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.
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.
»Der typische Geschichtenzerstörer« sei er, sagt Thomas Bernhard über sich und sein Schreiben, Peter Handkes Erzähler wird vom »Antifabeltier« heimgesucht und Elfriede Jelineks Bekenntnis als ...Romanautorin lautet: »Ich schlage sozusagen mit der Axt drein«. Aber warum unterziehen österreichische Autor*innen nach 1945 das Erzählen als traditionelle Kulturtechnik einer solch scharfen Kritik? Viktor Konitzer verfolgt die Geschichte politischer Erzählfeindschaft bis zu den Ursprüngen einer genuin österreichischen Literatur zurück. Dabei entdeckt er spannende Formen des Nicht-Erzählens - und zeigt, wo die Geschichtenzerstörer*innen Zuflucht suchen: im reinen Fluss der Sprache, der Prosa.
Täter*innen sind heute omnipräsent - in Film, Fernsehen, Literatur, Forschung und Popkultur. Eine kritische Reflexion der Darstellungen ist besonders da geboten, wo sie zur Identifikation einladen. ...Paradigmatisch für diesen ambivalenten gesellschaftlichen Trend steht die Holocaust-Literatur aus Täterperspektive.
Neben einem umfassenden thematischen Forschungsüberblick legt Eva Mona Altmann ein innovatives, interdisziplinäres Modell zur Textanalyse vor, das die spezifische Rhetorik der Täter, die Steuerung von Empathie und Sympathie sowie die Möglichkeit einer textimmanenten Dekonstruktion des Täterdiskurses durch das literarische Verfahren des unglaubwürdigen Erzählens berücksichtigt.
Objective:
Specific content characteristics of suicide media reporting might differentially impact suicides in the population, but studies have not considered the overarching theme of the respective ...media stories and other relevant outcomes besides suicide, such as help-seeking behaviours.
Methods:
We obtained 5652 media reports related to suicide from 6 print, 44 broadcast and 251 online sources in Oregon and Washington states, published between April 2019 and March 2020. We conducted a content analysis of stories regarding their overarching focus and specific content characteristics based on media recommendations for suicide reporting. We applied logistic regression analyses to assess how focus and content characteristics were associated with subsequent calls to the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (Lifeline) and suicides in these two states in the week after publication compared to a control time period.
Results:
Compared to a focus on suicide death, a focus on suicidal ideation, suicide prevention, healing stories, community suicide crises/suicide clusters and homicide suicide was associated with more calls. As compared to a focus on suicide death, stories on suicide prevention and stories on community suicide crises/suicide clusters were also associated with no increase in suicides. Regarding specific content characteristics, there were associations that were largely consistent with previous work in the area, for example, an association of celebrity suicide reporting with increases in suicide.
Conclusion:
The overall focus of a media story may influence help-seeking and suicides, and several story characteristics appear to be related to both outcomes. More research is needed to investigate possible causal effects and pathways.
In der Nacht manifestiert sich die Macht des Abseitigen, zugleich aber ist sie ein Zeitraum, dem Momente des Schönen innewohnen. Nico Nassenstein und Anne Storch nehmen die Nacht aus verschiedenen ...Blickwinkeln unter die Lupe und verknüpfen historische Perspektiven mit Untersuchungen zur Sprache und unterschiedlichen Formen der Wissensproduktion. In Kapiteln unterschiedlichen Genres zeichnen sie so ein Bild der Nacht als andere Möglichkeitswelt, in der alternative und dekoloniale Wissensformen ihren Platz finden und Souveränität und Kreativität immer wieder neu erlangt werden können.
Abstract Lange galt unzuverlässiges Erzählen als Sonderfall homodiegetischen Erzählens, was erst jüngst hinterfragt wurde. Der Artikel zeigt, dass die ontologische Klassifizierung nach Genette zu ...kurz greift. Unzuverlässigkeit scheint in der Heterodiegese
besonders bei unzuverlässigen Reflektoren oder als mimetische Unzuverlässigkeit möglich. Dazu ist insbesondere die Perspektive des Erzählers zu untersuchen. Am Beispiel von Kehlmanns historischem Roman Tyll kann gezeigt werden, dass auch Gattungsvorgaben das Spiel
mit unzuverlässigem Erzählen grundieren. Tyll erscheint als Spiel mit erzählerischer Unzuverlässigkeit.It was only recently that narratology opened itself for the possibility of heterodiegetic unreliable narration. This article argues that Genette's ontological
criteria of homo- and heterodiegesis fall short with regards to unreliable narration. Heterodiegetic narration seems susceptible to (mimetic) unreliability particularly when internal and even zero focalization are used. The narrator's perspective is of particular interest here. Daniel
Kehlmann's 2017 historical novel Tyll is a perfect example for heterodiegetic unreliable narration that not only plays with various strategies of unreliability but also calls into question the generic implications of the historical novel as means to represent history.
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