A Postclassical Narratology Author(s): Brian Richardson and David Herman Source: PMLA, Vol. 113, No. 2 (Mar.

, 1998), pp. 288-290 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/463366 . Accessed: 05/04/2011 10:14
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A Postclassical Narratology
To the Editor: Drawingon contemporary cognitive science, David Hermanmakes an impressive effort to rethinkthe conclusions of a numberof "classical" narratologists ("Scripts,Sequences, and Stories:Eleconcerningtext sequences and narrativity ments of a Postclassical Narratology,"112 [1997]: 1046-59). Two possible objections to Herman's largerproject immediately suggest themselves, however. One is the unidirectionality his accountof the changingand cumulativemoveof ment of literaryhistory("Theformalimpetus,the constitutivegesture,of literary fiction has been the rejection or at least the backgroundingof scripts in which priortexts were anchoredand the complementaryforegroundingof new scripts matchedto changingideas aboutnarrative" [1054]). The problemwith this kind of accountis thatit seems to have no place for the of unexpectedreappearances lost genresandthe generalhistoricalshort-circuiting that the history of literature constantly produces. Thus, Don Quixote indeed opens "witha semicomic indictmentof the delusive power of outmodedscripts, those of chivalricromance" (1054), but this model does not explainthe continued of Cervantes'sexample, which explicitly inspired subsequentwritersto power producecomparableindictmentsover several centuries,such as Lennox's A Female Quixote, Scott's Waverly, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and Faulkner's Old

Man. Despite the accumulation centuriesof literaryhistoryanddespitechanges of in historicalcircumstances, storystill needs to be told andits lesson relearned. this
Analogously, the fact that Diderot's Jacques lefataliste et son maitre, which

only intermittentlyinspiredinterestduringthe years after its publication,could be successfully (and faithfully) transformedinto a postmodernplay by Milan Kunderasuggests that Diderot's text responds to much more (or less) than its immediate historical matrix. More relevant to its diachronic situating than the encyclopedists' debateson free will and determinism,which Hermaninvokes, is Tristram Shandy,an inspirationalso of comparableresponsesfrom the untimely figures of Jean Paul, Machadode Assis, G. V. Desani, CabreraInfante,and Salman Rushdie. I must conclude with the admittedlyShandeanclaim that the hisdoes not proceedin anythinglike a simple diachronictrajectory; tory of narrative it folds back on itself unexpectedly and is constituted by chronological leaps, gaps, and repetitionsat least as much as by a steady temporalprogression.The is appropriate metaphorfor the historyof literature not the view from the bow of

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horizonbut rather a ship headingtowardan ever-receding a long snake in an odd spot, whose shape displays irregular loops and unexpectedpoints of contact. The second, more generalandmorefundamental problem lies with Herman'sattemptto produce a description of narrativepracticethat includes all narratives,whether fictional or nonfictional, classical or postmodern,hackneyed or hermetic.It is not clear that this is necessary or even possible. I was disappointedto find that the examwritingis a ple Hermanprovidesto illustrateavant-garde passage from Nightwood that seems tame by the standardsof the avant-garde-or of Nightwooditself, for that Whatis needed is an engagementwith much more matter. radical pieces that challenge the limits of narrative, a number of which can be found among the texts of Gertrude Stein, the Tel quel novelists, John Cage, and the later Beckett. Gerald Prince once described La jalousie one" (Naras "a novel, of course, but a pseudo-narrative ratology 65). How would Hermanview this claim? I strongly suspect that such works do not possess a minimal"narrativity" insteadaredesignedto frustrate but all standard conventionsof narrativity. to deploy HerOr, man's terms, it may well be that the radical avant-garde narrativescript is in fact predicated on the negation of the conventional narrativescript-a script that Herman otherwise maps convincingly. A universaltheory of narrative would then be a theoreticalimpossibility,since the more experimental writers do not merely attenuatebut forcibly implode, subvert,or deconstructthe basic identifying featuresof conventionalor nonfictionalnarrative. What is needed then is both the kind of naturalnarratology that Herman advocates and an antinarratology that can describe innovative writers' violations of conventional and even logical orders. The rebirthof narrative poetics in the first part of this century was largely occasioned by a desire to comprehendthe most innovative writing of the period; it would be disappointingand ironic if a postclassical narratology were to produce a theory that attempts to embrace every text but the most challenging ones-the ones that constitute perhaps the best reason for doing narrative theory. BRIANRICHARDSON
Universityof Maryland,College Park

Reply: I admireBrian Richardson'sscholarshipon narrative, and I am grateful for his letter and the opportunity it gives me to clarify my position. It may be that I miscon-

strue Richardson's two objections to my approach,but in my opinion both are misplaced. Furthermore,I believe that Richardson's second objection commits him to a view of narrative(and narrativetheory) that is ultimately untenable. In the first instance, I do not think that my account of literaryhistory is unidirectional.Note that in the first of the two research hypotheses outlined on page 1054, I mention dominant, recessive, and emergent narrative it techniques.This vocabulary, seems to me, does not enin tail unidirectionality; fact, I used these terms to avoid an overly linear account of literary history. The "new" (emergent) scripts and narrativetechniques being foregrounded over "old" (recessive) ones at a given point might well have been dominant (or recessive, or emergent) in an earlierepoch. Thus the hypothesisis designed to allow for the "irregular loops and unexpectedpoints of contact"that Richardsoneloquently describes. A particular narrativestrategycan reemerge-can again be used to contest a dominantstrategy,though invariablywith a difference-at differentmoments in literaryhistory.My analysisdoes assumethatthe literarycorpusgets progressively bigger,but it also implies thatwhatmadeCervantes write Don Quixotecould make Flaubert,mutatismutandis, writeMadameBovarv.Hence, literaryhistoryis perhaps less a partiallycoiled snake thanan ever-expanding field of forces, crisscrossedby multiplevectorsof change. Richardson'ssecond objectionconcernswhat he takes to be the "theoreticalimpossibility" of my (or any) "attempt to produce a descriptionof narrativepractice that includes all narratives."Richardson mentions writers like GertrudeStein, the Tel quel novelists, John Cage, andthe laterBeckett andremarksthattexts by these writers "aredesigned to frustrateall standard conventions of The formulationjust quoted suggests why narrativity." this second objection is not only misplacedbut also, as I see it, incoherent. To grasp what makes some novels readersalso need to have a sense pseudo-or antinarrative, of what, generally speaking, a narrativeis. Similarly,to study how and why avant-gardewritersviolate standard conventions for designing and interpretingstories, analysts should try to characterizenarrativeconventions as well as the ways in which they can be violated. The two tasks are complementary;it would be just as bad to neglect one as the other.My main purposein this essay was to rethinkclassical accounts of general and basic narrative structures.For reasons of space and strategy,I was only secondarily concerned with the complex story designs for which the early narratologistswould perhaps not even have had a name. But though my essay centers on the cognitive bases for narrativeconventions, I refer the readerto the second researchhypothesis sketchedon

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page 1054 and to my discussion of Winnie-the-Pooh,A Servantof the Queen, and Nightwoodin the final section of the essay. Here I suggest thatby relatingcriticallyand reflexively to prevailingscripts,stories can incite readers to reflect on what sorts of things should be narratedand on how andwhy narration shouldproceed.In otherwords, I explore how some stories are designed to subvert received ideas about narrative.Though my exploration is of course only a beginning, the essay does in fact adumbratehow a postclassicalnarratology might startto come to terms with the most challenging texts-the texts that would most challenge narratology. More generally,however,Richardson'spoint that certain experimentaltexts "forciblyimplode, subvert,or deconstruct the basic identifying features of conventional or nonfictionalnarrative" does not invalidate the search for models that help describe and explain such features. Indeed, in the absence of at least a tacit theory about the basic identifying featuresof stories, how could one even formulate the proposition that some narratives "chalFar lenge the limits of narrative"? from being a theoretical impossibility, then, investigatingwhat makes a story a story is a prerequisitefor studyingthe innovativetexts invariRichardsonmentions. Even "antinarratologists" assume some sort of theory about what narratives ably are and how they work. My aim is thus less to propose a "universaltheoryof narrative" thanto arguethat,universally, narrativeanalysts operate with core theoreticalassumptions about the narratives(and antinarratives) they study.A postclassicalnarratologyshould try to articulate those groundingassumptionsas explicitly as possible, in orderto reassess theirnatureand scope. DAVID HERMAN
North CarolinaState University

and review"Hawthorne His Mosses" ville's extraordinary in a single misleading sentence thatfollows on two other equally confusing sentences. This is the skewed passage to which I am referring: belief early-nineteenth-century Despitethe commonplace United States wouldgivebirth to thatthenewlyindependent of or no rebirth renaisa unique literature, discourse literary in Whilesomewriters sanceemerged theantebellum period. to others Renaissance, emphasized analogies theEuropean missuchideas.Melvillelinkedcritics'"great challenged in literature thecostume "in of take" imagining American an SaxonsuQueenElizabeth's withAmericans' day" "Anglo and The Tales ["Hawthorne HisMosses," Piazza perstitions"
and OtherProse Pieces, 1839-1860, ed. HarrisonHayfordet

al. (Evanston: Northwestern Chicago: UP; Lib., Newberry 1987)245-46]. (1104) The claim that "no discourse of literaryrebirthor renaissance emerged in the antebellumperiod"is suspect for at least threereasons.(1) Althoughrenaissancecomes from the Frenchfor rebirthand, as appliedto a period of Europeanliterary,artistic,and scientific history,referred to the so-called Revivalof AntiquityandRevivalof Learning and to the rebirthof the artsand sciences afterthe socalled medieval Dark Ages, the term was, in the main, appliedto Americanliterature simply to label a periodof exemplaryliteraryactivity and maturity.(2) The renaissance label (which could only have been understandably applied after the event-i.e., postbellum) was inevitable because that aspect of the Renaissance which pertained to England,particularlythe era of Shakespeare,was the naturalcomparisonand spur.The ambitionsof American writers-mainly competitive men, it is true-inevitably took the form of wishing to equal or surpassShakespeare. Clearly, then, Avallone's statementthat "some [American] writers emphasized analogies to the EuropeanRenaissance" directly contradicts her previous sentence. Such analogies constituted the "discourseof... renaissance ... in the antebellum period" and subsequently.

Melville and American-Renaissance To the Editor:

Discourse

Any argumentthat female writershave been excluded from, or marginalizedin, a literarycanon will inevitably seem tendentiousto the extent that it dependson a correspondingdowngradingor suppressionof male writers.In "WhatAmericanRenaissance?The GenderedGenealogy of a CriticalDiscourse"(112 [1997]: 1102-20), Charlene Avallone is guilty of marginalizing a work by a male writerwho, like the female authorsshe wishes to boost, was for many years marginalized by the creators of an approved American canon. Avallone disposes of Mel-

(3) In the mindof anyoneknowledgeableaboutAmerican literature,the assertionthat there was no such discourse before 1861 would immediately trigger some recall of Melville's 1850 review "Hawthorneand His Mosses," with its famous boast that HawthorneapproachesShakespeare in literary stature. Indeed, "Hawthorneand His Mosses" is a, perhapsthe, foundationaldocumentin the discourseof a putativeAmericanrenaissance. Avallone knew that she had to take some account of Melville's review,but instead of giving Melville his due, she mean-spiritedly mangles and unfairly abbreviatesa quotation from the review to give the false impression