Session 4

Question 1

What were the Learning Objectives for the fourth session?

Answer 1

Be able to define and explain:

1. The concept of the unnatural in the context of cognitive narratology.
2. The relationship between unnatural narratives and mimesis.
3. Jan Alber’s 9 strategies that readers purportedly employ to come to terms with the unnatural in narratives.
4. The history of the unnatural in narratives.
5. How the unnatural in postmodernism differs from earlier instances of the unnatural.

Question 2

When did the proliferation of impossibiliteis and unnatural narratology begin?

Answer 2

In postmodernist fiction (ca. late 1960s - late 1990s)

Question 3

What are questions to be asked when analyzing unnatural narratives?

Answer 3

1. How can we make sense of and interpret these impossibilities?
2. How are they related to the impossiblities of postmodernism?

Question 4

What does the term “unnatural” refer to?

Answer 4

1. The term “unnatural” denotes physically, logically or humanly impossible scenarios and events.
2. To be called unnatural, the represented scenarios or events have to be impossible by:
   - the known laws governing the physical world
   - accepted principles of logic
   - or standard anthropomorphic limitations of knowledge and ability.

Question 5

Define “Natural”

Answer 5

1. The “natural” is the foil against which we measure the unnatural.
2. The term “natural” denotes our knowledge of natural laws, logical principles and other cognitive parameters derived from our real-world experience of time, space and other human beings.

Question 6

Name the reading strategies we can apply to make sense of the unnatural.

Answer 6

1. The blending of frames
2. Generification
3. Subjectification
4. Foregrounding the thematic
5. Reading allegorically
6. Satirization and parody
7. Positing a transcendental realm
8. Do it yourself
9. The Zen way of reading

Question 7

What are the characteristics of The blending of frames?

Answer 7

Cognitively modern human beings have a remarkable, species-defining ability to pluck forbidden mental fruit - that is, to activate two conflicting mental structures and to blend them creatively into a new mental structure (Blending theory).

Question 8

What are the characteristics of the reading strategy “Generic Conventions”?

Answer 8

Many impossibilities in earlier narratives can be explained on the basis of generic (“genre”) conventions (e.g. time-travel in science-fiction, talking animals in fables etc.).

Question 9

What are the characteristics of the reading strategy “Reading events as Internal states”?

Answer 9

1. Some physically, logically or humanly impossible elements can simply be explained as parts of internal states (of character or narrators such as dreams, fantasis, visions or hallucinations.
2. This reading strategy is the only one that actually naturalizes the unnatural: it reveals the impossible to be something entirely natural, namely an element of somebody’s interiority.

Question 10

What are the characteristics of the reading strategy “Foregrounding the Thematic”?

Answer 10

The theme creates a scenario which explains the unnatural.

Question 11

What are the characteristics of the reading strategy “Reading allegorically”?

Answer 11

The unnatural scenario becomes readable in the context of an allegory that highlights the universal merits and dangers of love.

Question 12

What are the characteristics of the reading strategy “Satirization”?

Answer 12

The most important feature of satire is critique through exaggeration, and grotesque images of humiliation or ridicule may sometimes merge with the unnatural.

Question 13

What are the characteristics of the reading strategy “Positing a transcendental realm”?

Answer 13

We create a story realm in which such unnatural occurences become natural.

Question 14

What are the characteristics of the reading strategy “Do it yourself”?

Answer 14

1. Some logical impossibilities can be explained by assuming that “the contradictory passages in the text are offered to the readers as material for creating their own stories”. In such cases, the text serves as a construction
   kit that invites free play with its elements.
2. Such narratives use logically incompatible story elements
   to make us aware of suppressed possibilities; they allows us
   to choose the ones that we prefer for whatever reason.

Question 15

What are the characteristics of the reading strategy “The Zen Way of Reading”?

Answer 15

The Zen way of reading presupposes an attentive and stoic reader who repudiates the above-mentioned
explanations, and simultaneously accepts both the strangeness of unnatural scenarios and the feelings of
discomfort, fear, worry, and panic that they might evoke in her or him.

Question 16

Which two different manifestations of the Unnatural exist?

Answer 16

1. There are the physical, logical, or human impossibilities found in postmodernist narratives that have not yet been conventionalized, and thus still strike us as odd, strange, or defamiliarizing.
2. There are also impossibilities that have, over time, become familiar forms of narrative representation (such as speaking animals in beast fables)

Question 17

What was a typical form of an unnatural narrator in 18. century novels?

Answer 17

Speaking objects (Coins, slippers etc.)

Question 18

What is the role of the Unnatural in Literary History?

Answer 18

1. The unnatural allows a fresh perspective on literary history.
2. On the one hand, the unnatural is a hitherto neglected driving force behind the creation of new genres.
3. On the other hand, postmodernism is hardly the completely innovative and wholly unprecedented explosion of anti-mimeticism that certain critics consider it to be.

Question 19

What is the role of the Unnatural for postmodernism?

Answer 19

1. From the perspective of unnatural narratology, one can reconceptualize postmodernist narrratives as texts that not only consistently project unnatural scenarios and events.
2. In addition to that, they are part of an intertextual endeavor which radicalizes physical, logical or human impossibilities that have already been conventionalized in other genres and defamiliarizes these impossibilities again by transferring them to realist contexts.