The Genre of Trolls - Doria

tional structure and motifs of the story; I am not claiming that the performers
invented the narratives or that they are responsible for their every
detail in the same way as literary authors might be, momentarily disregarding
the controversy over intentionality. Yet in choosing to narrate the stories,
they assume some responsibility for the shaping of the texts, and they
put their own stamp on the narratives. The narrator therefore partly corresponds
to the author-function, an impersonal, narratological slot that is
nevertheless filled by a particular individual. Both aspects are relevant in
the ensuing discussion.
Concerning genre, I have just devoted the preceding chapter to demonstrating
its active construction in narration. I have not abandoned that
point of departure; in this chapter my ambition is to investigate the construction
of genre in terms of unfinalizability rather than of intertextual
gaps. As I believe unfinalizability is an important ingredient in narratives
of the supernatural viewed as a genre, the stress will be on more orthodox
renditions of such stories.
7.2 The Terrors of Unfinalizability
In his discussion of the spatial whole of the hero, Bakhtin gives an example
of the functioning of the surplus of vision, which is illuminating in many
ways. It has particular significance for the narrative to be analyzed below,
and it deserves to be quoted in full:
Lorsque je contemple un homme situé hors de moi et face à moi, nos horizons concrets,
tels qu’ils sont effectivement vécus par lui et par moi, ne coïncident pas. Aussi
près de moi que puisse se trouver cet autre, je verrai et je saurai toujours quelque chose
que lui-même, de la position qu’il occupe, et qui le situe hors de moi et face à moi, ne
peut pas voir: les parties de son corps inaccessibles à son propre regard—sa tête, son
visage, l’expression de ce visage —, le monde auquel il a le dos tourné, tout un ensemble
d’objets et de rapports qui, en fonction du rapport respectif dans lequel nous pouvons
nous situer, sont accessibles à moi et inaccessibles à lui. Lorsque nous nous regardons
l’un l’autre, deux mondes différents se reflètent dans la pupille de nos yeux. (Bakhtine
1984: 44) 32
32 “When I contemplate a person situated outside of me and in front of me, our concrete
horizons, such as they are actually experienced by him and me, do not coincide. How-
ever close to me that other can find himself, I will always see and know something that
he, from the position he occupies and that situates him outside of me and in front of me,
cannot see: the parts of his body inaccessible to his own gaze—his head, his face, the
The Terrors of Unfinalizability 257