Intertextualität in Cornelia Funkes Roman Tintenherz (German Edition)

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Metalepsis… Metalepsis is the transgression of the boundaries of the fictional world. For this transgression we can distinguish between various types and their effects or functions. Building on the Genettian definition of metalepsis, I will begin to outline our basic set of terms for metalepsis with its general problems and specific media affordances.

Both distinctions can be reproduced on the levels of embedded stories. These two different definitions which Genette gives in Narrative Discourse refer to two different dimensions of metalepsis. The first definition refers to narrative roles of author and character, their functions and capabilities; the second definition refers to the worlds fictions create see Herman , who describes them as formal features and world-creating functions. Introduction 5 could only report it but not interfere with it. In terms of the worldcreating function of fiction, such a metalepsis is described as the author entering the fictional world.

Especially in the visual narration of films, TV and comics, there is no narrator unless it is specifically cued in formal devices like voice-over narration or captions see Bordwell Worlds As a work of fiction begins, readers imaginatively enter its fictional world, or storyworld. Any of these cues helps readers imagine the fictional world in which the story takes them by providing an entry point into this world.

In films, TV and comics, a sweeping establishing shot of the venue or a close-up, which is then pulled back to reveal more of the storyworld, fulfil the same narrative function. In a narrative without any frills and whistles, such as metanarration, mise en abyme or metalepsis, readers will not leave this fictional world as long as the story unfolds. Some of our contributions use the Genettian distinction between intradiegesis, extradiegesis and hypodiegesis.

In the first case, the narrative level of the teller, whose discourse produces the fictional world, comes to the fore and intervenes with this fictional world. In the second case, the real world outside the fictional world is revealed in its own representation. The basic underlying assumption of fiction is that the fictional world is produced by an author or creative team in the real world.

This brings both aspects of metalepsis together. The author as a producer of the fictional world is connected to the real world.

Metalepsis in Popular Culture (Narratologia)

The transgressions of metalepsis can take on many different guises. However, the basic function of metalepsis remains a crossing of the border between the fictional world and a representation of the real world. Fictional worlds and their mimesis, i. Possible worlds are projections of alternative states of affairs from the actual world. In fiction, they lose the pristine logical clarity of philosophy and are extended into fully-fledged fictional worlds.

If metalepsis refers both to the real world and to a fictional world, how can it reconcile the actual and the possible state of affairs? Basically, there are two options. One option is to work through deixis: The fictional text thus deictically addresses the real world in which we actually read it. The fictional world is the world we imagine as readers and audiences as the story unfolds. Boundary The boundary which metalepsis transgresses is generally that between a representation or mental construction of the real world and the fictional world.

These two worlds are on different ontological levels, because the fictional world refers only to a possible state of affairs, whereas the real world refers to the actual state of affairs. Even though it is also just a representation, the real world in metalepsis is considered as crucially different from the fictional world. This notion of difference is fundamental to the boundary or frontier of metalepsis.

As characters within fiction read a novel or watch a film, the boundary of metalepsis can move to the distinction between the fictional world and the fictional world which is imagined by the characters. The distinction between the fictional world and the real world is reproduced in fiction, when characters become readers and authors within their own fictional world and produce a secondary fictional world.

However, a different kind of boundary has been identified in studies of metalepsis: Fictional worlds have boundaries which distinguish them from the real world and from each other. Heterometalepsis asks us to consider what would happen if one of the characters, say Dorothea, leaves the fictional world of Middlemarch, not to address the readers or George Eliot herself, but to join Jane Eyre for a cup of tea at Thornfield. There is a transgression of the boundary marking off distinct fictional worlds, but it is not the boundary to the real world or a representation of it.

Does this also qualify as a metalepsis? Simply by mentioning their names alone, this generic and discursive context of the real world is evoked. This contextual dimension of the characters reminds readers of the real world. Its Types, Effects and Functions The boundary which is transgressed in metalepsis runs between the fictional world and the real world, and the real world is then represented in fiction.

Fiction facilitates this transgression in different ways: The direction and the nature of the transgression in metalepsis help us draw up a basic matrix of types which is coherent and applicable across media, because it is not bound to verbal narrative discourse. A metalepsis can be both ascending and rhetorical if a character addresses the readers or the author by verbal deixis or by looking out of the frame, thereby breaking the fourth wall.

It is ascending and ontological if the character actually steps out of this frame and enters a representation of the real world encountering readers and the author. Descending metalepses can be both ontological and rhetorical. Authors can address their characters or even enter the fictional world to interact with them. Readers can enter the fictional world as well and perform a descending ontological metalepsis, but they almost never address characters in what would be a descending rhetorical metalepsis. If the boundaries of fictional worlds are represented in fiction, then Jane Eyre can address Dorothea across these boundaries and invite her over for tea in an intertextual rhetorical metalepsis.

Dorothea can leave the world of Middlemarch for Thornfield in an intertextual ontological metalepsis. The research on metalepsis yields a good many more types of metalepsis than the ones I have just outlined. The case studies in this volume will also propose more types of metalepses than the six types of my basic matrix. The same is certainly true for metalepsis and its pervasiveness across the media.

In their investigation of specific texts, the articles in this volume expand this basic matrix of types for the media they discuss. However, the types they find are always types of transgressing the boundary of the fictional world and they therefore do not distort but complement this basic set of terms for analysing metalepsis in popular culture. Werner Wolf does not claim the same social significance for metalepsis, but for him as well its transgressive quality is essentially subversive.

This notion is important enough for him to include it in his minimal definition of metalepsis: Metalepsis disrupts the readers imagining the fictional world and their immersion in it. Its effect, if not necessarily its intended function, is therefore thought to be anti-illusionist. However, the question arises as to whether this is necessarily always the case.

Metalepsis seems to be essentially anti-illusionist because it destroys the coherence of the fictional world by transgressing its boundary. Contributing to the persuasive power of this assumption is certainly the perceived rise of metalepsis and other means of metareference in the disruptive and deconstructive narratives of postmodernism. Brian McHale states that love and death are both the basic principles of fiction and the basic principles of life Readers long to be seduced by the text and authors love their characters According to McHale, these relations of love and death, which underlie all fiction because of the basic communicative situation they imply, are already metafictional.

Postmodern fiction brings them to the fore with its self-reflexivity and enacts them in metalepsis. Introduction 11 In fact, we could even claim that metalepsis is inherent to the entire communicative situation of fiction. With metalepsis, it becomes explicit. Fiction — and this takes us back to rhetoric—is intertwined with the basic communicational situation: In verbal narrative, it is usually the narrator who produces the discourse.

In visual narrative, such a narrator is often not discernable. Nevertheless, the visual and verbal information films communicate is carefully managed, and we can thus discuss narration and communicative situation in visual media, even though they have no narrator see Bordwell On the basis of this communicational situation, fiction can be enmeshed with reality both in the implicit communication between author and readers and in the knowledge they share.

Jean-Marie Schaeffer shows how immersion in fiction oscillates constantly11 between moments of mimetic illusion and moments of metaleptic realisation of the real world For him, metalepsis is an enactment of immersion, because it reproduces the transgression between the fictional and the real worlds, which underlies immersion at large.

The boundary between the fictional world and the real world might not be generally as watertight as basic narrative analysis makes it out to be. Suffice it to say that transgression in metalepsis can have disruptive and deconstructive effects, if the immersion in the fictional world is ruptured, and that it can have illusionist effects, if it successfully reproduces the basic interaction of the communicational situation of fiction. Along this line of reproducing the communicative situation and artfully changing it in fiction runs the distinction between natural and unnatural narration see Fludernik for natural narration and Richardson for unnatural narration; see Thoss forthcoming for a discussion of unnatural narration and metalepsis.

If there is no essential effect of metalepsis, we need to start wondering what the functions, the intentionally engineered effects, of metalepsis in popular culture are. The dichotomy between immersion in the fictional world and the anti-illusionist rupture of immersion gives rise to one set of functions. In the literature of the fantastic, texts make readers doubt for a moment whether what they read is real.

In comedy, the fictitiousness of the fictional world or the blandness of the real world can be comically revealed on comedy, see Sarkhosh in this volume. Such revelations of the fictional onto the real or the real onto the fictional world can also lead to epistemic functions of doubt and detection see Lutas in this volume. As we can see from these tags, the narrative function of metalepsis is often tied to a genre such as the fantasy novel, comedy or crime fiction. The case studies of Klimek, Sarkhosh and Lutas will focus on these three genres and elaborate how they accommodate different functions of metalepsis.

Ben-Merre and Turk show how the relation between audience and text established through metalepsis can engender effects of immersion, authenticity and self-reflexivity. The entire collection of case studies in this volume will show how broad a spectrum of effects and functions metalepsis in popular culture can have. The material of these basic accounts of metalepsis, which are central to the illumination and definition of the concept, are limited in two ways: Introduction 13 a broader scale by offering a series of metaleptic case studies in popular texts of different media.

It is seen when TV characters snatch remote controls to have a say in the events of their stories, when a superhero embarks on a quest to meet his maker or when detectives reveal that there is a real world beyond the fictional world in which they live. Metalepsis is certainly not limited to high culture or avant-garde literature and, in order to gain a broader understanding of the phenomenon of metalepsis, the case studies in this volume analyse its different aspects and occurrences in different media across popular culture. Pier and Schaeffer have assembled a volume which bears testimony to the pervasiveness of metalepsis in our cultural expression, featuring various articles on metalepsis in film and popular fiction.

Wolf has attempted to provide a systematic transmedial account of metalepsis in his article of Our volume follows their trail by providing a coherent account of metalepsis across media— an account which features case studies and extensive discussions of the specific limitations and possibilities of metalepsis in the various media employed by popular culture.

The focus of our volume is on the narrative mechanisms of metalepsis. In order to connect these to texts of popular culture, we have to answer two questions: Are the metalepses of high culture texts more deconstructive and critical of ideology? Are the metalepses of popular culture tied to genre effects? Second, how do the limitations and possibilities of specific media, their affordances, affect the worlds, boundaries and types of transgression in metalepsis?

How do visual and audio-visual media expand our understanding of worlds, their boundaries and transgression? Popular Culture Words are used with different intentions and are thus ascribed different meanings and values. From their perspective, texts of popular culture are inferior, since their stories, characters and messages are streamlined and schematised, the generic expectations are always fulfilled and their plots offer easy and gratifying answers. Over the last forty years, critics of culture, society and media have repeatedly shown that this distinction between popular culture and high culture is not grounded in any essential difference between popular and avant-garde texts, but in ascribing these tags to the texts see Frow None of these texts themselves changed over the years: However, even though it is easy to show that popular culture is largely a tag in our cultural value system, the influence of the tag in shaping our expectations towards the texts is real nonetheless.

This kind of expertise in both popular and high culture not only helps us to understand the texts, but it also sets our expectations of what texts of either group will be like and of what kinds of readerly involvements they provide. However, the expectations towards popular culture still determine our understanding of how these texts are to be read, and they tell us which functions and effects of metalepsis to look for in them. Introduction 15 Metalepsis transgresses the boundaries of the fictional world and makes readers aware of the real world. If metalepsis disturbs immersion, then its function may be to destabilise narrative structures or to provide fuel for ideological critique.

If metalepsis reinforces the immersion of readers, this would tend to reinforce the stereotype of popular texts. Metalepsis in comedy, as our case studies of comedy film, animation and fiction show see Thoss, Sarkhosh and Feyersinger in this volume , reveals the real world and disrupts the immersion of readers in the fictional world without necessarily providing an ideological critique or openly experimenting with narrative structures.

Comedy toys with something being hilariously amiss, with readers knowing more than the characters or vice versa. In popular culture texts these effects may be relayed by metalepsis, but they do not necessarily imbue the text with avant-garde qualities. The genre expectations of comedy, detective and fantasy fiction influence the effects readers perceive of metalepsis. These expectations can correspond to the set of expectations we have in popular culture texts or they can be at cross purposes with them.

The popular culture status of the texts discussed in the case studies of Metalepsis in Popular Culture certainly influences the expected functions and effects of the metalepsis in these texts.

However, these expectations always interact with expectations readers have in particular genres. At the end of the day, the effects and functions of metalepsis depend on the larger narrative contexts in which it occurs. Media Affordances Having considered the popular culture status of the texts discussed in the case studies in this volume, we turn now to the affordances of the various media employed by popular culture in order to see how they shape the depiction of worlds and their boundaries as well as the transgression of these boundaries in metalepsis.

Written literature, published on paper between the covers of a book, has very different limitations and possibilities for representing a story than do film, comics or performances. We can distinguish between media which by and large employ one mode of representation, such as the written language of literature or the images of paintings, and media which employ more than one mode of representation.

Comics use the modes of written language, images and panel sequences; films use the modes of spoken language and sound as well as photographic images. Sometimes, in subtitles and inserts, films also use written language. Popular culture is full of multimodal media such as films, comics, or videos. With the rise of digital cultural forms such as hypertexts, virtual realities and computer games, multimodal media in popular culture have grown in number over the last decades.

Each mode has its affordances. Images can do things that words cannot do. Images are much more detailed and precise than words, whereas words can be more general and can negate things. Film adaptations of novels are indeed often hampered by the different media affordances of written and visual storytelling. Media affordances also affect metalepsis. Images can Introduction 17 show the boundary between the fictional world and the real world as a frame or dividing line, and they can distinguish between them by representing the real world as photographic reality and the fictional world as a cartoonish world reduced in detail and texture, as for example in the cartoons by Tex Avery.

As each mode of representation has its own affordances, these affordances multiply and interact when they are brought together in multimodal media. The TV series of Pride and Prejudice not only works through the modes of images and spoken words, but also through the mode of the performance of their actors. Performance is particularly rich in possibilities for metalepsis, since actors use their flesh-and-blood bodies in order to represent the actions of a character in a fictional world. The role of Mr Darcy has left its mark on the public persona of the actor Colin Firth, as he has repeatedly mentioned in interviews see Teeman Hofer explores the metaleptic potential of performance and public personae further in her case study.

The types of transgression are of course influenced by the modes of representation in turn: We should not take the direction too literally for visual media, however, since in The Purple Rose of Cairo the actor descends from the screen into a representation of the real world, which is technically an ascending metalepsis. Verbal media can describe ontological metalepsis and directly represent rhetorical metalepsis. Visual media can represent both.

In fact, works of fiction sometimes employ their very medium for a metalepsis. It might represent a special kind of metalepsis which is based on the actual interaction between the text and the reader. The term refers to the transgression of the boundaries between a fictional world and the real world.

This border between the fictional and real world can be reproduced within a fictional world in a mise en abyme. Metaleptic transgressions can be categorised into different types, and they can have different effects and functions for the story and our understanding of it. Transgressing the boundary from the fictional world to the real world is an ascending metalepsis; transgressing from the real to the fictional world is a descending metalepsis.

We can further distinguish between transgressing the boundary rhetorically or ontologically. The basic matrix of types of metalepsis thus takes direction ascending—descending and nature ontological— rhetorical as its variables. In the first instance, the effects or function of metalepsis would be anti-illusionist; in the second instance, they would be strongly illusionist. The expectations towards texts of popular culture are predictability and escapism. If metalepsis disrupts the immersion of readers, it seems to work against the predictability and escapism ascribed to popular culture.

However, the generic expectations of comedy, detective fiction or fantasy can complement or contradict the expectations elicited by popular culture. Metalepsis in Popular Culture, as our case studies will show, not only questions the high culture—popular culture distinctions but it also teaches us about its dynamics. Furthermore, media affordances, i. Metalepsis in popular culture occurs in a variety of multimodal media, i. Even though the critical discussion of metalepsis is rooted in the instances of avant-garde literature, our foray into popular culture has shown that it holds an exciting repertoire of metalepses.

They need to be analysed on the basis of a consistent set of terms while keeping the expectations tied to their status as popular culture and the media affordances of the texts in mind. As you, dear readers, close the door on this introduction, and open the next, you will find that a rich array of case studies of metalepsis in popular culture awaits you.

Directed by Sharon Maguire. An Authoritative Text, Context, Criticism. Directed by Michael Curtiz. Pride and Prejudice The Purple Rose of Cairo Directed by Woody Allen. The Truman Show Directed by Peter Weir. Secondary Sources Bordwell, David Narration in the Fiction Film. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Fiction and Possible Worlds.

The Johns Hopkins UP. Die Metalepse im Animationsfilm. Cultural Studies and Cultural Value. Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. The Fictive and the Imaginary: Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics. University of Minnesota Press. Jensen, Klaus Bruhn Retrieved 20 September Theory and Case Studies. Literacy in the New Media Age. Metalepsis and the Construction of the Subject. Introduction 21 Richardson, Brian Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction.

The Languages of Storytelling. University of Nebraska Press, 1— Retrieved 03 October The Rhetoric of Ficitonality: Narrative Theory and the Idea of Fiction. A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. University of Pennsylvania Press. The aim of this paper is to elaborate our basic definition of metalepsis for written narrative texts, to develop a practical scheme of such metalepses and to explore their effects in the genre of fantasy fiction. I have chosen the popular genre of fantasy fiction because this genre has shown a remarkable richness of different types of metalepsis during roughly the last three decades.

As this scheme is being developed inductively from a variety of examples taken from the fantasy genre, the categorisation of metalepses may have to be modified in order to make it applicable to the study of metaleptic devices in other media. This scheme, therefore, should be complete for narrative texts in general, though it is not the only possible categorisation of the phenomena in question.

Metalepsis in Fantasy Fiction 23 wider exploration of the historical and philosophical backgrounds of each of the three main categories. Fantasy fiction is along with detective stories and self-help books one of the most popular genres on the contemporary book market. It is often regarded as a purely escapist genre see Bonacker that fulfils no other function2 than entertainment. The present paper will show that this is not true: For a more detailed list of criteria for a paradoxical phenomenon in the arts to become a metalepsis, cf.

See also Pier Extradiegetic level ascending metalepsis descending metalepsis Intradiegetic level ascending metalepsis descending metalepsis Hypodiegetic level Fig. When an actor in a play hurts himself and cries out in actual pain in his own person, not as the stage character he plays, the cry is clearly a paradoxical transgression between the level of representation the performance and the level of what is represented the play.

This example shows that metalepses in different media can occur in different forms. The fact that performance is an inherent element or characteristic of some art forms makes possible these kinds of transgressions between the real and the fictional world. However, with the exception of performing arts, metalepsis understood in the strict Genettian sense only involves fictional levels of representation. Even if an actual author e. Metalepsis in Fantasy Fiction 27 character is merely what Gabriel After having written a sad ending for the two little children who got lost in a forest, the narrator Mythenmetz addresses his readers in a direct way: Was soll ich machen?

Shall I break the most important taboo of Zamonian literary history? Only in pulp fiction does good triumph over evil in the end. The book is a pastiche of several episodes that take place in the worlds of different works of world literature. From within the fiction, Skinner communicates with Jane: Jane tries to do so by using several further descending metalepses: Then she makes the two men read a book see In this case, descending metalepses are examples of the temptation that authors, like readers, are faced with while reading or writing fiction: Metalepsis in Fantasy Fiction 29 prolonged stay in a fantasy world also poses the psychopathological danger of a loss of reality.

This change of place cannot be called a metalepsis because the Otherworld is not a hypodiegesis i. But there is also a vertical transgression. In the Otherworld, Jon-Tom learns that he possesses a special gift: This coming-to-real-life of characters constitutes an ascending metalepsis, a leap out of the story world of the song into the frame world where the song is sung.

During the rehearsals of a school production of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street,17 the spirits of the characters acted on stage become alive and continue to fight their cruel play-war in reality. This happens because the teacher wants the children to play their parts with passion, to immerse themselves in the play: Once again, we find metalepsis linked with the theme of immersion in fictive worlds. Encouraged by the teacher, the children identify completely with their roles; as they do so, their words take on the power of spells.

Suddenly, invisible hands begin to damage the room. As Ann is very sensitive to the fears and sorrows of the people tortured by Sweeney in the play, she decides to kill Marshall on stage in order to get rid of the ghost. The end of the novel confirms that the spirits of stage characters have indeed been summoned by the passionate acting of a play.

The world in which Colin, Ann and Marshall live no longer follows the rules of a realistic novel; the ascending metalepses of stage characters as spirits that possess their actors is a fact in the story world of The Dark Behind the Curtain. Following the terminology of Todorov Another form of ascending metalepsis related to the theme of the magical power of the word is the coincidence of the reading act and of what happens in the text that is read.

This is the case when the content of a hypodiegetic story comes alive on the intradiegetic level at the moment a character reads the text. A strange noise is described in this text. At the very same moment, a strange but quite similar noise is heard in the mansion where the narrator and Lord Usher are sitting together; the two characters are frightened by this coincidence. Metalepsis in Fantasy Fiction 31 Equally problematic is the case of another well-known example regarded as a typical ascending metalepsis in fantasy fiction.

The story is narrated in internal focalisation through an intradiegetic character who is reading a book. Sitting in a green armchair at his country estate with his back facing the door that leads to the garden he is deeply absorbed in the plot of the hypodiegetic story he is reading: He breaks into the house and sneaks—a dagger in his fist—towards a man who is sitting with his back towards the door, reading in the green armchair. Genette assumes that the hypodiegetic burglar must have come via ascending metalepsis onto the level of the intradiegetic reader of his book and, once there, assassinated the reader at the very moment he is reading this passage.

Gonzaba enjoyed the nearly perverse feeling of tearing himself away from what was around him, line by line. The strictly internal focalisation of the story makes the text what Todorov As these examples show, we must not be too hasty when classifying literary phenomena as ascending metalepsis: Another problem for metalepsis arises when the story that constitutes the hypodiegetic level within the intradiegetic level is not fictional but factual within the world of the story.

Nevertheless, the surprising effect of his sudden appearance remains. Fantasy fiction frequently explores this frightening potential of ascending metalepses. Readers may begin wondering why it is not possible that they themselves might one day discover that they, too, live only in a novel, written by a hidden poet on a higher level of reality.

Complex Forms of Metalepsis in Fantasy Fiction The previous sections have discussed the simple forms of metalepsis in fantasy fiction. To study the more complex forms of metalepses, Wolf At the beginning of the novel, the hierarchy of narrative levels seems quite clear: This would not be too implausible, but in the second half of the novel, the genre of the text suddenly changes: For example, a dog talks to Thomas.

Breathe through the fur. The fucking dog talked. I wanted to hear more, I wanted to run like hell. To become immortal, France had written that after his own death, someone would come to Galen to write his biography, thus enabling him to come to life again via metalepsis from his own biography. He was convinced that since he had been able to create the people in Galen, then if he died, someone somewhere would be able to recreate him […].

Thomas Abbey is no longer needed: Thomas, the homodiegetic narrator, leaves the scene and therefore does not witness the expected return of the dead author. Within the story world, France is not a character but a real person, now dead, who is the subject of a factual biography. So France used his writing-power to make a person of his own diegetic level Thomas make him France a character in a hypodiegetic story the biography through which he can, after his death, come to life again. This results in a blurring of diegetic levels. Complex metalepses like this completely destroy the type-theoretic distinction between the levels of representation and of what is being represented type-token differentiation.

Is France the creator of Thomas? Metalepsis in Fantasy Fiction 37 make Thomas write his biography? So are Thomas and France on the same diegetic level? But then how could France write that Thomas would write his biography? How could Thomas resurrect a man from death with the help of written words? Everyone in this strange fantastic world seems to be ruled by mysterious powers, all united by a spell of words.

Thus, this novel celebrates the creative powers of human imagination and at the same time explores the scary potential of this world-creating force. Indeed, as part of the fictive world of the text, they are merely part of a large representation, but from their own level of fictionality characters cannot possibly know this. This knowledge is restricted to us, the empirical readers. Normally, the aesthetic illusion veils this knowledge, but metalepses can produce an anti-illusionist effect that brings this knowledge back into the mind of readers.

They celebrate the magical power of fantasy and enchantment through written, read or sung words and thus work towards the effect of immersion, but they can also explore the scary potential of the creative power of human imagination: Contemporary popular fantasy fiction uses metalepses in order to combine both: The Land of Laughs. The Dark Behind the Curtain. Foster, Alan Dean Poems, Tales, Essays and Reviews. Secondary Sources Antonsen, Jan Erik Essais sur la signification narrative dans quatre romans modernes. Fantasy als besonders umstrittene fantastische Literatur.

Fantastik in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Essay sur la mise en abyme. Theorie der phantastischen Literatur. Die Sprache der Literaturwissenschaft.

Textanalytische und philosophische Untersuchungen. Eine Philosophie der Literatur. Erkenntnisformen von Dichtung, Philosophie und Wissenschaft. Metalepsis in Fantasy Fiction 39 — Die Metalepse in der phantastischen Literatur. The Tradition of the Anti-Realist Revolt. Eine Typologie und sechs exemplarische Analysen. Niemeyer Schmid, Wolf Zur Theorie der literarischen Fiktion als Make-Believe. Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, — Narrative Devices in Contemporary Fantastic Fiction. Eine radikale Konsequenz der neueren Metafiktion.

Literaturprogramm und Lebensinszenierung im Kontext seiner Zeit. Tezuka Osamus autoreflexive Mangas. We most certainly would be shocked, since our Western episteme ascribes such events to the supernatural and the fantastic. Such transgressions of the boundaries between the fictional world and the real world, so-called metalepses, certainly have no place in detective fiction, a genre which relies on reason and deduction—the very opposite of fantasy. Can we accept that a detective can enter the world of Jane Eyre in order to protect the heroine?

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Does it challenge the idea that the novel is detective fiction? Or can we reconcile metalepsis with the conventions of detective fiction? In this article I will analyse The Eyre Affair and three other examples of works in which the narrative metalepsis has an important place: For my discussion of metalepsis in detective fiction, I am going to outline which worlds are represented in the examples mentioned above and how the metaleptic transgression of the boundary between these worlds takes place. As popular detective fiction often follows a strong and entrenched genre model, we need to address the effects of metalepsis—do they work as immersion or rupture?

Especially the representation of the reading and writing process in my examples provides interesting insights into the effects of metalepsis. Theoretical Prolegomenon The use of the narrative metalepsis in detective fiction has not been the object of any literary study yet.

This can be due to the fact that, since its essence is the transgression of the boundary between different worlds, metalepsis has ontological implications which seem to make it incompatible with a genre like detective fiction. Detective fiction as a popular genre is interested in providing reassurance and epistemological certainty, whereas metalepsis transgresses boundaries of beings and often destabilises the stability of the word.

Brian McHale for example explains that the dominant in detective fiction is epistemological It is true that the detective novel, especially in its popular form, is one of the most easily recognisable genres of literature, especially because of its strong generic conventions.

Its basic structure is very simple: On the other hand, the simplicity of this basic structure is one of the reasons why detective fiction can appear in so many different forms, or sub-genres. Moreover, detective fiction is generally seen as a formally very rigid genre. According to Tzvetan Todorov for instance, detective fiction does not allow many deviations from its simple generic rules without losing its essence.

A dominant according to Jakobson is the focusing component of a work of art, the component which guarantees the integrity of the structure. In the intellectual forms of detective novels, such as the sub-genres Tani calls the anti-detective novel and the metafictional anti-detective novel, the author allows himself or herself a larger freedom with the generic conventions, using them to other ends than in the traditional forms. In some of the works that Tani includes in these intellectual sub-genres, especially in the works pertaining to the metafictional anti-detective novels, one can find examples of narrative metalepses.

However, it is arguable whether these novels really are to be considered pure detective fiction. More specifically, they use the basic structure of the detective novel for metafictional purposes, such as the problematisation of the relationship between the author, the text and the reader. In this process, the detection aspect often becomes secondary, and not even the basic structure of the detective novel is respected.

Or could it be that it is the rigidity that explains this compatibility? As many critics have noted, the strong generic conventions that I mentioned as typical of detective fiction could very well be one of the reasons why postmodern writers use the genre; the subversive techniques are more conspicuous when there is a clear frame to be broken.

However, this is not the only reason why detective fiction and metafictional postmodern literature can be compatible. The act of detection itself could be the reason why the detective novel is sometimes used as a mould for self-reflexive literary works. Such an analogy is constructed on the fact that, after all, the enigma that the detective has to solve is a text, since the events have to be put into words.

The access to events in the past can never be direct, only mediated, in this case by language. Seen from this perspective, all detective fiction is metafictional. For the anti-detective novel or the metaphysical detective fiction, such a degree of hermeneutic self-reflexivity is perhaps not much of a surprise, but what about the distinctly popular incarnations of the detective novel? One could think, with Francisco G. Orejas, that the aim of popular literature is to accomplish a mimetic illusion and to conceal the act of narration in order to catch the attention of the reader for the story that is related.

See for instance Annie Combes As we have seen, questioning and the suspicion that what we held to be real is only fabricated are embedded in the genre of detective fiction. It seems that the drive to immersion and textual pleasure in popular fiction and the rationalist heritage of detection suppress such questioning and suspicion which would give rise to metalepsis. However, in recent years, popular detective fiction has engaged with its metaleptic undercurrent and I will explore four works in the following, discussing the worlds, boundaries and effects of metalepsis in detective fiction.

The Dumas Club is self-reflexive on the level of discourse. Dorrit Cohn for example distinguishes between metalepsis on the level of discourse and metalepsis on the level of story I will focus my discussion on the latter. As we will see, there are three or even four different worlds which seem to communicate in very intricate ways: Likewise, Menchu, her friend, makes another comment that could be interpreted as self-reflexive when she says: The Flanders Panel is narrated by a heterodiegetic narrator in the third person.

The narration seems to follow the pattern of a chess game that is played in a painting by the 15th-century Flemish painter Pieter van Huys. In order to save themselves, the characters have to get involved in the game and to interpret the movements of the invisible player who has the black pieces.

Consequently, the characters become detectives themselves, more so than the actual detective of the novel, inspector Feijoo, who is not even close to solving the case on his own. The act of detection here reproduces the act of interpretation of a story: Admittedly, a game of chess is not a narrative, but the way in which it influences the lives of the characters in the novel makes it a sort of embodiment of a story, if by story we mean the chronology of the events as they actually occurred in the diegetic world.

The movements of the invisible chess player who plays with the black pieces become actual events in the reality of the characters, as if the chess player were a god, or an author, playing with the world that he had created. Even though the events turn out to be not the machinations of an author or god from beyond the fictional world, both the characters and the reader have had the impression that a metaleptic transgression was actually occurring throughout the novel.

To start with, there is a relation between the story of the three characters from the painting and the game of chess. It is true that this relation is inversed compared to the relation between the chess game and the events of the fictional world. The lives of the three characters in the painting are not affected by the chess game, as it is the case for the characters in the novel.

The chess game is represented deliberately in the painting as a key to the solving of the murder of one of the characters inside the painting, a murder that had already been committed a couple of years before the painting was even started. Nevertheless, there are some strange resemblances between the world depicted in the painting and the diegetic world of the novel.

Synonyms and antonyms of Intertextualität in the German dictionary of synonyms

At first, this happens in certain episodes that are presented in a fantastic mode, with the narrator manifesting a hesitation about their real occurrence. But, to judge by the way in which this event is presented, it appears as a transgression of the boundaries between the worlds, in other words as a metalepsis: This imaginary space makes one think of what Sophie Rabau writes about the narrative metalepsis and its hermeneutical aspect: The ending, which reveals that the culprit was no god at all, but just one of the characters who had staged the whole thing in order to imitate the movements in the game of chess from the painting, could be an argument for seeing the novel as a simple detective story.

Still, the narration of this final metaleptic turn is marked by hesitation: The text in French is: This makes me conclude that despite its strong engagement with metafictional undercurrents of the genre, The Flanders Panel is primarily a detective novel containing metafictional elements. In the following three novels, the metalepses and their transgressions are actual events in the fictional world and we will turn to them for our discussion of the effects of metaleptic transgressions and their effects.

Metaleptic Transgressions and Their Effects Even though the two novels discussed here enact the transgression of the boundary between fictional world and real world, being popular detective fiction, they still aim to reduce the disruptive effect of their metalepsis. Both novels feature a metaleptic meeting between the author and the character that he created. I will compare the way the meeting is narrated in these two cases with one of best known novels where such a meeting was staged: But the fact that a well known person from the real world and a character from the fictional world of another novel appear in a novel would not constitute an example of metalepsis worth discussing in this context, given the triviality of the procedure.

Such subversion could be viewed as an attempt to give a demystified view of the writer, who, according to postmodern literary theory, does not have total control and possession of his text. But the metaleptic device in Ten Percent of Life is not only used for commenting on the writing process. As in The Flanders Panel, the detection work is connected to the reading process. This is done on a general level, since the detective has to solve a mystery, reproducing thus, as we have mentioned earlier, the hermeneutic activity of a reader.

Metalepsis in Detective Fiction 51 himself, in a process described as comparable to the process of acquiring self-insight: The detective becomes thus more than the symbol of the reader who has to interpret the text. He becomes the literary critic, the professional interpreter searching for a hidden sense. What is noteworthy about the metalepses in Ten Percent of Life is the fact that they are not presented as shocking.

On the contrary, it is Chandler that utters his surprise when seeing his protagonist: This lack of shocking effect on Marlowe could be due to the fact that these metalepses have a very definite function in the novel: Actually, the solution of the actual crime is less important in the novel than the relationship between Chandler and Marlowe, and consequently the demystification of the authorial figure.

Accordingly, Ten Percent of Life is more a metafictional novel than a work of detective fiction, even though Marlowe actually has to solve a crime: Does this mean that the writer has the final word in this conflict between author and character? These are questions that are difficult to answer in the light of a novel that is characterized by ambiguity. Ten Percent of Life is consequently more of an allegory than a detective novel, something that would explain why the metaleptic encounters are not ex- 52 Liviu Lutas perienced as shocking by the characters.

I will here look into the reasons why the metalepsis in this work has a shocking effect, focusing especially on the generic aspects. To begin with, the metalepsis is anticipated by a series of unusual events that underline its strangeness. These events are not supernatural, but for the character they appear as irrational, since they break the status quo that characterizes his world.

Peoria Smith, the blind paperboy, claims he won a lottery and will stop selling papers and have surgery to get his eye-sight back, and he tells Umney he does not like him; two men are painting the hall at the entrance of his office without his permission, and his secretary has disappeared, leaving him a note of complaint. Later on, Umney and the reader will find out that these events were incorporated in the story by the writer, a certain Samuel D. Landry, in order to prepare his character for his metaleptic intrusion into the fictional world To start with, Umney has the feeling that he knows who the person is even before looking at him: This paradox of the familiarity of the unfamiliar is strongly reminiscent of the uncanny—das Unheimliche in German—as defined by Sigmund Freud.

According to Freud, the uncanny is the feeling of uncomfortable strangeness which results when something is experienced as familiar, yet foreign at the same time. A person reading a text as an allegory, says Todorov, does not get shocked by the supernatural events in the text, but tries to interpret their meaning on the allegorical level. For instance, the office darkens even though the day is perfectly clear However, the fantastic is far from being eliminated by this explanation, which is all but rational.

But, also like in Niebla, the character of the author does not have total control over his character. Alarm is actually exactly what the character of Unamuno feels when his character starts gaining certain independence: It can be mentioned in this context that the double is one of the most usual themes in fantastic literature.

See among others Jean Fabre What resulted was a highlighting of the allegorical aspects of the meeting between the author and the character. The ontological implications of the metaleptic events that occurred are thus abandoned for the sake of the plot. There are also some self-reflexive comments, which give a strange impression that both Umney and Landry are conscious of their being characters of another work of fiction: There are also comments on the possible generic classification of the story, comments that express the difficulty to determine the genre: Landry also makes a literary analysis of the character he created:

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