Thursday, December 2, 2010

Definition of Narrativity according to Monika Fludernik


Narrativity is one of the main, and perhaps the predominant concept which are at the focus of Monika Fludernik's study "Towards a Natural Narratology". For fludernik narrative is not restricted oral or written lingual forms, but also to theatre and cinema.

Fludernik isn't quite clear on what makes the difference between narrative and narrativity. Both of them her in her opinion perceptual activities, and it seems that narrative is determined as such by its degree of narrativity. So narrativity for Fludernik is a scalable feature, meaning that a text (or oral discourse or movie or play) can have a higher of lesser degree of narrativity, which makes it more or less a narrative. Experientiality is what determines the degree of narrativity, and so a dry, referential and factual text such as a history article has a lesser degree of narrtivity and therefore is a less of a narrative than fiction.

But Fludernik's notion of narrativity goes deeper than just experientiality. Narrattivity is not an attribute of a text, not a formal or even medium feature. Narrativity is something that precedes the text and medium, a sort of deep structure which represents a prototype of experience and experientiality, of being embodied, acting and a consciousness. In other words, narrativity in a way is a deeper kind of mimesis, mimicking in its abstract pre-shaped form the very experience of living and acting in the world (this is why Fludernik's analysis strives for universality). This abstract prototype is not, as mentioned above, a feature inherent it the text, but rather something that the readers invests in the text in the process of constructing its meaning. Therefore narrativity is the product of narativization which is an action, a process, something imposed on a text or discourse.
The implications of Monika Fludernik's model are varied and wide. For instance, she sees narrative of something that does not necessarily involve a plot, and there can be a narrative without plot if the experientialy criterion is otherwise met.