Rhetoric and narratology

Transcription

1 489235LAL / Martens et al.language and Literature 2013 Editorial Rhetoric and narratology Gunther Martens Ghent University, Belgium Language and Literature 22(3) The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalspermissions.nav DOI: / lal.sagepub.com Benjamin Biebuyck Ghent University, Belgium Helena Elshout Ghent University, Belgium Ralph Müller University of Fribourg, Switzerland Keywords Corpus-based narratology, ethos, proto-metaphor, paranarrative, rhetorical narratology, synecdoche, uncooperative narrator In 2011, Monika Fludernik edited a collection of essays entitled Beyond Cognitive Metaphor Theory: Perspectives on Literary Metaphor in the newly established series Routledge Studies in Rhetoric and Stylistics (Fludernik, 2011). As the title indicates, the volume aimed to take issue with Lakoff and Johnson s theory, arguing in favour of updating the theory of metaphor (and of other tropes) by redirecting attention to the specifics of figurativity in literature. In a similar vein, Steven Pinker described in more general terms the importance of rhetorical payoff (Pinker, 2007: 265), the feeling of accomplishment and reward that is experienced when readers can themselves contribute to the success of the communicative exchange. The articles collected in the present thematic issue want to add to the focus of the aforementioned studies a particular emphasis on the relation between the rhetorical toolkit that underlies the creative potential of figurativity and narrative. In doing so, we take our cue from related critiques of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (e.g. Eder, 2007), but also from recent trends in cognitive stylistics and cognitive pragmatics itself (Emmott et al., 2013). Narrative (either fictional or non-fictional) is a particularly rich environment for exploring and discussing the various functions and Corresponding author: Ralph Müller, University of Fribourg, Av. de l Europe 20, Fribourg, 1700 Switzerland. ralph.mueller@unifr.ch

2 170 Language and Literature 22(3) effects of non-conventional, creative usage of rhetorical figures and figurativity, since it provides both a systematic testing ground and a historical backdrop to the issue at hand. The notion of rhetoric applied here is neither primarily concerned with persuasion, nor with the long rhetorical tradition of taxonomies dating back to antiquity (and extending well into structuralist analysis of narrative). It is first and foremost concerned with the ambition to investigate the ways in which figurative and stylistic structures feed into narratives. This approach is to be distinguished, for the time being, from the American branch of rhetorical narratology influenced by Wayne C Booth (1983), which is mainly concerned with a synthetic approach to plot, character and genre, and only to a lesser extent with style, poetic diction and figurativity as dynamic processes. Undeniably, what is taught in classes on rhetorical analysis on the European continent is largely akin to the practice of textual analysis in British stylistics (see also Leech and Short, 2007, on rhetoric and style). Yet, this stylistic view of rhetoric can be expanded in various directions: Not only towards the study of emotional and ethical appeals of fictional messages (see Stockwell, in this issue), but also towards the contribution of stylistic patterns and figurative language to aesthetical and informational dimensions of a narration. Stylistic and figurative patterns may support or enhance the explicit message of the narrator, but they may also subvert or contradict it. Several contributions in this special issue on rhetoric and narrative focus on phenomena located on the level of observable textual processes that influence narrative organisation at the levels of plot, characterisation and profiling of the narratorial instance. Narratology tends to pigeonhole tropes and rhetorical patterning as elements expressive of a rather static, hierarchical layeredness: Tropes like metaphor and most prominently irony have either been associated with (implied versions of) authorial agency, constituting an element of authority that acts as an infraction of the individual mindset represented, or they have been dealt with as the conceptual background of character language and perception (e.g. Semino and Swindlehurst, 1996 on mind style). The contributors in this issue explore how rhetoric and stylistics may contribute to the investigation of latent or subliminal structures of narrative discourse: rhetorical figures (in particular figurativity) rearrange elements of narratives. Whereas rhetorical patterning may disrupt the narrative course of action, it may at the same time create new motivational structures. The narrative setting within which this process occurs, reinforces what has been termed a rhetorical (Flower, 1987: 125) or point-driven reading (Vipond and Hunt, 1984: 261) impelling the reader to interpret the relations within the figurative network in a non-linear narrative sense. 1 A similar narrative impulse can be seen at work when reading disparate textual phenomena such as landscape depictions in literary works: here, too, descriptive matter can be transformed into non-linear and noncontinual, yet progressively developing narrative potential. Recent innovative approaches within narratology (e.g. Caracciolo, 2013) build on a similar interest in linking narratology with cognitive stylistic approaches. Rhetorical structures are typically investigated with the help of close reading procedures that rely on a well-established terminology (Lausberg, 1998; Plett, 1973) and can be supplemented with regard to reader cognition (e.g. Semino and Culpeper, 2002). In addition, corpus-stylistic approaches have recently gained importance in analyses of rhetorical structures in literary texts (Semino and Short, 2004; Toolan, 2009). Corpus

3 Martens et al. 171 analysis may contribute to traditional literary analysis by drawing attention to structures that guide the expectations of readers (e.g. Toolan, 2009). Exploring the relationship between stylistic elements and narrative structure allows for new forms of research in corpus stylistics. Corpus stylistic analyses shed light on the makeup of the co-text (Black s (1993) frame ) surrounding the figurative expression: the extension of the frame, its semantic cohesion and adhesion, the distribution of semantic fields and their density, but also on the figuralising effect the tropes may have on the co-text. Insight is provided into particular narrative techniques that accompany or highlight metaphors (Müller and Lambrecht, 2013; Elshout, 2013). Other contributions to this volume chime in with recent attempts to go beyond conceptual metaphor theory in that they aim to do justice to other figures like synecdoche and metonymy (Chrzanowska- Kluczewska, Klimek) and to the interplay between figurative forms (Martens and Biebuyck; Elshout). The rhetorical and stylistic approach is applied to new and promising pathways of narrative theory: the study of ethos (Stockwell), corpus-based narratological research (Müller and Lambrecht), the study of anti-narrative techniques and their effects on the reader (Kukkonen), and historical and transgeneric narratology (Klimek). All contributions to this special issue are interested in the ways in which rhetorical devices display narrative potential. The rhetorical-narratological framework is explored in different directions, approaching the central question (the function of rhetoric within narrative) from different methodological angles and with regard to different genres and different figures of speech (simile, adynaton, prolepsis, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche). Müller and Lambrecht make a contribution to a diachronic, corpus-based analysis of literary figurativeness. Detailed analysis of their NarrCo-corpus shows a clear increase of as if -statements in the early 19th century and around The corpus analysis is enriched with a more detailed analysis of two positive and two negative examples of as if -concentration in novels from the 18th to the 20th century (Wezel, von Eichendorff, Musil, Weiss). On a narratological level, they show that as if -statements indicate a position that combines instances of poetic language with approximative descriptions of mental states. They explain the paradoxical combination of a confident narrator and the acknowledgment of character focalisation restrictions, as a paranarrative. This paranarrative frequently makes room for an external communication between author and reader. Elshout investigates the deployment of metaphorical agency in a poetic realist novella, Wilhelm Raabe s Celtic Bones (1864). Realist poetics only rarely display a predilection for elaborate creative metaphors. Elshout shows, however, how in the travel account figurativeness is often contained within virtual micronarratives like delusions and imaginations. She explains that because of their embeddedness in virtual passages the figurative sequences become proto-metaphorical : the emergence of a metaphor is reflected but not fully executed. In a mingling of simile and metaphor the narrator-witness tries to communicate his own perceptions and experiences and those of the other characters to the reader. Elshout s case study moreover reveals the narrative impact of virtual-figurative passages. The passages not only pause or anticipate the events in the storyworld but delay and instigate the primary plot and produce shifts in meaning.

4 172 Language and Literature 22(3) Kukkonen s contribution explores the notion of uncooperative narration by combining Gricean communication principles with rhetorical analysis. Her analyses of Eliza Haywood s fiction (1721, 1751) demonstrate the negotiation between the narrators flouting of the communicational maxims by means of the rhetorical figures adynaton and prolepsis, and the readers efforts to recover them as cooperative communicators. The impossibility of narrating certain emotional scenes is restored as a bodily sharing of this emotional experience, but also as a management of readers attention, since ironic chapter headings anticipate the readers responses. Kukkonen shows how uncooperative figures of speech flesh out a narratorial stance and create a community between the participants in literary communication (readers, characters, narrators). Klimek uses a methodologically pluralistic approach, linking traditional poetry analysis and a rhetorical-narratological toolbox. She investigates micro-stylistic phenomena such as metonymy and synecdoche in baroque epitaphs and reveals how they can create discourse events, both on the level of the enunciation and on the level of the reception, in the expected attitude of the reader. In particular, this approach enables her to demonstrate with an epitaph from Loredano in the German translation by Johann Gottlieb Meister (1698) how a complex (para)narrative layer may undermine the surface proposition of the text. Chrzanowska-Kluczewska s contribution focuses on synecdoche, which is frequently underestimated as a trope. She investigates the history and function of synecdoche. Her analyses of prose and poetry (Proust; Plath; Milosz) put forward the text-creating dynamics of body parts synecdoches. They demonstrate how synecdoches on the micro-level can be combined with other tropes and can be clustered in macro-synecdochical sequences. Moreover she explains how chains of synecdoches can create a figural cohesion on the mega- or meta-level of a whole text. Macro-figurative chains are shown to play an important role in the construction of narrative and lyrical scenarios. Martens and Biebuyck investigate how figurativity is channelled and altered through narrative. They show how metaphor interacts with other figures of speech (simile, metalepsis, personification, synecdoche) and with the modalities of the narrative. This interaction puts alternative narrative scenarios at the disposal of the reader that can be coined paranarratives. They explain that tropes in narrative are not pre-established cognitive forms. Rather, the strategic distribution of information in the narrative process has the potential to fundamentally alter conceptual metaphors (such as these for cancer). Hence, the appeal to conceptual cultural knowledge is to be considered as a consequence, and not as a prerequisite of the interpretation of tropes. They discuss fictional narrative texts by Juli Zeh and Herta Müller, as well as non-fictional disease biographies written by Jürgen Nieraad and Siddhartha Mukherjee, with a view to how these texts thematise and act out the agency of their own narration. The last article reconsiders ethos as a classical (and early modern) rhetorical matter and explores it in terms of current trends in cognitive poetics. Stockwell sets out an encompassing framework for the analysis of ethics as an interaction between readerly disposition and textual imposition, to produce a sense of a positioned reader of a literary work. He acclaims the recent renewal of interest for ethics, deliberateness, creativity and credibility as decisive features of literary rhetoric. Stockwell contends that every text has preferred and dispreferred readings. By means of a deictic analysis of text fragments

5 Martens et al. 173 out of Charlotte Brontë s, Jane Austen s and Kurt Vonnegut s work that display different kinds of relations between tellers, characters and readers, Stockwell shows the different degrees of mediation of the text s ethical stances. The common point of interest in all contributions of this special issue is the conceptualisation of stylistic and figurative patterns as dynamic, versatile phenomena that operate on different levels of the narrative composition and actively interfere with narratorial situations: in particular, the relation between narrator and character and the rendering of a character s experiences by a narrator. This special issue will be of interest to scholars in the fields of linguistics, narratology, literary interpretation, stylistics, rhetoric, discourse analysis, corpus methodologies and cognitive poetics. Owing to their preoccupation with questions of methodology, the contributions cater not only to narrative theorists, rhetoric scholars and stylisticians, but also to those who take an interest in the conceptual history of disciplines that have interacted differently on the continent, in the UK and in the USA. Note 1. See also Steen (1994: 84), In point-driven reading, readers frequently demand a justification for properties of the text; this is opposed to story-driven reading, in which readers concentrate on having experience by proxy. In story-driven reading, readers engage with the characters and events in the story, not with the way they are represented by their author, as happens in point-driven-reading. References Booth WC (1983) The Rhetoric of Fiction (2nd edn). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Black M (1993 [1979]) More about metaphor. In:Ortony A (ed.) Metaphor and Thought (2nd edn). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp Caracciolo M (2013) Phenomenological metaphors in readers engagement with characters: The case of Ian McEwan s Saturday. Language and Literature 22(1): Eder T (2007) Zur kognitiven Theorie der Metapher in der Literaturwissenschaft. Eine kritische Bestandesaufnahme. In: Czernin F and Eder T (eds) Zur Metapher. Die Metapher in Philosophie, Wissenschaft und Literatur. Munich: Fink, pp Emmott C, Sanford A and Alexander M (2013) Rhetorical control of readers attention: Psychological and stylistic perspectives on foreground and background in narrative. In: Bernaerts L, and de Geest D et al. (eds.) Stories and Minds: Cognitive Approaches to Literary Narrative. Series: Frontiers of Narrative. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, pp Elshout H (2013) No learned rhetorical flourishes! Anti-rhetorical narration and metaphorical agency in Raabe s Celtic Bones. Language and Literature 22(3): Flower L (1987) Interpretative acts: Cognition and the construction of discourse. Poetics 16(2): Fludernik M (ed.) (2011) Beyond Cognitive Metaphor Theory. Perspectives on Literary Metaphor. London: Routledge. Lausberg H (1998) Handbook of Literary Rhetoric. A Foundation for Literary Study (eds. DE Orton and RD Anderson). Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Leech GN and Short M (2007) Style in Fiction. A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose (2nd edn). London: Longman.

6 174 Language and Literature 22(3) Müller R and Lambrecht T (2013) As if : Mapping the empathic eloquent narrator through literary history. Language and Literature 22(3): Pinker S (2007) The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. New York: Viking. Plett HF (1973) Einführung in die rhetorische Textanalyse (2nd edn). Hamburg: Buske. Semino E and Culpeper J (eds) (2002) Cognitive Stylistics. Language and Cognition in Text Analysis. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: Benjamins. Semino E and Short M (2004) Corpus Stylistics. Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation in a Corpus of English Writing. London and New York: Routledge. Semino E and Swindlehurst K (1996) Metaphor and mind style in Ken Kesey s One Flew Over the Cuckoo s Nest. Style 30(1): Steen G (1994) Understanding Metaphor in Literature. An Empirical Approach. London and New York: Longman. Toolan M (2009) Narrative Progression in the Short Story. A Corpus Stylistic Approach. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: Benjamins. Vipond D and Hunt RA (1984) Point-driven understanding. Pragmatic dimensions of literary reading. Poetics 13: