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Conclusion
Fludernik describes the difference between her own (natural narratological) approach and unnatural narrative theory by arguing that she tend[s] to concentrate on the overall taste, ignoring some of the ingredients, while we seek to savour the tinge of spice that conflicts with the overall familiar blandness of the pudding. Indeed, we all feel that a focus on unnatural elements is particularly fascinating and can enrich the appreciation of the polysemic make-up of many types of narrative. Nevertheless, we would all like to describe the relationship between Fluderniks natural narratology and our unnatural narratology in terms of complementarity. For us, the unnatural and the natural are equally important. Common to all the approaches within unnatural narratology is (1) a fascination with highly implausible, impossible, unreal, otherworldly, outrageous, extreme, outlandish, and insistently fictional narratives and their structure; (2) the urge to interpret them by addressing the question of what they might potentially mean; and (3) an interest in examining the relationship between these specific narratives and all other narratives. We insist on the importance and extent of the unnatural in narratives from antiquity to postmodernism, and we remain convinced of the need to include attention to these narratives within narratology even if this means that we must significantly expand or reconfigure some of the basic categories of current narrative theory.
Endnotes
1. We would like to thank James Phelan for giving us the opportunity to respond to Fluderniks article and also for his great comments on an earlier version of our response. We are of course responsible for all remaining infelicities.
Works Cited
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