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Texts and Unnatural Narratives

 

            What we are mainly concerned with here is about unnatural narratives. First of all let me exemplify this concept. Richardson defines unnatural narratives as anti-mimetic texts that move beyond the conventions of 'natural' narratives, i.e. "the mimesis of actual speech situations", or violate the "established boundaries of realism" (2006: 5; 138).  One instance could be Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando because is challenging the notions of time. That being said, we can continue with the aims of unnatural narratology, which the authors refer as unnatural storyworlds, unnatural minds and unnatural acts of narration. In order to understand these concepts I will explain them in a little more detail. .
             Firstly the concept of unnatural storyworlds mean that do not comply with what the reader knows is otherwise physically, logically, or humanly impossible in the physical world; one example of this could be Robert Cover`s "The Babysitter" a short story which depicts numerous irreconcilable event sequences. With these situations the author try to make us see the importance of variety or possibility, in other words to be aware of what can be happen even in more strange situation.
             Secondly, the concept of unnatural minds is related to narration. Unnatural narration is when something impossible in life is set forth in the text. This can be as common as the ability of a narrator to disclose the contents of the mind of another, as routinely occurs in third person "omniscient" narration. More unnatural (because more unconventional) is the disclosure of the contents of another mind by a character-narrator, as frequently happens in "we" narration and in the shared focalization of "we" and "they" narration. One such example is Knut Hamsun's Hunger this reading is concerned with one aspect called temporality and identity over time.


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