Narratologia
Contributions to Narrative Theory
Ed. by Jannidis, Fotis / Martínez, Matías / Pier, John / Schmid, Wolf (executive editor)
ISSN 1612-8427
Narratology deals with narration. Narration plays an important role not only in fictional texts. The perception and representation of reality are phenomena of daily life, a fact underlining the fundamental nature of narrativity and the anthropological relevance of the discussion of narratological questions. Moreover, the currently dominant semiotic notion of culture defining all cultural phenomena as ‚text' calls for a descriptive and analytical instrument conceptualized and developed with regard to texts.
The topic of this new series - NARRATOLOGIA - is the challenge of elaborating a precise definition of narratology, its subject matter, objectives and scientific status. Another central concern of NARRATOLOGIA is the extension of the traditional scope of narrative theory. Narratology has traditionally narrowed its focus to questions concerned with the ‚narrative situation' and compositional structure (‚Bauformen'). The objective of the studies in this series is a broader ‚science of narration' understood as the comprehensive activity of modelling and representing events. The Hamburg Narratology Research Group (www.icn.uni-hamburg.de ) acknowledges the fundamental importance of narration for all cultural phenomena - which has not been sufficiently taken into account in traditional research into narratives.
At the same time in this series the contribution of literary studies to interdisciplinary narratology ought to be emphasised. Human and social sciences usually employ concepts associated with literature in their narratological analyses; their narratological approaches can therefore be understood as derivatives of models developed in literary studies.
Following the heyday of narratology in the 60s and 70s under the auspices of the socalled ‚linguistic turn' and its decline in the 80s, a new interest in narratological problems is currently emerging in international research. This interest is defined against the backdrop of a much broader horizon, which can be sketched by the following keywords: anthropological conditions for narration; narration and identity; fiction-faction; narration in non-canonical genres; hybridization of narration (narrative phenomena in poetry, poetic tendencies in narrative prose); film narration; narration in pictorial media; narrative hypertexts. All these new narratological questions and problems will be discussed in the volumes of NARRATOLOGIA.
