Journal of Literary Theory (JLT)

Michler, Werner

Form und Formung – Theorie und Praxis zwischen Kunst und Gesellschaft [Caroline Levine, Forms, 2015]

Klimek, Sonja

 1 
Sonja Klimek 
Unzuverlässiges Erzählen als werkübergreifende Kategorie. 
Personale und impersonale Erzählinstanzen im phantastischen 
Kriminalroman 
(Abstract) 
• Full-length article in: JLT 12/1 (2018), 29–54. 
This paper explores why unreliable narration should be considered as a concept not only 
applying to single works of fiction, but also to whole series of fiction, and why impersonal 
(›omniscient‹) narration can also be suspected of unreliability. Some literary genres show a 
great affinity to unreliable narration. In fantastic literature (in the narrower sense of the term), 
for instance, the reader’s »hesitation« towards which reality system rules within the fictive 
world often is due to the narration of an autodiegetic narrator whose credibility is not beyond 
doubt. Detective stories, in contrast, are usually set in a purely realistic world (in conflict with 
no other reality system) and typically do not foster any doubts regarding the reliability of their 
narrators. The only unreliable narrators we frequently meet in most detective stories are 
suspects who, in second level narrations, tell lies in order to misdirect the detective’s enquiries. 
Their untruthfulness is usually being uncovered at the end of the story, in the final resolution 
of the criminalistics riddle (›Whodunnit‹?), as part of the genre-typical ›narrative closure‹. 
As the new genre of detective novels emerged at the turn from the 19th to the 20th century, its 
specific genre conventions got more and more well-established. This made it possible for 
writers to playfully change some of these readers’ genre expectations – in order to better fulfil 
others. Agatha Christie, for example, in 1926 dared to undermine the »principle of charity« 
(Walton) that readers give to the reliability of first person narrators in detective stories – 
especially when such a narrator shows himself as being a close friend to the detective at work, 
as it was the case with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous Dr. Watson, friend to Sherlock 
Holmes. Christie dared to break this principle by establishing a first-person narrator who, at the 
end, turns out to be the murderer himself. Thus, she evades the »principle of charity«, but is not 
being penalised by readers and critics for having broken this one genre convention because she 
achieves a very astonishing resolution at the end of the case and thus reaches to fulfil another 
and even more crucial genre convention, that of a surprising ›narrative closure‹, in a very new 
and satisfying way. 
Fantastic literature and detective novels are usually two clearly distinct genres of narrative 
fiction with partly incommensurate genre conventions. Whereas in fantastic literature (in the 
narrower sense of the term), two reality systems collide, leaving the reader in uncertainty about 
which one of the two finally rules within the fictive world, detective novels usually are settled 
in a ›simply realistic‹ universe. Taking a closer look at a contemporary series of detective 
fiction, that is, the Dublin stories of Tana French (2007–), I will turn to an example in which 
the genre convention of ›intraserial coherence‹ provides evidence for the unreliability of the 
different narrators – whereas with regard only to each single volume of the series, each narrator 
could be perceived as being completely reliable. As soon as we have several narrators telling 
stories that take place within the same fictive world, unreliable narration can result from 
inconsistencies between the statements of the different narrators about what is fictionally true 
within this universe. 
 2 
Additionally, the Tana French example is of special interest for narratology because in one of 
the volumes, an impersonal and seemingly omniscient narrator appears. Omniscient narration 
is usually being regarded as incompatible with unreliability, but, as Janine Jacke has already 
shown, in fact is not: Also impersonal narration can mire in contradictions and thus turn out to 
be unreliable. With regard to Tana French’s novel, I would add that it can also be mistrusted 
because the utterances of this narration can conflict with those of other narrators in other 
volumes of the same series. So in the light of serial narration, the old question of whether 
impersonal narration (or an omniscient narrator) can be unreliable at all should be reconsidered. 
In the case of narrative seriality, the evidence for ascribing unreliability to one of its alternating 
narrators need not be found in the particular sequel narrated by her/him but in other sequels 
narrating about events within the same story world. Once again, narrative unreliability turns out 
to be a category rather of interpretation than of pure text analysis and description. 
Again, Tana French like previously Agatha Christie is not being penalised by readers and critics 
for having broken this one genre convention of letting her detective stories take place in a purely 
›realistic‹ universe because today, genre conventions are merging more and more. Tana French 
achieves an even more tempting ›narrative tension‹ by keeping her readers in continuous 
uncertainty about whether a little bit of magic might be possible in the otherwise so quotidian 
world of her fictive detectives. Thus, the author metafictionally (and, later also overtly) flirts 
with the genre of »urban fantasy«, practicing a typical postmodern merging of well-established, 
hitherto distinct popular genres. 
 
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2018-04-06 
JLTonline ISSN 1862-8990 
Copyright © by the author. All rights reserved. 
This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author 
and JLTonline. 
For other permission, please contact JLTonline. 
How to cite this item: 
Abstract of: Sonja Klimek, Unzuverlässiges Erzählen als werkübergreifende Kategorie. Personale und impersonale 
Erzählinstanzen im phantastischen Kriminalroman. 
In: JLTonline (06.04.2018)  
Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:de:0222-003836 
Link: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0222-003836 


English

Unzuverlässiges Erzählen als werkübergreifende Kategorie. Personale und impersonale Erzählinstanzen im phantastischen Kriminalroman [Abstract]

Düringer, Eva-Maria

Desires and Fiction [Abstract]

Vendrell Ferran, Íngrid

Emotion in the Appreciation of Fiction [Abstract]

Hartnagel, Lena

 1 
Lena Hartnagel 
Von (un)anständigen Autoren, Erzählern und Figuren. 
Liesbeth Korthals Altes fragt, wie Literatur unser Moralempfin-
den anrühren kann. 
• Liesbeth Korthals Altes, Ethos and Narrative Interpretation. The Negotiation of Val-
ues in Fiction, Lincoln/London, University of Nebraska Press 2014. XVI, 325 S. 
[Preis. EUR 60,99]. ISBN: 978-0-8032-4836-6. 
Literarische Texte und ihre Autoren sind imstande, Skandale auszulösen: Insbesondere dann, 
wenn sich das Publikum von Autorinnen oder Autoren getäuscht fühlt – wie etwa durch James 
Frey und seine vermeintliche Autobiographie »A Million Little Pieces« – oder wenn Irritatio-
nen über die Intentionen der Autoren oder Autorinnen bestehen – wie es sich etwa in den Re-
aktionen auf Publikationen Michel Houellebecqs feststellen lässt. Ausgehend von diesen 
Beobachtungen untersucht die niederländische Professorin für General Literature, Liesbeth 
Korthals Altes, in ihrer Studie »Ethos and Narrative Interpretation. The Negotiation of Values 
in Fiction« Zusammenhänge und Bedeutung von Narration und Ethik für den Interpretations-
prozess der Rezipientinnen und Rezipienten literarischer Texte. Kristallisationspunkt ihrer Un-
tersuchungen ist der Begriff des ›Ethos‹, der nach Aristoteles die Eigenschaften einer Person in 
Bezug auf ihre praktische Weisheit (phrónesis), ihren Chrakter bzw. ihre Tugendhaftigkeit (a-
retḗ) und ihre Gesinnung bzw. ihren guten Willen (eúnoia) impliziert. Bei Korthals Altes wird 
die Zuschreibung eines ›Ethos‹ zu einer heuristischen und evaluativen Beschreibungskategorie 
im Lektüreprozess. Lesende nehmen vor, während und nach der Lektüre literarischer Texte 
Ethos-Attributionen vor, die sich auf drei Instanzen unterschiedlicher Text-Ebenen beziehen 
können: Figuren (characters), Erzähler (narrators) und Autoren (authors). 
Ihre These lautet konkret: 
[I]n process of interpreting and evaluating narrative texts, ideas about characters’, narrators’, and author’s 
ethos – for instance, about their sincerity, reliability, authority or irony – are not just the result of inter-
pretive processes. They also play a central framing role even before, and throughout, the reading process. 
(viii) 
Diese These entwickelt sie in drei Hauptteilen, die jeweils in zwei Kapitel untergliedert sind. 
Hilfreich für ihre Argumentation und die Verfolgung des Gedankenganges sind ihre regelmä-
ßigen strukturierenden und klärenden Zusammenfassungen. 
Im ersten Teil »Ethos, Narrative, and the Social Construction of Meanings and Values« (17–
86) verortet sie ihre Fragestellung im Kontext von Theorien literarischen Verstehens im Allge-
meinen. Sie betont dabei zum einen (mit Verweisen auf Bakhtin, Voloshinov, Uspensky, Iser 
und Rabatel) die Funktion von Literatur als Probe- und Erkenntnisraum für metakognitive Pro-
zesse der Reflexion über Bedeutung und Werte; zum anderen stellt sie die Bedeutung von In-
terpretation (nach Auseinandersetzung mit hermeneutischen Theorien der Interpretation von 
Schleiermacher bis Ricœur) als notwendigem Akt kultureller Praxis heraus. 
In der Konsequenz bezieht Korthals Altes in einem nächsten Schritt soziologische Theorien 
(Bourdieu, Viala, Meizoz, Heinich) in ihre Überlegungen mit ein: Für die grundlegende soziale 
Kompetenz, andere Akteure in sozialen Begegnungen zu bewerten, Annahmen über ihre Inten-
tionen zu entwickeln und damit Ethos-Attributionen vorzunehmen, findet sich in der Literatur 
 2 
einerseits ein konkretes Übungsfeld – andererseits kann Literatur auf einer Meta-Ebene auf-
schlussreich für das Verständnis solcher Attribuierungsvorgänge sein. 
Im zweiten Teil »Ethos in Narratology: The Return of the Repressed« (87–169) werden Rele-
vanz und Ort von Ethos-Attributionen in der Erzähltheorie untersucht. Nachdem die Autorin 
gezeigt hat, dass die etablierten erzähltheoretischen Ansätze diesbezüglich keinen Konsens auf-
weisen, macht sie die strittigen Punkte, auf die hin der jeweilige Ansatz zu prüfen ist, an fünf 
konkreten Aspekten fest: Zunächst stellt sich die Frage, (1) ob eine rhetorische Perspektive auf 
Literatur als Form der Kommunikation (narrative communication) vorliegt, sowie diejenige (2) 
nach der Rahmung (embeddedness) von Texten, wie sie unter dem Aspekt der Diegese verhan-
delt wird. Weiterhin ist zu prüfen, (3) ob und wie erzähltheoretische Modelle die Instanz des 
Autors und dessen Intentionen als zulässige Kategorie der Betrachtung fassen und (4) welches 
Verständnis von Fiktionalität vorliegt. Schließlich werden (5) Lesestrategien, Lesarten oder Le-
seweisen relevant, die aus den jeweiligen literaturtheoretischen Modellen resultieren. 
Im nächsten Schritt werden die so generierten und konventionalisierten, vom erzähltheoreti-
schen Konzept abhängigen Erwartungen und Rahmungen ausführlich untersucht, die für die 
Attribuierung von Ethos bezüglich der Kategorien ›Figur‹, ›Erzählinstanz‹ und ›Autor‹ durch 
die Lesenden einschlägig sind, und diskutiert, in welcher Weise sich solche Attribuierungen auf 
die Interpretation und Bewertung literarischer Texte auswirken. Insbesondere nimmt sie dabei 
die Bedeutung der Größe ›Autor/Autorin‹ in den Blick, der sie hohe Relevanz zumisst: 
Only by recognizing the interretive and composite character of the author image, including that of the 
implied author, can narratology begin to address the diversity of readings, which would particularly ap-
pear in readers’ diverging construction of narrator’s and author’s ethos, or of a text’s irony. To take on 
board the author’s postures, his or her public images and modes of self-fashioning, also allows us to heed, 
in fairly precise ways, the broader context within which literature’s rhetorical dimension operates. (169) 
An Beispielen wie Philip Roths »The Human Stain« oder Samuel Becketts »Not I« illustriert 
und erprobt sie ihre Überlegungen. 
Der letzte Hauptteil »Further Explorations: Contracts and Ethos Expectations« (171–255) be-
schäftigt sich mit grundsätzlichen, durch die Rahmung einzelner Texte geweckten Ethos-bezo-
genen Lesererwartungen, die bereits im Vorfeld der Lektüre das Verständnis lenken können 
(heuristic potential of framework): Besonders bedeutsam sind hier die Rolle der Gattungszu-
ordnung und – gewissermaßen damit einhergehend – die zwei als grundlegend beschriebenen 
Attribuierungen bezüglich ›Aufrichtigkeit‹ und ›Ironie‹ der Erzählhaltung: 
Genres can be considered to raise expectations regarding the point of the literary experience and the 
work’s rhetorical aims: for instance to inform and, often, to testify or denounce, in documentary works, 
to reflect in the essay. To the generic expectations [sic!] also belong anticipation regarding an author’s or 
narrator’s ethos and about the interpretive and evaluative regimes considered appropriate. A writer also 
adopts a posture and expresses a conception through the choice of genre. (173) 
Aus Perspektive der Leser kann die Erscheinungsform des Textes, die eine bestimmte Gattungs-
zuordnung nahelegt, entscheidend für die Erwartungen an einen Text und das daraus resultie-
rende Zusammenspiel von Ethos-Attributionen und Textverständnis werden. Genau an dieser 
Stelle liegt aus Sicht der Autorin auch einer der häufigsten Faktoren des eingangs beschriebenen 
Irritations- und Konfliktpotenzials von Literatur: 
Die Reaktionen auf einen Text provokativen Inhalts etwa werden andere sein, wenn er sich als 
Satire zu erkennen gibt, als wenn er als Essay publiziert wird; eine Autobiographie erweckt 
andere Erwartungen an die Identifikation von Autor und Erzählinstanz als ein Roman. 
 3 
Das methodische Vorgehen, eine solche Vielzahl an Theorien und Modellen unterschiedlicher 
Disziplinen (Hermeneutik, Soziologie, Kognitionstheorie, Rhetorik etc.) in den Blick zu neh-
men, birgt durchaus seine Probleme, auf die die Autorin selbst deutlich an mehreren Stellen 
hinweist und so den drohenden Vorwurf, eklektizistisch zu arbeiten, vorwegnimmt: Sie erhebt 
nicht den Anspruch, eine begriffs- und ideentheoretisch hergeleitete Theorie zu entwerfen, son-
dern bringt umgekehrt in einer transdisziplinären Studie verschiedene Theorien ins Gespräch, 
und prüft deren Implikationen für ihre eigene Fragestellung und These. 
Liesbeth Korthals Altes’ Arbeit zeigt, dass und auf welche Weisen Ethos-Attributionen inner-
halb der Konzepte zu Narration und Ethik, aber auch im allgemeinen literaturtheoretischen Dis-
kurs relevant sind und berücksichtigt werden sollten.  
Besonders die Metaanalyse der narratologischen Konzepte im zweiten Hauptteil und die Her-
ausarbeitung der virulenten Kriterien machen ihre Überlegungen für weitere Forschungen an-
schlussfähig. Auch die Anwendbarkeit des Modells auf konkrete literarische Texte wird durch 
die klare Fokussierung auf die personenbezogene Kategorie des ›Ethos‹ ermöglicht, die die 
Analyse rezeptionsrelevanter moralischer und ethischer Implikationen in Texten mittels der 
drei Instanzen ›Figur‹, ›Erzähler‹ und ›Autor‹ strukturiert.  
Im doppelten Sinne sucht Liesbeth Korthals Altes in ihrer Studie nach den »rules that we play 
when we engage in literature« (86): Ihr Modell der Ethos-Attribution liefert einerseits eine heu-
ristische Perspektive für die Analyse literarischer Texte sowie narratologischer Konzepte, 
transportiert andererseits aber auch klar erkennbar ein Anliegen: Sie traut Literatur zu, ethische 
Reflexionsprozesse auszulösen und zu strukturieren. Insbesondere durch ihre mehrfach formu-
lierte Forderung nach empirischer Prüfung ihrer Ideen und Fruchtbarmachung für Bildungs- 
und Erziehungskontexte kommt so die Relevanz der Ethos-Attribution für Interpretationspro-
zesse auch in einer normativen Dimension in den Blick. 
 
Lena Hartnagel 
Lehrstuhl für Neuere deutsche Literaturwissenschaft 
Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
2018-01-15 
JLTonline ISSN 1862-8990 
Copyright © by the author. All rights reserved. 
This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author 
and JLTonline. 
For other permission, please contact JLTonline. 
How to cite this item: 
Lena Hartnagel, Von (un)anständigen Autoren, Erzählern und Figuren. Liesbeth Korthals Altes fragt, wie Litera-
tur unser Moralempfinden anrühren kann. (Review of: Liesbeth Korthals Altes, Ethos and Narrative Interpreta-
tion. The Negotiation of Values in Fiction. Lincoln/London, University of Nebraska Press 2014.) 
In: JLTonline (15.01.2018)  
Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:de:0222-003785 
Link: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0222-003785 
  
 


Von (un)anständigen Autoren, Erzählern und Figuren. Liesbeth Korthals Altes fragt, wie Literatur unser Moralempfinden anrühren kann. [Liesbeth Korthals Altes, Ethos and Narrative Interpretation, 2014]

Lederle, Sebastian

German

Pflicht und Kür einer Theorie des Mythos [Angus Nicholls, Myth and the Human Sciences, 2015]

Demmerling, Christoph

 1 
Christoph Demmerling 
Von den Lesewelten zur Lebenswelt. Überlegungen zu der Frage, 
warum uns fiktionale Literatur berührt 
•  Full-length article in: JLT 12/2 (2018), 260–278. 
The following article argues that fictional texts can be distinguished from non-fictional texts in 
a prototypical way, even if the concept of the fictional cannot be defined in classical terms. In 
order to be able to characterize fictional texts, semantic, pragmatic, and reader-conditioned 
factors have to be taken into account. With reference to Frege, Searle, and Gabriel, the article 
recalls some proposals for how we might define fictional speech. Underscored in particular is 
the role of reception for the classification of a text as fictional. I make the case, from a 
philosophical perspective, for the view that fictional texts represent worlds that do not exist 
even though these worlds obviously can, and de facto do, contain many elements that are 
familiar to us from our world. I call these worlds reading worlds and explain the relationship 
between reading worlds and the life world of readers. This will help support the argument that 
the encounter with fictional literature can invoke real feelings and that such feelings are by no 
means irrational, as some defenders of the paradox of fiction would like us to believe. It is the 
exemplary character of fictional texts that enables us to make connections between the reading 
worlds and the life world. 
First and foremost, the article discusses the question of what it is that readers’ feelings are in 
fact related to. The widespread view that these feelings are primarily related to the characters 
or events represented in a text proves too simple and needs to be amended. Whoever is sad 
because of the fate of a fictive character imagines how he or she would fare if in a similar 
situation. He or she would feel sad as it relates to his or her own situation. And it is this feeling 
on behalf of one’s self that is the presupposition of sympathy for a fictive character. While 
reading, the feelings related to fictive characters and content are intertwined with the feelings 
related to one’s own personal concerns. The feelings one has on his or her own behalf belong 
to the feelings related to fictive characters; the former are the presupposition of the latter. If we 
look at the matter in this way, a new perspective opens up on the paradox of fiction. Generally 
speaking, the discussion surrounding the paradox of fiction is really about readers’ feelings as 
they relate to fictive persons or content. The question is then how it is possible to have them, 
since fictive persons and situations do not exist. If, however, the emotional relation to fictive 
characters and situations is conceived of as mediated by the feelings one has on one’s own 
behalf, the paradox loses its confusing effect since the imputation of existence no longer plays 
a central role. Instead, the conjecture that the events in a fictional story could have happened in 
one’s own life is important. The reader imagines that a story had or could have happened to 
him or herself. Readers are therefore often moved by a fictive event because they relate what 
happened in a story to themselves. They have understood the literary event as something that is 
humanly relevant in a general sense, and they see it as exemplary for human life as such. This 
is the decisive factor which gives rise to a connection between fiction and reality. The emotional 
relation to fictive characters happens on the basis of emotions that we would have for our own 
sake were we confronted with an occurrence like the one being narrated. What happens to the 
characters in a fictional text could also happen to readers. This is enough to stimulate 
corresponding feelings. We neither have to assume the existence of fictive characters nor do we 
have to suspend our knowledge about the fictive character of events or take part in a game of 
 2 
make-believe. But we do have to be able to regard the events in a fictional text as exemplary 
for human life. 
The representation of an occurrence in a novel exhibits a number of commonalities with the 
representation of something that could happen in the future. Consciousness of the future would 
seem to be a presupposition for developing feelings for something that is only represented. This 
requires the power of imagination. One has to be able to imagine what is happening to the 
characters involved in the occurrence being narrated in a fictional text, ›empathize‹ with them, 
and ultimately one has to be able to imagine that he or she could also be entangled in the same 
event and what it would be like. Without the use of these skills, it would remain a mystery how 
reading a fictional text can lead to feelings and how fictive occurrences can be related to reality. 
The fate of Anna Karenina can move us, we can sympathize with her, because reading the novel 
confronts us with possibilities that could affect our own lives. The imagination of such 
possibilities stimulates feelings that are related to us and to our lives. On that basis, we can 
participate in the fate of fictive characters without having to imagine that they really exist. 
References 
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319–332. 
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Fiktionalität. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, Berlin/Boston 2014, 313–337. 
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Literatur, Münster 2018. 
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Cambridge, MA et al. 1990. 
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the Aristotelian Society 49 (1975), 81–94. 
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Gefühlsleben, Münster 2015. 
2018-09-16 
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How to cite this item: 
Abstract of: Christoph Demmerling, Von den Lesewelten zur Lebenswelt. Überlegungen zu der Frage, warum 
uns fiktionale Literatur berührt. 
In: JLTonline (16.09.2018)  
Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:de:0222-004025 
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Von den Lesewelten zur Lebenswelt. Überlegungen zu der Frage, warum uns fiktionale Literatur berührt

Aumüller, Matthias

Vorwort

Berninger, Anja

Empathy – Real-Life and Fiction-Based [Abstract]

Schneider, Ralf

 1 
Ralf Schneider 
Bridging the Gap Between Literary Studies and Linguistics:  
A New Attempt 
• Ekkehard König/Manfred Pfister, Literary Analysis and Linguistics. Grundlagen der 
Anglistik und Amerikanistik, vol. 42. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag 2017. 256 S. 
[Preis: EUR 19,95] ISBN 978-3-503-17186-6. 
Linguistics and literary analysis look back on a long history of commonalities and differences. 
While classical philology was an endeavour that amalgamated the two fields naturally – the 
study of the Latin and Greek languages being possible only through the literature and that of 
the literature only through the study of those languages, 20th century developments in scholar-
ship, such as the Chomskyan turn in linguistics, did a lot to prevent further meaningful conver-
sations between linguists and literary scholars. At the same time, literary analysis never really 
stopped making use of linguistic models, modes of thinking, and terminology in their practices 
of text analysis, and linguists also did look at the particularities of language used in literature. 
The structuralist approach to literary analysis, which still dominates most text-oriented methods 
in the literature departments, is deeply embedded in the concepts of structuralist linguistics. 
Furthermore, some other fields with a long history of their own, including stylistics, the study 
of metaphor, the use of language varieties in fiction and film, or the broad area of rhetoric have 
also provided ample meeting-ground for linguists and literary scholars in the past decades.  
It may therefore appear as if the two areas of scholarship and learning were harmoniously 
blended. However, the study programs of most universities have in fact »compartmentalized« 
the study of literature and the study of language »into two separate disciplines that took little 
notice of, and little interest in, each other«, as Ekkehard König and Manfred Pfister state in the 
preface to the volume under consideration in this review (9). It has also been my experience 
and that of many colleagues that, much as one might try to highlight the indebtedness of literary 
analysis to linguistic questions in literary classes, and vice versa, the relevance of literature for 
the study of language in linguistic courses, students find it difficult to establish the relationship 
between the fields. The book by König and Pfister, aiming at overcoming precisely that sepa-
ration, is therefore a most welcome publication. The book can be used as a course book in 
classes that combine literary and linguistic objects of study, or provide a more general intro-
duction to literary linguistics or linguistic literary scholarship. The authors, highly esteemed 
senior colleagues and emeriti of the FU Berlin – one a linguist, one a literary scholar – are the 
ideal co-writers for a book like this.  
The book consists of eight chapters and the overall structure is mostly inspired by a linguistic 
perspective, starting with »Prosody and Metre« (ch. 1, pp.15-39), then moving ›up‹ the levels 
of linguistic analysis, with »Syntax« (ch. 2, pp. 41-64) and semantics (»Meaning: Metaphor 
and Metonymy«, ch. 3, pp. 65-94) to transphrastic and pragmatic levels of analysis, including 
a short chapter on »Irony« (ch. 4, pp. 95-114), and a longer one on »Narration, Deixis and 
Creation of Perspectives« (ch. 5, pp. 115-165). Three more chapters cover some ground that 
readers of Manfred Pfister's seminal contributions to the study of English Literature are not 
surprised to see in this volume (ch. 6: »Conversational Interaction and Dramatic Speech«, pp. 
167-207; ch. 7: »Intertextuality«, pp 209-233; and ch. 8: »Heteroglossia«, pp. 235-255). These 
chapters, far from presenting any rehashed positions, are up-to-date considerations of these ar-
eas, concisely summarised with a view to the purpose of the book and with a stronger linguistic 
 2 
perspective than is usually the case. One could, of course, have chosen a different structure for 
the book, using, for instance, the categories and distinctions of literary analysis as points of 
departure and then looking what linguistics has to offer in each case. However, all major literary 
genres are dealt with, and whoever has taught introductory classes in literary analysis will find 
that the entire tool-kit of literary text analysis appears within the course of the book.  
It is impossible to re-echo here the richness of information and insight provided by the individ-
ual chapters. Regarding the wide ground the book covers, most readers will be biased towards 
liking some chapters more than others. The present reviewer, while being fully convinced by 
all chapters, found the chapters on metaphor and metonymy (ch. 3), on irony (ch. 4) and on 
narration and perspective (ch. 5) particularly insightful and helpful. The fine chapter on prosody 
and metre (ch. 1) ought to be standard reading in classes that introduce students to literary 
analysis, and chapter 6, on speech acts and communication in drama is a brilliant exploration 
of Speech Act Theory (and its limitations, to which literature sometimes points) and of the 
complexities and artfulness of monological and dialogical speech. 
One example may illustrate how the chapters work, and to what extent the volume covers, ba-
sically, the same ground as other introductions to literary studies, but is still quite different – 
refreshingly so. The observations on »Narration, Deixis, and the Creation of Perspectives« (ch. 
5) do not start with an introduction to the narrative situations and modes of focalisation as, for 
instance, specified by Gerard Genette, but with a consideration of acts of narration from the 
perspective of Speech Act Theory (cf. 115-118). The complexity of speech acts in the novel is 
illustrated by looking at Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and its embedding of narrative 
frames. The concept of speech acts also informs later parts of that chapter. A short discussion 
of fictionality (cf. 118-119) that takes theoretical and literary historical positions from Sidney 
via Vaihinger to Defoe (Moll Flanders) into account is then followed by an introduction to the 
question of (un)reliability of narrators, which again makes many references to novels from An-
glophone and European literature that illustrate the varieties of unreliable narration. The authors 
then introduce the linguistic concept of situation types to discuss the elements of which a nar-
rative consists (events, processes/activities, states), and demonstrate that the progressive form 
expresses processes, and does so in alternation with the simple form that renders events and 
states, which they regard as a case of grounding, i.e. the creation of background and foreground. 
This is the starting point for an exploration of the temporal anchoring of sentences in narrative, 
and the rules of the use of tenses in narration, as well as the many deviations that can be found 
in literature (cf. 121-124). This is quite typical for the entire volume: The authors introduce the 
rules and regularities of the structure and use of language, as theorised by linguistics, and then 
look at the broad spectrum of rule-breaking that literature performs. They also point to the fact 
that literary genres and sub-genres establish rules themselves, which are then violated by later 
generations of writers, either playfully, as is demonstrated with a meta-ballad by Charles Stuart 
Calverley (cf. 125), or as a more serious reflection on the possibilities of narrative, as in a short 
story by Julio Cortázar (cf. ibid.). From the consideration of what literary and non-literary nar-
ration share, the authors then turn to the inventory of text analysis provided by narratology, but 
with a focus on »a few of reasonably well-established dimensions, which were selected on the 
basis of how they are signalled and expressed by particular linguistic devices, both grammatical 
and lexical« (128). A short presentation of the concepts of homodiegetic and heterodiegetic 
narration, and overt vs. covert narrators is then followed by a longer section on deixis and other 
ways in which utterances in narrative texts are related to context; further indicators of perspec-
tive (expression containing -self, non-declarative sentences, i.e., interrogatives, imperatives and 
exclamations, and parentheticals). A further section is devoted to the representation of speech, 
thought and perception. In these sections, the question of perspective, that has occupied and 
riddled narratology so much, is approached from a linguistic stance. The exact analysis of indi-
vidual expressions indicative of different, or shifting, centres of orientation that this chapter 
 3 
performs is a plea for close reading and for heightened attention to how worlds are created with 
words. The same holds for the volume in general. Three more sections follow: a detailed anal-
ysis of the beginning of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man that elaborates on 
how the vocabulary and syntax of the passage establish the boy Stephen as the centre of per-
ception; a discussion of temporal structures in narrative beyond grammatical tempus (such as 
the various possible relationships between story-time and discourse time); and an introduction 
to meta-narrative and metafictional levels of narration.  
In all chapters of the book, König and Pfister manage to elegantly weave together structural 
observation on the one hand, and analyses and interpretations of the various functions of lan-
guage use at particular moments in literary history on the other. This reminds students that 
theoretical concepts are put to best use in precise historical application. Without using the lit-
erary examples in a strictly diachronic way, the book all in all also amounts to a good survey 
of the historical changes in literary language. The many close readings of either brief examples, 
or longer passages or even entire poems are all brilliant illustrations of how the detailed analysis 
of the way language is used will render sound, convincing, and enlightening interpretations of 
literary texts.  
A few minor complaints concern the ›usability‹ of the book. In general, the publisher, rather 
than the authors, needs to be taken to task for a layout that looks quite outdated. One may well 
have some reservations as to the increasing ›didacticisation‹ of books aimed at a student market, 
but a book with virtually no illustrations and only a few words emphasised in bold print in each 
chapter may find it hard to compete on the market today. While each chapter has a concise list 
of references that guide the reader towards more in-depth study, it is absolutely incomprehen-
sible to me that the book lacks an index of terms. If a student who has read the book wishes to 
return to a definition, or an example, they will have to go through the chapter again. Doing this, 
they are unlikely to see that many concepts are of interest in more than one chapter, because 
the notions are relevant on various levels of analysis. One of the main achievements of the book, 
namely to point to the rich and multifaceted use of linguistic thinking in literary analysis, is 
obscured by the lack of cross references and indices. What the book would have profited from 
most, however, is a glossary which repeats the most central terms and definitions and then refers 
back to the sections of the book in which they are discussed and illustrated. Not every student 
of literature is required to study a full list of classes in linguistics anymore, so that such readers 
are likely to take a repeated look at how a concept from linguistics is defined.  
While most terms and concepts are at least briefly explained and illustrated with an example in 
the chapters, sometimes either the authors seem to think that no explanation was necessary, or 
the need for brevity required them to skip the details. For instance, in the discussion of different 
types of rhyme in the first chapter, the reader finds one meagre half sentence on alliterative 
rhyme: »Rhymes based on the identity of the onset (alliteration, ›Stabreim‹) or of the entire 
syllable (›identical rhyme‹) are also used in certain literary traditions, which may differ signif-
icantly from language to language.« (17) Can the student extract much helpful information from 
this sentence, if they have not yet seen alliterative verse and understood how it works, and the 
role it played in Old and Middle English poetry? Also, when the terms ›masculine‹ and ›femi-
nine‹ rhyme are introduced, would it not have made sense to explain why rhymes on one or two 
syllables, respectively, are termed like that? Sometimes words occur that would require further 
explanation in their immediate context, such as »the illocutionary point (purpose)« (96), or 
»logophors« (141), or »the Gricean maxim of Manner« (123 – here a cross-reference to chapter 
6.1.4, where the maxims are discussed, would have helped). The authors' erudition is palpable 
on every page, and while the style in general is adequately elevated for a scholarly book, in 
some cases the authors seems to aim beyond the assumed readership of this book: One wonders 
whether the use of Latin expressions is necessary, since few students today actually have much 
 4 
Latin available. Here are three examples. The first is: »[…] indications of playfulness or insuf-
ficient knowledge, such as ›I am only kidding‹ or relata refero, ›I am only telling you what I 
heard‹« (117). Is the point here to introduce »relata refero« as a technical term, or would the 
English version not have sufficed, if not? Again, an entry in an index would have signalled 
whether an important term was introduced here. Second, the sentence immediately following 
presents another Latinism, but this time »a traditional distinction is drawn inter alia between 
[…]« (ibid.), and a third one is found on the next page: »fictionality has been recognized as a 
differentia specifica of literature« (118). For the latter two, simple English expressions would 
have sufficed. Furthermore, when English words are used as technical terms or as an illustrative 
example, this is expressed through italicisation, and non-English words are of course frequently 
italicised as well, and the use of bold print adds further complexity to the layout. This raises the 
question whether some editing with a view to the target audience would not have made this fine 
book more accessible.  
All in all, the book by Ekkehard König and Manfred Pfister contributes to the renewed effort 
to bring the study of language and literature closer to each other once again. Analysing and 
interpreting a broad range of literary texts from the vantage point of linguistics, it serves as a 
more than welcome reminder that linguistics and literary analysis are by no means strange bed-
fellows, but rather the ideal combination for a deeper understanding of how language and liter-
ature work. Seeing that the division between linguistics and literary studies is institutionalised 
in the study programs of most universities, it will probably take more books like this one, many 
more co-operations between linguists and literary scholars within and beyond the classroom, 
and quite a few changes to the modules in most BA and MA programs to overcome the unfor-
tunate gap that exists between the two branches of our discipline. It is to be hoped that more 
projects will follow the example set in the book under review here.  
 
Ralf Schneider 
Literatur und Kultur Großbritanniens 
Universität Bielefeld 
2018-12-20 
JLTonline ISSN 1862-8990 
Copyright © by the author. All rights reserved. 
This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author 
and JLTonline. 
For other permission, please contact JLTonline. 
How to cite this item: 
Ralf Schneider, Bridging the Gap Between Literary Studies and Linguistics. A New Attempt. (Review of: 
Ekkehard König/Manfred Pfister, Literary Analysis and Linguistics. Grundlagen der Anglistik und Amerikanis-
tik, Erich Schmidt Verlag 2017.) 
In: JLTonline (20.12.2018)  
Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:de:0222-004083 
Link: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0222-004083 
 


Bridging the Gap Between Literary Studies and Linguistics. A New Attempt [Ekkehard König, Manfred Pfister, Literary Analysis and Linguistics, 2017]

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