Monika Fludernik's model for natural narratology

Essentially what Monila Fludernik is trying to suggest in her "Towards a Natural Narratology" is a new model for narrative analysis which is based on her notions of experienciality, narrativity and narrativization.

Following Nilli Diengott's analysis, Fludernik's model is divided into 4 levels:

the first level of the model is related to the question "what" (to distinguish from the question of "how" in levels 2 and 3). This level is essentially pre-understanding of how the world functions and contains "parameters of real-life experience" which are the most basic, initial cognitive frames of experiencing. These cognitive frames are what Fludernik calls "core schemata" which relate to presupposed understanding of reality, and they include such schemas as "agency" and "goals". They make up a configuration of an experienced event that includes (and must include) an evaluation of it and its meaning. This configuration is of a teleological nature, a mechanism of causality, and it must do so in mutual agreement with the function of evaluation. These cognitive schemas are natural on account of being a part of our consciousness, enabling us to grasp a world of action and change.

The second level relates to "how" and is a mediating one, containing according to Fludernik four cognitive frames or parameters: telling, viewing, experiencing and acting. These are explanatory in the sense that they mediate a story to us and render it accessible. These categories are also natural on account of "explanatory patterns" utilized by us in understanding our daily experience. This level is also reflective by accounting for the presence of consciousness.

The third level also deals with "how" and is a cultural pattern of storytelling and includes genres and conventions. Fludernik does not contrast "cultural" with "natural", and she argues that this level is also natural in the sense that we naturally employ these culturally acquired capabilities. This level, for instance, includes the poetics of a genre, allowing for its creation and consumption.

Level four is a dynamic process of narrativization in one narrative. Here the previous levels are employed in order to construct a coherent narrative that settles problems and contradictions in the understanding of the text.      

Definition of narrativization according to Monika Fludernik

Monika Fludernik's constitutive concept it that of narrativization. Inspired by Jonathan Culler's notions on naturalization, Fludernik sees narrativization as a process in which narrativiry is imposed on a discourse, thus turning it into a narrative. This process is a dynamic one, and Is facilitated only by a "interpretative recuperations" carried out during the reading or hearing (or viewing) process. Narrativization is an action, putting the title of narrative and the property of narrativity as something outside of the text which is imposed on it, thus constructing, rather than reviling, it as a narrative.

This is not to say that we are free to decide on our own what is a narrative and what is not, culture and discourse are at work here, and we grant in advance the expectation for narrative to something which is accepted as "literature" but not to "leaflet". But what this does mean is that narrative is a relative concept. This is why Fludernik is so focused on natural narratives. For while a western person might perceive experimental literature as a narrative, other cultures might not agree. But spontaneous oral narration of experience is much more universal, and therefore Fludernik asserts that this is the prototype for all subsequent cultural developments of mediums and forms of narrative. So Fludernik places the natural narrative at the head of the taxonomy of narrative types. This enables Fludernik's model to have an diachronic aspect to it, explaining how from natural narrative our cognitive parameters have expanded and matured into more complex forms and genres which are still based on that basic, innate, universal capacity to experience someone else's story. The fact that we are able to naturally consume a genre (such as 'stream of consciousness') is reducible to a. developments stemming from natural narrative, and b. our capacity to build upon our intuitive basic abilities to narrativize and extend them to different types of discourses.     

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.  

Jonathan Culler's concept of naturalization and its adaptation by Monika Fludernik

In her challenging and inspiring work "Towards a Natural Narrtology"  (1996) Monika Fludernik attributes part of her inspiration to Jonathan Culler and his work that suggested the heuristic concept of "naturalization".

Jonathan Culler's "naturalization" relates to readers' strategies that are employed as interpretive methods for reconciling what appears to be inconsistencies in the text. In a sense Culler's naturalization is the process of making something strange and puzzling in the text fit in with knowledge and perceptions we have of out existence, what is often referred to as mental model, schema or cognitive frames. That is, something which is odd about the text or unexplainable is reconstructed by the reader in a form that makes sense, that sense being something that we know and are able to explain.

Naturalization, as suggested by Jonathan Culler, is a process carried out by the reader, in response, but not in a binding relation, to elements in the text. It is essentially an individual action, and therefore can vary from person to person. However, social and cultural elements go to work here by providing common shared and socially acquired cognitive frames, thus insuring that a mutual understanding of what a narrative is about will be fairly possible within a certain social and cultural context.    

  

Cullers' naturalization bears an interesting, almost opposite relation to the Russian Formalists' concept of estrangement. Estrangement was defined by the Russian Formalists as the main function of art and literature that takes something familiar and "refreshing" our grasp of it by making it suddenly strange. Naturalization, as is evident, works the other way around. This alludes to the notion that, when dealing with narratives, the quintessential trait of a narrative is its ability to induce naturalization by the reader.

This is very much Monika Fludernik's approach in "Towards a 'Natural' Narratology. She perceived narrativity defined by the experientiality of an anthropomorphic agent, or in other words, our apparently innate ability to narrate and receive narration of experience. Monkia Fludernik replaces Culler's "naturalization" with "narrativization". Narrativization is the action we carry out in making the text fit a shape of experience we are familiar with. In other words, Fludernik's narrativization is making a given story be understandable is relation to a prototypical "meta-story" we inherit from our culture and society, but also from the mere experience of being alive. Narrativization, in a sense, is life and fiction coming to terms. 

Experienciality according to Monika Fludernik

As was mentioned in the main overview of her work, the concept of experienciality is viewed by Monika Fludernik as the defining characteristic of narrative and narrativity. In this she departs from the classic narratology notion of narrative as a series of events the relate to one another through causality.

Experienciality can be understood as a copy of sorts of a real life experience, as something which has the appearance of something that is actually happening. Experienciality, according to Fludernik, has a number of traits that might assist in elaborating the concept.

Fludernik stresses that experienciality should be understood as differing from experience. She views experienciality as a dynamics that strives towards an illustrative effect and the attribution of meaning to the story. Experienciality is a state relevant for both the reader and the narrator – an anthropomorphic entity to which facts of the story are relevant – thus establishing the tellability of the narrative.

Embodiment is a term related by Fludernik to the anthropomorphic experienciality. Embodiment related to the state of physically being in space and time, a state that is interdependent of cognitive schemas that construct our experience. These schemas precede actual experience in the same manner lingual prototypes and universals precede actual objects. If we take for example the event of eating in a restaurant we find that we have a prototypical script on such a happening which allows us to comprehend and act within the situation.

Consciousness is also a part of experienciality. This is manifested mainly in a conscious agent for whom the events and actions of the narrative have meaning. Things are never sad, existing, scary etc. just on their own account, they must be so for someone, and that someone in Fludernik's view is the narrator. This gains importance if we view narrative as a medium which enables relating someone else's consciousness.

Mimesis is the final crucial element is Fludernik's notion of experienciality. Fludernik stressed that "mimesis must NOT be identified as imitation but needs to be treated as the artificial and illusionary projection of a semiotic structure which the reader recuperates in terms of a fictional reality". Mimesis, in other words, is not what traditional thought saw as imitation, but rather something constructive. Mimesis for Fludernik is a part of narrativization process by creating some sort of semiotic analogy between the text's fictional reality and actual reality.     

Monika Fludernik: Towards a Natural Narratology- summary

In her formidable work "Towards a 'Natural' Narratology" Monika Fludernik attempts at reconceptualizing the basic premise of narratology in the aftermath of post-structural thought, which is intuitively hostile and suspicious of the term 'natural' that Monika Fludernik seeks to set in the forefront of her theory. But as Fludernik stresses, 'natural' is assigned by her not to texts or textual techniques, but to cognitive frames, namely equating the elusive quality "narrativity" with "experientiality", a "quasi-mimetic evocation of 'real life experience'. So, Fludernik's "differentia specifica" for narrativity and narrative is the embodied anthropomorphic experiencer.

Following Labov, Monika Fludernik relates to 'natural narrative' as spontaneously occurring storytelling. She therefore relates to such types of oral narrative as preceding more complex forms of narrative such as literature. Fludernik's reason for doing so is her hypothesis that there exists a cognitive schema which correlates to formal aspects of narrative, with their essence found in the most basic prototype form of natural narrative.  This is not to say the Fludernik rejects poststructuralism, for all narrative in her eyes is constructed, but she does claim that there are universally valid cognitive components that instill a discourse with the quality of narrativity.   

Narrativity is defined by Monika Fludernik as "a function of narrative texts and centers on experientiality of an anthropomorphic nature". This definition, for example, refutes and contradicts in a way with Hyden White's line of thought, making history a lesser form of narrative for its lack of experientiality. 

Narrativity for Fludernik is never something inherent in the text, but rather something attributed to it by the reader which constructs the text as a narrative. Therefore it is dependant solely on the reader and his interpretation.

One of Fludernik's .. which classify her as a post-classic narratologist, is her negation of fictionality in the definition of a narrative. Referentiality is not the issue, it is all about the way we experience and respond to a certain form of information. 

Monika Fludernik's writing in "Towards a Natural Narrative" is elaborate and complex. Here you will find a series of articles attempting to shed light on some of the concepts employed by Flundernik and reviews on some of the main themes of her oftentimes elusive thought.