Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses

22 Introduction
cultural studies, particularly foregrounding the question of narrative’s function
in social, historical, ideological, or psychological contexts. Rather than
merely analyzing how texts work, and which of their elements are responsible
for which meaning or design effects, the current emphasis lies on what these
narratives achieve in communication, which ideological or identity-related
messages they convey, what ‘cultural work’ (Tompkins 1986, Beck 2003) they
perform, and what possible effects they may engender in the real world. One
could, therefore, argue that all narratology nowadays is context-sensitive.
Fourth, we would like to propose that the cognitive model, which is one
of the many ongoing projects in the field, 18 is slowly establishing itself as a
new basis for ever-increasing areas of narratological research. The cognitive
model provides a useful explanatory framework which offers a potentially
empirical grounding for dealing with textual features. It has also introduced
to narrative studies some new terminology and concepts which are perhaps
apt to replace more traditional elements in the paradigm. Among such new
concepts one can point first and foremost to the notion of the frame, which
has now been generally absorbed into narratology much in the same way that
linguistic terminology (e.g., of deixis and temporal modes) was in classical
narratology. A second major adoption from cognitive science is prototype
theory, which is becoming more widely accepted in narrative studies and is
beginning to replace the former insistence on clear distinctions between narratological
categories. Deconstructive treatments of the binary oppositions
of classical narratology have helped to popularize a more relaxed attitude
towards classification. One could also count experientiality, originally proposed
by Fludernik in 1991 (see also 1996), as a cognitively based concept
that has meanwhile been adopted by a number of researchers such as Wolf
(2002) and Löschnigg (2006). A reliance on cognitivist and constructivist
principles is now common in postclassical narratology, for instance in recent
work by Ansgar Nünning (1998), Ralf Schneider (2000), Alan Palmer (2004),
Richard Walsh (2007), and Jochen Petzold (2008). 19 This emphasis on cognitive
issues is linked to the medial extension of narratology since the classical
model was unable to deal with many of the newer types of narrative, and the
cognitive approach offers a model which can accommodate linguistic storytelling
besides a host of other forms of narrative.
What we are arguing here is that, although there is no unified new methodology
in sight for postclassical narratology (nor do we plead for such a
18. So-called cognitive narratology is usually associated with Monika Fludernik, David
Herman, Manfred Jahn, and Lisa Zunshine.
19. See also Fludernik (2001) as well as Alber (2002, 2009a, 2009b, and forthcoming)
and Aldama (2003).