structuralist heritage (insofar as starting as a response to postmodernist texts [1]) but expands the question beyond a binary opposition of mimetic versus non-mimetic--or, natural versus unnatural (10). The essays offer possibilities for (re)interpretations based on the developing concept of the unnatural, including that of challenging traditional concepts of mimesis--which also brings into play challenges to other concepts, such as “the probable” and “the possible.” This collection expands critical approaches to the unnatural to include a wide variety: feminism, affect studies, and “postcolonialism” (albeit the term is used carefully by Klein not as a “temporal” marker but to denote an “enhanced awareness of the colonial legacies” [54], since the status of being colonized is still a reality for many peoples). Unnatural Narratology is also rich in its analyses grounded on close readings of one text, as well as comparative analyses between genre, medium, national languages, philosophical grounding, or theoretical approaches. Furthermore, because of the wide-ranging textual fields analyzed, the volume resists coming across as a private dialogue among only a coterie of “unnatural narratologists.” Rather, its dialogue invites readers to consider the implications not only for narratology, but also for the broader problem of representation. In the interest of space...