Postclassical Narratology Research Articles

Jegingger’s Ahmad Tohari: A re-narrated based on sacrilege and social disorganization

This research examines the Jegingger, novel written by Ahmad Tohari (JAT) which highlights the banal life of a family (palm trees climbers). JAT was re-narrated as exploiting the tension between the economy and family ties, whether ideally economic activities are separate (industrial economy) or integrated with the family (subsistence). Cultural establishments are mutually contested: the subsistence culture of traditional society is challenged by the productive economy, or conversely, the productive economy is challenged by the banal subsistence economy of traditional society. The methodology of postclassical narratology—exploring and explaining cultural manifestations and then exposing chronological sequences-was used to structure the vulnerability or resilience of banal communities in maintaining social ties. A subsistence economy with its characteristics of low productivity because it tends to be a cultural activity—not economic. It contains vulnerabilities seen from two sides: 1) banal agencies that do not have literacy and competence in carrying out subsistence professions have the potential to commit malpractice; 2) low productivity limits access to health facilities. These two weaknesses become obstacles to maintaining social ties. Sacrilege—abuse of sacred symbols—which was triggered by the malpractice of coconut climbing, has caused social disorganization—the loss of basic family and community affection—becoming a hub for the idea of raising awareness of the importance of the power of knowledge and materials in supporting traditional community ties. Mastery of material, especially in massive amounts (1.5 billion diamond necklaces), can transform a banal agency into a powerful one.

Deconstructing Digital Rhetoric to Face Geopolitical Challenges: A Social Media Narrative Analysis Framework

Skyrocketing technological advancement along with changes in environment dynamics allowed people, states and governments to influence each other’s diplomacy, security and international relations, using words and images, strings of events, to construct narratives. The rhetoric of power and conflict is distributed in chameleonic volatile environments, targeting members of the society to challenge security status and power balance, while new media instruments feed people`s thirst for information to challenge their beliefs into tailoring attitudes and behaviours. Defined by many as a “portrayal of events surrounding change” (Dunford and Jones, 2000) or as “central feature of modern influencing across borders (Wagnsson and Lundström, 2023) in a continuous “battle”, (Van Noort, 2017), strategic narratives bear multiple meanings, generated by the versatility of the digital dissemination channels. Understanding these meanings enlighten many directions, like international relations, diplomacy and politics, resulting in risk-free engagement, vulnerability- awareness and controlled decision-making policies, just by using narrative analysis as the appropriate instrument. However, the classical analytical models do not provide enough lenses to grasp all the components generating meaning in a digitally disseminated content and many features are thus ignored, mutilating paramount intelligence otherwise needed to complete the picture. That is why, this paper advances a model framework for a digital narrative analysis that looks at components of the textual narrative backed by the features of the environment, the characteristics of the audience and the dynamics of the dissemination, coupled with more recent social media metrics. To this end, we reviewed literature on Russian formalism (Propp, 1928), (Tomashevsky, 1965) structuralist narratology (Todorov 1969, Genette 1988, Bal 1977), poststructuralism (Chatman,1978) and postclassical narratology (Herman, Fludernik, 1999) to the most recent digitally related approaches (Georgakopoulou, 2020), (Bal, 2021) and then advanced our analysis framework that adds specific traits which social media environments enhance. We thus intend to contribute to the large body of literature with an analytical model, to render a mould of the strategic narratives in the security, defence, politics and international relations.. This paper is part of a larger study, the framework will be piloted in further research, where data will be gathered to validate the model.

Focalization, Subjectivity, and Magic(al) Realism in “Night in the Woods”

The main aim of our analysis is to consider the use and function of focalization in Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall, 2017) and the resulting magic(al) realism subjectivity of perception and fluidity of the gameworld in the framework of post-classical narratology. Our suggestion is that the specific ludonarrative features and functions of the game and its playable protagonist, Mae Borowski, pose questions pertaining to the ontological status of the gameworld, making it an in-between, undetermined magic(al) realism space. Taking into account the conventional formulas and themes utilized in the game, it has already been discussed as an American story following the tradition of the so-called Rust Belt Gothic. This approach, albeit highly accurate, fails to exhaust the possibility that the events presented in the game, specifically in the fourth act, are only subjectively perceived by the protagonist/focalizer, Mae Borowski. In our text, we discuss the potential markers of subjectivity present in the game, with a focus on the game music and soundscape.

Faktografija i fikcija - ogledavanja u romanu Vreme smrti Dobrice Ćosića

The subject of this paper is the analysis of Dobrica Ćosić's novel A Time of Death I-IV (1972-1979), primarily from the perspective of possible worlds theory. One of the most important Serbian novels about the First World War, which critics have frequently defined as an epic novel, was inspiring for our research for at least two reasons: the first lies in the fact that historiographic metafiction is still the most prominent literary current in Serbian novelistic production, and the second is that contemporary readers have returned to Ćosić through intensive film adaptations in the recent years. The analysis and survey of the relationship between the factographic and fictional is precisely what led to the illumination and better understanding of the contemporary readers' attitude towards the so-called NEO-historical novel, which, according to Tihomir Brajović, began with Dobrica Ćosić. An interpretation of the characters in terms of possible worlds theory is at the center of attention, particularly the function of extratextual narrative identities of military leaders, statesmen, politicians, and warriors (Nikola Pašić, Aleksandar Karađorđević, Radomir Putnik, Stepa Stepanović, Živojin Mišić, Petar Bojović, Apis, and Stanislav Vinaver, among others). The specific aim of this paper is to understand the creative process whereby the characters were transformed and shaped as they made the transition from fact to fiction and, in this context, to analyze the documentary and artistic function of different types of texts that are incorporated into the narrative fabric of the novel. In particular, the author's auto-poetic comments are deemed particularly relevant to unlocking the process of metamorphosis of the historical into the fictional. Two more questions are addressed as separate research challenges: (1) the importance of the specific way in which the author constructs the so-called historical characters to form national identity in the novel; and (2) the more general issue of historical truth, with particular regard to the nature of historiographic narrative. The methodological starting point for the interpretation of the characters is provided by the tenets of postclassical (cognitive) narratology, with priority given to Hilary Dannenberg's typology of transworld identities.

Narrating Agency and a Reflective Self in “Asymmetry” by Lisa Halliday

Advancements in modern “post-classical narratology” have undergone unprecedented growth in the last two decades, giving rise to various directions of narratological research within the cognitive and diachronic domains. One such approach is biosemiotics, which appeared at the crossroads of semiotics and cultural biology and combines a set of definitions for meaning-making and agency construction in philosophy, linguistics, culture, and all complex systems. Agency here represents any kind of subject activity (e.g., epistemic, cognitive, etc.) which is possible to determine by the indices and icons of subjectivity on the level of the storyline development and then compared at the level of the discourse. From the biosemiotic approach, the narrative discourse as a complex system is characterized by the meaning emergence and telic behavior of all its constituent parts striving at closure and a certain goal, i.e., having some sort of agenda (Mendoza-Collazos&Zlatev, 2022). Thus, the agency is supplementary to the acting of the self-reflecting subject in terms of intentionality, self-referentiality, and self-governing activity. Following the above definition of agency, this paper examines the possible ways of applying Peircian triadic sign theory to narrative agency construction in the contemporary novel “Asymmetry” (2018) by Lisa Halliday, operating with the notions of embodied or bodily agency (Caracciolo&Kukkonen, 2021) and biosemiotic agency (Tønnessen, 2015). Seeing subjectivity related to perspective-taking in the narrative discourse, it is important to trace the distribution of the icons and indexes of subjectivity on three levels: semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic.

Narrative Agency in Maurice Blanchot’s Récits? A Case Study on Death Sentence and Awaiting Oblivion (I)

This article investigates a type of narrative that is unacknowledged by classical narratology and hardly included in postclassical narratology studies: that of lyrical and philosophical prose, often containing elements belonging to the dramatic genre. Starting from Brian McHale’s urge to address Monika Fludernik’s exclusion of poeticity from narratology and Jan Alber’s inclusion of any poem in narrativity, I use different definitions and clarifications from classical and postclassical narratology (Vladimir Propp, Greimas, Roland Barthes, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Sarah Drews Lucas, Gerald Prince, James Phelan, Peter Hühn, Jens Kiefer, Hanna Meretoja, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, John Shoptaw, Samuel Caleb Wee, Roy Sommer, Manfred Jahn, Roland Weidle), also bringing elements on agency from drama (via Martin Esslin’s notion of the “Theater of the Absurd”) in order to find the best tools to explain how Blanchot’s Death Sentence and Awaiting Oblivion elude narrative agency. On the one hand, these récits challenge the usual borders between literature and philosophy and, on the other hand, they refuse taxonomic boundaries such as what we understand by literary genres. Thus, my article focuses on the lack of narrative agency in these texts, a notion that is paradoxically connected to the affirmation of passion and passivity, which characterizes the experience of literature and death alike, often in the form of the neuter. I relate Blanchot’s neuter to Emmanuel Levinas’s il y a and I discuss the formula “X without X” as not purely privative but as a pre-critical notion which Blanchot used in order to emphasize the divide passion/passivity/action/activity. While in my discussion of Death Sentence, I define the unnarratable and the difference between the two stories that make it up, completing each other and taking the reader from the realm of life to the realm of death and back to life, in the section on Awaiting Oblivion, I deal with the philosophical language and dramatic devices of the text. With a preamble on its themes: waiting, forgetting, and speaking continuously (or “blathering”, to use Samuel Beckett’s term), I finally put Awaiting Oblivion in relation to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

Narrative Time in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games: A Genettian Perspective

This article utilizes Gérard Genette’s (1972/1980) narrative discourse theory in order to explore the temporal narrative strategies deployed in The Hunger Games (2008), the first novel in the popular series by the American writer Suzanne Collins. Though Genette’s comprehensive theory includes such elements as time, mood, and voice, the main focus of the study will be narrative time, whose elements order, duration, and frequency and their subcategories are first defined and then applied to the analysis of this novel. Genette’s theory of narrative discourse has almost invariably been considered as a purely formal one, a highly systematic classification of terms designed to describe narrative structures, without focusing on the social and cultural factors. In contrast, the present analysis aims at exploring both the formal and the communicative components of Genette’s theory, with a view to bridging the gap between old classical and current postclassical narratology.

A Tale of Two Theories

A Tale of Two Theories

Handbook of Narrative Analysis by Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck

Reviewed by: Handbook of Narrative Analysis by Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck Kai Mikkonen Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck. Handbook of Narrative Analysis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019. 424 pp. Like its first edition, the much-extended revised edition of Luc Herman’s and Bart Vervaeck’s Handbook of Narrative Analysis (hereafter HNA) seeks to serve many objectives at once. HNA is, first, a survey of major trends in narrative theory from structuralism until the present. Second, it is a textbook that illustrates the practical uses and possibilities of these theories and analytical approaches based on them, with the help of a set of short literary texts. Thus, the authors’ stated purpose is to “make narrative theory available to those who are interested in close and ideological relevant readings of literary prose” (10). Furthermore, but in a much more limited sense, HNA is a history of narrative theory within the framework of narratology, from structuralism and classical narratology to present-day postclassical concerns, involving, for instance, rhetorical and cognitive narratology, possible-worlds semantics, cultural narratology, and the natural vs. unnatural narrative debate. Finally, HNA also puts forward a research policy statement about how narratological analysis should be conceived and practiced. These objectives, and the book’s tripartite division into Before and Surrounding Structuralism, Structuralism, and Postclassical Narratology, have not changed since the first 2005 edition, which, in its turn, was based on the Dutch-language original Vertelduivels: Handboek verhaalanalyse (2001). The first two chapters about structuralist and classical narratology have also remained intact in size and subject matter. By contrast, the last chapter, on postclassical narratology, has been greatly expanded and has gained new dominance. Having more than doubled in size, this section now constitutes roughly two-thirds of the book. Another evident change is the inclusion of Dutch cartoonist Ge Wasco’s one-page cartoon “City” (2015) with the two short texts that were also used in the first edition, Charlotte Mutsaers’s “Pegasian” (1996) and Gerrit Krol’s “The Map” (1998), which serve as examples and as testing grounds for the theoretical concepts and analytic approaches. The comics appendix is a significant gesture towards a more intermedial emphasis and inclusiveness, which is also reflected in the discussion devoted to cyber narratology and comics narratology. HNA can be congratulated for featuring a wealth of contemporary Central and Northern European narrative theories and studies. For teachers of narrative theory and analysis, there are many valuable discoveries to be made and old friends to re-connect with. Personally, for instance, I was grateful for being reminded of Philippe Hamon’s work on ideology in the novel, and for discovering Liesbeth Korthals Altes’s and Vincent Jouve’s approaches to ideology and the effect of value (Jouve’s effet-valeur), which are to some extent a continuation of that work. HNA also includes several diagrams that can be used in teaching (I only wish there were more). The three short literary texts, and their continuous analysis from various perspectives, are also one of the strengths of HNA, even if a question may arise as to the scope and overall effect of these mini-analyses. [End Page 179] Since so many things can be reasonably said about these texts, or abstracted from them, considering the various theoretical frameworks, it would have been interesting to hear how the writers perceive the issues of relevance and compatibility of interpretation in a more general sense. The statement that interpretation means “the effort to connect the content” of a literary text with its form (8) is not altogether satisfactory. Given the authors’ emphasis on the features of individual narratives — as stated in the introduction, the concluding remarks, and several times along the way — some more hermeneutical self-reflection might also have been relevant to what it means to discover the peculiarities, oddities, and complexities of individual narrative texts. By spending most of their time in paraphrasing existing narrative theories within a particular research tradition, or under a certain theme, while at the same time emphasizing the complexity and incommensurability of individual narratives, Herman and Vervaeck are in a sense loyal to the fundamental tension in narratology between the generalizable narrative form and the specific text. The...

Contemporary French and Francophone Narratology ed. by John Pier

Reviewed by: Contemporary French and Francophone Narratology ed. by John Pier Maria Mäkelä Contemporary French and Francophone Narratology, ed. John Pier. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2020. 237 pp. John Pier has taken on the challenging and important role of a transparadigmatic and transcultural mediator in literary narratology, a task typically falling on the shoulders of most well-versed and meticulous scholars. The value of this work is emblemized in the recent volume titled Contemporary French and Franco-phone Narratology, edited by Pier and featuring some of the most interesting and prominent scholars of narrative working in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada, all of them mostly publishing in French. The volume comes across as a counter-narrative to contemporary Anglophone narratology and particularly its master narrative of the triumph of context-sensitive English-language (post-classical) theories over the technical, detached French (classical) structuralism. Not only Pier’s Introduction but also many of the chapters construct French and francophone narratology as the often misunderstood Other, while English-language postclassical narratologies, practiced not only by Anglo-American colleagues but also non-English-speaking narratologists in, for example, Germany and the Nordic countries, are positioned as the dominant practice. Interestingly, Pier even writes that “few French-speaking researchers would describe themselves as feminist, postcolonial, rhetorical, cognitivist, or unnatural narratologists . . . it would be difficult to conclude that the postclassical narratologies have decisively taken root in francophone narrative theory” (3). By constructing this compelling counter-narrative of francophone scholars as free spirits who refuse to conform to the paradigms set by the US-dominated international scholarly community, Pier and his colleagues are well positioned to retell the history of French narratology from Greimas, Barthes, Todorov, and Genette to 21st century optional-narrator theories. The volume succeeds in [End Page 182] challenging such entrenched disciplinary ideas as stark dichotomies between text-centeredness and theories of readerly dynamics. Moreover, the retelling of disciplinary history from the francophone perspective deepens one’s understanding of the myriad ways in which non-literary, and especially linguistic and hermeneutic, narrative theories have shaped and challenged very basic narrato-logical categories, such as voice, narrator, and the story/discourse distinction. The volume attests that one of the strong points of narratology could in fact be this kind of metatheoretical and diachronic self-reflection, a practice that leads to a more fine-grained and adaptive understanding of our key concepts and scholarly practices. It must be said, however, that while the general outlook of the volume is highly metatheoretical, self-reflexive, and even self-critical, fertile comparisons between Anglophone and French theories of literary narratology that would have highlighted the added value of French theories for those currently ignorant are not sufficiently followed through. A case in point is the volume editor John Pier’s own chapter on French discourse analysis as a poorly recognized forerunner of postclassical “contextual-ist” narratologies. The key concept here is enunciation, originating in the work of linguist and semiotician Émile Benveniste and successfully imported into literary studies by Dominique Maingueneau and Ruth Amossy. French discourse analysts have a strong tradition of focusing either on the occasion of uttering (enunciation) or on its linguistic, stylistic and generic traces in discourse. Pier makes a convincing case for this tradition’s methodologically rigorous take on context as both social and generic; yet little is said on the particular role of narrative in this tradition. Following Maingueneau, Pier makes a distinction between routine genres and auctorial, self-constituting genres of discourse: whereas routine genres are regulated by institutional settings, auctorial genres rest on their own self-constituting power. Narratives feature in both. Among auctorial genres, literature is listed along with science, religion, and philosophy. Yet the analytical consequences of the discourse-analytical approach for narrative fiction remain vague, which is mostly due to the lack of sustained case studies in Pier’s chapter. Moreover, a more elaborate comparison between, say, recent Anglophone theories of the rhetoric of fictionality would have concretized the benefits of a discourse-analytical approach to narrative fiction. When the alleged master narrative of Anglophone postclassical narratology is evoked, the result is sometimes confusing. Sylvie Patron’s chapter on pannarrator and optional-narrator theories...

The empire of the narrative: Plan making through the prism of classical and postclassical narratologies.

This article theorizes the "narrative turn" in urban planning studies, using Gérard Genette's work to differentiate first- and second-degree narratives. Genette defines the latter as paratexts that determine the public's reception of the former. The article assesses how second-degree narratives work with different perceptual regimes to construct the reception of the political vision of territory. To that end, it resorts to the recent work of postclassical narratology. Indeed, the latter is particularly interested in the way in which the narrative, in various forms, affects its addressee. Postclassical narratology allows us to renew the theory of narrative in urban planning by focusing on what hypothetically happens in the consciousness of the receiver of the narrative when he or she becomes aware of it. Consequently, the paper sheds light on an emerging aspect of the design process: disambiguating signals embedded in urban planning documents intended for a wider public.

Chinese Narrotologies

Chinese Narrotologies

The Transdisciplinary Encounter of Narratology and Visual Art in MMORPGs

The aim of this paper is to present and analyze visual elements of MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game) storyworlds as important aspects of both world-building and the immersion capacity of virtual worlds. MMORPGs are characterized by multi-user environments called ‘open worlds’, in which maps and geography of space play an important role. Geography and maps that represent these geographical forms in the game play a significant role in creating the worldness of virtual space and the narratives located in them. The same goes for the features of architecture, natural or outer space expanses. Visual elements contribute to the narrative in numerous ways, which is analyzed in detail using a transdisciplinary approach – the narratological apparatus and especially the shift towards postclassical narratology. Another, but not less important visual aspect that will be presented in the paper is the importance of character appearance, as well as clothing (armors) and equipment in the context of building character identity for themself (the player) and the way they present themselves to other players. All of these aspects indicate that visual space (geographical and architectural) as well as visual characteristics of the characters have an important role in storytelling, supporting the transmedial praxis of contemporary narrative forms. Article received: December 23, 2021; Article accepted: February 1, 2022; Published online: April 15, 2022; Original scholarly article

The Problem of Self-Presentation in the Modern Literary Process (“Narrative about the Author” in E. Simonova’s Interviews)

This article explores a particular version of the narrative of personal stories, i.e., the “narrative about the author”, which is indicative for the analysis of writers’ reflection on their role in modern Russian-language literature. The article aims to determine the specifics of the “narrative about the author”, show that it is formed in public discourse and conditioned by the existence of a narrative framework (a question-and-answer form of an interview that demonstrates public expectations from the creator). Public self-reflection captures the process of self-identification and modeling of the myth of verbal creative work in modern times. The event of the “narrative about the author” is an important change, after which they were able to define themselves as a writer (to name themselves). The author uses methods of classical and postclassical narratology, as well as personological and narrative psychology in the study of the “narrative about the author”. The study reveals that the “narrative about the author” occupies a borderline position with respect to fictionality, the narrator is non-trivial, they are both inside the event and outside it, combining personal attitude with social, cultural, and other conventions adopted about authorship. The article considers the “narrative about the author” with reference to an interview with the Ural poet E. Simonova. The empirical basis of the study is the interviews she gave from 2019 to 2022. In her interviews, Ekaterina Simonova creates an image of a “little poet”, a socio-psychological construct created under the influence of changes in the symbolic status of poetry in modern times, whose components are non-exclusivity and inclusion into everyday life. Within the narrative and within the limits of one response, one sees the formulation of a position, and in the comments given in parentheses, its ironic interpretation. As a result, the author concludes that in the interview with E. Simonova, a myth develops about the writer as an “everyday”, ordinary person who is built on a strategy of ironic sincerity, which is consistent with the artistic narrative of her poetry.

Narrative and experience: interdisciplinary methodologies between history and narratology

ABSTRACT This introduction discusses key elements in the connections between narrative and experience from the viewpoints of narratology and historical studies. The linguistic turn and the several narrative turns have brought narratology and historiography close together, and a key concept in this development has been experience. Postclassical narratology emphasizes experientiality as the core of narrative, and new trends in historiography foreground the salience of experience in social and cultural history. We consider how historical narratives can be located and interpreted, assess cooperation between narratology and history, and suggest possible lines for further collaboration. Whereas the linguistic turn in historical scholarship has produced extensive theoretical and philosophical discussions on the premises of writing history, we aim to promote a methodological application of recent narratological approaches to history that will help to answer concrete empirical questions. Simultaneously, historical research turns out to be a useful partner for narratological analysis, providing a necessary understanding of time- and situation-bound contexts for interpreting particular narratives and even more, showing that narratological schemes and models of explanations are not universal, but historically constituted.

Introduction: Time and Narrative, the Missing Link between the “Narrative Turn” and Postclassical Narratology?

Introduction: <i>Time and Narrative</i>, the Missing Link between the “Narrative Turn” and Postclassical Narratology?

Hacia un concepto de narratividad: cruces (posibles) entre su dimensión literaria, antropológica y cognitiva

This article suggests a conceptual reflection on narrativity and its role in different cultural spheres. Therefore, a dialogue between three traditions is proposed: literary, anthropological and cognitive, to bring some elements of the cognitive paradigm closer to the tradition of literary studies, literary theory and some authors that could be identified with philosophical anthropology. This approach pretends to critically examine some contemporary debates on narratives, post-classical narratology and bring these debates in the context of Latin American literary studies.

Stāstījuma jēdziens un tā adepti latviešu literatūrzinātnē

Keywords: stāstījums, vēstījums, Broņislavs Tabūns, Harijs Hiršs, narratology, Latvian literary scholarship This article is dedicated to the concept of narrative, exploring the origins of the concept, its character, and use in Latvian literary history and nowadays. The concept of narrative has telltale signs of an epistemological crisis: the meaning of concepts (including narrative) is regularly questioned and expanded. Independent of whether we view a narrative, at the level of microanalysis, as a chain of events (actions) linked by causality, or at the level of macroanalysis, as an ideological concept or an ingredient of cognitive processes, narrative is linguistic in origins and still retains that function. The sources of narratology in Latvian literary scholarship are found in the publications on the theory of fiction by Harijs Hiršs and Broņislavs Tabūns as early as the 1980s. The views of both theoreticians tend to impact the use of the words “vēstījums” (message) and “stāstījums” (narrative) in Latvian: Tabūns used “vēstījums”, whereas Hiršs has used both “vēstījums” and “stāstījums”, originally as synonyms, and later introducing a hierarchical relationship between the two. The different approaches have lead to confusion among literary scholars—to this day, both concepts are sometimes used as synonyms in scholarly literature. The etymology of words and context of their use indicate that ‘stāstījums’ is a more precise translation of the concept of “narrative” than “vēstījums”, for it satisfies the requirements of both classical and postclassical narratology.

An Issue of “Who Sees” the Fictional World: Teaching the Conceptual Evolution of Focalization

Narratology constitutes a vital component of literary criticism and theory. A prime goal of narratology teaching is to build a systematic conceptual framework of key narrative concepts for students. A good command of the core concepts of narrative theory ensures profound narratological textual criticism. Taking focalization as a case study for Chinese college students, this paper analyzes the evolution and current state of focalization theory with the aim of helping them to acquire a systematic conceptual framework of focalization theory. This paper adopts both synchronic and diachronic approaches to examine the conceptual evolution of focalization, focusing on the early exploration of focalization, the focalization study in classical and postclassical narratology, and the analysis of nonhuman focalization. Focalization is an issue of “who sees” which is often conflated with the issue of “who speaks” in the early stage of its conceptual evolution. Genette has made a distinction between them, and scholars of classical narratology developed variegated focalization theories. Postclassical narratology made major improvements, emphasizing readers’ reception and the context of focalization. Nonhuman focalization, a distinctive dimension of focalization theory, also counts as an important interpretative perspective concerning focalization for students. An elaborate discussion of the conceptual evolution of focalization seeks to reveal to students a multi-dimensional conception of focalization as a way to enhance their ability to perform a narratological reading of literary texts.

ВЛАДИМИРСТОЈШИН: ГЕНЕЗАЈЕДНОГCROSSOVER-а

The paper deals with thestatus of the children’s novels The Cinema in a Matchboxand The Champion Through the Windowby Vladimir Stojšin (1935– 591994) in relation to their affiliation with literature for all ages, i.e. crossover literature. Today, Stojšin is best known as a writer for children, although at the time when he published his first novel for young people, he had already published praised prose works of a very modern orientation. From the very beginning, his novels for children have been received as literature for all ages. As a writer for children, Stojšin remained largely attached to themes and motifs belongingtothe narrative worlds of his previous works. Focusing on the example of the transformation of a character of a prostitute from a novel for adults into the character of platonic love interest of the hero-narrator from thenovelsfor children, the text identifies the narrative devices by which this transformation was carried out. The conceptual apparatus of classical and postclassical narratology was used in the analysis.